Top products from r/Eldar

A lot of it depends on what kind of army you want to build. Eldar is capable of many styles; long range shooting, sturdy close range fighting, mobile close combat, mechanized, vehicle-based, and so on. Eldar is currently one of the strongest factions, capable of competing at the top level with any faction in a variety of styles.

A fairly standard way to start things off is:

• Get a Start Collecting box, which contains 5 Wraithguard, a Farseer, a Wraithlord and a War Walker (£50, ~500 pts). This is a great core for an army. The Farseer appears in every Eldar army, almost without fail. The Wraithguard are considered strong, particularly with D-Scythes. The Wraithlord is best taken as just a beatstick with a sword, and is reasonably effective in this role. The War Walker, armed with Shuriken Cannons, makes for a nimble harasser.
  
  
• Add a Wave Serpent hover transport, which contains a Wave Serpent with various weapons (£28, 150 pts). This is a necessary unit in many lists, and will be particularly useful for the slow-moving Wraithguard in the Start Collecting box. I never leave home without one.
  
  Where you go from here depends on what you want to do.
  
  
• One Option, Adding Troops to form a Battalion: A simple way to reach 1,000 pts is to round things out with some troops and a Warlock HQ. Guardian Defenders have great firepower and weapon options, while Rangers have good durability at range and a unique deployment power. 3 squads of Guardians/Rangers is 300 pts of troops and will run you £60 total. The Warlock is 7 and 35 pts. If you think you will need several and a Farseer, there's a cheap bundle available.
  
  
• Another Option, Adding Heavy Support to form a Spearhead: You already have 2 Heavy Support units, you can add more to form a Spearhead detachment. The trusty Fire Prism is a classic, with £31 getting you a top-notch model that runs about 160 pts. Buying two will bring you to 1,000 pts. Two Fire Prisms will allow you to use the linked fire stratagem.
  
  General Advice
  
  No matter which of these options you go for, you'll end up spending about £50 on Start Collecting, £28 on the Wave Serpent, and £65 on filling out the rest of your 1,000 pts, leaving you with about £100 to spare in your budget.
  
  Don't forget to buy the Codex/cards (£35), a measuring tape (£4), some dice, and hobby equipment, which I describe in detail below.
  
  For dice, I find Chessex tends to sell pretty cheap cubes of 12mm dice that are easy to roll many of at a time (example) for ~£15. These dice are cheap, but are fair dice even if they are a little round and roll all over the place, and the black/white ones are quite easy to read. There are other manufacturers as well.
  
  For superglue, any Cyanoacrylate glue will work. The kind with a brush cap or narrow nozzle is ideal, since you will easily put too much as you start out.
  
  For paints, I prefer to use Citadel paints as GW recommends, but there are as many opinions on paint brands as there are painters. If you can, a spray-on base coat makes things easier. I recommend this guide for the beginning of painting, but there is much to read and watch about painting.
  
  When painting a model, first you must apply primer to the model (spray or brush on) in a thin layer. This is a special substance designed to stick to the plastic or metal surface of the model, and present a paintable surface to apply paint to. If you've used a whiteboard, you'll note that the dry-erase marker wipes off of it easily, even though that same marker leaves a permanent mark on cloth or paper. Primer is like a layer of cloth or paper on top of a dry-erase board, so the paint can stick.
  
  For brushes, buy cheap paintbrushes. Buy a cheap set for like 10 quid. You will ruin them, it's what happens. This way, you won't feel bad about it.
  
  Read and watch lots of guides for newbies.
  
  Paint with friends if you can, it's fun.
  
  Hope this helps!

To add to /u/ZSCampbellcooks said: I've found that a quality tool helps ease some of these pains. I'm not saying go spend an obscene amount on a high end model, get something in the top tier middle. I have 3 that I use: Harder-Steenbeck, Patriot 105, and Master's. I use the 105 the most. It is just so easy to use and produces great results. The Steenbeck is OMG fantastic but I only use it for a narrow band of techniques and the Master's took a lot of work to get to a usable condition. If I'm starting over I'd skip the Master's and Steenbeck until I got real good and I'd purchase the 105 or the Sotar or the Iwata Eclipse. All are highly reviewed and used by pros.

Learning your specific airbrush takes time, especially as a beginner. I got a piece of cardboard and filled the brush with water and practiced. There are youtube videos of pros doing this. Speaking of youtube- watch other people that use airbrushes besides mini painters lot of knowledge out there. Guys that do t-shirts will help with color theory and blending, the model plane/car guys will teach under shading, guys that paint cars can teach fading (there was a guy I saw that did grey smokey skulls on a black motorcycle tank that was legit Louvre quality), on and on.

Anyway, a little long but tldr: get a brush in the middle somewhere and practice practice practice.

And everyone should buy this airbrush cleaner. It's OMG fantastic and won't eat your O-rings in the brush and will even strip paint from your models with out damaging the plastic or resin. I use it all the time, like I bought a case.

To make sure your bikers don't get "stuck" you need to have their legs positioned perfectly or they splay out or pinch into the jetbike seat.

There's a line on their ass that runs across both legs that I've always used to ensure fit. What I do is use a thin plastic glue like the brush on Tamiya, brush it into the leg hole and the part of the joint where it connects, then press the legs on. After that I let it set for maybe about 10s and then I put the biker on a jetbike and adjust the legs a little before the glue sets completely hard.

This allows me to ensure two things. First, that each biker stays on their bike without magnets or anything. And second, that and both of the bikers feet contact the foot rests and both their hands contact the handlebars (I use the same technique for arms).

I’ve magnetized everything with optional load-outs, I would highly recommend. I’m about to start on my knight as well, picked up this set of magnets to figure out which would work best.

Magnets

If you want to paint them black, I have had great success using these
StaedtlerPigmentLiner. Pretty self explanitory, and really any fine tipped felt pen should work, but these are top notch.

I went ahead and cheated and used this stencil for them

But I agree, for sure looks awesome! I wish I hadnt attached the fins? on the other serpent. Not sure what I will do on that to get the white blended in on it. Might break down and pop them off ;(

Like in shop or something? I've checked on Black Library and on amazon and neither have it.

https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-40000/novels/ghost-warrior-rise-of-the-ynnari-ebook.html

https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Warrior-Rise-Ynnari-Thorpe/dp/1784966754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521093842&sr=8-1&keywords=Ghost+Warrior

This stuff: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TT856HG/ref=cm_sw_r_fm_apa_W2uPAb9TB5ZX2

Its actually a translucent red acrylic paint. You can get pretty much any color you want. Put two coats of it on the backside of the "glass".

Inks! With an airbrush and zenithal, warning, the blue comes on way stronger than it rightfully should, use a test model first.

White zenithal pre-shade layer

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002644I1U/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The blue

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00263XW9A/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The video that made me try inks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRfkM6RGIrs

I got it on a Norwegian site, but you can get it here on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Warhammer-40K-Craftworlds-Vanguard-Detachment/dp/B07TRP2G44/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=craftworlds&link_code=qs&qid=1573509112&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-1

This is the one I mentioned.

You could also paint them exactly how you like, and use little red rubber bands on the flying base to signify Siam Hann or what have you. Seen this done many times on different units to avoid confusion. I personally wouldnt do anything permanent to signify a craftworld trait since you never know if your strategy will change over time.