Lord Torath's Eldar Warhost

Lord Torath

Lord Torath

Vassal
Someone elsewhere suggested I do a showcase of my armies, so I figured, why not? I'll start with my Eldar.

Table of Contents:
Avatar, Farseer, and Warlocks (this post)
Howling Banshees
Swooping Hawks
Striking Scorpions

So here's my HQ:
1 Avatar Farseer Warlocks Front.jpg
My first painted 'regular' Eldar was the Farseer (on the far left), painted most excellently by Lady Torath. I was having a heck of a time trying to decide on a color scheme, so I let my wife futz around with it while I painted more Panthers (space marines). She came up with the black and green look, and my 'generic' Eldar all got that scheme (she helped me out with a couple other color schemes: my Swooping Phoenixes and my Harlequins).

The Singing Spear warlocks were next, and the Avatar is the last model I painted in this group. He sat in my Pile-O-Shame for well over a decade. I bought him in the early 2000s and took him to my buddy's house. He has a drill press, and I wanted to pin the top and bottom together. Well, I drilled a nice hole in the bottom, and then broke the bit off in the top piece, just slightly off from lining up with the hole in the legs. I finally bought a pin vise and drilled a new hole that lined up with the broken bit. Since my Eldar are green, I really didn't want the Avatar glowing orange and red. So he got a green and yellow treatment as well.

Here's a look at their back sides:
1 Avatar Farseer Warlocks Rear.jpg
I really do like how the big guy came out, both his armor and his glowing sections. The sword didn't come out quite how I imagined it, but it still looks pretty good. Oh, and I do still have the hair, but I like him better without it. (Huh. Looks like I missed painting one of the gems on the back of his right leg. Ah, well.)

Next Up: Howling Banshees.
 
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Nice. I like the colour scheme and using it to tie the avatar with the rest of the bunch seems like it was a good idea.
 
For the Howling Banshees, I wanted to lean into the banshee aspect and give them a somewhat ghostly appearance. Good-bye bone and crimson; hello shades of blue! I imagined these ladies materializing out of the dark to fall upon their foes.
2 Banshees Front.jpg
Yes, that’s a 3rd Edition Exarch. While I love the 2E Banshees, I never really liked the Exarch Power Axe model, so I sprung for the 3e Exarch with the double-bladed glaive.

The power sword blades I painted a turquoise blue, then dry-brushed progressively lighter and darker blues from opposite edges. I really like the way it came out, so I repeated it on my force weapons for my space marines.

Jain Zar was a much later addition to my collection. The banshees were painted around 2006 or so, and I snagged Jain Zar off Ebay around 2020. I painted her to match, and I’m quite happy with how she turned out. I wasn’t certain about her Big Hair at first, but it’s grown on me.
2 Banshees Rear.jpg
 
Nice idea.. kinda funny in that Banshees are ladies in green but citadel kinda went away from that with whites.. but then, a grey one is valid (there is also the old joke about Marvel Comics when they made 'Banshee' a guy) but as they as ghostly spirits, that scheme works well.
 
These look great. The avatar looks really imposing & your rationale for painting the banshees makes sense. IIRC the lore allows that individual temples all have their own schemes.

I recently got the avatar, warlocks & the phoenix lords. I have some unpainted stuff from the '90s. I have been mulling over how to add them to my existing eldar force, some of which I've put online.
 
Very nice and thank you for sharing them. I like the schemes, in particular the banshees - I like the idea of them having a spectral look. The greens on the command tie them all together nicely.

I think I should do a badge for "damn I missed that, but only noticed when I'd taken a photo and posted online for the world to see". It happens to most of us here! I'm forever wondering how I missed some huge mould line during painting that is now as deep as the Grand Canyon when photographed, or fingernails or claws are the other one I somehow seem to forget. So you're in good (well mine at least!) company!
 
Eric said:
I think I should do a badge for "damn I missed that, but only noticed when I'd taken a photo and posted online for the world to see". It happens to most of us here! I'm forever wondering how I missed some huge mould line during painting that is now as deep as the Grand Canyon when photographed, or fingernails or claws are the other one I somehow seem to forget. So you're in good (well mine at least!) company!
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That is definitely a badge I have earned several times over! :)

I'd picked up a squad of 2e Hawks off Ebay, but couldn't find an Exarch, so I purchased a 3E version. But I had no idea how I wanted to paint them, spending hours looking at online images of other people's minis.. Once again, my wife came to my rescue. While I was messing around with the banshees, she painted up one of the hawks in vibrant flame colors, and thus were born the Swooping Phoenixes:
3 Swooping Hawks Front.jpg
3 Swooping Hawks Rear.jpg
I don't remember which model she painted first. I think it might have been the one on the far left. I painted the rest. The 3E guy was very fiddly, and it was very hard to get his pointing arm to stay put. I think he's pretty securely glued at this point, but I'm still careful how I pick him up.

I've since picked up a 2e Exarch and a squad of 3e hawks, but they remain waiting in my Pile-O-Shame.
 
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Lord Torath said:
Once again, my wife came to my rescue. While I was messing around with the banshees, she painted up one of the hawks in vibrant flame colors, and thus were born the Swooping Phoenixes:
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Your wife has a good eye for colour. Leaning on mythology is a good fit for the eldar since much of their lore is inspired by legend.
 
Way back in the mid naughties, I found an ebay sale for a dozen scorpions, an exarch, and Karandras the Hunter (he might have been in a separate auction, I don't recall). This was after the Dark Eldar had come out (3rd Edition?), and someone online had posted rules for Arhra, Father of Scorpions, who - in this interpretation - had fallen to Khorne instead of Slaanesh. I thought that made more sense, and my buddy Mogar was collecting Chaos, so I painted up Karandras and five scorpions in Khorne's black and bronze and gave them to him for Christmas:
ArhraandSons.jpg
Rules wise they are the same as the Eldar version, except they have (and pay for) the Mark of Khorne, giving them a better armor save, triple charge range, double attacks on charge, and the ability to parry when charging.

For my part, I decided not to go with the traditional green (I've never seen a green scorpion), choosing instead to use a brown desert scorpion theme. I picked up another copy of Karandras several years later (same time I got Jain Zar), and painted him to match.
4 Striking Scorpions Front.jpg
4 Striking Scorpions Rear.jpg
Looking at them now, they could probably use a blackwash to bring out more of the details. And, of course, the one base needs touching up.
 
Lord Torath said:
This was after the Dark Eldar had come out (3rd Edition?), and someone online had posted rules for Arhra, Father of Scorpions, who - in this interpretation - had fallen to Khorne instead of Slaanesh.
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Dark eldar incubi turned up in 3rd. With their "master of blades" leader & helmets with built in guns there are clear parallels to the scorpions.

Ahra's fate was ambiguous IIRC, but there's enough wiggle room for fan interpretation to go any way. Plus, yours look cool, which is the most important thing.
Lord Torath said:
I've never seen a green scorpion
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Given the era aspect warriors were introduced, I suspect each just got a distinctive colour - black, white, red, green, blue.
 
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