Haeming it up!
In case you haven't noticed, my Dark Eldar need work. In their current shape they are unplayable. It won't take anything really major to get them ready, but there are a lot of fairly small projects to do. I've also been very busy lately, so I'm trying to break these projects down into easily managed chunks that will give me concrete progress that I can see to stay motivated. I decided to start with my Haemonculi. First I'll explain what my old Haemonculi had and why, then what needed to be changed (and also the why.) After that, I'll explain what I did and how I went about it. I'm including the 'why' in part because I think you might find it interesting, and in part because you may find something useful in it to improve your own army.

My old Haemonculi had Destructors (the old Liquifier) and Scissorhands. While I didn't expect them to be in close combat, those Destructors could do a ton of damage quickly. Even if the Haemonculus died, it would do a lot more damage to the enemy. 2 Haemonculi in one place could wreck an important enemy unit in a single turn for fairly little cost. I also gave them skyboards to ensure good mobility so that they could hit the targets that I wanted before the enemy could intercept them. They weren't a linch-pin of my Dark Eldar, and sometimes they didn't even make it into my lists, but they could be a very effective addition. They also made good Webway portal holders, and often showed up in my portal lists. (Including the infamous 3-way game where a single Haemonculus started on the board at 1000pts and it freaked my opponents out so much that they decided to gang up on me. My 1000pts of Dark Eldar managed to do over 1100pts of damage in the two turns that they managed to exist.)

In the new Dark Eldar Codex, some of their options are different. For starters, no more skyboards, so those had to go. Destructors became liquifiers, so that's no problem. I want to add more close combat capability to this army, so I upgraded the scissorhands to agonizers. They'll definitely be packing those webway portals for this army, which means they'll need the mobility of a Raider and a small squad to keep them somewhat protected.

So, I needed to remove the flying base from one Haemonculus. (The other had lost his through a move or perhaps neglect over the years since I played my DE.) Then I had to remove the skyboard (winged blades glued to a 25mm base) from each of them. This took a bit of digging and prying, since I'd glued them on to last. various -ectomies completed, I then needed something to represent the agonizers for each of them. I decided on a barbed tentacle for one and a bladed-glove-thing for the other. Quick, to the Apoxie Sculpt!

I rolled out a thin cylinder of Apoxie Sculpt and let it start to cure. After a while, it became a bit more rigid and I went to add the barbs to it. I had considered making little barbs individually and gluing them on, but that seemed like a fiddly process and would likely end up with barbs falling off here and there over time. Instead, I used a small set of clippers to make little cuts at various places on the tentacle. The scissor action lifted the triangular pieces away from the body of the tentacle, forming little barbs and hooks without me having to mess with them further. I had also considered cutting away the hand using a dremel tool, but instead I just molded the base of the tentacle around it. It gives the tentacle a little more solid structure, provides a better attachment point, and is less work.

While I could have easily made a similar tentacle for the other Haemonculus, I decided against it. Haemonculi strike me as being very individualistic, so I don't see them as likely to modify themselves in exactly the same way. Sort of a warped sense of personal style, if you will. For the second Haemonculus, I wanted a blade-like thing, along the lines of what I gave mini-me (Dracon El T'taes) years ago. I made a couple of very long blades from Apoxie Sculpt, intending on having them start at the wrist and extend past the fingers. When I placed them, however, I realized that they were very close to the appearance of a crab or lobster claw enclosing the hand. That looked interesting to me and even seemed a bit more organic than simple blades, so I shaped them a bit more to enhance the effect and let them harden.

I am waiting on the paint jobs, because I want to settle on a paint scheme and get started on the whole army at the same time. I do have some ideas specific to these models, though. The Dark Eldar are supposed to be very pale, so I want to reflect that on the skin of my Haemonculi. I also want to really bring out that the parts that I sculpted today are things that they have modified to be part of their body. To that effect, I want to paint the tentacle the same color as their skin, and I'll probably make the claw a bony version of that color as well.

I want to keep this project moving and linked together. When I make my next progress, you'll be able to access it through this link.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

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