Contrasty Scarlocs´ Archers

It sure has been a while since I worked on fantasy elves. As you know it´s been all eldar and IG as of lately. But I´ve had these Scarlocs´ archers sitting around in their original box since late 80´s and finally with arrival of those contrast paints I got myself together to actually throw some color on them.

So it´s only ten models now and that leader is not Scarloc himself but an ancient Legolas from a Lord of the Rings box I bought back in the days. Far from the best Scarlocs´ you´ll see around but I´m pleased with them as I wanted to test how fast I can make table top ready models with those contrasts. I wouldn´t hesitate pushing these around on a battle field.

Not going to set myself any deadlines here but I think I´ll have a beginning of a wood elf force here. It´s just 20 more archers and a general to meet the 3rd edition minimas. We´ll see what happens as I have a couple of other project going on too.

 All completed models so far. Some shields are still missing. Will add them later.

A closer look at some of the troopers and the standard.

I general I´m really happy with the way those contrasts work for this kind of mass painting. The result is just good enough for gaming and you can make units quite fast compared to regular paints. Just sprayed base on a few more Scarlocs´, a wardancer and a couple of other elves.

Elf parade

In my previous posting I mentioned the Finnish independence day and the military parade that is an essential part of celebrations. Going through my even older text I noticed that almost exactly one year ago I painted the first model in the blue and white theme that was then chosen for my high elf army. That me made think - let´s see how my army looks today. Elves! Get ready for a parade!

Here´s everyone. Not exactly in a parade formation rather than just arranged on a bookshelf to fit in one picture.

Backrow: Baggare train, Guards, Shore riders with Scouts behind them, a Wizard, a Spectre

Middle row: Merchant company, Archers

Front row: Two Marine bolt batteries, Ship company, Wardancers

That roughly 120 models painted during last 12 months if you count in the war machines and carts too. I´m pleasantly suprised with myself.

Here´s a closer shot of the left wing. The merchant company was the first unit I completed. I had quite a lot of those 4th edition archers and spearmen left and it was nice to practise painting after many years not touching your brushes.

The right wing. Pretty much everything here is old school citadel. A lot of Jes Goodwin sculpts here.

In my opinion the army has a naval expeditionary force feel in it. It´s an infantry strong army with just a small unit of light cavalry in support. Just like something you could expect to land from elven warships and merchant galleys.

I´m hoping to expand my army so that it would eventually have at least one unit of every unit type presented in the WFB: Armies book. That means that I will have to paint a dragon rider, a unit of silver helms, a unit of warrior, kith unit and a chariot. I have a dragon and it´s rider in WIP state and it would be finished quite fast if I took the bull by horns and just painted it. One day...

For kiths I would like to get some rural looking archers. Armed with longbows the kiths could add some firepower to my army with lower points value than the normal +1 missile elite archers. I did buy a chariot a few months ago and I think I will take it on the painting table some day during next spring. As I love Jes Goodwin sculps I will try to get my hands on some more hand weapon armed elf warriors and create a warrior out of them.

Independence day archers

Today we are celebrating the 99th independence day of Finland. It is a tradion to have a big military parade on 6th december and this year it will be in Kajaani. And it is also quite common that if the Defence Forces has aquired some new equipment lately it will be presented to the public on this parade. This year the new system to make it´s first public appearance is the Orbiter II UAV system that will fly over the city of Kajaani during the parade and the image it transmits will be shown on a big screen.

With all this on the background I felt it would be appropriate to have something new ready for my high elves today. As my army has been lacking a dedicated archer unit I decided a while ago that I should get one. I was lucky to score about 30 plastic fantasy regiment archers from two seperate ebay auction for a very low price. Now the unit is completed and ready to mow down my enemies.

The unit leader is a Citadel Eternal Champion EC05 Dyvin Tvar model. Both the musician and standard bearer are excellent Jes Goodwin models from Elf command groups range. And the rank & file are of course fantasy regiment unipose elven archers. The archers were in pretty nasty shape when I got them but I decided not to strip them but to just give them a facelift. I think it worked and will do just fine as rank & file. The command group was given a bit more care.

A close up on the command group.

The whole unit.

This is how the archers looked like when I got them.

Seventeen archers, standard, musician and a LVL5 champion is roughly 350 points. That is a lot but elf archers can be used in hand to hand combat too if needed. It would be nice if they had access to shields and magic standard. Those would add a lot to their usability.

I still have eleven of those unipose archers left so I might do another unit later. Or use them as scouts. We´ll see. Happy indenpendence day everyone!

A harpist and some archers

It´s been a month since my last update and to be honest I haven´t been painting that much lately. Mostly it´s been because of work and other duties taking my time but I´ve noticed myself being a bit tired with the current projects. A unit of dark elf crossbow armed warriors is still waiting to be finished among other things. But as I´ve promised my friends those darkies will be completed by Christmas.

I hadn´t painted any high elves lately as I sort of got fed up with them until this week when I suddenly got a boost of motivation and decided to start a new unit. It will be archers this time. Same blue and white theme as the rest of my guys. I have close to 30 plastic elves from the fantasy regiment box and ultimately I´m aiming to have a 20 elf strong archer unit including 80´s metal command group. Rest of the plastic archers will propably boost my small unit of scouts some day.

The first one to get completed of the unit was this harpist photographed 

standing on a training for warriors book :D

The musician, a pair of very quickly painted archers and a WIP standard bearer.