Space ElFebruary- Mostly Ancient Painted Eldar

 

Long ago in a Wizard's Keep (the game shop that helped me make it through high school) I discovered miniatures. One of my focuses, eventually, were the Eldar. Space Elves. They were just cool sculpts and the art and lore from Rogue Trader and beyond was interesting to me.

I bought lots of Eldar miniatures and slowly painted them. No real focus on a coherent army, just cool miniatures (some things never change). Then, around the turn of the century, the Eldar got a new set of plastic multipart Guardians. They were fine, but I only built and painted a handful. Yet the bits gave me some ideas for more conversions. 

I went through my remaining original Harlequins recently and realized I needed to strip their paint from the 90s and redo them with more modern techniques. These are the remainder of that original box of Harlequins and some scattered blister packs.

Another guy who was recently stripped is the Eldar Musician with harp. He had been partially painted for 20+ years, but now he's getting some attention. 

And the original Farseer who was painted back in the late 80s/early 90s has been begging to be stripped and repainted for decades has finally gotten his wish. We'll see if there's any improvement in the paintjob. 

A few years ago, after years of gathering various Eldar and Dark Eldar bits from dark corners of the webway, I made these four. Using some fantasy High Elf bodies with various Eldar/Dark Eldar bits, I got a special Warlock and his bodyguards plus a one-off Aspect Warrior, a Phoenix Lancer.

My craftworld was named Kaewak with a very limited backstory, but they used a lot of purple. I liked the lasgun Guardians (not necessarily the early plastic ones, but they bulk up the numbers.

These Dire Avengers include a few conversions to to add to the original metal figures. The only other Aspect Warriors (aside from the Fire Dragons that were finally painted a few years ago) are one Dark Reaper and one Howling Banshee. I've got several unpainted, though. 

Some of the first Eldar I painted were these Scouts. Looking at them now, I really want to strip them and repaint.

This weapons crew had an olde lascannon platform that just dind't look great (not very Eldar-y). That weapon will be replaced and the platform was recently tossed in the stripper.

These next few are various fancy folks. The guy in the front of the next picture is one from the Musicians pack. I actually like how he turned out. A couple of the others with him are early century conversions that tuned out okay. Further down we've got some Warlocks, one of which is a conversion of an olde Heartbreaker mini to give me someone a little fancier.

When the MicroArt Studios/Cool Mini Kickstarter for scenic plastic bases came out, I had a dream of debasing and touching up my entire Eldar host. It's only happened to a few of them so far, but the dream endures.

There are some more recent Eldar/Space Elves in depth here, here, here, and here. I think finally finishing the Hasslefree Space Elf Witch is what got this Eldar nostalgia started...