Fear them

The Dark Eldar (don't make me call them that new name) are the alien race I love the most in the 40k universe. It wasn't always so, and deservedly: when I worked at GW in 2005-06, weeks would pass without us selling any Dark Eldar models. I distinctly remember that there was one blister pack of wyches with assault weapons that was sitting on the peg the day I started there, and the day I finished. but in 2010, they were reborn with an almost complete refit both of lore and models. They are undoubtedly the most horrible thing in 40k (including Chaos!) and they represent the perfection of what GW has tried endless to replicate since: the uneasy mixture of science fiction, mysticism and faerie tale weirdness. 

If I said 'quasi-undead space vampire elves' you'd assume that I was talking about a bad Shudder import. But somehow, it works. As cruel and vile and twisted as they are, there's something... kind of sympathetic about the mounds of shit which they have to plough through every moment of their benighted existence. There's something bizarrely almost admirable about the frantic desire of these wretched, evil creatures to stay alive. Given that the alternative is to have their souls eaten by a dark god who pretty much embodies sadism and is almost wholly their creation, you can't entirely blame them. From devouring the suffering of their victims to restore their withering souls to frantic and ever more perverse surgery to rebuilding their own bodies in oubliettes of horror and pain, the Dark Eldar are ultimate survivors. 

The only problem is that for years I couldn't bloody paint them. I kept trying various lacquered metl paintjobs, but they all looked pants. In the end, it occurred to me that I should stick to what I'm good at: miserably industrial and metallic. They look like Moorcock and Clive Barker had a collision anyway, so I decided on dark silver and gold. The light blue bases and red grass were a way to throw a bit of contrast in it. 

I love Scourges. They're one of the most 'Dark Eldar' things. Both from the perspective that in such a vicious society only messages carried by hand can be trusted and because... well... they voluntarily got a haemonculus to hollow their bones with massive drills and suture wings to their backs without any anaesthetic whilst they presumably feed on their own agony! Because you know... they were bored.

Speaking of Dark Eldar who do weird things because they're bored... Wracks. It's one thing to be a freakish flayed Frankensteinian surgeon creature with a cheese grater grafted to your face. It's another to have ended up in that state because you thought it was a good idea having seen the results beforehand. It's the truly frightening thing about the Dark Eldar: the bizarre debasements they inflict on themselves as much as others. 

Their big brethren, the Grosteques, are pretty unnerving too. I'm not keen on the model, so I made mine from Vampire Counts Vargheists and spare Talos bits:

On the other end of the spectrum, Incubi are cool just because they look slick and martial. I really enjoyed painting their helms. 

My final offering for today is a Lhamaean. Again, I'm not too keen on the official model. It's not a bad model, it just doesn't seem to quite fit the aesthetic of the Dark Eldar. So I did a head and hand swap on a Dark Elf Sorceress. Simple!

I have to be in the right mood for Dark Eldar. Although they share some of the visceral horror of my Nurgle stuff, the mood is very different. Nurgle is all about grime and corruption and decay. With Dark Eldar, it's about perversity and invasive cosmetics, about life at its most desperate and demented. 

I might go and paint some cats or something now. 

Ode to Tabletop World

People get into this hobby for different reasons, but for me a major factor was the narrative aspects and the splendid vistas of the Old World. I started the hobby with Warhammer Fantasy in 1995, and my imagination was carried away by the beatiful timber-framed houses, the little forests and the rickety bridges shown in publications at that time. Now as anyone who lived through the glorious era of Books for Hills can attest, a handsome table can really make the difference. 

Making decent terrain has been something of a passion for me since I learned how to do it when working at Games Workshop in 2005-06, but my already potentially worrying passion was given a boost in 2015. Specifically, when GW dropped Warhammer Fantasy. Those familiar with my Age of Rebuilding project will know that I had no intention of adapting to their new world, but what I realised at that time was that at some time along the way, my own gaming board had been coerced. I'd slipped into the habit of buying GW terrain, and whilst some of the pieces were nice, the overrall effect seemed to be that someone had put Clive Barker and Tim Burton's works into a blender and then drizzled them across my table. I decided it was time to restore my terrain collection to what the Old World should be. Cue lots of individually based Gaugesmaster trees... and Tabletop World. 

Tabletop World is a small Croatian company that specialises in scenery which, whilst never outright stated, seems aimed at Warhammer Fantasy players. Now straight up, let's be clear: these models are expensive. Like, almost GW expensive. I'm warning you of that now not because I think that as a wargamer you're averse to high prices (!) but because once you've got one of these kits, you'll immediately want to outfit your entire table with them.

These models are beautiful. The detailing is incredible, including interior detail. Details as small as crumbling plaster are sculpted. They aren't the quickest models to paint because of the sheer amount of features, but honestly they're among the most enjoyable I've ever worked on. 

The roofs and sometimes the individual floors of buildings can be removed, which means that garrisoning can be done by literally placing models in the building rather than abstraction. 

Tabletop World uses a very nice, cream-coloured resin for their models. At one point I tried painting one without washing to see if it worked. To my surprise it almost completely worked fine, though I would still always recommend washing resin (I was just curious at the time). I don't remember ever encountering flash or injection lines on the kits. If your only experience of working with resin is the horrible defect-ridden stuff that GW uses (Forgeworld and Finecast) then TTW kits will leave you goggling in astonishment and thinking you've forgotten something. 

I should emphasise again: if what you want are cheap and nice but not awesome, this isn't the range for you. 4ground do some decent stuff that's easy to get ready. But if you really want to create an immersive and beautiful tabletop environment, Tabletop World is well worth the investment!