Grotesques Complete

I finished the grotesques.  I like how these came out.  I need to make an agonizer for the aberration, and I need a better photo setup. 

Some Dark Eldar Painting Progress

So I have been finishing a lot of models lately.  Here are some pics.

Custom cronos

Drazhar

Medusa

Sslyth

Super easy custom Medusa

Easy SSlyth Conversion

Ever since the dark eldar were updated, I have wanted a squad of these guys.  I love the thought of four armed, snake-men.  I like the finecast model, but monopose for a unit of over 2 doesn't work for me.  I built these from original metal tyranid ravener bodies.  I cut off most of the large tail blade they have.  I also trimmed the width of the top of the ravener snakey tail, where I glued the first set of arms, to fit with the width of the dark eldar waists.  The metal was nice to work with, because I was able to bend the tails around to give each one some of its own character.  You will recognize other bits from dark eldar warriors, shard carbines from the scourge kit, dark elf weapons, harlequin weapons, wyche weapons, hellions and even a sword from the shining spears kit.  

Dark Eldar Aberration with Scissor hand WIP

I decided my aberration needed a new scissor hand, and I need to finish the paint job on this squad once and for all.

I used the end of the raider horizontal sail arm, and a vambrace blade off of the dark eldar warrior sprue.  I bent the end of the blade to hook down.  The hand is from a tyranid warrior, with the thumb cut off. 

 I was really trying to copy the awesome scissor hand on the wrack sprue.

 The squad almost finished.  Still a little work to go.

Dark Eldar vs Squatarii War Convocation

So for our final battle of the weekend, Aric and I played my Dark Eldar vs his Squatarii war Convocation.  We had to proxy some of his models, as most of his admech and squatarii stuff is still new in the box.  

My list was:

HQ:

Sslyth and medusa, venom dual splinter cannons

Troops:

2x 10 dark eldar warriors, 1 splinter cannon in Raider with splinter racks

Fast attack:

6 Reavers 2 Cluster caltrops

2x 5 scourges, 4 haywire blasters

Heavy support

Cronos spirit probe, spirit syphon

Ravager 3 dark lances

Formations

Corpse thief claw (yes I used it against my brother, I warned him, and he encouraged me to try it out)

Scalpel squadron

Aric's list

He had the skitarii war convocation.  

Knight with Stormspear pod, rapid fire battle cannon, and Chainsword.

His admech force included:

HQ: Tech priest Dominus

Troops:

3 Breachers (mostly assembled) Heavy arc rifle

3 Destroyers (proxied with my space wolf terminators) with plasma culverin

Heavy support

Kastelan robot maniple, heavy phosphor blaster top, twin linked heavy phosphor blasters

Other proxies - eldar warwalkers as dragoons, tau as skitarii rangers, and tau pathfinders as rustalkers and infiltrators (which we forgot to add until about turn three).

 My dark eldar on the carpet, waiting to be deployed.

 My deployment.

 For some reason, probably from the day before's planetstrike mission, I brought in the reserves turn one.  I should have started rolling turn two.  That may have made a big change to the result.

 First turn squatarii shooting casualties.  I think Squatarii scored like 2 objectives, turn one.

 Turn one dark eldar shooting casualties.  I had both haywire scourge groups, and the corpse thief claw shoot at the knight.  It was 8 haywire blasters, and five twin linked haywire blasters later, and the knight went up in a blaze of glory.  My scalpel squadron were unable to erase a five man squad of squatarii vangaurd.

 Turn two squatarii shooting casualties.  The scalpel squadron died quickly to the massed imperial shooting.  Those plasma culverins are brutal.  Two talos down.  At this point, I should have been running the talos every turn, and not shooting the haywire blasters.

 Turn two dark eldar shooting casualties.

 The dark eldar advance into the imperial guns.

 Turn three dark eldar shooting casualties, I focused on getting rid of the awesome hq model.  And kept the scourges on the dune crawlers.

 And lots more Dark eldar dead.

 This objective was hotly contested all game.  Aric's dune crawlers managed to make the scourge flee after winning an assault to take objective three.  The following turn, I was able to destroy both remaining dune crawlers, and take the objective with some assaulting Reavers.

The Dark Eldar won with 9-8 victory points.  It was close the whole game, and could have gone either way with a few important rolls of the dice.  It was a great game.