Shadespyre's May Post - Leader Month - (Something about White Dragons?) Dark Elves (2758 points)

OWAC VI - Leader Month - Laird of the White Wyrm

May

Resting on my laurels a bit this month. Most of the effort has gone into stuff for Wild Card month and getting my photography mojo back. Thanks to everyone who suggested I try a grey background as I seem to be getting better results again - well, you can judge for yourselves because here come the pictures!

Kicking off with the four different Wizard sculpts. There's plenty of choice for spellcasters in this range!

Here's a fifth Wizard option, but the only one available on a Cold One. He's joined by a second incarnation of the mounted musician / leader model - I've used the rearing Cold One models for characters and unit leaders, so this will distinguish him from the otherwise identical mini who acts as musician for the Helldrakes. He gives me the option to have a rampaging solo mounted character - unlike Wizards, the range doesn't cater so well for martial heroes in my opinion.

Which is why I've included this guy! NON-DARK ELF MODEL ALERT! But don't worry, he is still a pre-slotta Citadel miniature so my rules remain unbroken! 

He is actually Skarlos, the half-elven leader of the CP2 Bryan Ansell's Heroic Adventurers boxed set. I felt like a suitable paint job could sell him as a Dark Elf; I hope you agree?

The reason he got invited in is because I needed someone suitably badass to lead this little lot - 25 elite Blackguards, along with a musician and standard bearer borrowed from the Mengil Manhide regiment. To keep the Blackguards that little bit blacker, I used a smaller version of the White Dragon symbol on their shields.

The Blackguard didn't make it into the 3rd edition Warhammer Armies, but in 2nd edition they were +1 Elites armed with additional bows, and so they will stay. Maybe they should have gone into the Wild Card section, but I feel like Leader month is comfortable for them. Does anyone still care about that now it's May? 

Right then - onwards and upwards. Leaders with wings next!

If you've been around the hobby a while, you'll recognise this picture and have probably been expecting it to appear. This is Tony Ackland's War Eagle (with Dark Elf rider), TA5 from the Arcane Monstrosities range. In 1984 this was a pretty impressive size, and is one of the classics of the time I think. Though it should be noted that the Dark Elf rider was a horrible, dumpy and lumpen thing which you'd be as likely to think was a Dwarf as a Dark Elf! So I got an Eagle without the rider and made my own:

I've included a bunch of photos because I'm very happy with how this came out. To add a saddle to the mount, I made a mould from the Cold Ones so that I could make a copy of theirs and adapt it to suit. I added the harness to try and sell this better rather than just perch it on the Eagle's back. 

The rider himself is another version of the mounted musician figure. To make him fit, I cut away the armoured skirt behind his legs so that I could fold him into a kneeling pose (like the mounted crossbow ladies) and then resculpted mail over the gaps. I wanted to replace his measly sword with something more impressive, like the halberd / lance / pike thingy in the picture. Wandering through my bits collection unearthed the top end of this halberd which I then constructed for him - by incredible coincience, this part is the top of the weapon which the original rider model wields! No idea how I came to have it, but it makes me happy to have included it here.

The colour scheme is vaguely inspired by *tropical* Harpy Eagles, but at least the name makes sense for Dark Elves. I look at lots of arctic birds of prey but they tend to be a more speckly white which I thought would be hard to pull off effectively.

I'd be very pleased to have this model as the general of my army, but there's something else missing isn't there? Yup, a Dragon! Dragons are my first love and the chance to include an ancient classic here could not be missed But which one?

Well, it's Dark Elves, so that suggests a Black Dragon, and it happens that just in time for Christmas 1982 Citadel introduced this:

This beautiful beast is the FF61-2 Black Dragon (61-2 because it replaced an earlier Giant Wyvern model). Just look at those sleek lines and that highly sittable-on pose. Perfect. Less perfect is their incredible scarcity on eBay. Although as far as I know they remained in production alongside the only-slightly-later DRG / C11 Dragons, the other five of the set are easier to find and cheaper to buy. Eventually I found one with a damaged tail and no head (heads on this range are seperate and interchangeable anyway) at a bargain price, and the Black Dragon was ON.

However.

Attentive readers will have noted that the shield emblem carried by the entire army is a Dragon. A White Dragon. And yet, it was only when I picked up the model to paint it - it, the classic Black Dragon which I had carefully tracked down and repaired and made a rider for and then undercoated black - that I realised that I definitely had to paint the damned thing WHITE!!

Nuts.

Anyway - I re-primed it in white, started painting it, dropped it (snapping a wing and a very elaborate sword blade I had specially made), repaired it again and so eventually we got this:

You'll notice I remade the end of the tail in a different style, and selected a different head, adding a bigger tongue because I felt there was something missing. I've previously painted white dragons from a pale blue base, but in this case I wanted to avoid bringing in a new colour so I used the Dark Elf Highlight skin tone as my starting point and worked up to white from there. I'm quite happy with the shadowing I got while still having a dragon which reads as white rather than grey, I hope. I abandoned an ambitious idea of adding more colour with purple glazes because I feared I'd lose the white balance and wasn't sure how I'd put it right if it went wrong! Something to try out on a less important model.

For the rider, the same saddle method as for the Eagle rider, and a voluminous resculpting of his cloak. Then he took a dive and got his fancy sword replaced with a plain plastic one, and a slightly flat repair to his helmet crest. Everyone will be focussed on his mount anyway.

I think that's enough excitement for one month? We need to save some fun things for June, when we'll have some wild things for my Wild Card month.

Army List Additions:

I'm not going to fully spec out all the characters with magic items and things, but I may as well assign some levels to start getting a feel for what a full army list might look like:

Scores for May:         2758  points   33 models

2 x Wizard (level 10)                                                                                                            236 points

1 x Wizard (level 20)                                                                                                            303 points

1 x Wizard (level 25)                                                                                                             418 points

1 x Wizard (level 15, Cold One)                                                                                          225 points 

1 x Hero (level 20, Heavy Armour, Shield, Cold One)                                                 194 points  

1 x Hero (level 15, Light Armour, Great Weapon)                                                        132 points

24 x Black Guards (+1 Elites, Bow, Light Armour, Shield, Standard, Musician)   364 points

1 x Hero (level 20, Heavy Armour, Shield, Lance, Giant Eagle (Griffon))               374 points

1 x Hero (level 25, Heavy Armour, Great Weapon, Winged Dragon level 1)            512 points

Running Total:          5771  points  188  models

Coming Next:

Wild Card month!