Four-Color Figures

There are many very cool things about the new Dark Eldar codex, but in leafing through my shop's preview copy, I noticed that the Dark Eldar Archon can surround himself with a retinue of trusted alien bodyguards. You see, the Dark Eldar are so treacherous that an Archon simply will not trust his own kind to watch his back.

The four alien types written up for this purpose are completely new, and among them include the Sslyth, snake-bodied alien fighters who are extremely tough and quite good in a fight.

I wanted to try my hand at modeling these cool new Xenos, so I came up with a plan to combine WFB Saurus plastics with Kroot plastics. Add in a bit of green stuff, and the Sslyth come to life!



Above is the finished product, all painted and ready for the retinue! I've got more painted shots to show off, but first, here are a few unpainted looks to give a better idea of the components of this conversion.







The conversion requires two sets of Kroot arms and two Saurus bodies. Remove the molded-on leg from the first Saurus body with clippers (the other leg comes separate), then use green stuff to fill in the holes and bulk out the "snake" body. A blob of green stuff should also be employed to help anchor the finished body to the base (along with some plastic glue).

Saw the top portion off of the second Saurus body, and then saw just a smidge at the proper angle from the first body. Join the two bodies with plastic glue. Use green stuff to fill any unsightly gaps. Then play with the Kroot arms until you get the desired fit. I also tweaked my arms a bit to give them different looking weapon load-outs.

Here are some more images of the finished model:












My ideas about Sslyth crystallized as I made this conversion. I envision them using their 4 arms to aid in locomotion when not in battle. When the fighting starts, their short but powerful snake bodies allow them to keep up with the Archon and utilize their full complement of deadly weapons.

Here's a comp shot with one of the new DE Warriors:




One of the core ideas with these guys is that they're mercs, so I tried to give my first conversion a lot of gear. As I perfect my methods on these, I will add different types of non-Kroot gear to further distance them from the Kroot frames. These guys are 35 pts. per model and you can have 1 - 3 of them, but I think their stats justify their cost. I intend to make more!

--Scott