Thursday 13 April 2017

Eldar Space Fleet


After showing you a bit of my work in progress the other day, I've finally decided to take the time to finish my Eldar fleet for the simple reason I want to move on to the Imperial one and many other projects !

Starting from what I showed you the other day, I quickly primed everything in white. This was quite disapointing I must say. The original being all red and blue, the colours of the plastic were still showing after 2 coats. Considering how poorly stripped and damaged some models were, I didn't want to add another layer so I moved on from that point.

Coloured plastic : NOT COOL
So I decided to give my fleet a strong dominant colour just like I had done for my Tyrannid fleet and thought blue was as good a choice as any. 
I took my airbrush out and started applying the bright turquoise you can see on the left right after the white only to see the compressor shaking and falling from the table...

Change of plans.

Took my colours and opted for washes and wet blending "en masse". The aim really was to have a transition from white to deep blue as smoothly but rapidly as possible and I think it worked pretty well.


In under an hour I had all the ships base coated and waiting for a few highlights and details.


For the sails, I just applied 2 thin coats of leadbelcher followed by washes of orange and yellow and highlights of silver. They look rough but I wanted something looking alien and quick enough. In hindsight, it could have been subtler and better but I really was in the mood to get them done as fast as possible.
However, I still need to stat the flag ship up in some simple and elegant way...

The Hammer of Vaul
 To give a bit of variety, I've tried to give every ship an angle to imply a form of dynamism.


The shadowhunters are quite fun and the left one (the only lead model in the fleet) is an absolutely smashing sculpt (Cheers to Chris) !


Which brings us to the plastic wraith ships, simple sculpts really but doing the job more than fine.


With both fleets on the table, I'm really glad of the effect I've got, both fleet were very straightforward to paint and it's visually very easy to read with strong colours for each side.
I know I could have set the standard higher with these but I only slightly regret not doing it. They're tabletop worthy and I know I would have got frustrated by them if I had to push things any further. I've spent something like 3 hours painting on them and I find the result/time ration to be high enough for the purpose.


With this project ticked off the list, I'm quite chuffed to be able to move onto other things. With 3 gaming Week ends planned ahead, I still have a few things I need to paint but nothing overwhelming and projects I would have wanted to do anyway so that's good news !

29 comments:

  1. Loving your work, as always, JB!

    The simple colour scheme makes the fleet gell amazingly.

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  2. Cor, they're a bit of alright. You may see quick and dirty paint jobs, but I see a beautiful, eye catching fleet, in interesting colours.

    The Hammer of Vaul is the guilding on the lily. I love the unconventional sail configuration.

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    1. Cheers, I want all forces to be easily distinct from one another hence the dominant tones for each. I don't see the point in painting such a scale the way I'd paint a 28mm one.
      You've been a great help for those (again) !

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    2. Always here to get your hobby back ;)

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  3. This is wonderful stuff JB, I can't wait to see them in hand.

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    1. Don't set your expectation level too high ! They're a fun group though. ;)

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  4. Great work, particularly for a levée en masse paint job.

    A nice thing about these older eldar sculpts is that they are similar to the BFG sculpts, probably similar enough that you could mix them to get some more escorts... or a ruddy huge battleship.

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    1. There is indeed a possible association although I must admit I refrain myslef from admitting it. I have enough trouble focusing with a small format game as Space Fleet but BFG would open doors to a far wider area to explore. Space Fleet will scratch the space comabt itch just fine I believe. ^^

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  5. These look great JB, those eldar ships sure are purdy.

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  6. Lovely, lovely work - as always! You post really piqued my interest as I was only just reading through the original tease for BFG in 1989. Are these models from a round the same era? Early 1990s? I am sure these eldar ships originally had 3 sails? Perhaps I imagined it. The combination of the electric blues and the fleshy colour sails is very striking and contrasts very well. Nice free hand on those fiddly eldar symbols too! (:

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    1. Space fleet actually went back and forth with a change of name and rules, some of the concepts didn't make it into the final cut and the game was repurposed for children with optionnal advanced rules compared to the detailed games it was first intended to be.
      You can find the info I gathered about it in this series of posts :
      Space fleet part 1
      Space fleet part 2

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  7. Egad ! Flying blue space woopsies!

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  8. I absolutely love these!!! Amazing stuff as ever JB

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  9. Man, I'm in love with these. Tremendously inspiring work. Agh, I need to put my hands on my fleets!

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    1. I'd love to have your own fleets facing man !

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  10. Wow, the Eldar Space Fleet really 'pops' on the tabletop. Brilliant work!

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    1. That's all I intended for them so cheers !

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  11. LOL, the designs are very "space is an ocean", but I think they look great.

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    1. Hadn't realised that but so very true !

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    2. (I was going to link to the "Space is an ocean" entry on TV Tropes, but that site is a weapons-grade motivation hazard)

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  12. I totally agree with Allison M. above -- you've made your Eldar look like tropical fish. They are absolutely fantastic. Wonderful work, JB!

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    1. Well I could only go with the flow with those models. ^^
      Thanks a lot Matthew.

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  13. These look great! I have always thought they nailed it with these ships and I was never too keen on the eldar models they made for BFG as they didn't look 'wraith boney' enough like these old Space Fleet minis do.

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    1. I guess it's all due to Jes Goodwin really ! I compeletly agree with you on this. ^^

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