Dark Eldar Beastmaster Conversions

[Morgrim]

I've never liked DE beastmasters riding on skyboards. It seems very unfitting given they're members of wych cults and thus elite gladiators, while hellions are rebellious street gangs. Instead I feel beastmasters would show off their talents by choosing the most fitting of the creatures they have broken and having them modified fit to bear them into battle. (Which also fits with them getting the Beast special rule.)

So since I run a monster themed DE army I've been slowly converting models for my beastmasters. (I apologise in advance for the poor quality of the images, these are all taken with borrowed camera phones.)


My first beastmaster was Menshai Rache, first done under the old codex. He's a mixture of old DE warrior parts and the warg chieftain from the Lord of the Rings range. Cutting the head off said warg was possible the hardest part since it was through the thickest part of the metal model. The head is a plastic demonette with the hair removed and all of the hair, most of the armour and the chest/torso fur is all greenstuff.



(Sorry for this one being blurry)



Because in the former codex beastmasters were on a 25mm base I needed to use the rock and pin the model on quite a high angle in order to get it to fit, but this meant it had a habit of face-planting a lot even with weights stuck under the base. I'm using past tense because he took an unfortunate tumble off a gaming table and sort of smashed (came off the scenic base and one paw + another leg fell off) and I haven't gotten around to rebuilding on a slightly larger base yet. Small flying bases are 31mm across but I figure a 40mm round is close enough to use. (The skyboard sticks out about that much anyway so it won't affect getting into base contact.)

[Morgrim]

This is my second finished beastmaster. Still unnamed at this point. I finished converting ages ago but my first attempt at a paint job didn't come out well and it took a while to get motivated to try again.


Unfortunately the flash was a bit bright and the colours have been washed out.


This one shows the colours better (with bonus local game store terrain backdrop!) but the local redshirt apparently has shaky hands. The red metallic whip doesn't come out well in photos either it seems.

Both the hellsteed and rider are a mixture of hacked and reglued parts. The horse is a Tomb Kings skeletal horse plus two different Wood Elves horses sort of mashed together. I'd have preferred using just one WE horse but needed the two different poses to get the legs in the right place. Skeletal horses are much more forgiving, you can just saw through a joint and pivot the bones without it looking too bad. The horns and ears are from the Chaos warhounds (I use them with minor conversions as my khymerae). I did have to sculpt two new hooves and all the exposed meat.



The rider's chest, arms, shins and feet are all Dark Elf corsair parts. (The back of the chest is actually molded into the cloak, which surprised me.) The upper legs are the old Dark Eldar warrior ones, chosen because they were the only pair I had wide enough to fit over the enlarged back of the hellsteed. The head is one of the old Dark Eldar jetbike riders with the excessive hair clipped away and a weird sort of coif sculpted to fill the gaps. The hand and whip are from the Tomb King chariot and anything not covered is greenstuff.

I'm not insane enough to have bought most of these bits for a project like this, it was just working with whatever I happened to have in my bits box at the time, but I'm pleased with how it turned out. My next project is sculpting a mount for a 3rd beastmaster (what can I say, I enjoy playing them even if they aren't that effective) which will be my first attempt at mostly scratch sculpting a monster. Although I'll probably cheat and use a premade head and wings.