ulthwe – Twitchy Bristles

Armies on Parade 2020!

I’m a casual hobbyist at best (and definitely no better as a photographer), but when I saw that Games Workshop was running Armies on Parade online this year, I decided I was gonna throw my name into the hat, and share pictures of the two armies that I’ve managed to finish this year. It’s been a long strange trip but I’m happy with how both of them have turned out so far – and I have plans to add a few new reinforcements to my Eldar, and a big expansion on my Death Guard army, too, in 2021. The Long War never ends.

Pictured: A whole bunch of elves pouring out of the Webway Gate.

Out of the two I definitely think my Death Guard army is more photogenic, ironically. I’m happier with how it turned out and how coherent it all looks together, even though I do love my multicolored Aspect Warriors for Eldar. On the Death Guard side, I think I’m most proud of my vehicles – the Blight-Haulers and the Rhino really stand out, and I’m still a sucker for my Lord of Contagion, too. Papa Nurgle’s blessings on Lord Felthius and his creepy-ass smile.

Pictured: Where the trouble began. That smile. That damned smile…

On the Eldar side, I think my space elves suffer from a slight lack of coherency in their colors. I’m very happy with my Fire-Falcon-Rainbow-Prism, my Storm Guardians, my Howling Banshees, and my HQs, but I think in the new year the Dire Avengers, Wave Serpent, and my back left Wraithlord are going to be in need of a little love and a facelift. In a way, though, this is a good problem to have – it makes me feel like I’ve improved and that it shows in my recent painting.

(More fluff and new content to come soon! Made a lot of headway in real-life stuff and I’ve got builds done on some projects I’m hoping to paint up soon. December’s going to be a good month, especially with the new Death Guard releases coming up…)

Double-Feature Eldar Crusade Report!

The bad news with writing a Masters’ draft the last month is I did very little painting. The good news is that I got a couple of great games in, playing at Noble Miniatures with KinpatsuSamurai and playing Floorhammer at my apartment with my roommate. In both games I ran my Craftworld Ulthwe Eldar, with wildly varying results. They still hold their own decently against the Sisters of Battle, but I am in desperate need of a solution to to army’s kryptonite – Tyranids.

Pictured: An image taken moments before disaster

Both games were in the Crusade format, and the first involved getting my Warlord – in this case Jain Zar – to cast a ritual using the Webway Gate, which we busted out because it fit the mission type and…I will take absolutely any excuse to use my Webway Gate. I sorely underestimated the amount of damage KinpatsuSamurai’s Exorcist could put out, and I paid dearly for it in the first turn of the game. My Banshees took a beating from Repentia Sisters and other close-combat units, but I think what really shone this game were my Storm Guardians. They’re really starting to grow on me.

Pictured: My surviving elves by the game’s end, and smoking legs where a Penitent Engine used to be, courtesy of the Storm Guardians. The exploded Falcon also did not survive.

I managed to just barely win out through time and technicality against KinpatsuSamurai. My roommate is a different story. With her Tyranids, it’s never a question of whether or not I’m going to win, it’s a question of how long the game go on until she tables me and has her run of my objectives! The Banshees probably did best out of my units in this game, but that’s not saying much – we got halfway through turn three when I was wiped off the board. One of these days I’ll figure out how to hold my own against Tyranids – but today is not that day, and tomorrow doesn’t look good either.

Pictured: Jain Zar and a squad of Howling Banshees against a Broodlord, which was the only one of my roommate’s units I defeated this game. The *only* one. Definitely *not* salty.

(No fluff this week! Me and KinpatsuSamurai have to hammer out the results of the last narrative game, and given the way the last match ended that may involve an Eldar vs. Sisters rematch. Fortunately, I have a few reinforcements on the way to help my elves out!)

Eldar Fire Prism

A long time ago I saw Spikey Bits’ LED-lit Eldar Fire Prism and decided I was going to do that someday. Now, with more or less my whole Eldar army assembled, I decided this was going to be the time, and that this was going to be the model with which I call my Eldar “done.” Feeling like this army is done is bittersweet, but also a thrill – and I’m looking forward tremendously to running this Fire Prism with the rest of my space elves on the tabletop.

Pictured: The lighting on the Star Engines, which I must pay 10 points for in perpetuity.

Putting this together was definitely the trickiest build I’ve ever done. Having to drill holes into the frame of the model and run wires between the power supply in the base and to each of the model’s assemblies took planning, elbow grease, and a little luck, but when it came to rigging up the lights themselves Evan Designs and their LEDs were fantastic. Even without having worked with electronics at much length before I was able to figure it out, patch it together, and bring this boat to life.

Pictured: The bare Fire Prism without heavy weapons or canopies. Hello, pilots!

The final tank ended up being built in a number of subassemblies, either pressure fit or magnetized together so that I can fix it later if any of the lights shut down. I used a take on the “sponge” method I’ve used to do grav tank hulls before and that I used prominently on my Death Guard (and Spekd has my eternal gratitude for introducing me to that.) The hull design is a cross between the “eye” motif Ulthwe uses generally, but is also a callback to the game Fire Emblem: Awakening. Because I’m hot trash.

Pictured: My “Falcon”, like everything else in my army, geared to support Howling Banshees.

In addition to the color-changing rainbow cannon and the flickering engine lights, the Fire Prism is also multipurpose – for a while now, my existing Falcon has been in Biel-Tan colors and since I’m going full-Ulthwe I wanted my Howling Banshees to have a party bus that would fit in with the rest of my army. As KinpatsuSamurai has pointed out, I have picked a lane, and I’m owning that!

As tricky as the build was, and as much as I might have been able to give it more love if I’d waited until after my Masters’ was done, I’m extremely happy with the results on this. This is the best model that I have ever built and painted, and the difference between this and my older work (before Twitchy Bristles) is night and day. I don’t think I could hope to end the construction and painting of my Eldar army on a better note.

Preview: Taste the Rainbow Cannon!

This is a model I’ve poured a lot of effort into over the last month – originally I was going to build it after I finished writing my Masters’ research project as a reward, but then a local painting contest came up and I thought it would be a great chance to get some local exposure for my work. The contest is part of the Sci-Fi @ Home convention, based out of St. John’s. I’ll have a proper gallery done up soon, but in the meantime, here’s the video that I sent in as a demo of the lighting system!

Pictured: The lighting demo for my Eldar Fire Prism, in Craftworld Ulthwe colors.

(www.youtube.com/watch?v=67FDkVV4CgY if you can’t see the embed.)

Thrilled to get my name out there as a painter, and I’m excited to run this in my Eldar army soon! Full gallery on this coming next week!

It lives! Lighting test for my Fire Prism

Just a short, sweet update for today. I’m still hard at work on my thesis and won’t have the chance to do any major hobbying for a while. But I did have time to do this: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67FDkVV4CgY if you can’t access the embed)

Pictured: Left to right, the engine, prism cannon, and cockpit lights.

The lights and the battery pack and other accessories were all bought via https://evandesigns.com/, and they were relatively easy to put together (even for someone with no real knowledge of electronics, wiring, circuits, etc.) The shipping was relatively quick and to be honest I might pick up more lighting sets from them in the future if I light other 40K vehicles.

My plan is to use the blue lights for the engines, the four white lights for the two cockpits, and the color-changing LED to give my Fire Prism a bright, shiny rainbow cannon. There’s a local convention doing a miniature painting contest this month, so if I can work a little more efficiently on my thesis and free up some spare time this might be the right time to bring this to life.

Eldrad Ulthran

*Although many Aeldari seers sensed the nascent presence of Ynnead in the infinity circuits, it was Eldrad who put into motion a daring ploy to awaken the slumbering God of the Dead.*

With playing Ulthwe since I got back into 40k and painting, having a psyker HQ in my line-up has been the bread-and-butter of my lists, and this is especially the case with Eldrad Ulthran later in 8th edition and early so far in 9th. With the new Crusade campaign I’m in I wanted to have a nice, shiny new Farseer for the tabletop and so I took a crack at painting the former High Farseer again.

Pictured, a Farseer painted a year ago, left, and the recently-finished Eldrad for comparison.

I’m thrilled with how the model came together – I used a combination of some of my own methods for the gems and cloth and some of the recommended colors and placement from one of the old Warhammer TV tutorials (praise be unto Duncan and his two thin coats). This is another model where I feel like the improvement I’ve made in the last couple years really shows, and makes me glad that I took another shot at this.

Eldrad Ulthran was once chief among the Farseers of Ulthwe. Eldrad has lived for over ten thousand years, and has successfully guided his people among the twisting paths of fate since the Fall, and throughout the rise of the Imperium.

Embarking on my 9th Edition Crusade

Pictured, 25 PL of my Eldar, taking on the Deathwatch after exiting their landing craft.

I’ve wanted to do narrative-style play in Warhammer 40K for a long time, so when a couple of friends of mine wanted to start up a Crusade game and came up with a strange new world for us to fight over, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I packed up my Eldar, and a friend of mine packed up their Deathwatch, and we went to our FLGS – Noble Miniatures in Paradise, Newfoundland – to kick things off.

Pictured: The Eldar take some calculated risks, but boy are they bad at math.

I brought a squad of Storm Guardians with fusion guns, my Howling Banshees, Jain Zar, and a Falcon transport and we went up against a squad of Primaris Intercessors, a Redemptor Dreadnought, a Primaris Captain in Gravis Armour, and an Inquisitor. The dreadnought was definitely the target that gave me the hardest time, but in the end my space elves recovered most of the supplies from their crashed cruiser’s debris and escaped.

Pictured, my Guardians defending an objective (and also coming to space elf Jesus.)

There were definitely some lessons learned this game but the fusion guns worked brilliantly, and I think I’m getting better at playing my Banshees to their strengths. Looking forward to switching my roster up a little for the next Eldar game, and looking forward to debut my Death Guard on the tabletop sometime soon, too, in this campaign. As always, I can’t say enough good things about Noble Miniatures and about their table setups. They’re a phenomenal shop and made for some great pictures, and a great starting point for our Crusade.

Rattled from their escape pods and landing craft, the crew of the Sunstalker retrieved most – though not all of their supplies from the drop site. Their good fortune in reaching a habitable world is befouled by having reached one inhabited by the Deathwatch.

Crusade Upgrades!

Pictured: My “Crusade” Howling Banshees with updated runes, bases and power swords.

Recently with my ninth edition handbook I picked up one of the Crusade journal; a narrative-style campaign in 40K has been on my to-do list for a long time, and since I’m lucky enough to have a few friends locally interested in the same thing I’m giving it a whirl. I hope to post and chat about different games that I’ve played and show a few battle reports on the site, but before getting too carried away I also decided that some of my existing models needed a little more love before hitting the tabletop.

Pictured, my old Farseer model vs. Eldrad Ulthran, playing the part of my Crusade Farseer.

Not that I always play favorites, but if I did they’d be Jain Zar, my Banshees, my Wave Serpent, and my psykers, so those are some of the models I either redid from scratch or refitted. Guy from Midwinter Minis has an awesome tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gNfrCS263s) for using nail flakes and I tried to apply this to all of my power swords, which gave them a really nice new glimmering effect under natural light.

Pictured, my Wave Serpent post-upgrades with a higher base. Vanes make a big difference!

All in all I think I’m ready for this campaign now and ready for my Eldar to make a splash on the tabletop. Eldrad’s going to be getting a gallery of his own in the next while, too, and I have some other galleries (and battle reports) planned over the next while too. Still going to be slow going till the thesis is done but I’m pretty excited with where painting and playing are going from here!

Before, After, and Next Steps

Pictured, Guardian from 2018 vs. Storm Guardian from 2020.

Felt like I needed a win today, so I’m posting something fun. When I started painting Warhammer again back in 2018 I started with a handful of Guardians, Howling Banshees, and psykers, and after a couple of years I thought it would be neat to compare some of the first models I did with the models I’ve been painting more recently.

Pictured, Howling Banshee from 2018 vs. Howling Banshee from 2020.

I’m happy to say that I think I’ve made strides as far as my painting goes – the more recent colors pop better and I think I’m getting better at picking contrasting colors that look good together. More than that, though, using occasional resin bases, kitbashing, and my basing have all moved a little out of my original comfort zone and I’m excited to see what kind of improvements I’ll have made in another two years’ time.

Lastly, I want to add that because I’m working on a thesis right now and moving into “crunch” time I’m likely not going to be uploading much over the next month or so. Hoping to focus on that for a while and hopefully come back to painting refreshed – I have a few Eldar and Death Guard projects primed and ready to paint and a new “mystery” army I’m excited to build too.

Thanks for the support and views, and see you on the other side!

Storm Guardians

I said a year ago to some local friends I play with that I was never, ever going to build Storm Guardians because of how niche they are and how much the upgrades would cost. As fate would have it, though, I ended up with an extra few sprues of Guardians, and since I already have a regular 20-person Guardian blob I decided to do something different – so I tackled part of my shame pile and supported my local FLGS all at the same time.

Pictured are the whole ten-person squad with Flamers, Chainswords, and Aeldari Blades.

I’m happier with how these look than my regular Guardians and after playing with them a little (especially the chainswords!) I think I’m going to bring them along with my regular army a little more often! The resin parts were surprisingly easy to work with, my only complaint is the distribution of parts in the GW Storm Guardian kit – I ended up buying 2 upgrade kits and still didn’t have enough chainswords to equip a default squad.