Nights best spent crafting flesh

The first five Wracks stagger free of the laboratories.

This edition of Tower of Snakes comes to you straight from the painting table, i've been buoyed ahead with painting recently, feverishly brushing acrylics/inks/mediums/varnishes onto any Dark Eldar models within my reach and i'm happy with the results so far!

The Coven of the Severed Tongue

Dark Eldar by Adrian Smith

It all started with this picture.

Over the weekend of course the 6th Edition Warhammer 40k Rulebook was released and alongside that came all the inevitable reading, i have to say, i'm a huge fan of the new rules so far and for everything they have taken away, they have given you ten more, pretty excited to get some games in!


Flicking through the army background section of the book i was suddenly floored when i came across this picture, Adrian Smith has always been one of my favourite artists, his style is unique and instantly recognizable, but it struck me that i don't think he has ever painted the Dark Eldar before, and if he has, never in such gruesome and beautifully dark detail, the complete picture shows the bodies of terrified guardsmen strewn across the ground with their eyes cut out and the Dark Eldar standing aloof and alien in the aftermath of battle while a Talos floats broodingly in the background.

I'd always been tempted to do a Dark Eldar Coven based army, but now alongside 6th edition coming into being and waiting for the new Chaos Codex it seemed like a perfect time to actually get into action!

I picked up a box of Wracks and a Talos to get to work on and pictured above is my first wrack, not completely finished yet but coming along nicely, the detail of the models is absolutely incredible and very fun to work with, the skin is a lot nicer to view in the flesh and is an absolute joy to paint.

I used a lot of the new GW paints to paint the model including the Dark Eldar specific skin colours and the dark blue/grey highlight colours, the blood is achieved using Tamiya Clear red ink, this stuff is fantastic, it works best if basecoated with a nice dark red (think GW Red Gore) colour and the subtly worked along, the Wrack models are brutally stitched together in a number of places so i thought it would be great to highlight that, basing usually presents a bit of difficulty for me, i don't like to be too flashy with it as i like the attention to be on the models themselves, i like the idea of the army walking across a desert like area, but i also thought it would be cool to have lots of blood spatter and blood drips to further the narrative of such a horrific army, i used the same blood method as i used on the models and it has come out pretty well, going to paint the first 5 wracks up with the same basing method and see if it bears up across the squad, and if it doesn't look so good i can just rebase them!

The models to the right are some more Wracks from the same squad that i am painting, the one on the left has had a Basecoat of Rakarth Flesh, highlighted with Pallid Wych flesh and then inked with Leviathan Purple wash, the model on the right has had the same treatment, but then a recoat of Pallid Wych flesh after the purple wash, after this i do one more coat of Pallid Wych flesh as a highlight, but mixed with 50/50 with Skull White, and then the work on the rest of the model begins!

I will post some more progress soon hopefully and let you know how i get on!