Eldar Warp Gate

Or something like that. My 40K fluff ain't what it used to be.

Anyway, when Adrian announced that he was going to turn his focus from Ultramarines to Eldar, I decided I would build him a terrain piece for his army.

I sort of had an idea what I wanted, and after some browsing on ebay found the exact thing - the keel from the Dark Eldar Ravager:

Technically that should be the rudder, but that's what it's sold as in the bitz shop, which was selling in lots of three, making it easy for me to decide between a six or an eight-arched structure.

Once the keels arrived, it was a simple job of levelling the botton (or top, depending on how you look at it) and gluing it to a used CD with normal solvent glue, and adding a 40mm round base to the centre of the CD to hide the hole.

After making sure that the arches are aligned to their opposite members, I sprayed the whole thing with gloss white paint. The coverage wasn't perfect, but because the plastic is grey, that lent a bit of "shading" to them.

Once the whole thing has dried, I set gems used for nail art onto the arches using double-sided tape used for photos - using glue would have been too fiddly and taken too long, and I can more easily change the gems if Adrian didn't like the colours I chose.

This is what the Warp Gate looks like next to a Space Marine scout I just happened to have handy. The Eldar (Dark Eldar?) rune on two of the arches still need to be painted to make it look visually balanced, and there still needs to be some sort of a centrepiece on the plinth in the centre, but I'll leave Adrian to work them out. I suspect it can also work for High Elves in a fantasy setting, and I believe Thomas has some from the Island of Blood box set.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with the remainder of the can of spray paint and gems... Suggestions?