Starting a Dark Eldar army

Kruellagh the Vile - Des Hanley

Ever since their introduction in the 3rd Edition of Warhammer 40,000, the Dark Eldar have always peaked my interest. Portrayed as deeply depraved and sadistic raiders, traveling the void praying upon the unwary, the Dark Eldar have always been a force that demanded attention. Some of the original imagery done by Des Hanley and Wayne England is superb and still sticks with me today. The image of Kruellagh the Vile slaughtering that Imperial guardsman with her Soul Flayer is particularly memorable. 

Haemonculus - Wayne England

While not as striking as some of the artwork, the original  line of models was certainly interesting (many of which were sculpted by Gary Morley and Chris FitzPatrick) and are not easily forgotten (the original Archon with his dead-skin mask and outrageously large claw springs to mind). At the time, I was only in high school and without a steady form of income, I was forced to be content with a single squad of Dark Eldar warriors (all of which I somehow managed to paint in a single weekend...). I continued to slowly collect models from the range sporadically, never really creating a viable force to actually use them in the game. Eventually, I vowed that I would fully embrace the force and construct a proper army when they received a new Codex and accompanying range of miniatures. As many of you know, this took Games Workshop twelve years to finally accomplish.

Needless to say, when the Dark Eldar were finally revisited in the Fall of 2010, I eagerly set out to start an army of the Dark Lords of Commorragh. Fortunately, the army received royal treatment, with nearly every unit and model being designed and sculpted by Games Workshop’s master modeller Jes Goodwin. This attention resulted in the most consistent and uniform range of miniatures Games Workshop has released for a Warhammer 40,000 army.  Each of the plastic kits were designed and planned so well that nearly every piece from one set is interchangeable with the others (and many of the Dark Elf plastics too!). This interchangeability even spills over into many of the the new character models (the Archon with Husk Blade and Soul Trap for instance), presenting a wealth of conversion possibilities.

This post will mark the first of many detailing my progress assembling a Dark Eldar army. For this first installment, I want to talk about my initial efforts in tackling the Dark Eldar Headquarters section. The Headquarters section for me is typically one of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of building an army. The Dark Eldar codex is filled with interesting and effective Headquarter options, making choosing an initial model tricky. Eventually I opted for an Archon wielding a Husk Blade and a Soul Trap (eager to try one of the codex’s new options over the trusty old agonizer...).

As a bit of a homage to the older Dark Eldar range, I decided to use the old Kruellagh the Vile model as a base for the conversion. If any of you remember the model, you will probably recall that both her hands and feet looked awful.  

Kruellagh the Vile - horrible hands, feet, name...

The brunt of the conversion was to replace both of her hands and feet with nicer ones from the new Dark Eldar range. Replacing the hands turned out to be pretty easy as they could be swapped with the Soul Trap and Husk Blade from the new Archon model, only requiring minor greenstuff work to fill in some of the seams between her hands and wrists. Her legs were a little more involved, requiring me to largely remove them below the knees.

Off with her legs!

I chose to replace them with the legs from one of the new plastic wyches, which were thankfully correct in scale. Like the hands, the legs required some greenstuff work to fill gaps and smoothen out the transition between the plastic and metal. Finally, I pinned the model to a scenic base taken from the Eldar Harlequin Troupe Master.

The new Dark Eldar components even fit well with the old models! 

And now to build the rest of the army...

That about does it for my first Dark Eldar post. Any questions or comments would be appreciated. There are still several ideas going around in my head for other Archon models, including one based on another even older Dark Eldar model than Kruellagh...

- Harlon Nayl