I’ve offered a fair amount of credit so far, I think, to @BrittneyStucklessArt for my better half’s contributions to my hobby production, but this is kind of the big one this year, a much-needed squad two Christmases in the making. Brittney had wanted to get me Fire Dragons two Christmases ago when they had been announced but the individual box wasn’t available at the time, or it might not have been on hand at the local hobby store, I’m not totally sure which. But in any case she picked it up for me this more recent Christmas and the timing couldn’t be better. As I think I mentioned discussing the new and Tyranid-aligned Autarch I made, earlier this year I went 0-4 at a local casual league in town and the most apparent, glaring weakness of my army was its ability to handle armored targets.

I wanted to try and make these stand out on the tabletop, since I feel like they’re going to be a “clutch” unit in future games, so I also added some resin bits to them from Green Stuff World, but wanted to try and take these in a different direction than conventional Fire Dragons. So far my Aeldari-Genestealer army relies on cool whites and a lot of cool colors in general for their color schemes, so I thought instead of Fire Dragons it might be interesting to try a more “Ice” Dragon scheme, or to use the concept of shattering vehicles with some kind of cryogenic entropy instead of just melting them in place. Also, living in St. John’s, Newfoundland, there’s something about freezing to death under a hail of wintery slurry that’s just relatable to us, out here.

I went with a blue scheme not unlike what I’ve used before involving a glaze of Vallejo Air Blue, and I’m happy with the royal-blue that the Fire Dragons took on, which stood out starkly against the white. I added the fire effects and repainted some old TerrainCrate fire markers to fit in with them just for photography or for token purposes on the tabletop, which also went great. Then, as I sent the finished pictures over to Brittney for her feedback, she casually quipped that instead of Fire Dragons they looked like the Blue Eyes White Dragons instead. (My fellow millenials will appreciate that one, I think.) Now that I’ve seen it I can’t unsee it, and these guys might have their squad “nickname” going into 11th edition.

Along with the Fire Dragons, and as one more little finishing-touch or touch-up going into the new edition, I repainted a terrain piece that my brother 3d-printed for me a couple years ago to fit in better with the current army, and I also combined it with some icy markers that @kinpatsusamurai gave me ages ago from Monster Scenery to give this thermoplasma generator a little more “wow” factor on the tabletop. I also added a Warlock for my Warlock squads, repaired a second, and added a couple more piecemeal Guardians to stick with the D-Cannons since technically the models need to have operators, either on the same base or separate. I think? They come with the kit, normally, in any case. Anyway, I’m very happy with these, to the point where I’ve tabled one of my two Banshee squads in my regular lists to make room for them – a day we thought would never come, but I think these Fire Dragons are going to be worthy of that “staple” spot in my lists moving forward.