Power from Paint: The Sand Viper Coven

Deep in the darkened places of Comorragh lie the crafting halls of the Haemonculi Covens. They do not work in metal or stone, neither wood nor jewel; their material of their artifice is flesh!

My Dark Eldar collection is predominately based around Kabal forces (as seen in the recent Mayhem post.), backed up by some Wych Cult units. The third part of the Dark Eldar triad are the Coven which are noticeably absent in my collection, save for a few Wracks and a Haemonculus.

And that is something I'd like to rectify. The Coven provide some great opportunities for conversions and all sorts of ghastly creations as their mad leaders (a wonderful mix of arcane scientists and insane artists!) work their genius in pain and flesh.

The first unit I wanted to add were some Grotesques (large tanky, thumping machines); the official models are not particularly to my taste, and so I went searching the web for inspiration. I found a great set of kit bashes based around combining 40K Wracks and Age of Sigmar Melusai; the final models are suitably serpentine for the Coven of the Sand Viper, so I  decided to have a go myself.

The Serpent Grots

The tricky part of these conversions is that the Wrack's bodies are single pieces, meaning that their torsos need to be chopped in half to allow them to be fitted to the Melusai tails.  I'm not the most accurate hobbyist with a blade, but these don't look too bad.

Admittedly there are one or two looking a bit wobbly, but I could imagine them reaching over and down to smack a guardsman or a squish a Tau or two. Here are some closer pictures:

Serpent Grot 1

Serpent Grot 2

Serpent Grot 3

Serpent Grot 4

Serpent Grot 5

In terms of running a Haemonculus Coven in game, I'll probably use the Prophets of Flesh Obsession as it has some great benefits:

• 4+ invulnerable save on Coven models
• A great stratagem (Black Cornucopians) which allows reinforcement and movement tricks
• Excellent Warlord Trait (bonus CPs, yes please)
• Access to Urien Rakarth
• and finally an excellent Relic; the Vexator Mask

I've been reading interesting bits and pieces about the Mask on the various Dark Eldar forums and pages; being able to ignore Overwatch and force a unit to fight last in Combat (think about that for a minute...) seems really good!

Having built the Serpent Grots, I've got a load of left over Wrack and Melusai bitz begging to be used. So I've started with a new Haemonculus (wearing a suitable snaky Mask!):

She's very very scary!

Very pleased with how this model turned out; admittedly very fantasy looking, but will be fine for 40K with an appropriate paint job and will be fine running along side her snaky friends!