Eldar Dark Reaper: I Painted Sumfing!

It's been a good 1.5 years since I indulged in ye ole Warhammer 40K hobby.  (With my schedule, it's either hobby or writing, not both, which is why I managed to get a lot more writing done last year.)  Yesterday I got out of work early, it was a sunny, warm day, and I decided that I was going to camp outside and do some painting, damn it!

And I did so using my new painting philosophy, which is: keep it simple, stupid! If I ever want to get even half of the irresponsible horde of models I own painted one day, I'll have to keep each one pretty simple.  That means relying heavily on washes and dry brushing for details, and keeping the perfectionist in me at bay.  Overall, I'm pretty darn happy with this guy.

I usually paint the first one by him- or herself to figure out the scheme, and then I can paint more than one at a time once the design it determined.  So hopefully, completing my squad won't be far behind.  There's only 3 more models, after all.

You might notice that these are not the Craftworld Dark Reapers you are used to.  The "new" (at that time) Dark Eldar models are just so much cooler than the old Craftworld ones, that I decided to build a lot of my aspect warriors using DE kits.  That's my "Black Phoenix" Craftworld, and these badass aspect warriors are no exception.

They are basically DE Warrior bodies with WH Fantasy dark elf masked heads.  I also added a DE accessory behind the head to act as "reaper range-finding" gear.  The weapon, I believe, is a DE dark lance.  To me, the Reaper Launchers are not mini-missiles but quick-fire railguns.  Each time they pull the trigger, two very thin, javelin-like munitions are magnetically fired in rapid succession.  The poor targets at the other side are dead before they even hear the report of the gun.

I don't know when I will get another tiny pocket universe of time to paint more, but this was sure nice.  And I completed him in only an hour and half, which is pretty good for me, especially being rusty and all.

And here are links to blog posts when I first built these reapers TWO YEARS AGO:
— Reapers
— Exarch (which I'm not sure I like anymore — may just use the female model for the exarch)