Greetings Terrans, time for another wee dip of the toe into my latest project – a proper old school Eldar army. Not gonna lie, progress has been very slow since my last post – I have been chipping away at the lead pile and got seven old RT04 models base coated, but they were taking ages so I decided to push 2 through to completion prior to Christmas. Now, a bit of history for you. the RT04 range go all the way back to 1988, and were part of an initial run of 12 of ‘Space Elf’ models designed by Jes Goodwin. They are very much the blueprint for all the amazing Eldar that Jes worked on in the years that followed, but without the clean refinement that quickly came to typify the range. As such, the RT04 minis are a bit… well, wibbly for Eldar… Also, back in those days, (because of the low model count), every mini was named – the guy with the Melta gun is ‘Capt. Aetolia Lightfoot’, while the lasgun dude is ‘Irbic Trueshot’. Here they are:
When these came out, Space Elves were pretty much space pirates known for their funky insectoid armour, exotic weaponry, and alien helmet stripes. I always envisage using the RT04s as Corsairs in my own project, and I wanted them to be true to the period rather than have them look like super-clean Craftworlders. Ultimately, while this army will become a rag-tag group of Craftworlders, Corsairs, Aspect Warriors and Harlequins as it grows, I do want the Corsairs to look at least affiliated with the Craftworld… with that in mind, I tested out a darker purple for the main armour and included the weird striping on the yellow areas. While the blending on the dark purple could’ve been better, I’m actually pretty happy with how they turned out. Here they are with a Craftworlder to show the similarity:
Anyway, that’s it for this post – I’ll be getting some time to paint over the Christmas break, and I’m aiming to get the rest of my Corsairs done & maybe get started on some Aspect Warriors!
Have a great Christmas & roll on 2026.
Leadballoony - It's a lead thing 