WIP - New elven guard

If you´ve been reading this blog you´ve propably noticed that I´m a big fan of Jes Goodwin elves. My high elf army is pretty much build around them and in my opinion they are the best elf sculpts Citadel/GW has ever produced. Unfortunately that elf series has some limitations regarding weapon and armor options. For example the models you could use for guards are all spear armed, wear light armor and have tabs for shields. The guard unit I´ve been using clearly has light armor, spears and shields.

If one wanted to have elven guard with heavy armor, shields and spears the melnibonean range is the answer. But what to do if you want to take halberds instead of the spears? And no shield. The high elf infantry in general lacks punch and if you are fighting orcs or dwarfs you would really like to have some troops that can generate those S4 hits.

There are models in the ME-32 Noldor - Deep elf alternatives series that are carrying a very halberd looking spear. But at least in the ebay the prices are horrendous. I´ve managed to get myself just a single model at reasonable cost so far.

For me it was the Black Tree desings that came to rescue. They have an elven royal guard range of models that has a command group and a few different troopers. The sculpts are in my opinion oldhammerish enough even if they stand bit taller than Jes Goodwin elves. The armor can be light or heavy depending on how you look at them and the weapons can pass for a halberd. And the price is very reasonable. Some people have had problems with long delivery times from Black Tree but my package came in about three weeks from the order.

I got models for my unit of 20 a couple of months back but as I was busy with painting orcs I didn´t touch these during the summer. And like I mentioned I was pretty fed up with painting pointy ears. Now I´ve found new energy to work with these and here are the first glimpses.

The very first finished trooper and a couple of WIPs. In my

opinion their weapon will pass for harberd or spear.

WIP  troopers, commander and standard bearer. The commander

has a more elaborately decorated armor than the rank & file.

Commander, standard bearer and a couple of troopers.

Colour theme is the same blue and white as for the rest of the army.

I think there are six different poses for troopers and a three

elf command group including commander, standard and musician (no pic here).

I´m trying to get this unit ready for Oldhammer Oulu meet that will be in 6 weeks (28/10/2017). As these are fairly quick to paint I think I will make it in time.

What I´ve done with them boyz´n gobbos

Almost a year ago I was wandering what to do with a bunch of fantasy regiment orcs and goblins I had bought from a friend of mine. I got some tips both here in my blog and at Oldhammer forum but after starting with the boyz I lost interest in the project and the models lay untouched for months on my paiting table.

A couple of weeks back I won an online auction that had 70+ metal orcs and goblins in it. With some fantasy regiment models I had managed to get from a couple of guys I know I realised that I now had enough models to meet the WFB: Armies troop minimas for an O&G army. Even though I still needed some command groups and a shaman or two that realisation boosted my will to really start painting the army.

This unit of stickas was the first one to get completed. They still need a banner of some sort but that I will deal with later. I´m very inexperienced at painting greenskins. In fact this is the very first unit of orcs or goblins I´ve ever done. My goal is to have a playble force ready by july so rank and file were done as quick as possible with some more love given to command group models. Black base coat, warboss green skin, basic colours for clothing and armor followed by agrax earthshade wash. Quick highlights with skarsnik green and that´s it. Good enough to be used on the battlefield.

 Chief Rhybag´s speshul stickaz. Fantasy regiment goblins, iron claw

goblins, bagpipe musician, a chief and a double snotling as standard bearer.

The upper snotlings face is badly molded on it´s right side but 

will do if you don´t look too close.

The next unit to be completed will propably be this big mod of boyz. Regular boyz are all fantasy regiment orcs and the command group a mix of early nineties orcs from different ranges. This will be the main unit of my upcoming army.

That´s 28 orcs including a boss, a standard and a musician. The boss and standard are

pretty much ready. Everyone else in various stages of WIP. As you can see the

banners are not my strongest area of expertise.

Then there are the arrer boys of which I have close to 40 models. To meet the army minimas I´ve chosen 20 of those to be painted after I´m done with the big mod. They´ve been base coated black and I´ve started working on first of them just to get ideas of how I want them to look in the future.

These arrer boyz will need a standard and a musician. Perhaps

I´ll get a Harboth´s standard for them as those seem to be available

at ebay for reasonable price.

Most far from completion are the gobbos. I have at the moment 19 goblins of which about half are armed with javelins/spears and the rest with various hand weapons. They will need a standard bearer and a musician later on. And some stripping will be required.

Gobbos. Cannon fodder in making.

As last I´ll put a group picture of everyone. I have some wolf riders and a pair of bolt throwers waiting somewhere but as those are not obligatory they will be worked on after everyone else is done.

By july these will be ready to get on the battle field

Just wanted to show that something is getting painted even though I´ve been lately working mostly on the animal handler articles. The next one will be about chaos. Perhaps in a week or something.

Dark Elf War Altar WIP

A couple of months ago a saw this thread in the Oldhammer Forum and knew I have to make an altar for the joint effort dark elves. There is not a set for a war altar and as Willmark points out there are not that many models around that could be used as altar guards.

I did not want to copy what Willmark had done but tried to find an another angle of approach to the subject. In the end I was sort of forced to use the same two witch elf models Willmark used. To get some differences from his desing I´m using four altar guard who will carry an idol of some dark god and a banner bearer.

Here are the five altar guard. In the front a slighly conversed repeating bolt thrower loader. He may get a weapon to his right hand eventually. Tha other one is a Marauder dark elf warrior who´s shield hand has been drilled. In the back there are two witch elves who have had one of their daggers removed. The one to the right had her right hand repositioned so that she can hold the altar at the level as all the other do. The banner bearer is another bolt thrower loader. The bolt bundle he was holding has been replaced with a lance from a 5th edition cold one knight.

The idol is some sort of demon bust set on a crude plank panel. I´m going to add some ropes or chains to make it look like as if the idol had been tied down to the panel. Some bits and pieces will propably be added too. I imagine painting the idol bronzed with some blood stains or something. The idol is quite large but hey - these elves are religious fanatics. 

Following Willmark´s example I used the three man 20x50 bases for the altar guards. That way and by partly clipping some of the slotta tabs I was able to set the guards in pretty straight lines. The carrying poles need to be shortened a bit before base coating as they look a bit to long for my taste now. As per WFB: Armies book the artar guards don´t get shields but I might give the stardard bearer one to cover my crudeish conversion job.

Bolter and a farmhouse

A repeating bolt thrower for Traject0ry´s joint effort dark elf army got completed a couple of days ago. The warmachine itself and the crew are all nice models and were a joy to paint. I especially like the body builder spotter. The color theme is dark brown and grey which I think suits the dark elves well.

Spotter, aimer and the bolt thrower. I still might put the warmachine on a 40x40 base but don´t have any at the moment.

Goblin Lee has extensively anayzed the pros and cons of a repeating bolt thrower here. It´s not a very effective warmachine actually. It´s not very good value for money if you look at it points vise. But it´s a nice addition to a narrative battle where the points value is not the most important factor. And as Lee points out - it´s a nice model.

You propably noticed the mostly red and white building behind the elves in the first picture. It´s a WIP scratch build farm house I´ve been slowly working on for about a week now. My daughter got a set of headphones for Christmas and the box they came in was of very sturdy card board. I got an idea and without much planning I cut the box to something that resebled a house. From my daughters handicrafts box I found a big bag of 6mm lolly sticks and so I started cutting and glueing them. The walls and windows are now ready to be painted and some parts have received the first layer. The roof is in making and will be removable to allow putting models inside.

Front side of the farm house. The door needs to be done. And the roof end triangle. And of course it all needs to be painted.

Back side. Two windows here. It doesn´t show well in the pictures but I used gelatin sheet for glass.

I´m not sure if the scale is correct. I simply used an orc as a measuring stick for the door and windows. I still need to decice what to do with the interior. Might just add window frames and paint everything in some light color. But I propably will not be adding furniture and such. At least that´s not in my mind now. I´ll propably mount the whole thing on a base of some sort and add barrels, cart wheels and other small stuff. But let´s complete the house itself first.

Elf baggage train WIP part 3

A quick update on my high elf baggage train. All the characters are completed now and next I´m going to take care of wagons/carts. And the base/moving tray thing for the whole camp. But here´s a group photo of everyone:

From left to right. An elf horse and a merchant couple. They are a pre slotta mage and a female thief. In the middle six minis from Keyhole miniatures elf villagers series. And on the far right a wardancer and an artists.

A closer look at the merchant couple. The male figure is oroginally posed to look like he is casting a spell but I tried to me it seem like he is pulling the horse from it´s reins. The female thief was slightly reposed to make it look like she is helping her husband with the horse.

This is perhaps my favourite part of the whole group of camp followers. I wanted to include the wounded wardancer but his expression and pose are so aggressive that he seemed a little bit out of space among the civilians. Then I say this artist mini and came up with the idea that the wardancer is modeling for the painter. So now I have Thom of Elfland starting his latest painting The Wounded Wardancer.





Hope you enjoyed reading!

Dark elf army - a joint effort

So it´s yet another work in progress posting. Perhaps I´ll get something completed one of these days and get to write about that.

Having spent last few months mostly painting my high elves I have to admit that I'm pretty fed up with them. I will complete that WIP baggage train but after that I think I'm going to set those high elves to side for some time.

Traject0ry is an old friend of mine who is VERY experienced wargamer. I'm very happy to have been able to get him hooked into oldhammer. Traj has played a lot of WFB 4./5. ed. with his dark elf army so I came up with an idea that we could start collecting and painting one for 3rd ed. together. TL the dwarf general promised to help with painting so we decided to set goal for next december. By Christmas time we would have a playable dark elf force ready.

I did have some C09 dark elf minis and a few Marauder crossbow darkies. TL took the witch elves, warriors were sent to Traj and I was left with the crossbows. Traj wanted to include scouts to the force but we all agreed that the Marauder dark elf scouts are pretty hideous. Because of that Traj acquired some elf warriors that would proxy as shadows.

Command group and a trooper by me. The troopers of this unit were missing the bow part of their repeating crossbows so I did this crude conversion to normal crossbows using plastic bits. And I will change his base to one with no flock as we agreed on using glued sand and green paint. This will be a ten elf strong unit when completed.  I have another unit with C09 models to be painted later.

 Some witch elves by TL. This will be a ten elf strong unit too.

WIP dark elf warriors by Traj. Part of the first unit of 20.

Scouts waiting to be painted. These are elf warriors that will be painted dark elf style.

Some of them have been slightly converted by replacing their original weapons with swords.

Perhaps it won´t be the most uniform dark elf army you have seen but we are having fun building it. We three live hundreds of kilometers apart but it´s almost daily that we discuss using watsapp.

Traj has been writing a colorful background for this army and with this posting I´m inviting him to act as a visiting author for this blog. Hoping to hear from you soon Traj!

p.s. If someone happens to have a C09 beast handler or two I would very much like to buy them...

Elf baggage train WIP part 1

Matthew Sullivan from the Oldenhammer in Toronto -blog has created a nice baggage train for his wood elf army and written about both it and baggage trains in 3rd edition WFB in general. As Matthew points out baggage trains add realism, conflict and creative modeling to any 3rd edition army. I am not going to repeat his words here so just visit Matthew´s blog for further details.

I did some research of my own and found out that there aren´t many high elf baggage trains around. Actually I could not found one example of a painted high elf baggage train. And even from the collecting citadel miniatures site the picture for limited release pack is missing. 

At the Oldhammer forum I was able to find this thread about baggage trains where the original poster was thinking about getting one for his high elf army but it does not say if he ever completed it. But the thread itself gave me some ideas on how to proceed with my army.

The 3rd edition rulebook tells us that:"Baggage is represented by 1 wagon and 5 civilian models for every 1000 points in the army". For a normal 2000 point force I would therefore need 10 civilians and 2 wagons.

As there are not many elf civilian minis available I did order the TurnKey Miniatures´ set of elf villagers to make up for camp-followers. I also have a couple of resin tents and I will be adding some pack horses or ponies from Foundry´s excellent Baggage animals and livestock range. The tents are just fluff to add realism to army but I still need a couple of carts or wagons.

Elf villagers

So with 7 civilian minis and 4 tents at the moment I´m thinking about getting myself 3 pack animals and 2 carts or wagons. I don´t want to use duplicare models for civilians so the pack animals will propably take 3 civilians "slots". Ebay will hopefully help me with wagons. Tents and perhaps some other stuff that could be found at a camp will be added at some stage. I´m thinking about barrels, grain sacks, hay bales and so on.

Some tents

A beginning of a baggage train/army camp?

Please comment if you have suggestions on how to proceed with this project. Or if you know a good wagon model for nice price.

Six months

Hello everybody!


This blog has now been running for six months and I´m pretty pleased with how it´s been doing. Writing this it has had 2849 views and has 5 followers. I´ve written 34 entries this included and by far the most polular has been the battle report from the game between my high elves and my friend´s dwarfs. Switching to writing in english brought much more views than just keeping the blog to finnish readers.


So what next? This so far six months long journey back to 3rd edition WFB has been a fruitfull one. I´ve found wonderful blogs and met fellow oldhammerers online. Just one game played so far but two has been arranged for next july. I have a lot of things on my to-be-painted list and after adding so more elements to my high elf force I intend to start building an orc army. I have a busy summer coming up but I try to keep updating my blog at least twice a month. By the time this blog is 1 year old I´d like to have reached 10000 views mark and have doubled the number of followers.


The picture is pretty bad but here´s how my high elf army look today:

Some scouts, a bolt thrower, ship company, guards and wardancers in the front. Merchant company,

shore riders, a spectre and a wizard on the back. Hoping to add some archers in near future.

I´m working on a second bolt thrower that will give some more hard

hitting long range firepower to the army. 

Painting the second bolt thrower I noticed a small difference between the models.

I don´t know if the one on the left is a miscast or if the ornament has been filed down by

the previous owner. Or if there really is two different versions of this machine.

Here´s a elf job lot I managed to grab from a finnish net auction. I´m hoping to get the chariot painted during

this summer but on my scale it´s a big model with a lot of paint work to do.

The guy from whom I bought the chariot threw in these nice gobbo wolfriders for no extra cost.

Now I just need to find some wolves for them to ride.



Conversions

Just a quick post about two small conversions I did yesterday. I´ve been working on a ship company and finally received the last few models for it from ebay. I wanted the unit to have a standard but did not have a ready-to-use mini for that. I don´t think there is one in the ME-32 series. Anyway, I drilled a small hole in one of the troopers left hand just behind the shield "knob" to fit a flag pole. A 4th edition era dragon rider of caledor standard bearer lost his. Some filing down of the pole and repositioning of the marine´s hand was required but after all I think it fit quite nicely.

 
Quite pleased with myself I was confident enough to try an another conversion. I removed the left hand and the horn it was holding from an elf archer musician. I then filed down the hand and fingers and removed the horns mouthpiece. Again a hole was drilled in a marine troopers shield hand. Main part of the horn was placed in the hole from below and the mouthpiece then glued on top of it.


I´m pretty happy with both. I´m not experienced converter but perhaps I´ll experiment a bit more in the future.

The poor victims who gave their best part for greater good.

Hopefully the next post will be about the completed unit in a couple of days.

What to do with these boyz´n gobbos?

I have a confession to make. I´m a total noob at painting goblinoids. The last orcs and goblins I´ve painted are perhaps a couple of 2nd edition Blood Bowl players from the beginning of 90´s. And now I have managed to get myself into this:

Yes, that is 12 goblins and 25 boyz. Looks like a beginning of an orc army. But how to paint them fast to table top quality? How would you proseed? I´m thinking about basing them with black spray. After that green skin, some metallic for armor and swords and something for loincloth and belt. Wash the whole thing with Agrax earthshade and then pick out eyes, teeth and other details. Could that work out?

A close up of gobbos. I really like the snotling duo standard bearer. Unit leader may need some cleaning up. I actually have some more gobbo archers but they are missing heads. Does anyone have some?

That´s 22 fantasy regiment boyz and a metal command group just waiting to be painted.

WIP - Giant

Joulun alla hankittu jättiläinen pääsi työn alle kun kaipasin vaihtelua Merchant companyn jousi- ja keihässotureiden maalaamiseen. Olin aluksi ajatellut, että puhdistan koko figun kunnolla, mutta sitten päädyinkin kokeilemaan, josko päälle maalaaminen onnistuisi ja ainakin tällä hetkellä vaikuttaa ihan hyvältä. Perusvärit alkavat olla paikoillaan ja varjostuksetkin pääpiirtein tehty.

Joulujätti - seuraavaksi korostusten pariin.

Värimaailma tulee noudattelemaan samaa sini-valkoista teemaa kuin armeijan haltioillakin. Rikkailla kauppiailla on vara varustaa palkkasoturitkin samaan tapaan kuin omat joukot. Noihin tunikan olkakoristeisiin ajattelin lisätä valkoista - teeman mukaan. Ja jos uskallan, niin tuon vasemmassa kädessä olevan kilven vaihdan sileään jonka maalaan sitten samalla yksinkertaisella kuviolla kuin Merchant companyn keihässoturien kilvet. Täytyy vielä miettiä onnistuuko muutos jotenkin helposti, vai jätänkö nykyisen kilven paikalleen ja maalaan kotkakuvion uudestaan. 

Uusi base on jo odottamassa - pääsee eroon tuosta pahviläystäkkeestä. Alunperinhän Marauder giant seisoi 40x40 basella, mutta se tuntui kovin pieneltä, joten tein 60x60 kokoisen puusta. Kunhan figu on muuten valmis, niin sitten pitää ryhtyä miettimään miten sen saa tukevasti kiinnitettyä uuteen alustaan. Tuossa pahvissa se tuntuu olevan todella tiukasti kiinni - millä lie liimattu?!

Rauhallista Joulua!

Vasarointi vaimenee ja tonttutehdas hiljenee Joulun pyhiksi. Tänään on siivottu ja pakattu ja huomenna ajellaan sitten sukulaisten luo Joulun viettoon. Pakkaamisen lomassa sai vähän maalattuakin, mutta nyt on figut ja maalit laitettu laatikkoon odottamaan. Palataan asiaan uuden vuoden puolella.

Hyvää loppuvuotta kaikille!

Merchant companyn pisimmällä olevat yksilöt. Keihäshaltia viimeistelyä 

ja lakkausta vailla, jousiampujassa riittää vielä tekemistä.

WIP - Merchant Company, osa II

Posti oli tuonut tänään lisää Merchant Companya varten hankittuja figuja. Tarkemmin sanottuna yhden jousiampujan ja kolme keihäsmiestä. Jousiampuja sopii hyvin johtajaksi - on vähän eri sarjaa kuin muut tähän mennessä hankitut, mutta tyyli on riittävän samankaltainen. Keihäsmiehistä kaksi on todella hyviä, mutta yhden kanssa täytyy vähän miettiä. Voi olla, että jää pois kokoonpanosta, jos parempia löytyy riittävästi.

Jousimiehet ovat edenneet vasta vähän. Pohjien päälle on tullut metallit ja osalle olen saanut kasvot maalattua. Parina iltana ehtii vielä jatkaa, mutta sitten kyllä hiljennytään Joulun viettoon ja annetaan maalien olla.

Eturivissä keskellä Citadel Eternal Champion Melnibonean Infantry Archer.

Takana kaksi Elf Warrior with Spear / 1987 ja yksi Marauder Sea Elf.

WIP - Merchant Company

Seuraavana yksikkönä olisi tarkoitus saada kasaan High Elf Merchant Company. Jonkun rikkaan haltiakauppiaan yksityisarmeijan osa siis. Merchant Companyt toimivat Mixed rank -kokoonpanossa eli puolet yksiköstä on jousimiehiä ja toinen puoli keihäs- tai hilparimiehiä. Helppo ratkaisu olisi ollut käyttää Phoenix guard -figuja ja jotain jousimiehiä (jopa muovisia), mutta koska ebaysta löytyi mielestäni hyvännäköisiä ja kohtuullisen hintaisia jousi- ja keihäsmiehiä, niin ostin sitten muutamia eri myyjiltä. Tässä vaiheessa ajatuksena olisi kasata 8+8 -kokoinen yksikkö ja katsoa sitten jos sitä myöhemmin laajentaisi. Värimaailma tulee olemaan sini/valko/metalli.

Tähän mennessä posti on tuonut 5 kpl jousimiehiä, jotka ovat käsittääkseni vuoden 1986 ME-32  Noldor - Deep Elves -sarjasta. Korjatkaa, jos joku tietää paremmin.

ME-32  Noldor - Deep Elves

Yksityiskohtia yhdestä pohjamaalatusta jousiampujasta.