Starting a NEW Army the Hard Way!

new year new Army I know it's February don't rush me I'm be putting together a dark lar Army 2,000 points over the course of the year and I'm going to be doing it with none other than Scott the miniature Maniac who is doing the exact same thing we're going to have a point system in place for building converting painting modeling and gaming and we're going to see who wins overall and uh it's going to be me now it's been a while since I started a brand new 40K project and I'm really excited because I have put together a lot of minis in the meantime and I've learned a lot of things and so each of my armies is a little bit different my black Templar my necrons my Jean ster cult and I want the Dark Eldar to be different really different and so I bought some stuff a lot of stuff all of this stuff I want my Dark Eldar to be super special I want them to be everything I Envision in my head and so I got to try out a lot of new things but Scott has a leg up on me because he actually has a fair few dark alar already built and I don't even have a color scheme picked out pretty sure it's going to be pink but we'll see cracking open a new Army is always exciting getting a feel for a new Army and I've never really dived into the elves I've never cared for the normal Eldar but there is something special and spiky about the dark elves my goal is to get a squad of Troopers done to solidify my color scheme and I just can't get enough that new plastic smell And So It Begins cites are the normal Rank and file of the Drew Cari and so this is where I want to begin if anyone wants to start a new Army I would always recommend buying one box of the basic troops and finishing those you might find out you don't even like doing it and that could save you and your wallet a lot of pain now a little snag in the building the two halves of the dark Elder bodies have an unsightly seam right down the middle these models are old but have held up well I have an idea of how to fix this flaw I put some tape underneath each shoulder and then gently placed a drop of superglue and then poured on baking soda this makes a super hard res like material and I can reshape that corner into a nice sharp point with some sanding Twigs I finished gluing my bad boys and girls together and got them onto some paint handles and I love how imposing and extra they are like glamrock ninjas 10 calit Deep this project is starting to feel real and I got to pick some colors and I actually already have some Dark Eldar models finished although not really these are Helens and the reason I have them is because they were 20 bucks on eBay and I couldn't resist so they're not really part of this Army but I think I got somewhere close with the color scheme pink and teal is really really nice but they're a little pastelly they're a little desaturated I want to pump up those values quite a bit and the bases I am very happy with pretty much because they're my black Templar bases actually they're exactly my black Templar bases just with some grass tffs on there so I got to do a little something differentiate this Army and I'm going to cast custom resin bases for each Drew Cari I love the look of no base rim and I just going to I'm going to do it for the entire Army I don't know if it's really been done before the base Rim is so ubiquitous every model has to have a base Rim in theory you pick up all your models only by the base Rim never actually touching the model itself I I reach in there like a big bowl of popcorn I don't really care and that's why I'm going to omit the Bas R and I think it's just going to look incredible but now to find the perfect pink I don't paint much pink but I have amassed quite a collection of color pink paints I'm thinking classic Pig pink some magenta and mixing in some of this florescent pink and the camera doesn't do it justice this color is upsettingly pink then teal for a secondary color plus black and white I started messing around on my palette seeing how these colors interact with one another I would rather not add tons of colors I want to see how much I can get away with just using these and I found a picture online and Drew on top of it to try out some color combinations I primed my first delar starting with black a suitable color for my Dark Eldar and then I mixed in some of my blue and black into my pink to make a dark pink for a base coat I sprayed this on from underneath and took careful notes of exactly what I'm doing I want this Army to actually be consistent unlike any of my other armies I sprayed proper pink from above and they might look a little obnoxious but if I hold up something that's actually white next to them you can see they're still pretty dark now for something I've always wanted to take advantage of if I turn the PSI almost all the way down on my airbrush it'll spit out paint I want to create a messy texture over my darari armor so to start this process I splattered light pink over everything then I tore myself a little piece of foam to sponge on some black mixed with my turquoise color I went pretty hard with the sponging but a lot of it will get covered up later I'm layering on a messy foundation and speaking of Foundations all the metal will be bronze so I base Co these parts with a dark Earth color I'm going true metallic metal for this Army and even the best metallics can't one coat cover bright pink so I base coat is essential I put gold paint on top of this and picked out any of the cloth with my teal color I mixed up a dark reddish magenta to put over their Under Armour which I probably should have done first before all the other details but in the end I had some silly looking boys they don't look at all finished but it's all part of the plan I sprayed everyone with the gloss Varnish in preparation for a wash I want the recesses dark but I don't want all the models themselves to get too dark so a gloss will help the wash wash I put agre Earth shade over my first elf which stained beautifully but it also made the pink armor look a little more salmony red not quite what I'm after so for the rest I use null oil while they were still wet I used a clean brush to Wick away the wash anywhere it was pooling too hard but this one step has super changed the overall look of these fellas my Cal lights definitely needed a wash and honestly they're looking pretty good I should really stop now like if I wanted to get 50 cabal lights done this month I would stop here but I've never been one for making things easy on myself and I love a good highlight so it's time to pour some serious time into my most basic troop choice on my previous Elder I did a slap chop over zenial which gave me some nice values my new Eldar are pretty much flat I need to make the new ones look like the old ones and I think to make these models look their best heav metal Edge highlights will do the trick I carefully edged every highlight working slow with a nice sharp brush these guys are all about their segmented armor so I want that to pop and you know what else is popping your models and Cobalt keep display cases not only has Cobalt keep got best quality and quantity of miniature wargaming bases but their display cases are the sharpest way to display and transport your colle ctions their hero display case can hold one Epic miniature with a built-in metal plate on the bottom so you don't have to worry about magnet polarity your models will be held safe and secure and these cases are stackable so you can build a wall of Pride showcasing your collection Cobalt keep's Army display cases are The Next Step Up able to hold an entire squad or warband of tabletop Miniatures the floor of these cases is made of metal so your models be held securely no matter where they are in the case and from experience I can say rocking up to your local game store with your models in one of these will get some attention it's a really slick case and helps you show show off your minis to your friends while keeping their filthy Cheeto fingers off your perfect models the highquality parly carbonate shell securely clips into place and your minis are ready to be transported or displayed in style and as if the Army case wasn't big enough Cobalt keep has you covered their Cavalry cases are monstrous big enough to hold actual monsters or any other big impressive centerpiece model in your collection if you want to pick up some of these magnetic display cases and show off your minis in style you can shop with the code E10 to get 10% off your order of cobalt keep cases once the armor was finished I took a brown contrast paint and made some Shadows on my metal then I mixed silver into my gold to highlight putting this opposite of where I put the Shadows the gold and pink are both very warm colors so switching over to my green blue is a lot of fun it really Pops I'm going to use this combo all over my Army I think on my next 10 Warriors I might invert it teal armor and pink loin cloths I use these same colors on their eyes and my boys are done I have five calite Warriors all finished and ready to go ready for bases but I have no bases I need to build them but I have to build them and not use them these are sticker back magnet sheets and eventually this will be what's underneath each of my elves I'm going to use these as the base to build up from since I'm not using the bases they came with and for the ground I bought a few different sizes of slate Rock not something I would usually use for bases but for casting these will be perfect I stuck them down with milliput and superglue and started layering them up building them taller and taller using my sculpting tools to try and hide where the rock ends and the putty begins once I had my now very heavy bases I added some decorations a few skulls here and there and a sprinkling of pulverized slate Rock the Slate is nice and flat giving me plenty of room for Eldar feet while being exotic looking I've got eight bases all built and ready to go I'm taking a little bit of a calculated risk the dark Elder are supposed to stay on 25 mm bases but I've built 28.5 mm bases the regular lar used to stay on on 25s and recently they got a range update that increased it from 25 to 28.5 so I'm hoping I'm future proof in my Army a little bit and it took about an hour to build each of these bases which is fine but I definitely wouldn't like to do it a 100 times and I'm thinking I won't have to I'm going to cast them this stuff is smooth on mold star 16 rubber I'm going to be pouring this over my bases but I need to make a little box and I want that box as small as possible this rubber is expensive and I'm hoping I can make all the molds for my entire Army out of these bottles I put packing tape over my foam core and stuck down my bases It's Kind of Perfect that they're peeling stick now that I have them down I think I can lose a lot more area so I cut down my foam C even smaller and I put it all together with hot glue using a lot of hot glue and letting it squish that squish is going to be what gives me my watertight seal now for the tricky part how much rubber will it take I poured some sand into my mold until it was perfectly at my fill line and then poured that into a cup and thank goodness I did this because I discovered I needed a much bigger cup I used sand because it's dry but now I need to know how heavy this amount of liquid will be so I made a mark and filled it back up with water it's bang on 10 oz I've got it all figured out now it is go time I'm very dubious about its 30 minute cure time that seems really fast although its working time is supposedly 6 minutes so I'm going to have to be really fast with speed in mind I need a good way to stir up this batch so I took some popsicle sticks I had lying around and glued them to a match I can shove this into my drill and it'll stir for me then I mixed the two halves in the pots and got ready for the pour 5 oz and 5 oz give or take a little bit for the containers and then the race was on 6 minutes is not a lot of time to get this all done I dumped it all together and started my clock I set my drill on ludicrous speed and whipped it into shape 2 minutes of stirring and then 4 minutes of pouring going as slow as I could to try not to trap any bubbles but really it's just hope at this point that it all worked out all right it is sitting pretty the only thing that could have gone wrong is not mixing it well enough but I got the whole operation done in exactly 6 minutes as the Box demanded so I guess I got 30 minutes and we'll see what happened okay it's been 30 minutes actually it's been closer to an hour and oh it feels it feels really good but do I trust it like this is like a $20 mold I got to see I tore apart my box like a kid tears open their presents on Christmas morning it's either success or failure but everything was looking all right it looks like it worked flawlessly a that really was quick and it really does feel good but there's only one way to know if it works and that is to cast in it I bought Aluma light 10-minute casting resin and this is white and I hear some of you say Jay no base rims white resin it's going to Chip and look terrible in a couple of games and I agree but that's why I bought alumalite Black Ink so my bases are going to come out of the mold black which is the color I want them to be on my final models it should work perfectly but I got to figure out how much I need these models are tiny tiny tiny so I can't really do the sand trick so YOLO I poured my two halves eyeballing The Fill line and I put in a drop of the black and it looks like that single drop was probably Overkill I started my timer and poured the two halves together I went so fast that I spilled a lot and I decided to move my brand new painted models away from the Splash Zone remembering something I saw in a video once I stirred for 1 minute then poured for 1 minute and it is quick the box says a 2 to 3 minute work time but it feels a lot closer to 2 than 3 I let the resin sit for about 10 minutes and then it was time number one I would just like to say that my eyes are nearly perfect I mixed up exactly the right amount of resin and I am so nervous are they going to be perfect are they going to be full of bubbles there's only one way to find out I gently pulled my bases from the molds and they looked pretty good unfortunately though there were some bubbles trapped in the pointiest parts of the bases that's good though it means that the problem is in the resin not the mold and I already have some ideas of what I can do to make it better I Sharpie marks to remind myself where the dangerous spots are and I put the mold on an angle so hopefully gravity will help me out for my second batch I poured just a little splash into each hole and used a disposable brush to push the resin into the tips then filled it up the rest of the way this worked out way better they're about 95% perfect and if anyone has any more ideas please let me know the bubbles aren't the end of the world though I just cut off the bubble parts and chocked it up to the Natural irregularity of the stone in no time I had a couple dozen bases all done I sanded down the bottoms nice and flat and stuck on my magnet stickers and gave them all a black Prime I base coated my bases a dark gray mixed with a little bit of black and brown doing a zenial leaving plenty of the black primer still visible and then came the dry brushing a little bit of gray on the edges and then a second dusting of light gray mixed with white and they look so good you can't even tell if they're homemade just some rocks and goo from earlier today I put some phthalo green ink into my airbrush and dusted this over the bases to tint them and then I watered down some red Brown I put this over the sand and it has a lot of warmth that'll bring in a little bit of the pink for my Minis on to the base I used whatever colors were already on my palette to pick out the skulls highlighted them all the way to White and then my super custom bases were finished in one day oh I am in love with these bases and they already have the magnets in them I have a pipe dream of getting all of my models on magnet bases but I have well over 2,000 painted Miniatures it's just not going to happen but these 10 cites are all dunon rings once they're on the bases they will never come back to the painting desk only gaming and speaking of these kabalites I'm sure some of you are wondering why pink well one of the reasons is I don't paint any of my Army pink so it's a fun new challenge but also these are the Dark Eldar and they like to be scary and dark and so Pink's not a very scary color but it is to the Eldar because the thing that Eldar fear the most is slanesh all Eldar souls are doomed to slanesh but the dark Elder have found a workaround as long as they never ever never die they will never be given to slanesh and so they kind of wear pink in their armor just to tease the dark God they wear its colors but they will never die and become one of sesh's cultists I really really like that little bit of World building and I got to get these guys on some bases another reason I wanted to cast bases is because he can't pin minis into rock but now that I've made resin bases that I can drill into I'm still too lazy to pin my Minis I'm using super thick superg glue and if they ever snap off maybe then I'll think about drill bits and paper clips and with my boys stuck down the last little cherry on top some grass Tufts wacky Tufts I've always loved these but they've never been right for any of my armies until now I'm not let anything stop me on this Army YOLO oh my little cabal lights are all done it's really important when starting a new Army to like the basic trooper and I really like the kabalites they're like regular lar but actually cool and I actually casted up enough bases for my second Squad of kabalites which I might start working on them today cuz I'm feeling real Juiced about my dark alar and speaking of this Army and this challenge overall Scott and I are borrowing from The Games Workshop escalation league rules so that we can both build up points to see who wins overall once we have our completed armies but we're changing it a little bit cuz we're both doing the same Army Dark Eldar if we just used those points it would pretty much just be a tie our scoring sheet starts out pretty simple buying a unit is a point putting that unit together is two points three points for paining a small Squad five points for paining a large Squad Five Points a vehicle Five Points a character three points for playing a game but after that comes the juice interesting conversion three points per model cool freehanding three points per model interesting basing three points a model with these cits painted that brings me up to seven points but with the eight custom bases I made that brings me up to 31 points and that's why I'm so excited for this project cuz it's not really even about finishing an army it's about who can go above and beyond it's about who can go harder and I'm pretty hard right now if you guys have any ideas what I could do to take this Army above and beyond please leave it in the comments below subscribe or die but most importantly don't forget to

Channel: EonsOfBattle

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Keywords: eonsofbattle, eons, of, battle, warhammer, warhammer 40k, warhammer 4000, 40k, video, game, play, fun, paint, learn, tutorial, diorama, painting, design, base, basing

Id: -dmMpMMy6CQ

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024