It seems very fitting that May 1st is the time to pick up a new blog with a new army based on the Gaelic Beltane, or May Day... that serves as inspiration for Biel-Tan Eldar.
Over the last 4 years, I have assembled the best part of a company of Blood Angels and kept a log of them (here). However, for much of the 1990s, I collected and played Eldar in 40k. With 100 marines finished, I'm starting to put together a second 'modern' army and bring back the pointy ears.
I have been mulling over starting a second adult-painted army to go with my Blood Angels (or possibly even against them) for quite a while. The soft spot I have for green Eldar is still strong, and while most of the aspect warriors are literally using the same 25yr old sculpts, I never really had more than small infantry squads the first time round. Getting some of their slick tanks, as well as the excellent modern Forgeworld Avatar AND being able to paint them with an airbrush... could be a lot of fun.
2nd Edition: 1994
When my 14yr old self was trying to choose what to play, I went straight to the most powerful single unit of the day which was the Avatar in 2nd Ed. 300 points, fearless, immortal, with basically max stats, 10 wounds, capable of taking on pretty much anything up to and including greater daemons in combat.
The rest of the Eldar units were pretty squishy, but the more I looked at their unique aspect units, the more powerful they seem to be in their special role. Very much glass cannon - extremely dangerous when moving quickly and hitting hard. Fragile but powerful - more to be used as a scalpel than a hammer, and that felt like the right army fit for me.
During 2nd ed, there was really only Eldrad as a named character so a lot of people seemed to have Ulthwe as their craftworld choice; the aspect shrines & phoenix lords were all universal, so the other choices were really based purely on colour & fluff.
In ~1994, there were no Eldar tanks (jetbikes and dreadnoughts yes, but no falcons or even vypers yet); so it really came down to preferred guardian colours. The white and green scheme really jumped out, and that was what I went with on my first guardians and Biel Tan it was from then on. Below is my late 1990s army, still in a foam briefcase, with a mixture of complete and semi compete guardians.
Back to the Origins of Beltane
Being a little older now, and more interested in the painting & collecting aspects of the hobby (plus the internet now has information on everything), I went looking at the background real-world connections & history. Like much of GW lore, there is an element of truth and grounding in myth to the origins of the Eldar back story.
In the Scottish/Irish calendar, Beltane is the Gaelic May Day festival - marking the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice; usually celebrated on the 1st of May.
It marks the start of summer, when cattle are put out to the now fresh spring pasture (where we get our green), and people light bonfires of celebration. The Irish Beltaine means 'white fire' (which is the other main colour used in Biel Tan armies). The May bush is used to decorate festival sites (which is a thorny shrub), and many of the pagan rituals are about fertility and harvest (marked with the heart & cup).
Beyond Biel-Tan, it's amazing how much of the Gaelic elements have come into the Eldar structure - the other festivals include Samhain (1-Nov), marking end of autumn and dying leaves (and we have the red Saim Hann craftworld); Imbolc (1-Feb) which includes rituals with water & wells (probably the blue Alaitoc craftworld), and Lughnasadh (1-Aug) which has become the Lugganath craftworld (historically a sunset festival - the craftworld colours being orange and black).
I quite like that this idea of ancient, pagan rituals have formed the basis for the most ancient of 40k races, and there is a nice flow of symbolism into the style of painting & runes that go with the models. They have thousands of years more history than the filthy Monkeigh, and look down on the younger species.
Army Aims:
Having gone through the current edition codex, it seems a bit mixed as a competitive tabletop army - historically Biel Tan is heavy with aspect warriors, however the craftworld perk favours shuriken weapons (which are more guardians and support/vehicles). The fluff doesn't quite gel with the rules, as you'd need to ignore the description of what *should* be in the army in order to make it more tabletop effective.
As I'm not really in for competitive gaming in any case, I figure starting with some core craftworld colour units then gradually adding some aspects based on individual appeal. Collecting one each of the shrine squads could be done over quite a long period. When I did the start of my blood angels, I made a point of doing tactical squads first - the slightly more 'boring' units, which happen to be good colour practice, as well as filling out battalion type formations. Guardians, wraiths, then maybe some vehicles... by which point some of the ancient resin aspect warriors may even be updated to plastic.
Where is the prep up to now?
I have a bunch of models that are getting cleaned up slowly while finishing off some Blood Angels painting, namely:
- 4x guardian squads (+ support platforms)
- 3x wraithguard squads (including magnetised arms)
- 2x wraithlords (which came with the wraithguard in the Apocalypse box)
- 2x jetbike boxes
- 2x dire avenger squads (10 in total)
- 1x Forgeworld Avatar (still in blister)
That probably seems like overkill as a starting point, but I'm approaching things somewhat differently to the Blood Angels for a few reasons...
Batch painting going large
I killed myself edge highlighting hundreds of red armour plates on marines, when doing a better job with the airbrush and a good wash would have been plenty for tabletop standard. In turn - I found it got harder to stay motivated to do the detail on each successive tactical squad in a whole company. The aim this time is to do 90% of the work with airbrush, paint details like weapons in base colour and simple highlight and call it a day; and do basically ALL the base guardians in one go... do ALL the wraithguard in one go... etc.
Painting techniques have evolved
Contrast paint is a thing now, so rather than do 2-3 highlight levels on dozens of catapults, they can get a white basecoat and black contrast wash and be finished. Having gone through some of the excellent airbrush guides that The Mighty Brush has done over the last couple of years, using the Dark Angels guide for all the green parts of the Eldar should be quick and high contrast even without edging.
You can get a sense of how my painting (as well as the models themselves) were evolving in the 90s below. Monopose plastic lasguns; me going to a darker colour scheme when the shuriken version came out... then the multipart kit with backpack in 3rd edition (~1998. and which we still use today...). Painting the individual armour panels with about 3 layers of white paint to cover any darker tones was massively tedious.
Batch ordering accessories
Final reason I've been accruing a bunch of squads - as a speed saving, I'm sticking to resin bases from ONE set. My blood angels look ok on grey/city bases, but some of them are sector imperialis, some are hand made with bits of scrap and some are from 3-4 different resin companies.
Dragon Forge make a range called Lost Empires, which include 25mm, 32mm, 40mm, 60mm, 125mm and even 5-6 unique hero bases all in the same range. For the most part, the 25-60mm options also have at least 3-4 alternative sculpts.
They even come with etched runes, which are perfect for Eldar. Love them - but getting these made and shipped from the US is much easier done in bulk, so I ordered about 100 mixed bases which should cover at least 1-2 years worth of army progress even if I add a few more squads and vehicles to the list above.
Colour Scheme - Going off script
At first I was really keen on the idea of slapping contrast white on all the guardians and getting them done very quickly (if roughly). Highlighting white is really not fun, nor is going back and painting white faces onto the helmets after they have been done dark green.
I.... think... I'm going to go the other way - that is, paint the bodies green and do helmets in white. While less traditional for Biel tan, airbrushed green bodies should give a lot more interesting highlights compared to just white with grey recesses.
Plus it always bugged me slightly that all the other craftworlds matched their units throughout - Ulthwe uses bone helmets on black bodies for guardians, wraithguard, warlocks, dreadnoughts. Flipping the Biel Tan guardians to 80% green would make them more consistent with the tanks & wraiths. The wraithguard below was last repainted in 1999, having been originally green head (lime green too) and this darker green tone with white head I still really like.
On that note...
Right now I have about 30 out of 40 guardians prepped for priming (minus their heads, which will be painted separately), with their weapon platforms magnetised. I really should finish off some blood angel terminators first, and fight the itch to jump into new project painting...
In the meantime, will post a couple of pictures of the prep stages - nothing too fancy in removing mould lines and gluing parts together, however engineering the magnets for the weapon platforms has worked better than expected.
Should be a lot of fun to get these together.
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