WIP: Eldar Striking Scorpion - Test Model

After a really fun game of 3 player kill team, I 'borrowed' my friend's unit of old school Striking Scorpions to give them some paintbrush love.

These guys were fun to play against in the previous game of kill team, and I thought they deserved some colour.


A window of painting opportunity came up today and I took a crack at a test model - shown here with his friend (sporting the original colours, from the late 90's?).

My friend has requested 'neon eldar', starting from a dark base, and layering up to a yellow high-light. The paint recipe to date is:

• White undercoat (supplied with "borrowed" minis)
• Base - Dark Angels Green
• Wash - Thraka Green
• Layer - Scorpion Green
• Wash - Thraka Green
• Layer - Scorpion Green
• Highlight - 2:1 Scorpion Green:Bad Moon Yellow
• Highlight - 1:2 Scorpion Green:Bad Moon Yellow
• Final highlight - Bad Moon Yellow (sparingly)

I have also done the belts/pouches (Calthan Brown/Agrax Earthshade/Calthan Brown/Snakebite Leather), the sword teeth, and an initial layer for the gold bits (jewel surrounds on chest, belt and leg, and mandible gun things).

I found it difficult to show much of the darker colours, given how knobbly and bumpy the entire model is - lots of drybrushing potential but very fiddly to layer/highlight. GW models have come a long way in the last 15 years, but there is also something fun about the older models.

In terms of where next - I need to:

• highlight the facemask & weapons
• finish the gold bits
• do the jewels & eyes

For the weapons I am torn between a shiny gold which I see in some old WD's, or potentially going with something I saw on dakka which is leaving the weapons black and then highlighting them in a contrasting colour (ie neon). I am currently thinking about using a neon-pink type highlight, as it is the opposite side of the colour wheel to the green/yellow, and would also stand out a bit on some of my friend's other aspect warriors. If pink is not manly enough (for our little painted toy soldiers) then the same ice blue I use for my plasma weapons might also work. I'm inclined to give it a bash, take some photos and if it doesn't work out paint it over in black followed by gold and never speak of it again.

For the base, the request was "plain black with neon high-lights". Which is a bit tricky, and either way I would need to replace the existing slotta-bases to get rid of the cross piece. So its a bit of a waste to go there and not do something interesting :)

One suggestion was clear bases. I am leaning towards this with the jewels picked out in the same neon pink high-light used above on the weapons and some OSL if I'm feeling keen. I'll wait to see how the weapon highlighting goes above before I commit.

And the dynamic duo once again, this time from the back - those pants are figure hugging!

In other news, the Kill Team game was awesome and I'll post some pics rather than a battle rep as it was way too chaotic to write up. Fun tho. Random teleporters FTW! And my fit of painting enthusiasm has overflowed onto the Morkanaught (you can see some red pieces in the background of those photos) so some (slow) progress there which is awesome!