Saturday, August 25, 2012

Dark Eldar Raven Mk II

Elegant but Deadly Silhouette

So one of my projects that I started as a learning process is coming a little closer to completion.  My Dark Eldar Flyer, which was aiming to be a Raven substitute, but that may change.  The IA Apocalypse 2nd Edition brought the Raven back to the  potential of usability for me.  They were 205 pts for one twin linked dark lance shot, and four Str 4 AP 5 shots, it came down to 125 and changed four bolter shots for ten poison 4+ shots.  It seemed right where it should be compared to the Eldar Nightwing.  As of the Aeronautica book however, it's back up to 205 pts, with the same lance shot, and poison shots and a rule that doesn't seem to exist.  Add the flicker field to it, and it costs as much as the Tantalus?

AV 10 2 Hull Points, 1 lance, 10 poison shot flyer = AV 12 4 HP 16 transport, 12 Str 5 AP 2 shots?

I may just mount another gun in the nose vanes, and run it as a 'counts as' Nightwing with Eldar Allies unless an Errata comes out.  Anyhow enough ranting.

The Sky Asssin itself
I had used it as a Raven from the IA Apocalypse 2nd Edition book during Apocalypticon.  I hadn't quite finished getting a mounting system done, so it was Blu-Tacked to a flying stand, and in a lot of the footage if you see it, it looks like it's crashing.  Surprisingly, for it's last minute priming, it received  quite a bit of attention at the event.  Because of how smooth and stable the wings were, many thought it was a resin product that they hadn't seen.

Side Profile
So since my last update on this project, I constructed and added the top slugh tail.  This is a combination of some plasticard to buffer the gun, and then a Splintercannon body run along the bottom of an inverted and trimmed shuriken cannon from a leftover Wraithlord kit.  The main fuselage was rounded out with Milliput, including building up around the cockpit, and housings were added for the Dark Lances, and further rounded with Milliput.  I found it was a much better medium than Green Stuff, as with a little water it became much more malleable and allowed you to smooth it much more organically.
Oncoming death
My actual canopy ended up getting broken, it is currently sporting a replacement made with the half canopy DE rear, but an Eldar canopy front.  That will be replaced for the DE canopy front with the half canopy reversed and connected to the back of the full canopy.  Then the goal is to try and get a cast of the canopy by itself, and then try the difficult task of getting a cast of the whole plane.

2 comments:

  1. After just finishing my Voidraven (which was my first experience using mulliput or greenstuff) I am really impressed with the smooth finish you're got with your model. Absolutely brilliant.

    I have some old raiders, so I'll have to give this a go (although I'm afraid it's a bit above my modelling skills). One question I had is how did you build the dark lance housings ?

    I totally agree with the forgeworld rules on the raven, totally bonkers points cost now. The 10 shots sound great, but it will only (on average) kill 1.1 marines a turn. While the Nightwing is an excellent interceptor because all four of it's guns can target flyers (compared to 2 on the voidraven, razorwing & raven).

    Rathstar

    Ps. Great 6th edition tactics articles, I'm looking forward to more of them.

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    Replies
    1. The wing is solid all the way behind the housings, so they started out as plasticard tubes cut diagonally from the center of the tube, that produced a wedge like piece which was put on the top and bottom of the wing where the housing was going to be put.

      Then I used the Milliput to build up around the sides of the tubing.

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