As I think I have said before, I have been working on making a force of Corsairs using Dark Eldar models. With GW’s decision that Corsairs will not be included in Ynnari, I decided to model everything in a way that could see them fielded as either Dark Eldar or Corsairs depending on what rules set I wanted to go with. (My FLGS loathes Forgeworld stuff, so having models based on only being Corsairs is not a good idea.) It was a little bit of mental gynmastics, but it worked out pretty well. The one unintended side-effect this has brought about, of course, is my new fascination with Dark Eldar.
After a long run of not particularly caring for the murder pirates, I now find myself including them into my overall plan and the fluff of my new Corsairs – The Coterie of the Last Breath. A combination of Dark Eldar – especially those from the Kabal of the Last Hatred – and Corsairs that ventured to follow Yvraine, they are dedicated to overcoming mortality, even the pseudo-mortality represented by soul stones and infinity circuits.
Since the first model that would fall under Corsairs that I really wanted to work on turned out to be a Skathach Wraithknight, I figured I should paint up a smaller model to test out my color concept. I started off wanting to do a Split Complimentary Scheme with a primary color of purple and accents of yellow-green and yellow-orange; of course, it would be brighter than the purple scheme of the Kabal of the Last Hatred to show the amount of Corsair-tendencies present – especially since they would be primarily allying with my Biel-Tani, who are now what of the Swordwind followed Yvraine.
I will admit that I ran into a problem when trying to institute my desired colors, unfortunately. Even with bright green and purple, the yellow-orange really fought for attention and made the model painful to look at. Thus, I attempted to determine if darkening it would help – the result of which is still present in the hairtie on the above Kabalite/Reaver – but all of my inking (even using a brown real ink to get better color modification) did not make the color work any better with the rest of the model. I was left with a Kabalite/Reaver that looked like Easter had vomitted on him, so I went with what was amusingly Dark-Eldar-esque: leather/skin colors. This worked pretty well with the other colors and gave me my final color scheme – primary purple, secondary green, teriary skin/leather/brown colors, and silvery metallic bits inked in either purple or black.
To ensure the color scheme works in more instances than just this, I am likely to paint a Wych I assembled from spare parts – she has a lot more exposed skin, so I will likely use multiple skin/leather colors on her.
If I do get to it before starting the Skathach, I will likely base this model shortly. I am currently thinking of using a fallen leaves flock I recently bought since it is predominantly brown with only a few small bits of yellow, orange, and red. Otherwise, I will probably stick with my swampy bases – minus the snow. Still, I guess I will have to see how it turns out. Hopefully I do not end up scraping basing materials off halfway through the process.
What I’m seeing here looks good! I love seeing the evolution of a paint scheme.
Awesome! I’ll have to get some finished photos of him and his sister Wych up then! Especially since the base scheme I started off with did not work out quite right, so I will have to change that and do a third model to get the overall effect right.