So I've taken a liking to the Dark Elves and specifically their monster list (you can check out my version of it
here).
Mainly I wanted to do this list because I knew it would be fairly compact army wise and absolutely gorgeous on the table if done right. Now I have to see if I can paint this stuff well enough to make it as nice as I envisioned.
Due to the current Dark Elf line, my aversion to metal models, and my general cheap-ass attitude (I'm sorry but $135 for
fifteen harpies is ridiculous) , I've gone through and made a number of conversions, both for aesthetics and for cost. The end result I think came out a lot nicer than the GW models:
First off are my Harpies. This is the conversion I'm most proud of because I think it genuinely looks a lot nicer than the GW sculpts and happened to cost ~$50USD to build 15 of them. The conversion is the new Plastic Daemonettes mixed with wings from the Hawkman Hero-Clix figure:
Granted the plastic from the Hawkman wings was so hard that using the testors glue to get them on the daemonettes made me question why I bother playing a game that requires this much effort, but eventually I got it all going well enough and above is the end result. I've since gone and ordered another 10 Hawkman Figures since Wizkids went under, I figure the price may jump up and honestly at .65 per set of wing, you can't go wrong with this conversion!
Next up are my two Cold One Chariots. You can't even buy the metal-plastic hybrid kit from GW anymore, and with the new Cold Ones being so pretty, I decided to mix things up with the new High Elf chariot with some DE bits thrown on. This isn't an original idea, but the results came out pretty well. I used a combination of the new Corsairs kit and the Warriors kit to make the riders.
Next are my Dark Riders. This is an age-old conversion apparantly, and it's so blatantly easy that once I got into the DE army I found out how many people have done this. It's a simple mix of a Warriors box and the Wood Elf Glade Riders kit:
The next set of pics aren't conversions, just my build on the extraordinarily nice new Cold One Knights kit and the new Hydra:
Next up is my Dragon Lord. This is based off the High Elf Dragon kit for the most part. The main difference is that the chair is left off and the body/shield of the Lord is from the Cold One Knights. For the legs I used the normal kit but cut off the long flowing part of the robes underneath, and I honestly liked the whole dragon helmet that I simply used it and with the shield and body I think it works pretty easily as a DE Lord rather than a High Elf.
Next is the Master on Manticore. This is pretty much a normal Manticore with a Cold One Knight up top standing in for the normal Beastmaster from the model. I really hated the rider that is normally on this guy and I love the new CoK kit so away we went. I got the model from a friend (for selling most of his DE stuff for him), but had no base so I ghetto-built a 50mm out of 4 25mm bases. The green stuff filling in the gaps being so messy doesn't matter much as it's all going to get based with rocks/sand anyway, I just wanted the gaps mostly filled in. Also I've since used one of the modular movement trays to cut out a 50mm thing for the ghetto-base to be glued to, so it's got more support now.
Finally are the only two DE on foot: both characters dismounted versions. I actually am going to re-do the arm on the Master as I didn't like how the "sword" came out. It's not a lot of work but it needs a fix.
So that's the army. I'll probably add a few more things to it over time, like a Sorceress on Peg, maybe another unit of Cold One Knights to swap out for the chariot and some more harpies, but that's more or less how this is going to roll.
