Paul's High Elves - Reinforcements have arrived! Rank & File Month 4 (510 pts)

Reinforcements have arrived!

April has been a very busy, but very productive month for me both in terms of the OWAC and Real Life - Boo! On the plus side it is also my birthday month and this gave me full license to indulge in the fine OWAC traditions of 'changing plans mid challenge' and 'buying lots more minis' :p

I'm pleased to say I was able to more than meet my needs from the trading groups rather than resorting to the dreaded evil-bay. My thanks to Lee G, Marc P, Carl H, Ben P, and Gavin M all of whom were a pleasure to deal with and helped me fill in the gaps in my changed OWAC plans at short notice, as well as picking up some Goblin wolf riders for my eldest, and a near mint copy of the 5th Edition Magic supplement - so we even got to play an actual game with my OWAC minis this month! :D

A solid Elven back line is supported by two wings designed to press forward and fall back

The plans was working perfectly, the Lion Warriors moving in for the kill, until...

A bloody great Zombie Dragon and Vampire Lord turned up to ruin everyone's day!

Sadly, shortly after this picture was taken the High Elf Mage had his head ripped off by the Vampire Lord and the game ended in victory for the Forces of Evil.

Right, enough of that embarrassing loss! Let's get to this month's painting.  First up were a handful of reinforcements for my Shadow Warriors, with four more to bring me up to a unit of 12 overall, and another four Swordmasters for a unit of 20 in total.

Apologies, I've just noticed the one at the front is out of focus, but it's too late now!

As a prestige unit my Dragon Princes clearly needed a full command group, not least because it is another chance to do a banner, but also because the DP special rules in WFB 4th /5th Edition mean that they get their standard bearer for free (rather than having to pay double, as you would normally). 

My green stuff skills are a bit lacking, but I was fairly happy with this in the end.

The same rule does not apply to the musician however, and at 86 points I'm not sure many HE players actually bother(ed) to take one for their Dragon Princes in 4/5 edition. That may be why they didn't get a musician model until the much later release of newer Dragon Prince sculpts. I managed to get my hands on one of the horn arms from the newer DP sculpts and do some very ropey metal and putty work to convert an older DP trooper into a musician.

R to L Standard Bearer, Champion, Musician, Trooper

My family are by now well trained in spotting useful bits of junk on the ground to bring home to see if they can be used in junk builds and scenery projects. This time my wife played a blinder by bringing home a scrap of old rubber from a netball, as she thought the dimples made it feel like lizard skin. She was not wrong and it makes an excellent dragon hide banner!

The elven rune is named Caladai 'the symbol of the line of kings, the dragons of flame', which seemed perfect for the haughty Dragon Princes of Caledor. I'm afraid the weather was turning so I didn't get a chance to take a picture with the rest of the unit, but there are 9 of them in total now and I've just managed to acquire the bits to make another horse, so a 10th might be on the cards in the future.

I also added another five Reaver Knights in the same blue and golden yellow colour scheme as those I painted in February. Back then the blue and yellow colour scheme just happened to match the flag of Ukraine. This time it's deliberate and I hope the emblem of the phoenix on their shields is prophetic. It's always an important and sobering moment for a fan of 'war games' of any description to be reminded of the realities of war. My experience however is that most wargamers are actually keen students of history and well aware of the evil and misery of war, and it has been heartening to see the response from the community as we come together to hope for peace. 

I had started to hate painting these, but love how they look as a big group. I've got another 5 waiting, inc. command, but I'm in no rush to paint them quite yet!

Total for the month:

4 Shadow Warriors (12 pts each) - 48pts
4 Sword Masters (16 pts each) - 64pts
5 Reaver Knights (w/ spears, bows, and shields - 33 pts each) - 165pts
4 Dragon Princes (43 pts each) (inc. Champion*, Standard**, and Musician**) - 233 pts

* DP Champion = 61 pts
** DPs have a special rule that means the unit gets the standard bearer for the same price as a standard trooper, however the musician costs double as per normal.

Total: 510 pts

I also managed to rebase an existing unit of Silver Helms, and replace their mostly blank shields with a matching set with horse head design from the WFB4 box set, although looking at them in the photos I think they could 'pop' a bit more so I might look at those again at some point.

They had also been badly missing a banner, so I've added a simple pennant with the elven runes Sethai meaning 'Flight, wind, cry in the far mountains' and Harathoi meaning 'Youth, boundless energy, jealousy' used together here to represent the speed and potency of the young elven nobles that make up the Silver Helm cavalry.

May will hopefully be leader month, although I might yet swap things around and play a wild card before finishing with my leader. We shall have to see how the dreaded 'Real Life' behaves ;)

Thanks for reading and bon courage to all my fellow challengers. The end is in sight! :D

Sam's Wood Elves - Rank and File 1 (99pts)

So my first month is a cautious one, having owned many but never in fact painted an elf before, I wanted to start a little slowly to make sure not to get in too deep and then realise I hated the colour scheme, or that it was unfeasible to replicate over the course of 6 months. I think it is also fair to say that elves have always had the reputation of being on the more difficult side to paint, so it was also a bit daunting to start the task. 

With that in mind I opted to start with the minimum and to tackle some archers as they are the iconic rank and file models of the army around which everything else should be based.

Wood Elf Archers x 10 - 110pts

(shhhh no one will notice that I'm a dumbass who can't count and accidentally only painted 9 🤦‍♂️ - 99pts, apologies O Gracious Overlord, I promise I'll be painting many many more elves over the coming months)

Pleasantly as it turned out, all my fears were completely unfounded. And honestly I found them a complete pleasure to paint. Lots of wide and open areas with folds and the like making shading easy, and well placed details in easy to reach areas. The only finicky parts being the abundance of gems, but its easy to leave those until last and thus not worry about any mistakes during the main painting process. As an added bonus the scheme is much easier compared to my previous OWACs, woohoo! 

As with previous years the basing is on the simple side for now, and I'll be adding tufts bushes and leaves once I've varnished them. My plan is to go ham and cover almost the entire base with greenery.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and will be completing the rest of the squad of an additional 20ish archers and command next month. After all I'll need plenty of bows to riddle those pesky rats with feathers.

Peace

Sam

Overlord's note : I'll allow it this once, as I once did something similar with a whole unit of 24 and realized when I varnished them I was down one dude, still sitting undercoated in my undercoat box!

Sam's Savage Orcs - Da Horde is Complete

So when I started out on this journey two years ago following a nostalgia rush, the point was to get myself a fully painted army of old. An army like the ones I used to pore over in WD and spend time daydreaming about (when I should've likely been concentrating on schoolwork, meh). And with two consecutive years of the challenge I have finally done it. For the first time ever a 2000+pt army fully painted and based. Its done, woohoo!

I'm not going to lie this years 1000pts was tough at times though, the shear weight of painting the same scheme on broadly similar models really started to demotivate me. It wasn't helped by one of the other miniature projects I have going on learning how to walk, both terrorizing the household and severely reducing painting time and effort as I had to thoroughly put everything away after each session lest it get lost, eaten or otherwise incapacitated somehow. Honestly, I was only saved by a good dose of OWAC style shaming and the joy of painting the iconic 90s stone trolls.

Anyway, enough natter, on to the good stuff. The List:

OWAC III:

124pts - "Zogrod Mindmasha" - Savage Orc Shaman Champion, DHW

100pts - "Da Bull" - Savage Orc Big Boss, DHW

100pts - "Urgul 'Da Hammer' 'Eadbasha" - Savage Orc Big Boss, DHW

99pts - "Mad Krug Teefsmasha" - Savage Orc Big Boss, additional HW

171pts - "Da Immortalz" - 16 Savage Orc's, spears, shields, standard bearer & musician

190pts - "Da Crazy Huntaz" - 20 Savage Orc's, bows

390pts - "Da Rock 'Ard Bruvvaz" - 6 x Stone Trolls

30pts - "Summink still underfoot" - 2 x Snotling bases

Total 1204

plus last years list from OWAC II:

158pts - "Ugg Bonekrakka" - Savage Orc Warlord, War Boar (Snorka)

130pts - "Grog Mindbenda" - Savage Orc Shaman Champion, War Boar

59pts - "Wazz DaNoggin" - Savage Orc Shaman

46pts - "Dagob Moufsmasha" - Savage Orc Boss, shield

250pts - "Da Beastie Boyz" - 8 x Savage Orc Boar Boys, Standard, Musician

170pts - "Da Boyz" - 18 x Savage Orc Boyz, Standard, Musician, shields 

200pts - "Da Big 'Un" - 1 x Giant 

15pts - "Sommink Undafoot" - 1 x Snotling base

Total 1028pts

Grand Total 2232pts

On to the pics:

And now for the shot you've all been waiting for, the washed up guy, whose just put on a t-shirt for the first time in months and is barely conscious

Plus the hired help insisted we take this one too

So that's that, with magic items I can field up to 2500pts, which is very likely the largest size 4/5th edition you would want to play in order to retain any form of sanity anyway. Once the plague subsides, I'll hopefully be taking them for a spin against a certain skaven force...

For next year, of course I am definitely coming back, and with the changes I will be dipping into some 2nd ed. 40K, likely with IG junglist mastas (somehow I realized I like painting green and Perry twin sculpts).

Anyway congratulations to all who completed the challenge, was a great bunch again this year. Looking forwards to perusing through all the final blog posts and the hype train into next year.

Peace out

Samuel

AdamH’s wheely big final month – (414 Points)

“The terrible deafening thunder that you hear is not of nature no-no, as promised let me introduce you to the crazy warpsnitck and his mobile lightning shooting chariot!

Very impressive yes-yes? It costs many warp tokens but the mess it makes of the stuntys is well worth it.

I guess you are thinking this is the last you will see of my chittering horde, well maybe, but then again maybe not. There are still plenty more of us hiding in the shadows.”

Anyway, sorry for the title pun, hopefully you can just roll with me on this one.

Technically I officially finished the challenge last month since I completed five months and passed the 1,000 point barrier however I seriously have loads more Skaven to paint so decided to push myself as much as possible this last month and finish a couple of units that either weren’t at the minimum viable number or I just wanted to bulk up.

First up we have another group of Stormvermin, same colour scheme as before of course:

Next I turned my attention to my Clanrat unit, specifically I had a couple of the original Rat Ogre figures which I really like but always thought they were a little small for their stat line. They are only just a little bigger than a standard clanrat. So I painted them in such a way that they could fit in with the clanrat unit, taking the place of four standard rats but were still mounted on 40mm bases should I want to run them as Rat Ogres.

I also painted a bunch more actual Clan Rats to bulk out the unit:

Finally we have the real star of the month and maybe this army so far, I’m going to let the pictures do the talking and talk after:

A few things that might be hard to spot in the pictures, the globes on the wheel spokes all have some fancy crystal effect that I painted, was really happy with, and then mounted backwards so it is close to the wheel and you can’t actually see! I painted a nice looking OSL on the inside of the wheel coming from the generator, that is almost entirely covered up by the wheels again! Finally I painted all of the insides of the wheels, and the rats running them and guess what, you can’t see any of it! Hurrah for wasted effort…

Anyway, to summarise, this month’s entry is:

Stormvermin x12, Halberds, Shields [150]

Clanrats x19 (kind of) [114]

DOOMWHEEL!!!! [150]

Total – 414 points

Minus the wrap-up post this is the end of my rat horde for this challenge. Even though this is my second OWAC Skaven have always been my favourite army and I feel more pride in completing this one than any army I have ever tackled. This is the first time since I was probably 12 or so (which was a long time ago FYI) that I have had a full painted Skaven army and I can’t wait to see them all together. I have deliberately not got everything out together yet because I wanted to wait until everything was completed. So when I write my wrap-up post and take those pictures will be the first time for me to see the completed army as well! I am genuinely excited 😊

Sam's Savage Orcs - the one where the mojo was almost lost, but pre-shame shaming pulled us through (390pts)

Okay, so not going to lie, finishing off the savage orcs last month was a slog. So much so that I needed a break, which turned into pretty much the whole month of me being extremely un-arsed to pick up a paint brush. And in fairness, it was quite nearly the end of the line for me, I just knew if I Mulliganed one month before the end of the challenge whilst completely demotivated, it would be a Cyril Sneer dive straight into the Field of Bones. Thankfully, a little pre-shame shaming and probably the best models I've yet painted in either challenge saw me through to the finish line.

So on to the list:

6 x Stone Trolls (390pts)

Da Rabble

"Oi! Wot you lookin' at?! Fink your all innocent like jus coz you a rock"

"Dere's defo somink ova dere, betta go bash it wiv me club, jus to be sure" 

"An he woz dis tall"

"Got dis one from KFC down da road bruv"

"I work out sometimes"

"Wot dis 'ammer? It woz a Christmas prezzie from me mum"

And didn't I just go out with a bang! I personally think these Perry twins Stone Troll sculpts are the most iconic models of the mid-nineties era in Warhammer. And even though I had fully lost my mojo, once I started painting them, it was a pure joy. Really well set up models, that were very easy to paint. So much so that I banged all six out in four evenings.

So that's that, it is finally done, an army has been fully collected and painted for the first time in my life. Okay so it took two years, two OWAC's and considerable shaming, but as I've been playing since I was ten, after 25 years it's a fucking win.

For the last month of the challenge, I've got a bunch of cleanup to do. Which is in the order of: making a banner, varnishing all this years entries and then laying down the static grass and tufts. After that it's a wrap on the army. And then we go rescue Ol' Grog from the clutches of Adam's Skaven (and give them a damn good trouncing in the process... well that's the idea at least).

Anyway well done to all who finished, some sweet armies were built. Looking forwards to all the wrap-up posts next month.

Samuel

AdamH’s Month of rest – (239.5 Points)

“Our time together grows short, it seems like just yesterday you stumbled drunkenly into my warren looking to make a name for yourself, now you barely cling to life; I expect to see the last of my brood come forth.

Well I have a treat for you this day, you will get to meet my chief gnasher, the claws and teeth of my army as well as a few more familiar friends, and who knows, if you manage to live long enough you might just get to see one of my crowning jewels.”

So this was the month I thought I would take a bit of a break, I decided to paint a couple of high cost models (three of them in fact that compromise ¾ of the monthly total) however half way through the month I thought I should also probably get started on the pile of Slaves that were waiting for me. So in the end what was supposed to be a low model count month ended up being just as high as all of the others.

We start once again with a few more Gutter Runners, taking my total to ten and a decent unit size to harass warmachines and lone characters on the battlefield:

Also, this month sees another Warpfire thrower, the first of my high point cost models designed to give me a bit of a rest. Although after taking this picture I saw a few areas I missed so I will have to go back and tidy them up before I varnish this one:

Next for the units is again more Slaves, 15 of the blighters making a dishevelled 37.5 points… I have the scheme somewhat down after last month which meant that actually these didn’t take me as long as I thought they would, although I do find their lack of details or colours, part of what makes them slaves, also makes them quite dull to paint. In a 2,000 point army I would probably want to field at least two units of 20 of these so I still have a few more to paint if I expand this army:

And finally, only the second Character choice to appear in the army, a Warlord General. He is technically the lord choice/leader of this force although I believe his strings are being pulled behind the scenes by someone else. Unfortunately, I don’t think we are going to get to meet that particular puppeteer during the challenge but who knows what next year will bring. Anyway, onto the model, classic Skaven sculpt this that I tried to bring a bit of extra colour with some poisoned wind globes, which were also practice for something a little…. larger that may just roll onto the scene soon:

To summarise, this month’s entry is:

Gutter Runners x3, Additional Hand Weapons, Throwing Stars [42]

Warpfire Thrower [70]

Skvenslaves x15 (Inc. Musician) [37.5]

Warlord [90]

  

Total – 239.5 points

After taking these pictures I put the models away in my small carry case and discovered I have actually now almost completely filled it with painted rats. A great feeling indeed but also means I need to buy more storage.

We are in the final stretch now, just one more to go (technically I have now passed the challenge goal however I like to try and make a big splash in the final month so I am not going to rest until the brood mother sings!

Best of luck to everyone in these last few weeks and I hope all you following along at home are still safe and sound.