A group Challenge to Paint a NEW Army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle or Rogue Trader
Ah the finish line is in sight. This month I did my army leader and finished off the rest of the witch elves. A pretty meagre haul to be honest so in June I’m going to paint up the remaining cold one cavalry plus my cold one chariot. Anyway here is the points value of my May figures:
- 1 Witherwitch (Level 20 wizard) on cold one with hand weapon - 325 points
- 5 witch elves with light armor with two hand weapons and poisoned attacks - 70 points
Here they are:
Hello to all fellow owacers, here is my humble publication for the month of May.
It 's a rank and files month, so necessary to finish two of my units, the beastmen and the dragon ogres.
Dragon ogres:
They gather 174 points. They are 2 and are ready to join their brethrens.
We have the classic dragon ogre that will be used as a champion. The other is pretty good with a sword.
They both wear red armour and scales with some grey skins. That will make them match with my ogres.
The beastmen:
I still had to finish 16 beastmen to complete the 50 guys regiment. Here there are:
Here, we have 2 Khorne beastmen with vicious warhammers. Then we have two beastmen from the C27 line made by Kev Adams: Shearmone and Bolbone!
Shearmon wears a part red part bony armor while Bolbone chose a completely red armor. Both have faces on their chest armor.
Bolbone is my favorite of the squad, with his little pointy helmet.
Some really classic sculpts from the Runequest line. One of them is a fierce rhinoceros with spear and shield.
First we have a slug/ snake guy named "slug man" then from the C27 line, we have Bendle who receives a new knife, then a kind of lizard/ crocodile guy and Ruttrot a boar guy from C27.
Dwarf Warriors
The backbone of any Dwarf force. These 25 Warriors will fight relentlessly (unless Bugman's Beer is involved)
The Standard Bearer holding his runed banner high
The mighty champion
(lets let him rest)
The Musician ready to bang away
as always it was a fun month of painting some dwarfs
sadly I was not able to make any scenery this month
I hope you all enjoyed your painting this month and look forward to seeing everyone else's posts
good luck all
Till next month
Skål
This month I present Lord Forestmane's retinue of noble retainers. I felt like I was phoning it in this month with only 5 models. But it's been a busy month.
One of the toughest policies and direst duties of King Caradryel was the abandonment of the Old World colonies. A tragedy for many nobles that still had family ties with those elves that refused to leave the continent.
Those who flew to the new populated forests of Athel Loren were somewhat safe. But the people of the coast were damned to perish against the hordes of barbarians, orcs and creatures of chaos awoken after the age of elves and dwarves.
It was not an easy task to enforce the recall of elven troops in the diplomatic table. Among the unrested nobles in Ulthuan, there was a risk of disobeyance and unilaterally send aid to the continent, or worse, open rebellion. One of those, Bel-Tebal of Nagarythe, a caring father for the princes of Tor Nimtala in the Tielan coast. It was vital to retain the few nobles that were still loyal to the crown in the ravaged lands of Nagarythe.
Caladryel was pragmatic and an intelligent leader. It was not possible to make an exception with the stubborn veteran Bel-Tebal. Nor undoing his command. But in the audience with the enraged former prince, he choose wisely the words.
"You, as all the people of Ulthuan, has been commanded not to sent your valuable soldiers to the continent. Yet, I cannot forbid the aid of a father to her daughter and his son-in-law. You can march yourself with your mount, take your best blade and fight for them. Your retinue can accompany you, but they will not be allowed to land in the continent..."
A mount. Not a steed.
Bel-Tebal reached the caverns of his tower and pleaded for the aid of his old friend Ymmrrarior. The ancient female great dragon hear that the offspring of his friend was in danger, so she must stay awake from the dragon dream a little bit longer.
The hordes of chaos creatures did not know that they've indirectly provoked the wrath of an ancient foe. Fire and nightmare made manifest. No ratmen could pass her scale armour. No enemy enough powerful to stand the wrath of the old prince and his terrible ally.
I was also wanting to paint some creature. In the meantime I have been toying with some miniatures based on paleontological reconstructions. I despertely needed to put my hands on the dragon!
At first it was going to be based on some blue lizards that will also be in the same chromatic range of much of my army. The belly and wings in a sandy white or slightly ice yellow. But I was starting to paint my other commander, the elf mage, and I felt in love with the pink-grey I made. It was the perfect colour for the belly and wings of the dragon.
I love to put some small patterns in the horns, head and maybe tail or some key areas of the body of my creatures. I went for a slightly light turquoise strips and then the eye firey-motif.
Finally, the mandatory elf mage. I am basing each of my mages in a discipline of the Old World winds of magic. I chose a different approach to the lore of life. Instead of the usual greens, the japanese flowers allowed my to mix the pinky-gray tones with the flower pattern over the cloak.
1x High elf prince and a great dragon - 760 points
1x High elf mage - 59
Adrian's out.
My final rank and file month is dedicated to my very dear friend, Shaun (previously seen commanding Undead alongside Spawn #1). We've known each other for over 30 years and Warhammer and RPGs and all things nerdy have underpinned our friendship all that time. Indeed it was Shaun who pointed me towards the Oldhammer community when I picked up my brushes again back in 2013/14, which has proved to be a huge boost to my painting and hobbying in all sorts of ways!
Wood Elves always make me think of Shaun and these sculpts have particular resonance for various reasons, so this is by way of a thank you to him as well as a trip down memory lane.
First up are Skarloc's Archers, a "Regiment of Renown" in Warhammer lore going back to the 1980s. Every single one of them is a work of art. I love these sculpts, some of Jes Goodwin's best work of the period in my view. I love the storied history of the unit, the crazy mix of characters who nearly obscure the man himself, the detail on the 'basic' archers, and the rich possibilities and flexibility all of that brings to using the unit in games or RPGs.
People often talk about big miniatures like giants and dragons, or special characters being intimidating and needing a bit of a painting run up before they can do them justice. I think I felt a bit like that about these models. That real need to do them justice and to pay proper homage to the (imho) golden era of old school gaming from whence they hail.
I also opted for matte grey on the chain mail, with the idea that shiny metal should be kept to a minimum when hiding in forests. The only problem was that by the time I made that decision I had already used metallic paints on the exposed weapons for some of the heroes. One of the pit falls of batch painting across units when using up paint mixes during the OWAC, but in true OWAC style there is no time to look back, only to keep painting!
Next up is "Araflane Warskald" the unit musician. Another great sculpt and the use of animal skin makes him seem more celtic and savage than later WE sculpts, which is something I leant into with this unit alongside the military uniform colours.
In a previous post I hinted that another 80's influence might be creeping in to my WE colour schemes, but now wasn't the time for double denim. Rather the woodland fashion question for May was one of Plaid vs Tartan vs Not Getting Carried Away!! OK... maybe a just a little denim to bring that blue back in.
Two of my favourite characters/sculpts from this regiment got special treatment and I tried my hand at Plaid/tartan patterns for the first time. Not entirely successful, but I'm happy enough and I learnt it is best to keep things simple. Getting the flow of the lines seems more important than the complexity of the pattern.
"Glam, the Laughing Warrior" aka Wardancer/Champion, probably needs his skin tone lightening a touch, although I'm equally tempted to go back and give him some suitably Bowie-esque face paint. Tartan trousers were already a stretch on this model though, and I didn't want to ruin the Slaine type vibe of the sculpt which I think the darker tone helps with.
It doesn't help with photos though. Sorry about that.
Not officially a member of Scarlok's Archers, this is the falconer from the Wood Elf War Wain, who I think makes a good mage (for when rules don't allow your standard bearer to also be a mage - lame!). The blue and slight touches of yellow are also a nod to another emerging faction within my Wood Elves, while hopefully not taking him too far away from the rest of Scarlok's Archers.
I like the fact he has a falcon on his arm, and wish there were more Beastmaster options in WFB 4/5. I think Wood Elves lost something in not being able to have more animals in their forces, but the presence of the falcon marks him out from the standard Wood Elf and brings us on to the subject of "Multi-purposing and Special Characters by Proxy" as in a pinch he could double as Skaw the Falconer.
A final note on the birds, I have decided to use colour schemes inspired by birds of prey native to the British Isles, so not-Skaw is accompanied by a not-quite-Goshawk, and not-Sceolan is accompanied by the slightly smaller, not-quite-Sparrowhawk.
If Scarlok's Archers are an iconic Oldhammer unit then for me the iconic Middlehammer era Wood Elf unit are the Waywatchers (aka Tree Ninjas as I have started affectionately calling them while painting).
I can remember Shaun and I being very taken with both the concept and the sculpts (especially the one with the balaclava style mask who looks like a Wood Elf Beach Head from Gi Joe/Action Force!) and almost immediately incorporating them as an influence into our D&D games and characters.
Finally we come to a mini I'm not even sure how I acquired (possibly as part of a trade with a friendly UK hobbyist?) but ended up fitting my army, and the theme of this post, absolutely perfectly. If anyone can identify him then shout in the comments, I'm not sure I've ever really tried tbh.
In a post on another blog about another project entirely, I mentioned that there is a long honoured and respectful tradition in my D&D games for Elven Rangers (and by extension in that RT project, Eldar Scouts) to be named after Nigerian footballers... which was definitely also Shaun's fault.
Yet there was always one who stood apart from this tradition...
Shaun's character Garion "Red Fox" Kevanarial was directly inspired by the Wood Elf Waywatchers from Warhammer and we found fruitful parallels in the TSR AD&D 2nd edition era material and this sculpt could be the very image of how he started out (or indeed how his brother Allain looks in the Dragon Magazine we borrowed from), before his truly epic descent into Chaotic Neutral naughtiness and on to allegedly double agent evil-doing and Demi-god impersonation... You know, PROPER D&D, with Thac0 and variable XP tables and hard maths....
Anyway... the point is, it reminds me of Shaun so this one is called Garion :)
F*ckin' Tree Ninjas! Yeah!! :D
Monthly Total:
10 Scouts (inc. Musician and Standard Bearer) - 192 pts
Champion/Skarloc*- 51 pts
Mage - 59 pts
Wood Elf Hero w/ Longbow (I) - 107 pts
10 Way Watchers - 180 pts
Wood Elf Hero w/ Longbow (II) - 107 pts
Total: 696 pts
* I will look at Special Character/proxy point values in the final wrap up post
Tom's Bony Bit:
I am so fed up of painting these stupid skeletons! They have taken me some time to come back to but I am glad they are finished and I can move on to my wild cards!
I have kept with the colour scheme and recipe, although I had to go back over some of the red to get the right fade. I like the rusty metal finish and how they tie to the rest of my army.
Monthly Total:
10 Skeletons w/ light armour, shields, spears (inc. Musician and Standard bearer) - 144 pts
Total: 144 pts
Shadespyre asked about DnD models so I included this necromancer as another example. She has been undercover as an agent of the Red Wizards Of Thay, so her colour scheme is reversed with red magic and purple and pink robes. Both DnD Necromancer models were very difficult because of being one piece sculpts and having very difficult areas to reach.
Good luck to everyone for the last month, the end is just around the corner!
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