Have I mentioned I like Dawn of War? Probably only a million times. And have I mentioned that I love the Dawn of War: Unification mod? Probably just as often. One of the big flavor things in Unification for me is that after you develop your Eldar units’ tech tree a while, your Guardian units are eventually all converted into Dire Avengers and get a pretty solid boost. Needless to say, when I got a hold recently of some old metal Dire Avenger conversion bits, and since I needed to add a squad of Guardian Defenders back to my lineup, I knew what I had to do.

These ended up following my usual Guardian / Storm Guardian recipe, with a couple of cues taken from previous times I’ve done Banshees or Dire Avengers. (If you really want to get technical about it, my paint scheme comes from an old Shrine of the Ebon Blade design for Ulthwe’s Howling Banshees, so I guess the whole army is technically a Banshee army.) I mixed in a bunch of bits from more recent kits and all of the metal Dire Avenger bits, so that they’ve got the weight and character of old metal models but also still have a good amount of detail and flavor that blends them in with more recent stuff.

Last, but not least, of course I had to add LEDs. between my Wave Serpent, my Wraithlord, and my Guardian squad, now, I’m ready to dazzle my opponents even if it means I’ll never technically be able to set foot in a GW-sanctioned event. I also found a neat way to conceal the battery casings, at least a little, on the coin cell holders – I added magnets to a Guardian and a Spiritseer and now they can just snap on to the battery housing and cover it up.