Black Phoenix: Dark Warp Spiders

At long last I (may) have finished my squad of homemade "dark" warp spiders!

I say "may" because my original vision was/is to have warp vanes on their backs, using the DE trophy racks, as seen here and here.  I bought a finecast box of Incubi with the intent of using their racks for that purpose... and man that $#!^ is terrible!  My first encounter with "Failcast" and it lives up to that name.  There are so many tabs and extra crap on them, and when I tried to clean up the first one it ripped in half!  *sigh*  I'm trying not to go into an anti-GW cheap selfish bastards tirade here...  So lets move on with the Spiders instead.

So anyway, I went for a cooler, more Spider-man-esque look.  I'm very disappointed that the new Eldar release didn't include updating the old warp spider models which are of the very first design.  They really don't do it for me--big lumps of static ying-yangs.  So I made my own.  These guys are mostly Scourge bits with Reaver heads.  The spider-crawling chick has Hellion legs and the one running headlong into trouble has Wych legs.  In retrospect I should have made another crouching figure but...  oh well.  Gotta save some torso parts for my Scourges/Dark Swooping Hawks.  (I'm not likely to field more than 5 spiders anyway.)

On each back is the warp-jumping apparatus, six small reality-rending pods that give them somewhat of a spidery look.  I was really leaning on the big warp vanes sticking off their backs for even more spider-esque-itude but am so discouraged by the Failcast incident I don't know if I'll bother.  For their death spinners I used DE shredders, which are weapons of the same general breed.

My Exarch I wanted to REALLY be a dark spider freak, so I gave him four arms!  Under the new codex I'll be equipping him with the Spinnerete Rifle (represented by the Scourge haywire blaster).  His spiderweb is a wych shardnet and he has a powerblade on the other arm.  Melding four arms onto his tiny torso actually wasn't as hard as I expected it to be.  I first attached the arms that had to link together (gun) on kind of low, then filed the tops flat and the fit on the upper arms, filling the gaps with a pinpoint worth of greenstuff.  His head is a cool wych head with scars carved into his own face.  I was tempted to use the biker dome head with ponytail, but this one has so much more personality.

Color-wise...  I'm expecting to paint them all black with red highlights and red glass on their helmets, plus try to make a red glow on their warp gadgets.  Weapons will be silvery.  Should be slick if I can pull it off well enough.

In battle they were expert assassins.  I have played them once under the new rules (brief battle report forth-coming) and they did their job well.  They dropped in via deepstrike, shot the hell out of a small squad of chaos marines, killing all but one and wounding his Chaos Lord, and then bounced out of reach the same turn.  That was the pattern, jumping in to kill with S6 AP1 shots, then jumping out.  (Hardly seemed fair sometimes.) While the Exarch can be equipped for combat, I think that'd be a mistake.  I've tried it in the past and it generally doesn't turn out so good.  He's just not built for it, and with this kind of maneuverability, there's little chance of him getting charged.  My exarch had the spinnerete rifle and warrior powers of Fast Shot and Marksman's Eye (tho I completely forgot the latter the whole game). And as my report will reflect, I had one get needlessly lost in the warp when I rolled double-ones for a jump.  My opponent had no pity for me (nor should he -- all that moving should have SOME risk).

But three of these brave aspect warriors returned to the Black Phoenix Craftworld to revel in their freaky glory!  Though some say we are tainted, the Black Phoenix will rise again!