Shadespyre's May Post - Leaders - Guardians of the Moonglade - 3rd Edition Wood Elves (+2604 points)

 OWAC VII - Leader Month - Guardians of the Moonglade

May

Month Five. Traditionally, for me, this is Leader month. Also the month where things finally all seem to hang together, maybe? Let's find out together!

Let's kick off with a tiny bit of lore. I say a tiny bit implying that there might be more later, but my track record suggests there will be just one tantalising morsel that I never come back to expanding.

In the depths of the great forest, far beyond the wanderings of woodcutters and rangers, where the trees are incredibly ancient and unbelievably huge, there is a vast green glade, in the shape of a crescent moon. In the centre of the glade is a large, still lake; it is also the shape of a crescent moon. And overlooking the lake is a long, green (you guessed it) crescent shaped mound.

At the highest point of this hill stands the largest of the trees, its canopy so wide that it shelters most of the Moonglade. It's huge branches are full of life - squirrels and owls and sprites and so on - but most importantly it is the home of an ancient and potent nature spirit. The spirit of the great forest, its Dryad Queen.

And her King? The Moonglade is home to a large community of Wood Elves, and the mightiest Prince amongst them is her consort. And so when anything threatens her forest, a force of Wood Elves will set forth, led by the mightiest Guardians of the Moonglade.

Or something like that. 

Moons, you see? Like the crescent shaped shields? It's a bit like I planned it...

Some Leader minis then? Here we go:

From left to right:

Autumn hero, Summer Prince, Dryad Queen, Spring Spellsinger, Summer hero

The Autumn hero will probably slot into the Autumn Guard unit (you may recall that I forgot to include a specific leader miniature in that unit). The Summer hero, by contrast, was ejected from one of my Oreon units after I picked up the official champion mini. But I like him so he got painted. The guy with the harp is obviously meant to be a musician but I like the idea of a bardic wizard for Wood Elves.

Here are bigger pictures of the main two - the Dryad Queen is obviously the C34 Life Elemental, not an elf but how could you not use this model? Unless you hate finding and painting all the tiny flowers, of course.

Her consort is the classic moon-helmed Elf captain with a falcon, except that I carefully removed most of the falcon and replaced it with a fancy owl. Because moons and owls, you see. This is the third owl so far, I think.

Oh, his name is Amarion the Evergreen, Prince of Eternal  Summer, Guardian of the Moonglade, and of course he is named to honour the true King of the Wood Elves, our very own Mariano. Thanks for the inspiration, sir! No fancy Forest NMM from me, just coloured washes over Chainmail, but still.

Here's another guy, not technically a Leader but if I don't post him this month I'll forget he exists. He's just an Elf in a wolfskin, but I'm going to call him a Shapechanger, just to include one in the army. That makes him my last (?) rank and file contribution.

Before we move on, I should probably mention basing! Yes, I did some! Yes, it's ridiculously elaborate and is taking ages! Yes, for some reason I have used between 15 and 20 different products to achieve this. So I hope you like it.

You'll note I've put the characters on a movement tray, just for display purposes. I will try to fill the back rank at some point. But this is an opportunity to explain my new basing technique, which is to apply all the basing materials with the minis in place on the movement tray - magnets are obviously key to that. This method is saving me on materials because each individual base doesn't recieve as much attention - the guys in the middle of middle ranks are almost untouched, because you don't see their bases much. 

To aid this approach, I've been applying PVA glue with more precision using a small disposable syringe. I'll leave you to imagine the mess I made perfecting that idea! But it means I can reach into a unit and leave a little blob of glue to stick grass to, or whatever.

So, that was all the Leaders. Or was it?

No, gentle reader, it was not...

Hidden Reserves

Who puts leader models in their optional extras? This guy does! To be honest it wasn't optional, I just wanted to keep it under wraps until it was done. Time to reveal Hidden Reserve No 2...

It's a chariot! A heavily customised chariot, in fact.

I've got one of those lovely MD4 Elven Attack Chariots stashed in a cupboard, but it's soooo fancy I thought it looked better as a High Elf option. I wanted something a bit more rustic, like the picture from the Warhammer Armies book:

And so I built this. The basis is still the chariot floor, pole and yoke from a second metal chariot kit (I found it on its own on eBay). Wheels are from my bits box, the horses are Elf cavalry horses. The large Celtic-styled shield at the front is a button! The body of the chariot is a home made concontion of 3d printed shapes and Milliput - it was a bit of a devil to do, and it's actually rather assymetrical, but I'm quite pleased with the finished model. 

Of the crew, the Archer is the only one who isn't converted. The driver is extensively reposed from an ordinary Elf warrior, his legs were cut off and cut apart and reassembled to get this uncomfortable looking pose.

The Wizard Battle Standard Bearer (yes, this is allowed!) started life as a simple standard bearer who for some reason has a scroll? Go figure. The tree motif (representing the Tree at the centre of the Moonglade) is a piece of cheap jewellery, and is the perch for a fourth owl.

Finally, the Prince of Golden Autumn is pretty vanilla except that I sculpted a moon onto his helmet to match the other Prince. I would have like a more exciting pose for him but I had to pick from what I had *and* make room for him in that tight squeeze.

And *that* concludes our Leaders.

Unless I paint a few more in June, no promises though.

Wow this Month's post is dragging on a bit? But to avoid Wild Card month being even worse, let's add even more stuff! More Hidden Reserves, this time No 4 and No5.

It's ZOAT ALLIES! I genuinely thought you might guess this, just based on the association with Wood Elves and the profile of the model on the end of the row. And then I remembered that I converted that model so there's no reason for it to be a familiar silhouette...!

Second unit first, because it's more photogenic. Notice the same Celtic knotwork as on the Chariot, and the (very basic, I know) heraldry featuring a moon on a green background. It's simple and it gets the job done and that is the point where we have got to. I'll be going back and adding it to other standards in the army.

Not a hugely original colour scheme. I took an olive green not used on the Elves and then graded it darker to brown-green on the backs and lighter with Zandri Dust on the fronts. Am I the only one who thinks the faces are a bit "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"?

The magic spheres held by the leader of each unit (not technically wizards) are purple because of complementary colours - I'm trying to take this stuff on board a bit. 

A picture just to show how Zoats do not rank up! I used a staggered line, a slight rise in height, and also the rearing pose to make this happen. Sort of. You can probably guess that the minis and trays are labelled underneath because they only fit together in one combination.

The other unit. The standard completely messes up the look of it, but a second rearing standard bearer would have been boring, so I stand by it.

Zoats have to be led by a wizard, so here he is - a big purple extra-magical Zoat. He needs to lay off the purple orbs for a bit, maybe.

I should probably mention the conversions here. The rearing Zoats are made using the bottom halves of the "Zoat the Bibbisaur" star player model from Impact Miniatures. I bought a bunch of these and intended to use the top halves with metal bottom halves, too... but then I got bored of Zoats and passed them on.

Most of the Zoats are as-cast, just with the poses tweaked a little to allow even this level of ranking up. The wizard's club got reused to make a weapon for one of the standard bearers, in turn their weapon was used to top the wizard's staff (a previous owner had already removed the axe blades.) Finally, the standards are made from old plastic ones cut into new shapes to conceal their (evil?) origins.

Oh, if you ever fancy a laugh have a look at eBay and see how much people think Zoats are worth...

Okay, THAT IS IT for May. Back to painting.

Army List Additions:

Scores for May:       2604    points   22 models

1 x Autumn Hero - already accounted for                                                                          0 points

1 x Summer Hero (Level 15)      (Light Armour, Great Weapon, Longbow)             135 points        1 x Dryad Queen (Level 25 Wizard)                                                                                   418 points 

1 x Amarion (Level 25)                 (Heavy Armour, Great Weapon, Falconer)            215 points

1 x Spell Singer (Level 10 Wizard)                                                                                     118 points   

1 x Shapechanger (Giant Wolf)                                                                                           28 points

1 x Wain Lord Chariot                 (Shield, Longbow, Javelin)                                        144 points

1 x Autumn Prince (Level 20)                    (Heavy Armour, Shield, Longbow)           175 points 

1 x Battle Standard (Level 15 Wizard)     (Army Standard, Falconer)                         256 points                                             

Zoat Allies List:

1 x Zoat Leader (Level 15 Wizard)                                                                                       275 points

6 x Zoats                               (Standard, Great Weapon)                                                    420 points

6 x Zoats                               (Standard, Great Weapon)                                                    420 points         

               

Running Total:          6947  points  157  models

Note to self - with all these character additions, need to check the legality of the final army list!

Next Time:

The Wild Card. I'm sure I can still find something to post...