Drukhari - Combat Drug Tokens

I have always had some plans to expand my current Dark Eldar force with some more traditional (not rats at least) Dark Eldar. I have some plans for them and more on that later. With everything we have been seeing about 8th edition 40k, I am getting more excited than ever to get back into the grimdark future. One thing is Dark Eldar (I like the new name, Drukhari) seem to have gotten a boost. It's a combination of changes to their army and just the new edition being much more friendly to their play style.

So I whipped these up in a night. It was nice because I didn't need to prime them, and I wanted to get started painting something simple before I moved onto bigger projects. These are combat drug tokens. The units with the combat drugs rules get to choose which drug they are taking at the start of the battle, but each one has to be different per unit. So making 6 tokens to remind myself which unit has which drugs seemed like a fun little project. I could just write the benefit (like +1s, +1a, +1ws, etc) on a scrap of paper to follow the units around, but I sort of fell in love with doing little hand painted things after making my display board plaque.

Following a similar process, here is how I made them. This would be good for just about any hand painted tokens you want to put on the battlefield.

First thing is I found the little symbols I need and printed them out on sticker label paper. Then I cut them out and stuck them on 32mm bases. The symbols I got from game-icons.net, which is an excellent source for this stuff. Check it out. The only one I didn't get from there is the Dark Eldar helmet, which I just got from Google images. I stuck them down on my surface using blue tack.

Next it's just as easy as painting the base colors inside/outside the lines. Trying to leave most of the black lines from the print in place. Here is also where I experimented on the colors I would use. Originally the lotus flower to the right I started painting in blue, but then I realized the drug was called Grave Lotus, so I opted for black instead.

This step is kind of subtle, but I went around the symbols with a lighter color, painting in a sort of splotchy pattern to highlight them over the background darker color.

Next I wanted the tokens to have a cool border because I knew I wasn't going to be able to paint a perfectly round border where it meets the black of the base. So I just did a black splotchy pattern around it to contain the symbols and colors.

I really like the black lines, so to preserve them I went back over the lines with a fine tip artist pen to redefine them.

Next I went with the lighter corresponding colors inside the symbols and painted them within their base colors so some of that is still showing through the edges. This brings them out against the background.

Finally I touched up with some final details and I am done! This is always a fun little project because it's easier than painting miniatures and you get more freedom with it. I would recommend doing something like it.

Now, can you guess which token represents which drug?