Paul M's High Elf Host - "The Star and Garter" - Rank and File Month One

Yessss! There's nothing like the start of OWAC season to get the hobby juices flowing. I've absolutely loved seeing all the progress posts and camaraderie in the group this month and I'll start my post by saying thank you and congratulations to one and all, challengers and Mighty Overlords included, for getting OWAC VI off to such a good start.

I always like to start with a rank and file month as I like to get some bulk painting in the army colour scheme done before moving on to things like leaders and wildcards. 

This year I have started with a unit of Silver Helm cavalry, remembering that last year I didn't seem to hate painting all those horses as much as I heard people complain about... hmmm...

These are my second unit of Silver Helms for my High Elf host and in theory form the bulk of Ulthuan's cavalry forces. As such I don't treat them as a particularly high status unit like Dragon Princes, nor a specialist unit like Ellyrian Reavers, and their livery is a fairly basic white and blue combo over simple silver plate, with the thematic green 'dragon scale' on the mail in honour of this being a host of King Caledor.

The unit was assembled from what remained after a pre-OWAC version of myself took the easy option from a hoard of accumulated second hand mismatched and damaged HE cavalry and selected the most intact*/easiest to repair cavalry for my first unit. This meant lots of dodgy gaps around the necks (which to my shame I left unfilled as I had really begun to fall out of love with these sculpts... an early sign of the onset of cavalry fatigue?) and of course missing tails. More press moulding was the answer here of course, but after a number of experiments I found press moulds the plastic horse tails from the original model (with the wrapping at the base) are very tricky to attach reliably and prone to getting knocked off easily, so I have actually gone for tails from Goblin Wolf riders from the same era as the profile gives a better fit/stick, and so the scale is still suitably OTT.

* Intact didn't always mean correctly matched torsos to legs, so both units remain slightly mismatched even after some adjustments between units, but I have come to see that as a feature of how the army book describes Silver Helms as recruited from the young nobility of High Elf society. Yes, there is a broad uniform and standard of equipment within and across units, but Elves lives are long and military equipment is likely made bespoke and at different times so uniformity doesn't seem as important in this type of unit.

I also had a go at press moulding an arm to replace one that was completely missing, always with the idea of making this a standard bearer. I had real trouble getting a decent mould of the arm I wanted to use and this is the best of a very bad bunch. Slightly misaligned cocktail stick banner pole for 1990s authenticity.... also another sign I was losing the love for them. At least I remembered right at the last minute that I had some plastic HE emblems, including the long pointed star to match the shield design for the unit that I was going to stick on top to make it look less like a cocktail stick.... then I took it off again and stuck it on the right way round....

The banner is a simple pennant cut from the foil of a wine bottle top, with the runes Sethai, meaning: "flight, wind, cry in the far mountains" and Elthrai, meaning: "Doom, inexorable fate, hope" used in combination here to infer that a swift death awaits the enemies of the Silver Helms. 

This combination echoes the runes on the banner I added last year to the first unit, Sethai meaning 'Flight, wind, cry in the far mountains' and Harathoi meaning 'Youth, boundless energy, jealousy' used together to represent the speed and potency of the young elven nobles that make up the Silver Helm cavalry. This repeated use of the first rune is also deliberate to try and give a sense of shared military ethos and identity across the regiments of Silver Helms.

I also realised that the unit champions would be far better swapped around so that the one with the horse shaped crest on his helm leads the 'horse' unit and the bare headed Middlehammer era champion leads the 'star' unit. So.... this month I painted a champion, a horse, and a shield from scratch which you can see here over these two miniatures. I swapped the shields for obvious reason but I had to swap the mounts too so the basing would be consistent within the two units.

So there we have it. A unit of eight Silver Helms, and an example of a very successful officer exchange programme. I'm definitely done painting horses for a while though!

Total for the month:

8 Silver Helms inc. Champion, Standard bearer, and musician -  353 pts

Total: 353 pts /16* figures

* mounted troops count double according to OWAC rules, and rather than points value this year's SPECIAL EDITION is more focussed on the minimum 10 figures per month.
NB: for my own self imposed rule about needing to paint one extra figure per 5 pre-painted bases I use, it is important to note that all 8 bases were done from scratch this month. I might need that cushion later!

Now, that might sound like a negative, moaning post about how much I hate the models I've just painted.... Nope. It's an OWAC victory is what it is! There is NO WAY I would have bothered to go back and try and resurrect a second unit without the OWAC giving me the proper motivation. They are FAR from perfect but they are ready for the battlefield and now I have two units of far from perfect Silver Helms rather than just one, and a total of 42 painted High Elf cavalry across 3 divisions of light (15 Ellyrian Reavers), medium (18 Silver Helms), and heavy cavalry (9 Dragon Princes). Fourteen year old me is not going to believe this when I tell him :)

...

"Wot!? All that and still no blummin' archers?"

Alright, alright. Keep you shirt on (until the end of the challenge where you can bare your chest like a real man behind a fully painted army of toy soldiers!). Here...

I finally got round to finishing my first refurbished archer unit - 22 Archers of Caledor. These don't count towards the OWAC but it does feel good to have them done as this unit includes some of my very first high elf models from the original WFB4 boxed set I got for my birthday back in 1992... and it is at least their third coat of paint so don't look too closely for any detail because there isn't any!

Despite all the battles they have fought in they have never had proper leadership until now. I've tried to mix up my available command figures across the multiple units, so I've co-opted a spare Bolt Thrower crew member to act as unit champion (I quite like the idea and look of Archer/Bolt thrower officers having the same 'uniform' in the Caledor lines).

I was short one whole musician, and had a broken archer with no bow, so I tried my hand at some more ambitious press moulding with some of my least impressive results to date. After 5 failed attempts I took the least worst and made it work. Sort of.... There is also a single very old, and very bad (possibly one of my first EVER attempts at press moulding from many years ago), replacement bow top in amongst the crowd.

The standard bearer had a broken sword which kept him out of use, but I finally found the blade that was broken (not even sorry) and fixed it. The runes are Minaith meaning: "Skill in arms, spirituality, the Lost Way" and Senlui meaning: "Swiftness, accuracy" which seems like an apt combination for archers. In WFB5 both High Elf archers and spearmen have the "Citizen Levy" attribute which lets them shoot/fight with one extra rank. I have already used the Minaith rune on the banners of both my Spearmen units to signify this martial philosophy of High Elven citizenry, so I have deliberately used it again for the archers to show that connection in how the units are formed and then function as the back bone of any High Elf army.

Right. I'll shut up. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you again next month :)