So, that Epic Eldar army I started a few months back. It’s finally done! My Epic Eldar army is, at last, both finished and photographed. The first 5725 points took about two months to paint up. The remaining 390 took about another two months. But now they are all done at last. So here are some piccies.

I started with the basics: a Guardian warhost, the Avatar, and some Wraithguard. I’ve posted those on here before, but here they are again for the sake of completeness:

Next up was a formation of Dire Avenger Aspect Warriors, transported in Wave Serpents. The formation includes both an Exarch (leader) and an Autarch (Eldar supreme commander: he’s the chap with the wings). At first, I only painted a formation of six stands, but I later painted up another two stands without, so that either character is optional in this formation.

Since I was planning to use the Alaitoc army list to represent this army, the next thing to paint was clearly some scouts. So I painted up eight stands of Rangers and six War Walkers. These models could either be fielded as one warhost of eight Rangers and one troupe of six Walkers, or as two warhosts of four Rangers and three walkers each.

It was now time to do some more vehicles, and since I didn’t yet have any Falcon Grav-tanks, I started with a formation of Fire prisms. I painted up a formation of six of these, plus a Firestorm anti-aircraft tank to swap in as needed.

The one troop-type that is Unique to the Alaitoc army is the Alaitoc Pathfinder. In Epic they are essentially improved Rangers, with +5cm movement, an invulnerable save, and the teleport ability. There aren’t any official models for them, so I decided to represent them by using Ranger models, but putting them three to a stand on circular bases, and painting their cloaks brown (like most of the base) rather than green.

Next up was some artillery, in the form of a troupe of Night Spinners:

Next up was a troupe of Striking Scorpion Aspect Warriors. I didn’t paint any transports for these initially, but I did paint up the extra two stands so that the Autarch and Exarch were optional. The three Wave Serpents were a later addition.

One thing that the Eldar do very well is air power. I don’t have a huge quantity of aircraft, but I do have this squadron of Nightwing interceptors; probably the best fighters in the game.

By this point, I had most of a 4,000 point army painted up. The only things I was missing were the Falcon Grav-tanks that still hadn’t arrived from Forge World, and some titans. I’d been deliberately leaving the titans and aircraft until last. When painting an army it’s very easy to get carried away painting exciting things like large war engines first, and then leave yourself with a huge quantity of infantry to slog through later, which you ultimately never get around to. I was very keen to avoid that, but with nearly an army’s worth of other stuff done, I was now clear to do the big guys, so next up were this pair of Revenant Titans:

At this point I decided to make some objective markers for the army. I have a box of glass nuggets to use to mark objectives, but it can be fun to use markers that are themed to match the army. In addition, the Eldar army can replace one of their objectives with a Wraithgate portal, through which they can bring on reserves during the battle, so it’s worth having a marker for that if nothing else (and there’s a model for it that comes with the Avatar). So I put together the following objective markers: two statues, a small pool with a mysterious menhir in it, and a wraithgate. Of these, I think I’m most pleased with how the pool came out.

Aside from the missing Falcons, I now had everything I’d planned done, so I set about painting up other formations as the whim took me. First up was a formation of Jetbikes. From what I gather, it’s more common to take a formation of five stands of Jetbikes and one Vyper, but since I don’t have any Vyper models, I just went with a straight formation of six Jetbikes.

Next up was a formation of Dark Reaper Aspect Warriors, along with transports. As with the Striking Scorpions, I painted extra stands to allow for optional Exarch and Autarch.

At this point I started painting up duplicates of some of the things I’d already done: Wave Serpents for the Striking Scorpions, the extra Dire Avengers, another four stands of Rangers, another four stands of Wraithguard, another Guardian Warhost, another troupe of Jetbikes and two more Firestorm Grav-tanks.

After all that, I painted up a formation of Swooping Hawk Aspect Warriors. This formation can’t take transport vehicles (they have jump packs anyway), so I didn’t give them any:

At this point, my Falcon Grav-tanks finally arrived. I started by painting up enough to form a Ranger Warhost with the four extra Rangers I’d done before:

I then painted some more, to form a formation of their own (plus a Firestorm to provide AA cover).

Finally, I painted up a troupe of Fire Dragon Aspect Warriors. Rather than transporting these in Wave Serpents, I decided to put them in Falcons instead. In practice I probably wouldn’t actually take them like this in a game; it works out horribly expensive in points. But I could always borrow the wave serpents from another formation, and use the Falcons in another troupe of their own, so it wasn’t as if the formation was useless. Unfortunately, by this time I was tired of painting Falcons (I’d already done nine, plus nine Wave Serpents which have nearly identical hulls), so getting around to painting up those last six Falcons ended up taking almost as long as the rest of the army put together. Still, I got them done eventually, and here they are:

So with the Fire Dragons bringing the total points value just over 6,000, it was time to call the army done for now and take some photos of it in its entirety. So here they are:

Using the Alaitoc Craftworld army list (version 2.4), the army consists of the following:

Avatar	Free
Wraithgate	50
Guardian Warhost 3 Wraithguard	150 150
Guardian Warhost 3 Wraithguard	150 150
Ranger Warhost 8 Rangers	200
Ranger Warhost 4 Rangers 4 Falcons	200   200
Aspect Warrior Troupe (6 Dark Reapers) Autarch Exarch 3 Wave Serpents	225 75 25 150
Aspect Warrior Troupe (6 Dire Avengers) Exarch 3 Wave Serpents	225 25 150
Aspect Warrior Troupe (6 Striking Scorpions) Exarch 3 Wave Serpents	225 25 150
Aspect Warrior Troupe (6 Swooping Hawks) Exarch	225 25
Aspect Warrior Troupe (6 Fire Dragons) Exarch 6 Falcons	225 25 390
Pathfinder Troupe 6 Pathfinders	300
War Walker Troupe	200
Swords of Vaul Troupe (6 Vehicles) 5 Falcons 1 Firestorm	300
Swords of Vaul Troupe (6 Vehicles) 5 Fire Prisms 1 Firestorm	300 75
Windrider Troupe 6 Jetbikes	200
Windrider Troupe 6 Jetbikes	200
Night Spinner Troupe	175
2 Revenant Titans	650
Nightwing Squadron	300
Total	6,115

Of course, there’s still plenty more I could add to this army. I’ve still got some Howling Banshees, some Warp Spiders, seven Wave Serpents, another troupe of Night Spinners and loads of Guardians sitting unpainted in a box. I’d quite like to add some more titans, some super-heavy grav-tanks, some Shining Spears, Vypers, weapons platforms and aircraft to the army eventually. But it’s done for now.

Next up will either be some more Blood Bowl stuff (I still have a few Orc players needing attention, and then there’s the Wicked Elf team, of which only two are so far painted) or my Epic Chaos Space Marines. It might be worth having a go at painting some of my Epic scenery, too.

That reminds me, actually: I never did get any decent pictures of my Blood Bowl Elf team after I finished painting them. Maybe I’ll get around to doing them at some point this week.