When I started Warhammer, and when I picked up my first Aeldari, my army was Guardians, Howling Banshees, and Psykers. I want to lean heavily into that with my new “forever” army of weird elves, and I decided that I was going to give my Guardians some new toys to play with for 10th Edition. I had one of these kicking around from the early days of this blog, and I picked up a second second-hand platform because I am a sucker for anything in glorious pewter. Instead of the metal Guardians included, I opted to use some of the older plastic ones because I could kitbash their weapons a little easier, given the “Genestealer Cult” theming of this army, but I’m also sentimental and wanted to go back and press some of my first push-fit Guardians back into service.

Consistent with the rest of the Genestealer Cult elves I’ve done so far, everybody’s a little different in terms of their wargear and extra little bits and bobs like capes and tabards, and everyone’s had their regular shuriken catapults replaced with Tyranid-shaped ones. I didn’t get into a whole lot of detail about this in the last post, but in addition to neon pink on the basing tufts I’m also leaning into it hard as an accent “glow” color for weapons like starcannons or other plasma-themed weapons, and the D-Cannons definitely called for that treatment. Painting the white up to a very white-white-grey and then using pure white on the neon sections instead really helped to sell the effect, and to give more credit with due using a blue metallic paint from Green Stuff World also helped me to push this farther than previous projects.

I also better understand now why everyone talks about white as being a challenge – and what I found most of all was that it was a challenge to not over-apply. It’s a steady, repeated process of repeat layers, then light shade, then repeat layers, then light shade, and I found one of the hardest things was to keep too much paint from globbing up and obscuring detail over time. I’m pretty happy with the results, though, and…man, the damage that D-Cannons can do now in 10th Edition is no joke.

I’ve had the chance to do a couple of games with this army, but I’ve not had a chance to D-Cannon anything to death quite yet, and I’m hoping that will change in the near future. I’m also going to make sure that my Guardians’ weapon options aren’t locked into just the D-Cannon – I’ve spoiled my Howling Banshees a lot over the years, but this edition I think I want to make sure that my unsung Guardians get some of the attention and upkeep they’ve long-deserved.