This one isn’t metal, and it’s definitely not Oldhammer – this is a project that had been sitting on my pile of shame for the longest time, that I finally decided I was going to kitbash into a Howling Banshee-esque proxy either for a Wraithlord or for a certain Phoenix Lord. The model is the stunning Queen Taipahn by Raging Heroes – I’ve painted a bunch of their Sisters of Eternal Mercy models and this was kind of my first foray into something a little different from them. While I have some mixed feelings about the end result, the base sculpt itself is stunning and I would recommend this to someone looking for a unique proxy model for their army without hesitation.

For the sake of matching the rest of my army (and also partly for modesty), I used armor plate bits from Wraithguard/Wraithlords to cover the waist and chest and to act as a sort of ‘faceplate’ for the circlet-crown-helmet thing. While there isn’t a lot of the color in my army visually, I felt like red was a good choice for the tail color – it stands out really nicely from the Ushabti Bone of the belly scales and armour, and is also kind of a Daughters of Khaine homage in its own right.

The one thing that nags at me, and that I am too tired to change right now but am definitely not the biggest fan of, was my choice of hair color. I wanted to try and make this an HQ model that would stand out a little from other Banshee-archetype models, kind of like I did with my Banshees’ Exarch model, but the straw blonde just does not work for me. I think it might be something I can salvage in the future by adding more highlights to the hair to make it lighter, or it might be something I just need to start over on, and get to match the rest of the red-orange hair colors since I’ve taken liberties on other parts of the model. But that’s something I’m definitely coming back to.

With everything said and done, I think I’d give myself a generous 7/10 on this even if I think Raging Heroes was at a solid 9.5/10 with the sculpt. The only complaints I have at all are that there was a little bending and warping but it’s nothing that a little bit of elbow grease, hot water, and green stuff couldn’t solve. Not the biggest addition to my Eldar yet, but it’s definitely one of the fanciest. I almost feel brave enough to try a Creature Caster build, now.