Dark Eldar Project: Raiders and Ravagers

Since January I have been building, painting and playing the New Dark Eldar. We have a good deal of  Battle Reports featuring the army at our local stomping grounds (Heroes Games & Hobbies) and the Warhammer 40k Contest of Champions Tournament at Great Escape Games, Sacramento. The force has become quite the menace on the tabletop to say the least and the Raiders & Ravagers are taking awesome form as they near finish.

This is just one article of many in the series - you can see the whole project, from the start!

The Trueborn Raider. Aside from unique camo and markings you can tell it apart from the rest of the fleet easily - custom sail, black coloring, glowing shock prow and the numerous broken bells of various sorts. "Grisly trophies" hang from spikes on the front and side.

The most important part besides the base for game play is the dark lance. Its magnetized for easy removal during play. The gunner is pinned, and not attached to the weapon - mostly to allow the weapon to pivot fully if necessary.

Everything else is really about transport and coolness. I don't want the guys falling out of the raider constantly so they really need to be held in place somehow. Glue is a bad option because of transport, sticky tack gets old and boring, magnets are a lot of work compared to pins, so pins it was and is. The entire fleet is assembled and breaks down in the same manner.

One magnet in the front section of the mast, leaving the back plastic peg to hold everything in correct alignment. If it wasn't for transport problems Id just glue it all in place together, but it needs to breakdown for space and durability. All of the vehicle crew have holes in the bottom of their right leg/foot drilled all the way to the knee almost. Tiny thin Pins are mounted inside the Raider, right where the guy will stand.

There is a thousand tutorials and videos about magnetizing Raiders, watch some of them to find out how to drill holes and glue things in them. I was focused mostly on game play, and using the least amount of magnets. Transport really hasn't been an issue yet but could be easily, plus the fleet turns into excellent wrecks when needed. These are strong rare earth magnets - being able to move the models around the table without base issues is a must with 10+ skimmers flying around!

That's tiny 22 calibre wire. Its pretty bendy until you cut it really short, and has worked out perfectly for this application. Oddly enough the raider grate seems to be perfectly designed to mount pins exactly where the driver and gunner need to stand. I drilled nothing here. I put small bends in each wire once it was installed and cut into the raider, and with a little tiny bit of sticky tack inside the holes on the crew's feet makes a nice lock grip.

Shock prow, signature bell and a few of the Trueborn's trophies....

Ravagers aren't used the same way (literally) on the table as raiders. They seemed like a lot more work for the magnets and crew and definitely needed a meatier base. The dark lances, all three need to be easy to remove for game play AND travel. The extra bit of mast holding up those dark lance mounts is not a great piece of plastic to fool around with much...

Exactly the same as the raider. Pins on the crew and magnet on the front lance. Still a bit of sticky tack on the left foot also, more of an insurance and convenience thing than anything else.

Sail/mast magnetized in rear section to help clamp down on the side lance mounts.

No magnets in the side mounts, haven't been necessary yet but will happen one day to make game play a bit faster. The side lances rarely get destroyed and are not hard to swap out during the game, but magnets are cooler anyways right?

No paint on the front Ravager icons yet, but will update very soon. I have been able to mount bits and pieces of Dark Elf Man O War kits all over the fleet - adds some real sex appeal to the swoopy killy.



The Archon, "Prophet" and his haemoculus leadership cadre.