Part VI- Repainting the Wood Elf Force- The Dragon Rider

Back after a ton of summer activities with the kids. While all those activities were going on I wasn't complacent in terms of painting. In fact for summertime painting I got quite a bit done.

This next guy, the ever cool Dragon Master from the Citadel range (notes here). Like the rest of the Wood Elf force this particular model was purchased not for a Wood Elves per say, but yes, you guessed it: an ally for my Empire force in 3rd edition. This purchase represented the start of my High Elf force  which in years would number 14,000 pts. I quickly painted the model up and his debut was against Jeff and Dave's forces (Orc and Goblins/Skaven respectively) during the Ice Storm of 1991 at Dave's house. Since it was just me on the other side I played a combined Empire, Wood Elf and High Elf force. I don't remember too much other than we setup the board on the front living room floor as the power was still out, nor who won. I do recall however they were conspiring to knock him out early, as in like round 1. So against all odds I won initiative and charged across the board and got him into hand-to-hand combat. Don't remember what happened after that, but pretty sure I spoiled their casting of Windblast or Hurricane.

After that Jeff more or less stopped playing so Dave and I played a lot more. This particular dragon would end up as a general for my High Elf force, joined by another Dragon Master model as the army standard bearer and 4 more dragons. The cool thing about the High Elf force in 3rd edition is you could field a force made entirely of dragons which I did a few times. The downside was at 315 points the +4 Shock Elite Dragonkin riders only had 1 Wound...

After moving to 4th and 5th the model sat for a bit until I stripped it of paint and redid it into the form you see now. I made the butterfly wings from regular painting canvas that I cut out to the right shapes and stiffened with successive coats of a watery glue. A small wire forms the leading wing edge to give it additional support. The odd thing was that I modeled a saddle and plunked a 4th edition Empire Rieksguard knight on it  Not sure if the mini ever saw combat in that form.

Since getting back to Oldhammer I've been reassigning models to their proper place in the army lists and it just didn't really fit with the Empire, but I didn't want to trash the dragon. So I touched up the paint job and put the original elf warrior and saddle back on. Upgraded the base to a 50mm base and Bam, done. Moral of the story? Never throw anything away!

So with all that he really wouldn't fit into my High Elf force either with its blue and white paint jobs. What better place to assign then my reborn Wood Elves? Adding fall foliage and once again ties it all back in. 

Next up? I'm still looking for 9 more wood elves from the plastic Warhammer Regiments set for two more archer units (I have 31 now, so two units of 20 is the goal). I did pick up 2 more 4th edition Glade Guard models which I'm using for my Kinband Warriors. I don;t know why but I like these models a lot. They might very well be next as I now have 2 archer units, 1 wardancer unit, a wizard, general, treeman and now dragon rider painted. the force continues to be reborn!

Adding to all of this I'm also working on my reborn 3rd edition Dark elf force and have just finishes a unit of 10 Dark Elf Dark riders. (and yes, you can see some "under the brush" Cold One Knights in the background).

So stay tuned.