goblinpaladin's Wood Elves - a March update (264 points)

Happy March, friends! In contrast to my usual waffle, I'll try and be brief this month.

my delicate camerawork strikes again

This month sees those archers finished off, another five wardancers, and two characters.

5 archers, including a nice unit leader sculpt in lead. 55 points.
5 wardancers. 100 points.
Kaia Stormwitch, as a level 5 Hero + Battle Standard. 98 points.
Aenur, the Sword of Twilight. Just an archer unit leader here, for 11 points.

A total of 264 points. Alphanumeric!

♪ beneath the trees / where nobody sees ♫

I'm kind of sad to see the last of those plastic archers go, but it's really great to see the rank-and-file get done. This project will eventually have a regiment of spear-elf regulars, but that's outside the scope of the OWAC.

archer, captain of archers

i have to learn not to pick him up by the bow, though

The unit leader is just a standard archer sculpt, I think. He turns up all the time in other wood elf projects. Is he in the other wood elf armies here at the Challenge? Why not look at their posts and find out?

no littering

As I have 28 or so plastic archers, I decided to use metal figures so that unit leaders stand out. Unfortunately, I've only got the chap above so far, so in order to meet the legal requirements, I'm counting Aenur the Sword of Twilight as one of those unit leaders. Of course, his sword means he won't rank up with his new friends! Typical.

a hint of gleaming mithril beneath his green-and-grey cloak

Aenur, the Sword of Twilight, is a character from Games Workshop's Mordheim skirmish game. Mordheim's an urban setting, but you can see that he works pretty well in green and on a lush base with pretty flowers.

swoosh

what mould line

I got this elf free in a White Dwarf some twenty years ago and he's been rattling around ever since. The white metal was long since grey, but the sculpt held up perfectly cleanly. He was really fun to paint. I feel like I did him justice.

she is real hard to photograph. well, maybe just hard for ME

Kaia Stormwitch is one of the oldest named characters in Warhammer, being the wizard-scout-standard bearer for Skarloc's Archers, a Regiment of Renown since the second edition. Also, for all Warhammer's well-deserved modern reputation for being scarce on female characters, she's a lady.

that hair must be a pain to condition

I don't know that I've really done a good job on her dress. I was aiming vaguely at a kind of deerskin light brown with a greenish grey (but more grey) lining. I'm okay with where I've landed, but I could have done better, I think.

she's a character, so she gets a resin stump. the rewards of rank.

I'm going to use her as a Battle Standard Bearer, but the sculpt is very witchy. She has several bags and satchels, a flask, and a small herb bundle all tied to her waist, as well as quite a number of pieces of jewellery. In keeping with the vaguely-Celtic allusions of Goodwin's elf line, I've painted those in bronzes. I've also started experimenting with the fancy new gemstone paints, both here and on the wardancers (below).

"a heart-shaped casket holding the ashes of a legendary Elven Hero, Kern son of the goddess Torothal"

Gemstone paints are pretty neat, but I'm not sure they're significantly better than just using some glazes or something. 

transformers! more than meets the eye! wait that's not the right caption

God, I love painting these sculpts so much. Maybe I should try and collect all the wardancer sculpts? No. That's insane. I shouldn't do that. Or should I? No. Yes? No. Yes? No.

my favourite part was the nipples

okay my favourite part was actually the torc but i had you going

I don't really have much to say about each of these sculpts, except that they are ridiculously lovely to paint. Some interesting details to show the character of each figure, but not so much that I get annoyed and cross; simple and straightforward, but not repetitive. A joy. Citadel's modern designers, with their CADs and their tendency to have everything dripping in webbing or with ridiculous smoke sculpted on, could take some lessons from the 80s masters.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

well i guess you only really need armour on the bits facing the other guy

I originally washed this guy's feathers in bright colours before deciding to go with a fairly naturalistic approach, based on falcon and eagle feathers - and one cheeky kingfisher blue, because this is a fantasy game. He has a vaguely North American feel, in contrast to the Celtic sense I get from most of the other sculpts in the range.

i used to have leg muscles like that (this isn't true)

she gon' mess you up

the unemotional ceramic mask just screams 'peaceful tree hugger' to me

There's so much to love about this sculpt. The ceramic mask, the carefully placed pieces of armour, the sense of threatening motion. I absolutely love it.

gotta line up that javelin shot just right

i really could not get a photo of the front, sorry folks

One of the best details about this range is how stripped back the armour is. I've gone with bronze circlets sewn into the leather here, with a bit of iron chainmail. The bronze adds warm colour against the blue-highlighted black, as well as a bit of a Bronze Age-feeling in keeping with the vaguely Celtic stuff I keep mentioning.

 Like with the plating on the woman with twin swords and the stripped-back jerkin on the halberd-wielding elf, the range conveys a sense that armour is rare and expensive, that you have to do the best with what you can get. It feels really early medieval and authentic.

this guy is so goddamn terrifying

even when you can't see his eyepatch, he still has a freakin' claw gauntlet

 I go back and forth on what my favourite wardancer sculpt is, but as soon as I saw this guy in the old catalogues, I knew I really wanted him. He has a claw gauntlet and an eyepatch. What is his goddamn deal?  when I get around to doing shields, I'm going to have to give him one of those old spiky shields or one with a spider on it or something cool.

The red lacquer effect on his shoulder was done by layering Blood for the Blood God paint over silver highlighted up to Mithril Silver. I wanted to avoid his whole right arm being too same-y, in the cold iron. I don't know if the composition works or if the eye has to go around too much of the figure, but I'm pretty happy with him overall.

HeroQuest: Elf Quest Pack cover art detail, Donald Kueker. © Games Workshop and Milton Bradley, 1992.

That's it for this month, elf-friends. See you in late April, when I will be another year older and another couple of painted Old World miniatures richer. Oh, and about my promise to be briefer? Sorry about that.