Help me develop an army theme

Hey fellow kinsmen,

I am and always have been a big fan of thematic armies, especially having seen Eye of Errors Cthulu inspired space marines and other such great projects. I have a problem though, picking a theme for my new Eldar. I have most tools of the trade available including lots of green stuff and plasticard, generally nothing is impossible. The theme does not have to include a big modelling apsect since I generally like the eldar minis. However if there is a really awesome conversion idea I will convert each and every model of the army to fit the theme.

Some restrictions:
No blues whatsoever expect on maybe gems or eyes, my Vampires are deep blue, my DE are turquoise, there is just no way I'm going to paint another freaking blue-ish army. NO WAY.
My dark eldar are... well... dark with a lot of edge highlighting I'd like to have some full surface color back in there. I can blend and shade, so there is no problem there, NMM and OSL are options as well as long as it's full color.
I'm thinking something bright would be a nice change and white being an exceptionally eye-catching color on a dark table top I'm thinking white is cool. However white is hard to incorporate in a theme. What I mean by that is this: Say you're doing exodites, you'd use natural brown/green-ish colors, maybe warm reds and oranges. Corsairs?! Well you'd want them dark. Deep sea (like EoEs Marines Blight) - Dark Greens/Blues and Rust. The only thing I can think of using white as a primary color would be some sort of Crusade thing... or something generic using white as primary colour because you want to use white as primary color.

Ok ramblings over? What have I come up with so far?

Well, look at the first page of our dex, where it says "A dying flame in the darkness" , that should be something you can convert into a theme. I'd be using reds, yellows and to an extent white or NMMs on this one to show light reflections at its finest. The idea would be to have the entire army "burn" from the inside much like the avatar model. Sounds cool, eh? Very hard to do though, not sure if it requires remodelling some things, that I'd have to test. It also could come out very dark because light effects work best on dark models.

Elemental: Say Earth, wind, fire, water, lightning, ice (yeah, that's blue again, but meh). Could come to some nice freehands having cracked earth, fire, ice shards and such on vehicles, not sure what I'd do with inf
antry though as there is not that much space for freehands. Could also look incoherent very easily, probably not the best idea.

Crone world: Wraithbone bases, possibly dark with ash, desert browns and or greys, probably with NMM effects or marble textures. Models without helmets could get respirator masks to not inhale the dust. Colorful highlights with light effects or through colored gems, I'm thinking red, since that would work well together with brownish colors. Fluff-wise the Craftworld/corsair fleet could be searching the crone worlds for forgotten technology to rule the galaxy once more.

Harlequin theme... when you think eldar you automatically think harlequin, at least I do. Some people have already done this but I guess you can't invent the wheel twice and have a different result each time. I'd not have them go totally rainbow though, since in the fluff their domino suits are not necessarily each of a different color, I'd probably pick a neutral color and then 2 others to go with it with more colors only sprinkled on important models like the solitaire.


So yeah, that's my first thoughts on my army theme. If you have additional ideas or comments on my ramblings, please share them. I'm also happy for inspirational pictures as long as they don't infringe a copyright. I'll add more of my thoughts to the thread as I come up with new ideas.

Cheers and thanks for reading.

Dogmar

p.s. I know the formatting is abyssmal

I like the idea of a crone world army. I would actually go with brown and oranges, rather than red, if you were to use a Hawk Turquoise and white for accents. I know that you are trying to get away from blues, but I think the theme/paint combo would look beautiful on an Eldar army. Be sure to include lots of rangers/harlequins!

Orange and Turquoise are a good combination indeed, directly complementary if I remember my studies of the color wheel right . While you were saying orange I just remembered that part in "Path of the Renegade" or maybe it was "Path of the Incubus" where they were walking through a satellite realm of the webway that looked like it was entirely made of rust? Would be cool to combine that with the classical wraithbone. I'll definitely look further into this, but I also happen to like fire

mhhh the possibilities.

Edit: Thank you very very much for the quick reply.

It was Path of the Incubus(I'm reading it right now, probably why I liked the idea of a crone world theme...)
And yes, I was online trying to avoid coursework for a certification that I am working on  

Mhhh, I somehow can't come up with good ideas for how to execute the crone world thing. I somehow want to convert my models to make them unique, but at the same time I'm not that good a sculptor that I could do super crazy things... especially not on a whole army basis.

That and I can't really make the theme look its name, at the moment it would be desert or ruins eldar, not "crone world" eldar. And so far it's not coherent unless I make my aspect warriors look exactly like the guardians, which would be boring, but otherwise "rainbow" ... waaah, I'm stuck!

Next problem: since I bought second hand, most models are already built and/or metal. Damn the whole thing is harder than expected.

Dogmar wrote: ... waaah, I'm stuck!
Damn the whole thing is harder than expected.

Painting a unique army isn't easy   Try a test model? The metal ones would be the best to test as they are the easiest to strip if it goes...horribly wrong.

Like ESE said: Try color schemes on metal model first.

Major issue for converting eldars is lack of plastic bits. Most elites were metal for long time and now they're resin and ALL my elites in eldar army are metal models. And since Dire Avengers and Guardians are just repacked from old sprues, they don't offer that much new bits to play with. Eldar limbs are so thin that magnetizing them is very hard. Its sad craftworld eldars lack the variety of plastic bits goodness compeared their dark kin. However dark eldar bits do fit when needing to convert Eldar models. Just getting spikes and too much sharp corners off and make more organic they will work splendidly.

Still kitbashing eldars is very much harder than marines, tau or IG for that matter. Good luck with your project.

True thing about the difficulty of converting Eldar, thejamppa. I've settled with adding some extra bits like belts and small pieces of cloth here and there since there was just no way to get this done, without making my Eldar look like Dark Eldar. I will however make some conversions with High Elf bits when I get around to doing jetbikes, shining spears and rangers.

Color scheme idea as it stands now:
Base colour Sand-Brown/Bone. Highlighted white-ish. Painted on cracks that make it look like marble/stone. Is meant to tie well with the Eldar-ruins on the bases.

Powerweapons and other energy effects: Done in a bright fire salamander orange. Similar style to NMM. Supposed to jump right at you.

Subtle Highlights and Contrast: Turquoise eyes and gems. Possibly some differently coloured glazes for some units depending on the mood of the mini. Say if the orange doesn't stick out enough I'm going to weather the other parts of the mini some more to get the desired effect.

Vehicles: This is where it gets funny. Same marble stone effect base, but with added Avatar of Khaine freehand (this needs to be practiced a lot before I finally do it ), possibly also a Slaanesh freehand for the Banshee Wave Serpent.

For the bases: Some spiced up version of the Microart Studio Wraithstone bases and/or the ancient ruins (the one with the statue heads) bases from scribors monstrous miniatures.

I'm sure you've seen those, not sure if I'm allowed to post pics of them here.

What do you think? Testmodel will follow once I have time to paint again.

I think these models should look quite sharp. Can't wait to see a test piece!

Did some sketches for the vehicle design. There you go. Keep in mind, it's just sketches atm. The avatar will be dark with red/orange/yellow fire everywhere. Just like you see him in the artworks. This army is so gonna take forever, but it will be extremely cool!



What do you think? This on the side of a waveserpent /fireprism and the face on the wraith helmets.