This one I can’t be too smug about – unlike the recent Guardians and Farseer I had this painted up and built for a while, but IRL stuff prevented me from giving it the attention it deserved in gallery form. The Vyper is a model I used to hate just because of how aged it looked compared to other Eldar models, especially compared to more recent jetbikes, but – maybe unsurprisingly – I started to play with them a little more in Dawn of War and some of the magic rubbed off on me. It was another model where, like the plastic Farseer, I kind of wanted to scratch it off my Eldar bucket list and say I’d tried doing that.

Of course, I never make anything easy for myself, and so of course I ended up adding LEDs! Vypers are described as being somewhere between conventional jetbikes and grav tanks, and because I LED-ify all of my grav tanks I took that as kind of a personal challenge. As always, LEDs were bought from Evan Designs and I can’t speak highly enough to their quality from a modelling perspective. The Vyper also gave me a chance to pursue something I’ve wanted to do for a while – building battery covers that would keep the switches and batteries for my LED models a little more out of sight.

The battery cover started life as a dollar store accessory with plastic dinosaurs that a friend got for me ages ago at an old Christmas party, and because the bottom is hollowed out I thought they’d be perfect. (I’ve searched long and hard for more of these online and at local dollar stores in St. John’s, but to no avail!)

All things considered, very happy with how this turned out. It was also the last thing taken off the table on its maiden voyage during a Crusade game, so I’m taking that as a win on two fronts. I was never the fondest of these, but after working on one it’s definitely grown on me, to the point where this may very well not be the last that I paint up.