Shadespyre's March Post - Rank & File III - 3rd Edition Wood Elves (+1783 points)

OWAC VII - Rank and File Month (III) - 

March

March has been a month of non-Warhammer distractions - my D&D group decided we should meet in person for the first time in a year instead of playing online. And then someone said "But without the virtual table top, how will we do combats? What about miniatures?" and everyone looked at me. And so I've designed, had printed and am now painting minis for all the PCs and NPCs.

And this is why we front-load our OWAC painting, my friends! And so I have plenty to share with you. regardless of such unexpected tasks.

I changed my mind about what to share in March, and so here come the Wardancers!

Firstly, Summer Wardancers

And next, Spring Wardancers

I'm sure you'll all recognise the unit Champion as Glam, on loan from the Skarloc's Scouts set which contributed to the first two months. He's a better fit here, helping to increase the variety of models a bit.

And finally, Autumn Wardancers

This is the debut of my autumn colour scheme. It took me a while to arrive at this, finally realising that the way to make the dark red and chestnut work was to almost eliminate green from the scheme. The very muted green you can see here is actually Desert Yellow with a thin glaze / wash of green to bring it up a bit. To be honest, I could have left the green off, but I wanted just that hint to remind us that these are still Wood Elves.

Let's talk a bit about the seasons. I had this idea that as well as colours, the seasons would inform the gear and combat approach of each unit. In the end, the Wardancers are the only part of the army that express this well - the Spring unit represents youth and speed, lightly equipped and with rapid attacks; the Summer unit represents maturity and strength, with hard hitting great weapons; the Autumn unit represents experience and caution, and carry shields.

The natural progression through life might seem to be spring - summer - autumn. But I envisage my Elves "joining" a season when they come of age - so you could be young but still favour summer or autumn, or be a veteran but still prefer spring - but also to possibly move around in their long lives. 

Is there a Winter faction? We'll have to wait and see...

Apologies that I still haven't started on bases. But instead we DO have...

Hidden Reserves

This seemed like such a fun idea when I thought of it, but now I'm just not sure how many of these I'm going to get to... anyway, Hidden Reserve #1 is ready to be revealed!

Jaeckal bagged the easy points here, spotting that these must be a trio of Treemen, even though some conversions had changd their outline a bit.

These are all created by the great Trish Carden (fka Trish Morrison) and then messed around with a bit by me. On each one, I tried to pull colours out from those I'd used on the Elves from the relevant seasonal theme.

The Spring Treeman is very much the original Marauder model. (MB14/B). I added a few plastic dryad bits on the back to look like new growth.

Summer Treeman started as the other Marauder model, but I was missing the right arm and so this conversion, using some spare "wrong" arms I had lying around, occured! Again, I used dryad parts to provide branches, this time to support a glorious mass of foliage.

And finally, Autumn Treeman is a new resin model from Trish's lovely HarrowHyrst range. This model is packed with tiny details - check out the owl on the raised arm - but I still added some plastic bits to tie it in with the others.

Army List Additions:

Scores for March:       1783    points   33 models

9 x Wardancers                (Light Armour, Add Hand Weapon)                            207 points

1 x Hero (Level 10)       (Wardancer, Light Armour, Add Hand Weapon, Longbow) 106 points 

9 x Wardancers                 (Light Armour, Great Weapon)                                    216 points  

1 x Hero (Level 10)      (Wardancer, Light Armour, Great Weapon, Throwing Spear) 104 points 

9 x Wardancers               (Light Armour, Shields)                                                    207 points

1 x Hero (Level 10)       (Wardancer, Light Armour, Shield, Throwing Spear)  103 points 

3 x Treemen                                                                                                                     840 points   

               

Running Total:          2990  points  97  models

A hefty contribution by the Treemen has more than doubled my points count!

Next Time

The last of the Rank and File, I think? And I'll try to include another Hidden Reserves choice, too.