I'll warn you in advance: there are lots of pictures this week!
I've put together and painted many Eldar miniatures over the years, but this is the first time I've ever built and/or painted a unit of Dire Avengers. On the box, and online, these models look nice and chunky. In real life, the sprue are really showing their age and the models might be multi-part but have very limited options. These will be my client's foot-troops basically, so I have 25 in all to build and paint, but I think most will end up looking like this. Not only is the range of options limited, but the leg poses and arms are all very similar.
In happier news, I rolled out the Spiritstone Red technical paint from GW on this squad and I think that it turned out great. It's very fast, relatively easy (although, as with all things paint-related, you need to think about the application), and looks good across a squad. I actually used Runefang Silver for the base, and it seems that almost any metallic can be used as a foundation for these paints.
Onto some individual shots...
As you might be able to see, the laser targetter on the rear back really limits the field of movement of the heads. This is a shame, but the only alternative would be to leave off the targetter.
A leaning forward attacking pose, which is probably as dynamic as this kit gets!
The exarch, with pistol and dire sword. Actually, he does look pretty epic.
Another Avenger, in stoic "at ease" pose.
Next, I also painted up the Farseer. Now, this kit is a world apart from the Avengers box. It's expensive, basically single pose, but also very, very nice. The clamshell packs from GW are over-priced, but characters like this really act as a focus for the army.
I'm going to discuss with my client about the base: it is a base extender, and he may wish for some extra basing to conceal that. The actual scenic base that comes with the kit is also really nice, and I painted it in the same colours as the regular foot-troops.
Hand out cast, you can imagine the Farseer throwing warp-energy across the battlefield...
The cloak was done in the same colours as the bone of the infantry and vehicles, and it fits really well with the rest of the army.
Here's a close-up of the helmet, hopefully showing the highlights on the black. Because there are some dark colours involved here, the model is very difficult to photograph.
