Part X of the Repainting my 3rd Edition Wood Elf Force - Elven Lords

While I have not blogged about it lately, I have been diligently working on my 3rd Edition Wood Elf force since Spring. So much so that even though I am going to post about a single unit today, my Elven Lords cavalry unit — it is actually not the only one complete.

In order, I have finished the following which will be in the next blog entry(ies):

• Beastmasters (just the animals and I had to get creative, those guys go for $$$).
• Another treeman
• Wizards, 1 on foot and 2 mounted.
• 2nd Wardancer unit of 10
• Army Standard Bearer
• Bears Monstrous Host
• A Shape Changer — a Werebear
• Another unit of 20 archers!
• Baggage! Only three elves, but I need to find more "elf villager" types anyways.

In short, my Wood Elf army is pretty much complete outside of some Falconer ideas which I may or may not get to and a unit of eight Glade Runners (scouts) made from left over minis from Archer units. Along with that I need to get the actual beast master elves as well for the beastmaster units. If I had to add up the points off the top of my head, it is at least 5,000, especially with the dragon. Not bad for a force that started as allies for my Empire army and was maybe around 800 points back then.

But onward to the meat of the post, the Elven Lords which gives this blurb from the Warhammer Armies book:

"The Lords of Elven communities and their noble retainers ride magnificent warhorses into battle. Wood elves favor roan and dappled horses, plaiting their manes and ornamenting their bridles with hair-plumes and jewels."

Like Mike McVey with his Elven Lord unit featured in White Dwarf #141I did not want to have too uniform of an appearance, but I did not vary them as much as he did. Because of this and the fact that I wanted the flexibility to field them as Wood Riders if I so chose I kept them uniform to the rest of the army. In my imagining of them I take it to be perhaps a single Elven Lord with his retainers, nine in number rather than 10 individual lords.

I decided to keep the horses rustic looking, but uniform with their manes and tails. I did not want to go all gray as to me this seems more like High Elf steeds so I went with more brown horses. Green and white for the bridles with minor variations on the white patterns. Their bases continue with the autumnal turf to convey a middle of the woods late in the year feel that the rest of the army has.

Now some notes on the composition of the unit itself:

• The champion of the unit: I have disliked the mini since I bought it (around 1990) as I recall. Not sure why, but I think something in the pose struck me as odd. Finally, however, he came together with a paint job I liked this time around.
• The back row of the unit is of special note. After a single purchase off eBay I was able to round out the unit, but they were not cheap. I had never seen the rider with the mask attached to the helm before and it struck me as unusual.
• The elf in the front rank with the bow spent a number of years atop a cockatrice for my 4th/5th edition High Elf Army. I debated swapping him out but left him. If I can find some musical instrument "baggage" it will go to him.
• Several of the elves served as Dragonkin mounted on various dragons for my 3rd Edition High Elf Army when it functioned as a purely dragon force. Real quick — if you wanted, a High Elf player could field an entire army of nothing but dragons... more on that in a post at a later point. Fortunately I kept all the metal horses.
• The standard bearer I got off of an eBay seller who I do business with quite often. Sometimes pricey, but always reliable. The mini was in rough shape and gobs of paint which I stripped down, primed, painted. The flag itself is inspired from Dark Ages England and I tried to convey an Anglo-Saxon type feel to it while staying with the colors and scheme of the army.

One thing of note is the white spiral pattern on the shields... for some reason on these guys it was a bit wavier than on the other units. Not sure why. I was also short a few shields so I had to use some later edition ones...

Despite all this the unit came out fairly well and are a nice fit for the elites of the army. They did take a bit longer than I expected however.

Next up, as I mentioned and possibly a line on some minis that can stand in for Falconers but that is low on the priority list. Ok so if you ask, I am looking for Bob Olley Half Elves from the Ironclaw line in the late 1980s. They are not cheap however when they come up on eBay and the half elf with the spear cannot be used for the Falconer unit itself.

The next post on the Wood Elf force may be a "catch-all" as I mentioned above encompassing the last units as well as my thoughts on the army, what went well and what I would change with hindsight.

 

 

 

 

Part IX of the Repainting my 3rd Edition Wood Elf Force- The War Wain!

 

Since last time I blogged about it I have expanded my Wood Elf force considerably. This time however with a miniature that has a long history before it finally arrived on my doorstep. To what am I referring to? The addition of a Wood Elf Wain Lord aka the Elven Attack Chariot.

The Elven Attack Chariot was part of the "Machineries of Destruction" line from Citadel Miniatures. These featured minis from the 1980s were mainly siege engines and the like. They also included foot regiments like Prince Uthar's Imperial Dwarfs, which came in rectangular boxes, cool artwork and a short story of the machinery or regiment on the back.

An excerpt from the text:

"Prince Iolair Gilandiril drove through the forest on a crisp winter's morning. The frost glistened jewel-like on the branches and on the leaves of the evergreens, and the pale sun filtered through the morning mist to wash the scene with delicate pastel shades."

About 10 years ago I actually won this off of eBay. However, as I sadly pointed out here, it never made it to my doorstep. I still hope that someday it might arrive, but realize it is long since gone in the post and having moved since then makes it doubly unlikely. As best as I can figure it was delivered to the next street over from where I lived; same number for the house, but different street name.

So it was that around this time last year I got this miniature for considerably more than the one I lost out on (I paid $25 plus shipping for the other one!) It was not until September 2018 that I got around to painting it after a busy summer.

Of special note is the figure Aesllanan Woodmage (to the right) sculpted by Jes Goodwin. I have pretty much always liked this mini, so much so that I bought a second one to paint in the same color-scheme as the one on the chariot. Some would modify the mini so you could take the mage off of the chariot and use on foot on a 20mm base... Not me. I liked it so much I wanted to paint it twice! This mini is also unusual for me as it is a fairly light tone for the clothing. I always undercoat in thin watery black paint so when I go lighter it presents its own challenges. In all it came out fairly well in my estimation.

As you can see the chariot miniature overall continues with the autumnal foliage I have used on the rest of the Wood Elf force. I stayed away from painting the white like in the art on the box; to me that has more of a High Elf feel to it. So more browns and tans it was for the paint and with more gold used than normal to denote a high ranking wood elf noble riding in the chariot.

Here are the goods, my Elven Attack Chariot at long last! Now if that one I bought for $25 could shoul up that would be great....

Part VIII of the Repainting my 3rd Edition Wood Elf Force

I've actually been busy in real life as well as with Warhammer stuff. Over the last few months I've done lots of work on my Dark Elf force along with my wood Elves I've been chronicling here on the blog. Interestingly I've been working on the Wood Elves in the autumn and the Dark Elves in the echoing their basing choices.

Quick aside: the progress on the Dark elves can be found here. I'll have some new photos up soon of their progress.

As we all know, Wood Elf forces in 3rd Edition Warhammer are heavy with bow armed troops. This also carried over to later editions. In 3rd the compulsory choices are archers of which the minimum to field is 30. Aside from my Skarloc Wood Elf Archers all the bow armed units in the army are the result of the PBS3 -Plastic Warhammer Regiment Boxed Set. I know I've said it before, but while not the best miniatures that GW ever produced they are some of the best value around, even now as everyone and their brother has some spare ones to sell on E-Bay or trade. Additionally, to me at least these "looks like Warhammer to me" in much the same way 3rd Edition Talisman "As I know it."

So with all this here are the units I've completed, not one but two units, 20 strong of Wood Elf archers. As you can see green predominates but I continued with the black and white accenting to tie them into the other units of the army, along with the autumnal basing or red, orange and yellow. This now brings the fire power up to 82; three units with 20 and the Skarloc Archers having 22 in the regimental box set.

The 2nd unit (2nd as in I pictures the first unit here and Skarloc's counts as unit #1 for my army) followed by the 3rd.

To close out, I'll also need to get pictures up of my Elven Attack chariot that I painted up for the Wood Elf force, it came out well and I realized I finished it several months back. I now have a sizable force of Wood Elves repainted and have come a long way when they were simply an Ally force for my mega-battle with Dave and Jeff.

Part VII- Repainting the Wood Elf Force

I now turn back to a army that I haven't worked on in several months, my Wood Elves. As I last left the army it was at the state of adding my converted Wood Elf Dragon Rider. (Part VI described here).

This time around, I've churned out twenty 4th Edition spear-men for my 3rd Edition Wood Elf Force... Obviously they fill out the role of Warrior Kinbands in the 3rd Edition Army list.

Couple of points:

• I went with the 4th Edition range for several reasons, one being cost: the 4th edition range is not that hard to come by and the prices to round them out were fairly cheap. When compared to the 3rd edition elves they were significantly cheaper.
• Availability- Not to hard to find on eBay.the 3rd Edition elves with spears on eBay are bit more and usually in smaller groups. I was able to assemble the unit fairly quickly.
• Most importantly, I like the minis. I'm not sure the reasoning, but I've always liked these pointy ears.

So I started with 12 that I had bought years ago; stripped the old paint off and started at square one. Got eight more off eBay last fall and just got around to painting them. So without further delay the next unit to come off the bench.

As you can see I continued the autumnal feel with the basing. I also continued the green shields with the white swirl pattern to tie them into the rest of the army thus far.

Next up for this army is... I'm not sure. I have another unit of wardancers currently standing at 7 out of 10, and two units of 20 archers formed from metal command/hero minis and miniatures from the plastic Warhammer Fantasy Regiment box set.

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.

Part V- Repainting the Wood Elf Force- The General

Thanks PhotoBucket.

Like a lot of hobbyists I imagine, I have spent the last week and half migrating everything off of PhotoBucket due to their new Terms and Conditions. So that means not much time for actual hobby work. In my case I had most everything backed up, but the Mac that had the photos got damaged in a flood due to an errant sump pump malfunction. So in a few short months it was: lose the local copies of the photos and then the online ones (in a sense). Fortunately, for the Wood Elf thread I chose to place it online here at Blogger (until this too closes- many years from now, right google?)

Anyways, onto the thread: since the Wood Elf host has been growing in size I figured it was time to pause in the rank and file units and give them a leader. For my general I utilized the Ashen Peacemaker miniature that I had procured years ago sans horse and then proceeded to cut apart for a ill-advised attempt at a conversion. What possessed me to do that I have no idea. Fortunately I cut him apart at the points where he was easy to reassemble.

Like the rest of the army he is on a brown base (not the sides obviously) with fall foliage and with the rest of the army I went for a more subdued color scheme. To me this makes sense the Wood Elves are not High Elves; they are not about flash and style, but more rustic and "natural" in their finery.

The horse is actually from another 3rd Edition mini from the Elf6 Cavalry range. The general model it came with is (so far) assigned to the Elven Lord unit im assmebling (see below), but remains to be seen if that is where he stays. I think the crown throws the whole look off for a Wood Elf army to be honest.

As far as my general (I still need to think up a name) there is still a bit of touch up to go on the base and a few other spots. Why is I only notice these after I take photos and prepare the blog post???

I still have not decided whether he will accompany a unit of (so far) 6 Elven Lords or if he will be independent. Of course a lot of this is predicated on what happens with the battle standard bearer of which I'll have mounted as well.

Next up to blog about is my mounted wizard "Milambar Ice Blade". I actually took photos of him too, but noticed that I still need to paint the "ramage" (he has a saddle bag with scrolls). Also the Dragomaster (DRAG7) which I converted years ago with his remounted rider is almost complete too. If that were not enough I have another unmodified dragon that is stripped of its old paint job and primed. As to which army it will go I'm not sure yet, perhaps it will be painted in a high elf scheme...

And further: I still have another mounted elf wizard and a unicorn in need of a mounted female elf wizard.... an elf kin warrior band, two more 20 strong elf archer units, another Treeman, another war dancer troupe, and a scratch built chariot... So plenty of stuff to do with this army to say the least.

I'm still tinkering with the light box (I know, I know, I've been saying this for a while) but have come up with a few good ideas while I get some more lights this week. These photos are a bit better than as of late. I also have been re-reading about it in the web. Seems like that information I knew at one point, but I must have purged from my memory over the last few years.


In any event let me know what you think of the paint job or any other questions or comments. 
 

Part III- The Repaint of Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers

Part III- The Repaint of Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers

Like a lot of my 3rd edition models these guys have undergone many paints and then subsequent repaints. As I noted during the initial post of this topic I had to paint a lot of models quickly back in the day as I was the only player of "good" armies; meaning in larger battles it was always me, allying with... myself. So being an Empire player primarily back then meant Wood Elves as an ally contingent.

I was fortunate enough to grab a box set of Skarloc's Woof Elf Archers around 1989 (the box is long since gone.) Their initial paint job was rushed quite a bit, I don't remember much by they were obviously clad in a lot of green. The second repaint left them likewise green but still rather flat and using 5th/6th edition shields.

For their last (hopefully) repaint I took my time. I actually finished them about a month ago but with a two-week vacation I'm just getting around to posting this. As you can see I went with the same autumnal feel for the color palette I've been using for all of my reborn Wood Elf force, along with appropriate flock.

The photos are bit yellowish as I've been having a hard time getting to the store to get natural light bulbs for the painting/photography area.

Overall, I'm pleased with how they came out. For the shields I opted for a simple white swirl pattern which I had for several painted Glade Guards. I echoed the color on the banner which is a stylized pair of wings.

Next up is a Treeman which is almost complete. Until next time.

Part II of the Repainting of my 3rd Edition Wood Elf Force.

Part II of the Repainting of my 3rd Edition Wood Elf Force.

The first unit of the rebuilt force can be found here.

Despite a major flood in the man cave of the basement, I was able to continue to churn out some more units. I've been working on two units simultaneously, one unit of 10 Wood Elf Wardancers and a unit of 20 Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers which will be used as Guards or Lord's Bowmen. The archers are nearly complete, but the Wardancers are fully complete!

As you can see, I've used some regular Wood Elf warriors and champion models to give them a unique look and feel. I have another unit of Wardancers that I'm still assembling models for. This unit is the left overs from the first unit in the sense of the actual War Dancer models. Back in the day I used the ten models I had as Sea Elf Wardancers for my High Elf force. These models were all  actual minis from the Wardancer range, but for the rebirth of the army I decided to spread them out across two units instead, make sense? The second unit will look more like the Wardancer troops depicted in the Warhammer Armies book.

In keeping with my first archer unit I repainted, I continued the look of fall foliage on the bases and movement trays. I plan on doing this for the entire army to give it a unified, autumnal look.

Next up? I have a unit of 4th edition Wood Elf Glade Guards. I've always liked better than the 3rd edition models for the Wood Elf Host. For the 3rd edition force they function as Warrior Kinbands obviously. My scratch built Wain Lord chariot is another possibility along with my first Treeman repaint.

My journey (back) into 3rd Edition and the rebirth of my Wood Elves

Now that my Chaos Dwarf force is complete (for the most part) I decided to really start painting/repainting my other armies. But before that...

In the past I described how around 1987-89 my high school buddies and I played some amazing AD&D games and a bit later some Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay which I outlined here.

As we transitioned to the later grades in high school we started playing Warhammer Battle, at the time 3rd Edition. For some reason my buddies started playing the game earlier than I. As I would later learn they all picked  different armies so they could ally with each other for larger games. As I recall it was a follows: Jeff- Orcs and Goblins, Dave- Skaven, Pete- Dark Elves, Mike- Goblins? and Daryl had a small Chaos Force featuring Chaos Snakemen. For the most part when I started playing everyone else had largely stopped except Jeff and Dave.

As you can see all of the evil armies were taken except for Undead which didn't appeal to me. So as I started out I briefly played one game with my army as Bretonnian force before converting it to an Empire force. At some point I may post pictures of my Empire army but not now.

So what does this have to do with Wood Elves I hear you say? Glad you asked. Since there was only three of us playing regularly, if we all wanted to play it would be Jeff and Dave vs me! So with an Empire force, what to do? I had to buy and paint my own allies and hence where my Wood Elves came from. In fact my Wood Elf force which would grow to about 1500 pts was just that, an ally contingent that got bigger and bigger. I'm guessing Games Workshop did this but design... Later, my High Elf army would take the same path until it got to be massive, far larger than the Empire force.

I really haven't set out to repaint my wood elves this last month of so, I was repainting my dark elves, but for some reason I stripped down the Wood Elves and started them up with a unit that was one of my original Wood Elf purchases: a unit of 20 archers from the Warhammer Regiment Box set. I think searched the web, not a lot out there in the way of 3rd Edition Wood Elf minis (painted and presented) that is.

As you can see above I repainted them entirely in traditional greens like their original paint jobs, but wanted to make them look very autumnal. So I stopped at the craft store for some Woodland Scenics clump foliage- Fall mix for the bases and the movement tray. For the first try it's a tad too clumpy despite getting the handle of cutting the foliage it with my x-acto as I went.

So stay tuned for further updates about the rebirth/repainting of my Wood Elf Host. Unlike my Dark Elf army underway at the Oldhammer Forums I think I'm going to keep all my Wood Elf updates here on the blog.