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Welcome to my Eldar website, which showcases my growing collection of extensively converted Eldar miniatures for Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 tabletop wargame. In this site you'll find loads of pictures of my conversions as well as information on how they have been put together and other resources that you may find useful.This is the homepage of the site; check here for information about updates to the site and other news. You can browse to the other parts of the site using the menu bar above.
The Wraithsinger - 24/04/13
This project has been receiving most of my attention recently. The Wraithsinger is a wraith construct that is taller even than a Wraithlord. It has been animated by the soul of a powerful Bonesinger and its design deliberately takes several cues from that miniature. I hope that you like it. I am awaiting with anticipation (and some trepidation) the release of the new Eldar codex and miniatures, which are rumoured to be arriving in June. If the new miniatures are well-designed and interesting to me, I will probably buy them, but I anticipate that this will be my last big Eldar purchase for the foreseeable future.
"GW fatigue" & the future of this site - 22/03/13
Games Workshop as a company have been making a series of disappointing and harmful decisions over the past few years, which have becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. I find myself now in a position where I no longer feel comfortable supporting them as a company. I have no immediate plans to purchase any more GW miniatures (and the rumoured Eldar codex is going to have to be very special indeed to even come close to justifying the standard codex RRP of £30).
I will complete the Pegasus some day. In fact, I hope to eventually have all of my collection completed and painted. I anticipate that this will take a long time (probably years) to achieve, so this site will continue to be updated periodically with my progress. I should also mention that I have several projects that I have yet to publish, which will be uploaded soon - a Hornet squadron, Wraithseer and a Wraithsinger (that is *not* a typo, and it is one of my favourite conversions to date), as well as additional squad members for several units.
Listed below are the questionable decisions that GW have made that have led me to this decision. If you too are suffering from "GW fatigue", the only thing you can do is vote with your wallet, as GW certainly isn't listening to our voices.
- The introduction of Finecast as an improvment over white metal (whilst being plagued with casting/QC issues) and as a means to lower costs (leading to ridiculous prices for the customer).
- Absurd price increases of up to 67%; especially brazen in a time of global recession.
- Charging £30 for a brand new Codex that requires 2 pages of errata on release.
- Digital publications that cost the same as their paper versions.
- Massively over-charging for hobby supplies; because they can get away with it (compare 6" of Green Stuff from GW and 36" direct from Kneadatite's preferred supplier).
- Limiting information on upcoming releases to a 1-week window due to The Hobbit license, making long-term purchase planning impossible.
- Sitting on redesigned Eldar jetbikes since 2010 and continuing to charge £8 for a design that is nearly 20 years old.
- New (and extremely restrictive) trading terms for 3rd-party retailers, designed to eliminate competition and bring all orders in-house.
- Massive (and totally unjustified) price discrepancies in foreign markets (particularly Australia).
- Over-reaching defence of its Intellectual Property (most egregiously in this example).
- Inability to deal with criticism from its customers (following the above).
- Charging any amount of money for the embarrassment that was the Ultramarines movie.*
- Game-breaking rules and massive balance issues, mostly authored by Matt Ward.
- An increasing tendency towards bad miniature design.
- Forge World charging for a formerly free event under the pretence of "managing numbers" (anticipate that the cost will increase in 2014 and that the queue for the sales counter will be as bad as ever).
- Forge World setting outrageous prices for the new Horus Heresy range, knowing full well that the demand will ensure that people buy it regardless.
* NB - possibly the most sensible decision GW has made recently was to allow the not-for-profit Lord Inquisitor movie to continue. It was a no-brainer of course, since it is probably the most faithful recreation of GW IP ever seen, costs them nothing and looks awesome; but that hasn't stopped GW from cutting off its nose to spite its face before.
I hope that GW is able to reinvent itself and starting caring about its customers again, but right now all I can see is a lack of honesty and transparency, coupled with extreme short-shortsightedness and greed. My personal feeling is that most of these decisions have been made because GW is a publicly-traded company and they are desperately afraid of doing anything that might upset their shareholders. I wouldn't be surprised to see a large drop in the share price over the next few years, unless GW makes some root-and-branch changes.
Huge projects update - 09/01/13
It's been a while since I updated the site, but I've been very busy in the meantime. My collection is becoming more refined now and I'm completing more and more of my unfinished conversions. In a shocking development, I've even picked up a paintbrush and started painting my Dire Avengers! I've only basecoated one miniature (and started on 9 others), but it's a start at least and I'm pleased with the early results.
I've now split my Eldar Harlequins into two squads - standard Harlequins and those armed with Harlequin's Kisses. I've added pages for several new additions too - a squad of Dark Reapers and their Exarch, a converted Phoenix bomber, the first of three planned Warp Hunter turrets and a squad of the beautiful Shadow Spectres. There are also new photos of my War Walkers squadron and an update for my Farseer. I've updated my Pegasus project log and the Apocalypse datasheet, with rules, background and a technical diagram of the Pegasus, is now online too.
In preparation for a large Apocalypse battle, I've been working flat-out to assemble Irillyth; the Shadow Spectre Phoenix Lord. I've also completed conversions of all of the other Phoenix Lords - Asurmen, Karandras, Jain Zar, Fuegan, Baharroth and Maugan Ra. I've also made conversions of the Farseers Eldrad Ulthran and Bel-Annath, the warlike Farseer of Mymeara - currently the only Eldar Farseer with access to the Pyromancy discipline of psychic powers. Lastly, I've added the remaining runes from Imperial Armour 11: The Doom of Mymeara to my Eldar runes and symbols guide. There are lots of other minor changes and updates throughout the site.
New photos and runes - 17/08/12
The Eldar runes and symbols guide has been updated with around 40 of the cursive runes seen in the background of the pages of Imperial Armour 11: The Doom of Mymeara. I will add the remaining 20 or so runes soon. New photos of my Fire Prism turrets have been added too, as well as a new photo of my first undercoated Pathfinder. My converted Shadowseer has been re-armed with a Harlequin's Kiss and I've also designed and sculpted a new scenic base for my Avatar, which looks much, much better than my first attempt and really finishes the miniature off well.
I've also started playing games with my collection, now that a new edition of the rules has landed and levelled the playing field a bit. My last game prior to this was back in the days of 2nd edition, so a lot has changed since then. I've played three games so far, of which I've lost two and won one. A nice side-effect of this is that I am motivated to get models undercoated so that I can actually use them, which means that I'm much more likely to get some things actually finished! It does also mean that I've started to add some more units to my collection to fill gaps in my army list, but I am committed to converting and undercoating them quickly to get them on the tabletop (without sacrificing my attention to detail). Expect to see more Harlequins, Rangers/Pathfinders, a squad of Dark Reapers and the start of a 2nd scratchbuilt Nightwing in the near future...
Site relaunch and huge content update - 27/06/12
As you can see, I've finally finished the redesign of the site. In the end, integrating a comments section or migrating the existing site content to a blog platform would have been very difficult and time-consuming, so just consider this site a blog with the comments disabled! The site has been expanded considerably in terms of content, though it (and my collection) is now more tightly focused on the Craftworld Eldar. By focusing my attention, I intend to actually finish some conversions and get some stuff painted. I will soon be adding a new conversion guide detailing techniques for working with plasticard, but in the meantime I've added a new section on Eldar runes and symbols and made my personal Eldar paint scheme templates available for download too.
My (supposedly) last major conversion project, the Pegasus, continues to go well. I aim to have it fully built (though almost certainly not painted) in time for the 2013 Forge World Open Day. In the meantime, I've been revisiting some of my Phoenix Lord conversions in order to make them fit in better with the modern styling (and scale) of the Eldar miniatures. To that end, I've done some additional conversion work on Asurmen, Jain Zar and Fuegan (and I've also started a brand new conversion of Karandras, which I will add soon). My Striking Scorpion Exarch Wraithlord is progressing well, I've almost completed my second Fire Prism turret (of three) and I've also started converting a squad of Pathfinders. Finally, I'm also working on a new Autarch conversion, which I'm very pleased with indeed. Most excitingly, I've actually begun undercoating some of my collection, which obviously paves the way for actually painting at some point in the slightly-less-distant-than-before future! I'm experimenting with paint schemes for my Craftworld at the moment, though I do know that the miniatures will mostly be on snow-themed bases.
That's all for now - this site will continue to be regularly updated with my progress, so do please keep visiting.
