Exodite Dragon Knight 4

 The fourth Exodite dragon knight was the most involved conversion so far. Again I dismantled and stripped my earlier conversion, and built it again. However, this time I made new legs and a few other improvements.

The dragon was unconverted, although its left foot had snapped off at the ankle and had to be pinned and tidied up with green stuff. 

The new legs came from a plastic Eldar Guardian. They had to be cut down and considerably repositioned to make them sit properly on the dragon. This was a right pain. I sculpted some stirrups, which helped hide some of the worst of my work.

The upper body came from an old metal scout, and the head was from the Dark Elf rider who I cut up to make the standard bearer a couple of weeks ago. This particular model had a sniper rifle slung over his back, which wouldn't fit. I cut away the butt of the rifle and most of its barrel.

Then came the difficult job of extending the coat with green stuff to cover the legs. Ugh. I also made some ruined steps for the base out of plasticard.

I added a weird sensor to the model's back, to sit in the place where the rifle had been. The sensor top was made from a random Eldar sensor from some gun crew, and the length of it was made out of an old Dark Eldar gun barrel. This is clearly the comms officer.

Painting this guy wasn't especially complex, but it just seemed to go on and on. I suppose there's a lot of detail on him.

Here are all four of the riders.

Incidentally, I see that I've got a couple of new followers. That's extremely rare on this blog, so thanks for following! I hope it's entertaining!

Dragon Knight 3

 And here's a third Exodite dragon knight! I slightly cheated here: this rider has dismounted in order to take a difficult shot, and to give me a rest from hacking up metal. The model is just an old metal Eldar scout (such good miniatures!) and the steed is another old Dark Elf Cold One. It didn't have a tail so I sculpted one out of green stuff, and I have to say that it's not bad. 

I added a bit of random scenery to the base, which seems to be a broken Eldar relic. For an ancient race, the Eldar don't seem to be able to make anything to last.

Here's the unit so far. 

The next model is going to require a lot of cutting. I'm bracing myself for this.

Another Exodite Dragon Rider

 I had a go at the second Exodite dinosaur rider. This guy was made from a Dark Elf cold one and a Dark Elf scout rider with an Eldar scout's head. It's all metal!

I reckon this guy is a subtle, stealthy standard bearer for the scout riders. After all, he may be carrying a glowing spear and riding a dinosaur that wears a suit of bright blue armour, but his banner is invisible...

Here are the two of them. I hope to make a unit of five of these guys, eventually.

The Mother of All Tyranids

 Well, some of them. In the old days, Games Workshop would often release rules for a unit without making a model for it, or waiting a very long time to make the model available. Unsurprisingly, people would convert their own versions. This was the case with the Tyranid tervigon.

The tervigon is a sort of biological personnel carrier, whose job it is to give birth to units of termagants and to bolster the ones that are already on the battlefield. Unsurprisingly, large and unwholesome egg sacs are involved. 

While this is appealing in a gross sort of way*, I find it hard to imagine how it would work in practice. A typical game of 40k probably takes about 15 minutes in "real world" time, and to squeeze out a load of termagants and for them to become awake enough for battle in that time shows some serious parenting skills. I reckon it would make more "sense" for the tervigon to have a sort of portable teleporter on its back, that would make termagants zap onto the battlefield.

Alternatively, the tervigon might act as a sort of biological delivery van: it doesn't actually produce the eggs, but collects an egg sac and dumps it in the battlefield, then scuttles back for another. Anyhow, enough speculation, and more monster.

*

Years ago, I had a load of plastic tyranid bits and a burning urge to make my own tervigon. So, I bought the mid-section of a plastic dragon, turned it upside-down and got to work. The legs were carnifex limbs lengthened (pretty obviously) with sprue. The head was a carnifex head, and the egg sac was DAS clay and green stuff.

I found this thing and decided to give it a fresh new paint job (red ones grow faster, after all). Some of the conversion work could have done with a tidy-up, but I left it as is, largely out of laziness. I painted it in the style of my recent oldhammer termagants. I also added a nasty bum-pipe coming out of the bottom of the egg sac, through which it can poop minions. 

The shape of the model is quite reminiscent of the very old Tyranid bio-titans for Epic 40,000. Here is a picture of the tervigon with its babies.

And that's it for now. More Eldar, I think...

* Although I maintain that about the most unwholesome thing GW has ever made, zombies included, is the way that a Space Crusade Tyranid Warrior holds his gun.

Fire Dragon Exarch and the first Exodite Dragon Knight

New year, old models, same project! I'm sure it's not supposed to work like that, but what the heck. The first model I painted this year was the exarch with fire-pike for the Fire Dragon squad. You're probably sick of seeing me say this, but it's a Jes Goodwin model and it's really good. Quite how this chap is meant to wield his weapon, let alone get it into a grav-tank, I don't know, but this is 40k, after all.

And here is the entire squad.

*

The first (and best!) Eldar codex includes rules for pirates, which are now represented by Corsairs, and Exodite Dragon Knights. These may be one of the greatest things to disappear from 40K, including the greatness that was zoats. The Exodites were planet-dwelling Eldar who rode about on dinosaurs, an idea that is fundamentally extremely cool.

Sadly, there were never any official miniatures for the Exodites in 40K. A long time ago, I got some Dark Elf cold one riders and hacked up some Eldar scouts to serve as riders. Given that all the models concerned were metal, this must have taken quite a lot of effort.

Anyhow, I stripped down and dismantled one of my earlier efforts, rebuilt him and gave him a new paint job. For reasons unknown, the rider was missing one hand, which I replaced with a hand from Frostgrave. Like all my scouts, he's wearing a green coat and blue armour. I painted the dinosaur drab green and gave it blue scales to make it look a bit more exciting. The base was made to suggest overgrown ruins.

He looks a bit uncomfortable, but then I would be if you stuck me on the back of a velociraptor. Here is the model next to the scout miniature from which he was converted.

This was something of a test miniature. I've got a couple more that I could redo, and I think I'll work on that next. Perhaps my subconscious is trying to collect one of each of the units in the old Eldar Codex.