Some progress with Kith band

 Finished three more models for javelin armed high elf kith band. I´m now out of suitable models and constantly looking for more the get this unit finished eventually. So anyone out there with Marauder Miniatures MM80 series WE23 or WE2 you are willing to part with please hail out. Or some damaged mini I could convert a bit.

Left to right: Jes Goodwin Elf Warriors Lun and Taran, MM80 Elf (snapped dagger replaced with javelin tip), C08 Elf Two Spear and convered Jes Goodwin elven animal keeper.

Summoned Daemonette for Genestealer cult army

When I kind of accidentally began building a Oldhammer Genestealer Cult army I knew I want it to be Slaaneshian. Slaanesh has always been my favorite chaos deity. And to bring more of that chaos into the force I´ve added now a single summoned Daemonette. Acquired this model through a trade and painted him/her/it to match the few cultist I completed earlier.

"Forward you puny mortalssss!".

Contrast paints over White Seer base. Pink, black, blue and white contrasts. Some leadbelcher for metal details. Agrax for added shading and regular white for highlights. Black leather and pink skin ties this model to the rest of the still small force.

The model is named Suckflesh in the catalogue. Rest of the daemonettes have rather nice names too.

The daemonette range of ´88 from WD106. Because of the stance and mohican hair I would say that Suckflesh was sculpted by Jes Goodwin for sure.

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.

More Space Elves

As I´m still out of Desert Yellow Spray that I need for my IG I´m painting some Space Elves instead. These are just wonderful models that are a joy to paint. Sculpts by the one and only Jes Goodwin ofcourse.

 From left to right: Eldar guardian with shuriken catapult 2, RT401 Space Elf Alesia Wildfire with flamer and las pistol, RT402 Space Elf Nael Fleetfoot with Meltagun and chainblade without banner pole.

All three are in my usual eldar red and white scheme. Armor is Mephisto red shaded with Agrax and then washed with Bloodletter glaze. Highlights were done with Wild rider red. Helmets are light gray base with Agrax shading. And then pure white in several thin layers on that. Metal parts were painted with Leadbelcher and shaded with Agrax.

Flying horse and a hero

As mentioned before I don´t enjoy painting horses. So after completing a unit of silver helms and a warwain I naturally chose to work on a pegasus. The idea came from a plastic bodied dark elf pegasus I had lying in one of the many boxes containing all sorts of bits and bobs. The I think 5th edition era pegasus was in bad shape having lost its head and tail completely. One of it´s wings had broken away from the body too.

I removed also the other wing and scrabbed the mauled plastic body. Having an extra elf horse I did some drilling and pinning and the high elf pegasus was born. From another bits box a suitable rider was discovered and I was ready to prime the whole thing. I would have loved to mount a wizard on the flying horse but did not have a suitable model and went with this hero.

Simple white horse with grayish mane and tail. Hooves are very light pinkish brown. The sculpt of the riders face is pretty flat and with my skills it was difficult to get any life into it.

The rider is an ebay puchase I made before aquiring enough Jes Goodwin elf cavalry to make a unit. It was left unused and I´ve even forgotten it´s origins. I think it´s a Julie Guthrie model but not sure about that. If anyone knows who he is please comment below.

Pegasus is listed as a riding animal both here and in the high elf army list. They can be chosen to be ridden by a character model. What confuses me a bit is the fact that a unicorn is listed as a war beast. And rules for war beasts differ a lot from the rules for riding animals. I think I need to take a look into that some day.

Pegasi are pretty fast and strong and they deliver ´magical´ attacks. Their WS is only 3 and having just one attack means that they are not that effective in close combat. But as flyers they can take that one character model behind enemy lines to wreck havoc there. I will definately use mine one day to do that.

Warwain - Elven attack chariot

I remember admiring this model at the local game store back in the early years of the 90´s. As it cost a lot and looked too complex for my humble painting skill I never came to buy it. After getting back to hobby and getting more brave with painting I had the opportunity to get one of these beautiful Jes Goodwin sculpts. The best elven chariot there is - hands down.

The painted attack chariots you see around the internet usually follow the mostly white color theme of the original package. I however chose to follow my blue and white army theme with dark brown horses. It took me a while but here´s the completed chariot and it´s crew.

Dark blue is the main color with white details. Armor and some decorations are colored steel and copper. The blue feather theme is carried from the horses´ headpieces to archer´s neclace, leader´s helmet and to the bannerpole top.

The horses are based with pretty widely apart. Might rebase the whole model one day.

That driver looks like a singer from some late 80´s metal band. I keep imagining a microphone in his hands: "Run to the hills....".

Closer look at the crew as a whole.


One step closer to having one of each unit of high elves listed in 3rd edition WFB: Armies book. Now it´s just Dragonkin and Kith left.

Elven cavalry for July

One of the hobbying goals I set for myself this year was to paint the units in 3rd edition high elf army list I didn´t have yet. This unit of Silver helms is the first one to get completed. Now I just need to get working on Kith, Warwain and Dragonkin. To be honest I might not make it this year but we´ll see.

Released on Jan-Mar 1988 and presented in WD99 these Jes Goodwin sculpted elf knights are simply put my alltime favourite elven cavalry models. The horses are a bit smallish but that is a very minor detail imo.

The blue and white theme is the same as with the rest of my high elf army. The riders were fun to paint but I did struggle with the horses. I wanted the horses to look realistic and I didn´t want to have just white one as modern Citadel elves tend to have. So it´s mostly different browns with dark tail and mane. I did use some white markings on legs and heads but not sure how well I did with them.

The unit leader´s mount has some barding and is less dynamically posed than the rank and file troopers´ mounts. Every model is magnetized so that there is as little contact as possible between the rider model and the horse. This was done to prevent paint chipping and to keep the riders in saddle.

Silver helms are the most hard hitting troops the high elves can have. WS5, S4 and lances are a fearsome combination that can deliver a lot of damage. But they are expensive. My ten elf squadron will easily cost me 500 points if given a standard and a decent leader.

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I´m working on some more elves to complete that Kith unit. And I have some goblins too to boost gobbo horde closer to 50 models. But this july will be very busy and can´t be sure if I can find time to paint and blog.

One dream come true

When I was in the 9th grade I joined an american football team and ended up playing for 11 seasons all  the way from juniors to men´s team in Finnish championship league. Around the same time as started playing american football I discovered the White Dwarf magazine. The very first issue of WD I read back then was #101 I think. For obvious reasons I soon fell in love with Blood Bowl and 2nd edition was propably the first GW game I ever played. And I played it a LOT back in the days.

My general liking of Jes Goodwin sculpts began with these blood bowl elves. In my opinion these are still by far the best elf players GW has ever released. But I have have to admit that I do like the Dark elves of the same era a lot too.

It was always my dream to have a complete and painted elf team but the young me never had the resources or painting skills to achieve that goal. So I ended up playing with those not-so-gorgeous monopose elves from the Dungeonbowl set. A few of those got painted and I did buy a single blister of metal players and remember painting a thrower and a lineman but those have not survived to see this day.

Almost 30 years after discovering these elves I´ve finally reached the point where I can say that I have a painted playable elf blood bowl team. There´s a fair amount of good luck involved as I was not actively looking for these models. As it happened I scored a job lot that included among other things 8 elf players and that gave me the boost I needed to make this happen.

I painted the 11 models seen here in the same blue and white theme as my high/sea elf army. I tried to achieve a uniform look but so that there would be no two models that are completely alike. I was planning on making the bases astrogranite but made up my mind and chose green flock that in my opinion looks better with blue and white uniforms.

The whole team: a thrower, a blitzer, 6 linemen and 3 catchers.

I like my elves dark haired. Here are the linemen.

And the catchers.

Blitzer and thrower. Not happy with the thrower´s hair.
But he´ll do for now. I have another thrower waiting to be painted.

The team is now packed and ready to come with me to Oldhammer Oulu meet where I´m hoping to get my first game of BB in many years. BTW I´m looking for 2nd blitzer model. If you happen to have one you could part with please contact me. I would prefer the short haired version to complete my collection but the mohican one will do as well.

Seeker of Sampo

Merry Christmas!

In my previous posting I wrote about Kalevale painting challenge I´m running next year. The ´winner´ will be decided by a draw in which I will not take part but I wanted to paint something myself too.

Here´s Kauko Saarelainen - son of one of the men that followed Väinämöinen to Pohjola to get the Sampo back from Louhi. As we know Sampo was lost to sea after a battle versus Louhi and her men. Kauko´s father was the last one of Väinölä folk to hold on to Sampo but could not prevent it from falling off the ship and sinking to depths. Kauko´s father never forgave himself and nor did the people of Väinölä. Known as ´Sampo waster´ he lived shunned by everyone except his own family. Kauko seeks to clear his family´s name by joining the party that goes after the lost artefact. He is an agry young man with bad temper. That temper has gotten him in trouble many times.

Kauko wields the same spear his father used in combat against Louhi and her minions. He covers his head with a hood to go as unknown as possible. His fathers reputation is videly know and affects Kauko too. Kauko is protected by a long mail skirt and a big round shield.

Kauko´s model is a ELF1 series Kyfaillion. I´ve replaced his plastic shield with a larger metal one.

The base has been left blank as the winner of the draw will be responsible for basing all the models he gets.

BTW at the moment we have six participants doing a total of seven models allready. Check my previous posting for details of the challenge.

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!

Baggage train - Finally completed

My high elf baggage train has been in WIP status for some time but today I finally had chance to finish it. The main reason for not getting it ready earlier was me not being satisfied with the wagon I had planned to use. It was just too big compared to smallish 80´s elves. So I went back to ebay and got one that in my opinion looks better.

So here is everyone - ten elves, two carts and a horse plus some supplies. The base is some grass mat mounted on cardboard. There´s a sheet of "rubber steel" just undet the grass mat and every mini has a small magnet on the bottom to make them stand better. The base is 6"x8" to match the size of a 2000 point army´s baggage train.

Two elf ladies and a minstrel. They are from the Turnkey Miniatures´ elf villagers set.

An artist and his model. The artist is from Marauder´s MM62 series and his model is a Citadel ELF5 wounded wardancer.

The merchant couple. The male in the foreground is pre slotta C08 high elf wizard and his wife a pre slotta C08 high elf thief. They are walking their horse away from the supply cart.

Another cart and some supplies. The elves are again from the Turnkey Miniatures´ elf villagers set.

As far as I know this is the only completed high elf baggage train around the internet at the moment. Please let me know if there is another somewhere.

Elven guard

I´ve managed to finish my next unit of high elves which is a 20 elf strong guard formation. Being +1 shock elite with access to halberds, shields, heavy armor and both magical standard and instrument they are the best infantry the high elf list has to offer.

 I painted my spear armed guards in the same blue and white theme as the rest of my army (excluding those warriors and archers dating back to mid 90´s). Most are Jes Goodwin´s marvelous elf sculpts but the captain is from the Marauder line to give the unit some variation. As I have a couple of extra spearmen I´m planning on converting a musician for this unit too. But I´m still concidering different options on how to do it.

Front row guards with shields raised.

Five wide - four deep.

These will most likely see some action in july vs. some skaven and perhasp vs. my old enemies the dwarves too. Stay tuned for some battle reports.