I went back to the old craftworld Eldar and had a go at painting some Swooping Hawks. My eventual plan is to have a (small) squad of all of the Eldar aspects in the first Eldar codex, with the exception of the Shining Spears, who didn't have models back then.
The Swooping Hawks were lightly-armoured troops who used their jetpacks to fly above the enemy and drop grenades on them, to deadly effect. In theory. In actuality, they were very hard to use, as their attacks were very specific and their armour was tissue-thin. Back then (and probably now) much of Warhammer 40,000 was about covering your men in armour, and the Swooping Hawks tended to die very quickly.
Also, as I discovered recently, the models are top-heavy and fall over all the time. That said, they're also Jes Goodwin sculpts and are excellent miniatures with a remarkable amount of motion for their time. I put mine on slotta-bases, and made some grass and ruined pavements for them to stand on.
I don't think I've made a bad job, but I did find them fiddly and not all that satisfying. Still, I'm glad the unit is done, even though - if I actually played 40k - I'd never use them in battle.
These are quite good, lovely colors (would butterfly wings have been too much to hope for though?) They seem like another unit that is great in the fluff, but terrible on the tabletop.
ReplyDeleteI was going to point to my own Swooping Hawk output as a less exciting variation, but I appear to have failed to photograph them in anything other than an army shot.
Thanks! Butterfly wings might look good. That didn't occur to me at the time. IIRC, GW used the same metal wings for several different versions of the hawk bodies. I don't know why but my phone just wouldn't pick up the highlighting on these guys. Strange!
DeleteLovely work, your colours suit them perfectly, those minis are still unmatched so many years later
ReplyDeleteThanks! The 1990s Jes Goodwin sculpts are terrific. I find the newer Eldar are just a big bulky and cluttered by comparison.
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