Shadespyre's OWAC VI Wrap-up Post - Dark Elves / Drow

Shadespyre's OWAC VI Dark Elf / Drow Army - Wrap up post

July

It already feels like a long time ago...

I had a go at collecting the whole army together, setting it up on some painted boards and taking some nice photos. It didn't work out so well - impossible to get good lighting - but at least you get an idea of what 200 odd miniatures look like.

As it happens, the final model count of 211 is very similar to that for the Gnolls last year (I think that was 209?) but somehow this project felt much bigger!

You can probably tell that I finally got around to making movement trays for every unit and respraying them all in a uniform pale grey. I tried a few in white first and it was just a bit too stark. 

I made the trees using a Woodland Scenics kit. An odd experience - the kit include flat cast metal armatures which you twist into shape with pliers before gluing on the foliage. It would probably have been a more satisfactory process if the castings weren't badly flashed, but the end result was pretty good despite being a lot of hard work. Not sure I'd do it this way again, though.

Likewise, I'm happy enough with how the snow bases came out, but I'm not sure I'd do it this way again. The main problem being that it's almost impossible to go back and add more and get a "realistic" smooth fresh snow look if you miss a bit first time around.

In terms of the project itself - overall I'm happy. The theme was slow to emerge (and still hasn't presented a nice name) but I enjoyed finding the AD&D references to add here and there. I stuck to my aim of only using early Citadel ranges, with just a couple of plastic bits used to repair or enhance models, and managed to tie in some properly old miniatures as an excuse to get them painted.

There were the usual frustrations of building an army of such old minis - I couldn't collect all the unit types I wanted to; the poor quality of some castings made painting them a trial; forcing the figures available to fit an only slightly compatible army list - but as this is my third army of this type that was all to be expected. 

The purple colour scheme looks pretty good but was very fiddly, I ended up dropping about a half of the stages from the initial method and I don't think it really shows. Painting lots of narrow trim around armour and so on made for a lot of work, as did paints of wildly different consistency despite all being from the same range. My appreciation of Citadel Foundation Paints will remain long after I've emptied my last pot!

Highlights for me include finally painting a version of that Tony Ackland War Eagle, enjoying the White Dragon even though it was forced upon me, and the Displacer Beasts that used to be Weretigers. 

Next Time?

I'll definitely be in again for OWAC VII. Maybe I'll finally build a 3rd edition army with contemporaneous miniatures? I've got a few more all-pre-slotta projects that I could tackle, but it may be that the "novelty" of painting dozens of the same sculpt to make a unit has worn off a bit.

A few things on the list:

Pre-slotta High Elves

The Other pre-slotta High Elves (!)

Wood Elves

Zoats

Fimir

Eldar Pirates

Some sort of odd hodge-podge of the Half Orc, Hobgoblin, Ogre and Giant Mercenary lists from Warhammer Armies, because I don't have enough of any one to make an army.

It also occurs that I've never painted so much as one unit of Dwarves. But I'd have to buy a whole army from scratch to do that...

Previous Posts:

June (Wild Card)

May (Leaders)

April (Rank and File)

March (Rank and File)

February (Rank and File)

January (Rank and File)

Intro Post