I am building a Dark Eldar army to paint and play something new in my local store's (
Heroes Games & Hobbies) most recent Warhammer 40k Escalation League that started the first week of January. Venoms are elite five man fast open toped transports, and Razorwings supersonic attack jet fighters. Along with many other options in the Dark Eldar codex, this is a perfect opportunity to snag those conversion points since no models currently exist. The whole army is turning out to be a great place to show off some painting and modeling talent -
Started with two Vypers and a Raider. I set aside the bottom part of the Raider kit, you can see one of its three parts in the top right of the first picture over there. I wanted to save that part for the Razorwing later. The rest of the kit I divided up as equally as possible, I even cut the two side pieces in half literally. I built a Raider earlier so I had two of the smaller "1-section" sails to use on the Venoms, also duplicates of the tail piece, and all of the sharp blade pieces, so the two Venoms end up matching pretty closely.
Not many modifications to the Vyper, I just used the front part and attached the built up Raider sections. Slapped in the mast and deck pieces for fill to really help complete the look. With the prow and sail they start to look pretty neat. I made some modifications to the front plate later. Mostly just cutting it down section by section until it looked more Dark Eldar and less Eldar.
Very simple project really. I am sure I have mentioned before that I really like the idea of the Sails on the Dark Eldar vehicles. Lots of really cool Sci Fi incorporate the sails in various ways and the Dark Eldar are looking really neat.
Later I built really simple bottom-pieces for the back half raider portion of the Venoms using thin stencil plastic material. I also rigged up some engines from random toys at the dollar store. I will get you some follow-up pictures once they are finished and attached.
The Razorwing took a lot more patience to construct. A very simple design: Raider chassis, Vyper cockpits and extra pieces, Jetbike bits for Dark Eldar look. I built up from the Raider chassis adding the weapon guard pieces from the Vyper kits and parts of random sprue to hold things in place. The sail is the other "2-section" raider sail encased in the raider weapon guard. The front nose section is the extra Jetbike as Reaver kits come with four.
That was the easy part, next I built the wings and a rough fuselage from super thin plastic stencil material. The wings took several layers to get the shape and thickness to work. Once I had a shape I liked, I sketched on the armor plates with sharpie, and then individually cut the stencil material and worked each plate into position working on one side then the other, back to front.
None of it worked out perfect, but pretty good. White stuff and Dark Eldar bits filled in the rest. For a pretty mean Dark Eldar look, and another cool Sail.
