Next faction up for overview is my Eldar army, more commonly known as Aeldari Craftworlds now a days. My Aeldari have grown to a sizable faction since I happened to win one of the old "Start Collecting" boxes back in 7th edition.
My main inspiration for color scheme was the Protoss in Starcraft, which hilariously, are based of the Eldar to begin with. As some people may know, the main factions of Starcraft (Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg) are based off 40k's Space Marines, Eldar, and Tyranids respectively. Though I also recognize that my Craftworld's color scheme also pulls from the already established Iyanden Craftworld as well with the gold and blue.
 |
| Fully painted army as of 2025 |
While I've used gold as a minor decorative color for other factions, I've always loved the golden look of the Protoss and wanted to try my hand at a similar color scheme. It took a few test tries before I nailed it down. The final style actually uses very little gold to.
 |
| Wave Serpent Transport |
The main goal was a lighter colored gold. Something similar to a lot of the more modern Starcraft 2 cutscenes where much of the armor felt closer to a pale gold. At first, I'd tried layering darker golds up, or trying to do brighter golds over a lighter basecoat. I finally struck gold (ha, pun intended) when I tried a dry brush approach. Doing a layered Lead Belcher base followed by some Rune Fang Steel, I then applied an Iyanden Yellow contrast paint followed by a liberal dry brush of Auric Armour Gold.
 |
| Guardians |
I then went back to update my older models to bring everything in line with the final color scheme. I also wanted to go for a snowy tundra kinda base. To achieve that, I used Stirland Mud with a dry brush of Dawnstone and then some Valhallan Blizzard technical paint for the snow. The royal blue secondary color felt like a natural fit, and the aqua blue energy color also just seemed like the right fit in keeping with the Protoss theme.
 |
| War Walker |
The other painting element I wanted to do was match the Protoss pale skin complexation and glowing eyes. To that end, I used Pallid Wych Flesh, with a shade of Druchii Violet around the eyes and final glaze of the old Guilliman Blue over the eyes. For this faction, I am keeping the bare heads to a minimum and mostly sticking with helmeted, mostly to limit my use of the old glaze.
 |
| Rangers |
This collection stayed relatively small, consisting of the old Start Collecting box which contained a Farseer Skyrunner, a unit of 3 Windriders, and a Fire Prism. I had added a few of the old push-fit guardian packs (4 guardians per pack) to work on testing the color scheme. It wasn't until the Eldar started getting a proper rand refresh that I started to invest more in the faction.
 |
| Shroud Runners |
First was picking up the Eldritch Omens box set which provided me an Autarch, Rangers, and Shroud Runners (on top of some Chaos kits for my Alpha Legion). I also grabbed the other Autarch model to do some parts swapping and a Wave Serpent to have a transport. I later grabbed the Combat Patrol box at the time which had the Spirit Seerer, Wraithguard and Wraithlord. About 3 years ago I picked up a box of the new Guardians and a Falcon and last year I picked up a Wraithknight (which is currently in my queue to be built).
 |
| Wraithguard |
Unfortunately I haven't developed a lot of lore to this group, or even names any of the characters. As this is a running trend in most of my newer factions, they have all really grown aver the last decade, primarily after I became a father and my hobby time began to shrink. Also with a bunch of these newer factions, they haven't really had time to shine on the battlefield, so notable moments are also pretty light. I'd had higher hopes back in 9th edition of playing a lot of crusade games with the different newer armies to help work out some lore, but with the Covid lockdowns, that also prevent me form getting much gaming time in.
 |
| Falcon |
So that's the overview of my Eldar collection. I do plan on someday including Harlequins, Corsairs, and the newly started Exodites into the fold. But in an effort to control my backlog, I need to work through a lot more before I'm going to add anything else.
The Gallery for my Craftworlds collection is
here.
Until next time!
