goblinpaladin's Wood Elves - a January update (203 points)

It is nightmarishly hot in Australia. Canberra, where I am cursed to live, has been smashin' records and breakin' hearts. This mostly means that I haven't been able to get undercoating done, and when I have, I haven't necessarily been able to get any painting done.

At least, not without sticking to my chair. It's gross. I should've gone with goblins or trolls.

family photo! like every family, there's a surly goth

Still, I did manage to break 200 points. I threw the plan out the window a few days ago (when I had seven archers painted, six halfway done and weekend plans) and instead decided to paint up a couple of wardancers to make up the points.

This gives me:

13 archers. At eleven points each, that's 143 points.

3 wardancers. At twenty points each, that's another 60 points.

A total of 203 points. Mathematical!

(As wardancers have such idiosyncratic equipment choices and I haven't painted the shields anyway, I'm just pricing them as nudes.)

three wise kings. no, wait, that's different.

You might have noticed that these aren't what you might call traditional wardancers. I originally wanted to collect what I nicknamed 'elves with axes', as I noticed a couple of Oldhammery Jes Goodwin sculpts I liked (one is in this project, still to come). But as I started delving deep into the Mines of Oldhammer-ia, I awoke the Balrog of Elves are Really Cool. I rapidly expanded my initial 'couple of neat elf sculpts' into a full-fledged Third Edition army. As I scrolled through various wikis and old catalogues, my list of fun miniatures strayed from those labelled 'wood', including a few 'dark', 'high', 'sea', and 'Melnibonean'.

block of ten

I began to conceive of a more pluralistic approach to an elf collection. As the wood elf realms drifted away from the tedious civil war of the lost home islands, it makes sense to me that you would still see those primarily dedicated to Khaine, or to some of the other elven deities that are regarded in Ulthuan as less than savoury. You've obviously still got 'sea' elves (although I think that mine will mostly be river-dwellers, fisher-elves of the lowlands); even the wood elven courts should still retain some trappings and fancy things.

we three elves are warriors tall

So, yeah. There's a witch elf in there. She's cool; she's just really into Khaine. Some of the Glade Runners are really into Kurnos, you know? She makes a great wardancer when goblins invade or those tedious human horse tribes get a bit uppity. Really intense, yeah? Anyway, I've got to introduce you to my cousin. You'll love him, he's got an eyepatch.

two by two hands of elf

As for the other two, they are just some of the wood elf sculpts I like. I'm planning for the army to have lots of archers, a block of spears, some cavalry and lots of wardancers and animal handlers; no elves fighting with hand weapons in traditional blocks. So the elf sculpts like that get promoted to wardancers. I'm sure it'll all work out.

it is real hard coming up with captions

hey was there a limit on how many photos we were supposed to post

i just really like the flowers

i think this is all the archers?

Thanks for scrolling through all those photos of plastic wood elves from 1987! My partner took these photos, and so I wanted to use all of 'em.

that has got to be super uncomfortable

Next month, I'm planning at least another 12 archers (which would take me to 25/29 that I currently own), and a small group of 5 glade runner scouts. That would be 212 points. Let's see what the weather does.

Friday 18 Jan 2019; The Guardian

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