The initial preparation of this army began with a careful inventory of the army. This army has been built over the course of decades with many owners and various paint schemes. My first challenge was cataloging this army. I had been previously completely unfamiliar with Eldar and didn't recognize most of the models, and so I relied pretty heavily on The Stuff of Legends (http://www.solegends.com/) for support. Especially after the figs took their Simple Green bath...and fell apart. The Stuff of Legends has the catalog listings from the 90s with great pictures and names and weapons clearly listed. Also, on most of the heavy support and fast attack, there are exploded diagrams which are aiding in my attempt to reassemble the tanks. We all know how tough it can be to find these types of helpful documents when it comes to GW.
The Simple Green bath was a bit more involved than I thought it would be. The army was about half painted, a quarter primed and a quarter not primed. I found that the models primed in GW primer were the toughest to strip. I guess that says something to the quality of the primer if anyone wanted to know! There were some that were "primed" in a satiny blue spray paint that I was nervous about. But that stuff sloughed off the easiest. I wasn't able to verify what that brand was. I also had troubles stripping off some bright orange paint off of the majority of the Guardians. I couldn't get that stuff off to save my life. I ended up using straight-up acetone to get that stuff off. And there are still some remnants of that on the plastic arms for the Guardians. I am hoping it will prime over easily. I was pleased that the thickly applied primer that was used came off easily as well. The majority of the metal models soaked for 24-48 hours and the paint came off with a stiff plastic brush. I wore long plastic gloves, an apron and goggles with plenty of ventilation. It sounds cheesy, but necessary. Simple Green is great stuff, but stinky. The persistent orange paint I let soak for 5 days and I scrubbed on these models for a long time. But I had to move on with the project.
There were many repeat models in this army along with several editions worth of model releases. So we had original Guardians mixed in with plastic newer Guardians. But this can be helpful when trying to keep squads separated. So these were all sorted out and bagged. I bagged models in like groups in resealable bags for ease of identification and marked on the outside of the bags the contents. Then all their weapons and banners would be with them in an attempt to keep any bitz from being lost. Which happened anyways.
At this point, Basementmini Mike was ready to take his portion of the army he was committed to painting. We discussed quite a bit the paint scheme for the Alaitoc Craftworld (http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Alaitoc#.UL_ToINZV2A) as well as the general form the army would take. The Guardians, Heavy Support, Jetbikes and the Wraithgaurd would all reflect the Alaitoc colors: Alaitoc blue bodies with yellow helmets and white armaments and accessories. This way, the majority of the army would have a visual cohesive quality to the battlefield. And striking colors at that!
This picture shows some of my committed half of the army. It's going to be so much fun working on this army!
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