Swooping Hawk Exarchs are leaders and trainers of Eldar citizens following this Aspect Warrior Path. When it's battle time, they carry one of the ritual weapons related to their shrine.

As usual, Codex:Eldar allow several combinations but Games Workshop produced just one Exarch with a lasblaster instead of my weapon of choice - the Web of Skulls! This ranged weapon is wielded with a shuriken pistol, count as a power weapon in hand-to-hand, and can be thrown up to three times in the shooting phase, getting back in the hands of the Exarch after each throw. Seems powerful, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, I had some work ahead. Since the official Exarch model was completely entangled with his rifle, I had no hope of removing it cleanly for a swap. I had to build a complete Swooping Hawk Exarch from other miniatures. And to design what a web of skulls should look like, because I did not want to use the one featured on the old Dark Reaper Exarch (you can see the old model I'm speaking in the lower left part of the picture here).

Components

The easiest way of producing a Swooping Hawk Exarch was to convert another Exarch model - the archive Dire Avenger one, for example. One appropriate head, a pair of wings, and I was ready!

Of course, I also needed bitz for the Web of Skulls. I decided that the weapon would be stretched out. With an idea in mind, I went for a pair of Dark Eldar jetbike chains as well as a couple Incubi backpacks just for the skulls (yeah, I'm going into such details). You can see the whole bunch of bitz on the right. I admit it's quite a lot for a single model, but hey, when you want your custom Exarch, sometimes you have to go that far.

Body building

A Swooping Hawk Exarch has very distinctive features - wings. Just by adding them, virtually any Eldar model can be turned into a Swooping Hawk of some kind. Well, maybe not an Avatar, but you get the idea. Anyway, I just started the conversion with a head swap.
I carefully cut the Dire Avenger head, saving it for another conversion. Once beheaded, some unrecognizable shapes were remaining where the crest of the Dire Avenger Exarch was in contact with his armor, but nothing some filing couldn't help.
I added the wings afterwards, hollowing two grooves on a 90-degree angle, to insert them. All parts were glued with epoxy.
The result was okay but I wanted slightly more detail. I wasn't too comfortable with the Dire Avenger's loincloth, which was too long in my opinion. I decided to cut it and to "expand" it with the set of feathers coming from the forearm of the Swooping Hawk Exarch sprue. I could have used the whole forearm, but then the finished model would have had two different arms and I wanted to avoid that. With this little detail, I had been further than the minimal conversion work and I was quite happy with the result.

The Exarch was ready for the Web of Skulls: I simply cut the blade at the hilt and dig a hole to receive it.

Entangled in the Web of Skulls

Another custom Eldar weapon!

I separated lines of my Dark Eldar Jetbike chains, and, lacking any better idea, glued them together with a ball of epoxy glue. Once everything was rock hard, I started twisting them back and forth in an attempt to get an attitude for the Web of Skull. An attitude? Right. I had to cope with the wings of the Exarch, and I wanted the weapon to show a form of intelligence.
In my opinion, a projectile weapon able to be thrown three times in a row, returning to its owner's hand each time, requires more than just skill. Call it magic, psychic bond, artificial intelligence, it does not matter much. But I wanted the Web of Skull to show it. Hence I bended my metal chains at will, until they were not conflicting anymore with the Exarch Body nor his wings.
Once the chains properly twisted I just had to glue three skulls from the Incubi backpacks, looking in a general direction. It gives a good impression of an evil (if limited) form of intelligence.
Of course I used epoxy glue for maximum strength, and took care of proceeding slowly to avoid any disaster. I advise you to glue one skull at a time!

Painting

Each Aspect Warrior shrine has its own paint scheme and Swooping Hawks are in light blue. Beyond that, you can do as you please. Since an Exarch is the leader of a squad, I simply expanded the paint scheme of his comrades to reflect his advanced status as an elite warrior and a commander.

The inner layer of wing feathers was painted in shades of blue, from the darkest to the lightest. On the outer layer, a more colorful gradation was used, reflecting a rainbow but still going from the darker to the lightest color. For "mundane" Swooping Hawks, the gradation was from blue to green and ending in yellow; for the Exarch I went further, up to red. The same gradation was used for feathers on the helmet and on the loincloth, but each feather received all colors instead of the wing feathers which received roughly one shade each.
The Web of Skulls received a very simple paint scheme because I did not want it to draw too much attention from the Exarch's paint scheme, which had to stand out. The chains and skulls were already impressive enough from a modeling point of view. They were painted in metallic colors, chainmail and gold. The attachment point on the hilt was painted with a spiral, just because I had no precise idea and because it became more discreet that way.

In my humble opinion the output is quite good. My custom Swooping Hawk Exarch ended up as an impressive model and often attract onlookers to the gaming table when I field him in my Eldar army. He's a bit sturdy for a Swooping Hawk but since it's a close-combat monster (in current edition of Codex:Eldar at least...) his appearance matches his combat skills!

created on 08 Jun 2004