Shadespyre's January Post - Rank and File I - 3rd Edition Wood Elves(and friends?)

OWAC VII - Rank and File Month (I) - And So It Begins (Again)

January

Having started the month with a near-breakdown and developing a hatred of the colour green, I just knuckled down and started painting random colours onto random bits of a random Wood Elf until I didn't hate it too much.

This has pretty much been my methodology for every army so far, and I don't know why it continues to surprise me? Perhaps because every time I am going to have learned from my previous experiences and "do better"?

Old dog, new tricks, and all that.

Anyhoo, Wood Elves have been painted. Here are the ones that I have "finished" this month:

A first unit of Oreon's Elf Archers, this one including Prince Oreon himself and a standard bearer. It's sufficiently difficult to get hold of the command group miniatures for some of these old Regiments of Renown that I'm splitting one set between two units. Those of us with simlarly long memories will recall that these were sold as sets of (I think) seven identical troopers and *one* command model - the number of people who bought all four sets must have been limited, because the musician and champion rarely appear for sale (but you will see them in my second unit, you lucky lot!)

Hopefully it is obvious that the bases are unfinished, as is the standard. In my usual manner, I will return to these once the feel of the army is more established for me. I'm also making a "snagging list" of other things to come back to - that standard bearer's sword needs a resculpt and a repaint, for starters!

And to join them, here's a first unit of Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers, including the man (elf) himself. Though actually, the standard bearer and musician here are *not* the ones from the Regiment set. I decided to establish a clear difference between my two units by separating them into hooded and bareheaded miniatures, and that meant separating the official command figures from Skarloc and finding some hooded ones instead.

A possible flag on that pole is another thing for the snagging list.

You'll notice that I've carried through the same colours from the Oreon's unit, though with a wider range of sculpts in this RoR it leads to a less uniform look. Speaking of which, to avoid my Wood Elves looking *too* much like a regular army, I'm panting units with different sets of colours, which I'm nominally calling "Spring, Summer and Autumn" in a very unoriginal manner. This colour set is "Summer", though it came out a tad darker than I originally planned. But proper forests are pretty dark, so I guess that's okay.

I've also made a few changes from the way these minis are often painted (and not just from "really well" to "adequately"!) Specifically, I've changed a lot of potentially metal elements (fancy girdles and bracers) to sculpted leather, and quite a lot of potentially exposed skin to tight fitting cloth colours. The former because I prefer my Wood Elves with less metal, the second because I hate painting skin tones. Obviously my Elves have a carefully guarded grove of Lycra trees...

Army List Additions:

Scores for January:         628  points   32 models

15 x Archers                (Light Armour, Great Weapons, Standard)                240 points

1 x Hero (Level 5)       (Light Armour, Great Weapon, Longbow)                 55 points

15 x Lord's Bowmen    (Light Armour, Standard, Musician)                          238 points

1 x Hero (Level             (Light Armour, Greatsword, Longbow)                      95 points                

Running Total:          628  points  32  models

Hidden Reserves:

I've had no time to paint anything here yet, but top marks to Jaeckal for spotting that Hidden Reserve #1 is a trio of treemen. I'll keep them under wraps for now, maybe they will emerge painted next month?

OWAC VII Secret Santa Special Gift Model:

When I got my assigned "victim", I rushed off to look at his intro post and was immediately struck by an idea, which I was so enthusiastic about that the mini was almost done before anything for my own army was!

Da Big Gobb Publik Relayshuns Team

Cos sumtimes yooz iz juss too bizzy ta dooz ya own yellin'

These two Orky types have been sent over to George Prince, to help his Bad Moon Ork Warlord Da Big Gobb conquer his Space Dwarf enemies. The Ork Runtherd has a couple of simple conversions - hollowing out the end of his loudhailer, adding the crescent moon (or is it Pac Man?!) to his back plate and adding the extended barrel to his shoota so I had a nice surface to add some checks to. The urge to paint my own Orks is now very strong!

Next Time

Probably some more of the same in a different colour scheme.