I’ve been a busy bee since finishing Orion, cracking into the infantry side of my Classic Wood Elves project!
Firstly, I painted up this block of 15 Glade Guard spearmen!
I primed them with Zandri Dust, before going over the cloaks with Contrast Ork Flesh, then highlighted up with Skarnsik Green and Nurgling Green. Other colours used are Boltgun Metal, Blood Angels Red, Snakebite Leather and Steel Legion Drab. The shields are Averland Sunset, with transfers in the top left from the new Wood Elf Blood Bowl team transfer sheet.
I didn’t actually have enough shields myself, but thankfully a few awesome people on Twitter came through with some donations which helped me cap this unit off.
And then last night I put the finishing touches on these retro archers, which are (I believe) a mix of Skarloc’s archers and some of the 80s Lord of the Rings miniatures. I couldn’t tell you which were which though, they all seem to fit together as a cohesive unit very nicely. I was up way too late last night working on these! I definitely want to add more archers to this army, but I think next I will be adding some of the mid 90s sculpts from Aly Morrison to fit my army.
I did also squeeze in a little bit of a palette cleaner during the weekend between these two units too, a bit of “now-hammer!” in this Necron Canoptek Doomstalker model:
Will I be so productive this coming week? Stay tuned!
The lovely Papa Negan over on the official #PaintSlam21 Discord is joining in with her own Oldhammer project (we’re making 2021 the year of making an oldhammer/middlehammer army, with an emphasis on a 5th edition era collection!)
HobbySlam21 project – Aekold Helbrass’s Legion
“Joining Jess this year I’ll be doing an Oldhammer project of my own, a small Legion for the coolest warlord of Tzeentch, Aekold Helbrass, the man with the breath of life.”
“My army will be two 12 man units of Chaos Warriors, 5 Chaos Knights, 5 Pink horrors and Aekold Helbrass of course. Included in this post is a picture of a test Chaos Warrior which showcases my paint scheme for the army.”
“The general emphasis should be on relatively bright colors, but with the base design I’d also like to add the general theme of Aekold with bringing life wherever he and his followers go. But all in all, I’m looking forward to painting a full army this year for the first time ever.”
Thanks for sharing Papa Negan! I can’t wait to see how this army progresses.
Are you joining us with the retro Warhammer army project this year? Get in touch if you’d like your own community spotlight article!
When I was a wee nipper (well, 13 years old actually) I bought my first White Dwarf with my own money (after having spent years reading my best friend’s issues) – issue 201. And inside that issue I was introduced to Orion, the King in the Woods. The living avatar of Kurnous and leader of the Wood Elves! Needless to say I’d already been super excited about Wood Elves by this point, but this model tipped me over the edge and made me decide to collect them.
And so it was that Orion was my first big metal model kit (GW having only just started to roll out lead-free miniatures at the time). I didn’t really know about pinning, so he fell apart a lot and I’m sure he wasn’t painted all that well but dangit he was my king and I loved him.
So, after the passing of many many years, I find myself at the end of 2020 with the plan to rebuild this old Wood Elf army. And lo, an Orion kindly lands in my lap thanks to a generous soul over on Twitter:
Sure, he’s gone to pieces but he’s still my first love.
Well, I knew I had to get this chap rebuilt and painted up! So I got him glued (and pinned that pesky spear hand!) but found myself a little uncertain how to proceed. On one hand, I’d love to stick with that original ‘Eavy Metal style, but on the other hand the artwork of the time shows Orion with this strong green skintone which I think sits better with the character.
Mmm… green forest daddy. Wait, what? You didn’t hear that.
So at first I tried just glazing the existing skintone with Waywatcher Green glaze paint (sadly now a discontinued colour from Citadel) thinking it would be a nice compromise. It didn’t really work out though, making him look quite unwell and it was not a smooth colour all over anyway. So I ended up repainting the skin entirely, as well as replacing any blue areas with red or gold to help bring the scheme together.
In the end, here’s where I got with him:
The skin is based in Death Guard Green, then shaded with Biel-Tan Green and glazed with Waywatcher Green. Then I used carroburg crimson to add a bit of red into the muscles and face. Many of the blue areas (such as the loincloth and spear gems) were painted red over the existing blue. Overall I think the colours balance quite nicely now.For his hair it’s Emerald Green, washed with Biel-Tan and drybrushed Moot Green and Phalanx Yellow. The cloak was Death Guard Green with 2 layers of Biel Tan, then I picked out a few leaves in Averland Sunset and Mephiston Red before using Agrax Earthshade to die it all back together. There’s also a very light drybrushing back with the original Death Guard Green to bring out some more of the detail.
The base was already flocked but I did repaint the rim to match the rest of my army. The flock is actually pretty close to the colour of the sand on the other miniatures in the army, so I’m thinking for now I’ll leave that how it is. Perhaps as a leader I might just throw some tufts down later to bring that base up a notch.
So that’s him, Orion. The King in the Woods is back to lead his army.
So my first finished project for #PaintSlam21 is done! Thanks to Stazzeous over on Twitch, I had a voucher for Element Games and could justify buying the new Warhammer Underworlds: Direchasm box set!
So, over the last few days I’ve been working on Myari’s Purifiers, the warband based on the Lumineth Realmlords.
Check ’em out!
Bahannar, with his hammer, and Myari Lightcaller the leader of the Warband.Ailenn, The Minds Edge (my favourite!) and Senaela the archer.
You’ll probably notice I went for a rather different colour scheme than the standard Lumineth colours. I wanted to go for something bright and bold, since I’m on my oldhammer kick and these sculpts felt like they deserved it.
So my inspiration for these? The old 90s Dragon Princes of Caledor!
How amazing are these!?
So it was that I came up with this scheme for my Lumineth! And I think they came out really quite nicely. Colours, for those who might wish to copy them, are as follows:
Prime: Grey Seer Spray
Red Robes: Flesh Tearers Red (Contrast), Nuln Oil Wash, Highlights with Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Wider Red
Metallics: Stormhost Silver, Nuln Oil Wash, Some areas washed with Contrast Space Wolves Grey, highlights back up with Stormhost Silver.
Green: Base colour of Vallejo Deep Green, recess shade Space Wolves Grey, highlights Moot Green and Phalanx Yellow.
Gold: Retributor Armour, Reikland Fleshshade Wash, Highlights with Retributor and Liberator Gold.
Whites: Corax White base, washed with Space Wolves Grey contrast, highlighted back up to Corax White.
Bases: Death Guard Green rim and vegetation, Mechanicus Standard Grey rocks, Mornfang Brown branches. Agrax it all, drybrush with Celestra Grey on the rocks. Apply orangey-brown pigment powder to add effect, seal with white spirits or equivalent.
I hope that’s helpful to anyone who wants to do the same scheme. And watch out for more Wood Elves from myself very soon!
So in my last post I teased that my next painting job for the grand Age of Orion project was going to be a unit of Wardancers! Well I’m pleased to say I managed to get them painted before the new year was in!
Check ’em out!
The full unit. There’s 14 models in total, including the Warhammer Quest Wardancer (who also has an entry as a named character in the army book)I tried to keep the colour choices relatively close to the official ‘Eavy Metal colours as seen in the pages of White Dwarf at the time.I also tried to do some small tattoos – you can see deer antlers and swirls in these pictures 🙂And I thought I’d get a little David Bowie homage in there too, so this one is called Ziggy!
I’m not sure which unit or model I’ll work on next for my Wood Elves – to be honest I’m a little spoiled for choice already! But rest assured it’ll be given some serious love!
) painting Lumineth models from the new Warhammer Underworlds: Direchasm box set. Look out for them on my social media, and I’ll do a post here once the full warband is painted! But what I will say about them now? I’m getting my colour inspiration from more retro elves…
As mentioned in a blog post a few months back when I painted up my classic Warhammer Quest Wardancer, Wood Elves were the army that first got me into Warhammer back in the mid 90s (1996, if you want to be super specific about things, just before the release of 5th Edition WHFB).
My first White Dwarf was issue 201, which just happened to coincide with the release of Orion, King in the Woods. Shortly thereafter I bought my first box of plastic Wood Elf archers, and my first ever army project began!
Orion himself was my first ever “big” metal model. I didn’t know about pinning back then, so needless to say he fell apart quite often…
Sadly in about 1999, my Wood Elf army had to say goodbye for various reasons, and I shed a quiet tear for Orion and his elfin kin as they made their way to places unknown. And so it was that for about a decade beyond that point that I didn’t really look at Warhammer.
Around 2010, my hobby itch was getting too annoying to not scratch, so I popped into the local Games Workshop, in Leicester. The manager there was very helpful and she helped me pick out a Wood Elf Spellweaver (the finecast one) and a box of Glade Guard (which confused me, because they were archers and I remembered Glade Guard being the name for the spearmen!).
The Spellweaver. This was the first Warhammer model I painted after that decade or so of hobby hiatus.
Over the next few years I collected a small force of the “modern” Wood Elves, including the new Glade Riders and Wardancers as well as Treekin and the Finecast version of the 2000s Treeman. When the range updated I added Sisters of the Thorn, Wild Riders and Wildwood Rangers to my collection along with Araloth. And then came Age of Sigmar. A bunch of these models got transferred onto round bases to create a Wanderers force for the new game. But although I did go on to make a Sylvaneth army too, the look of the army never really worked for me. I missed the way my old 90s army looked.
Arrayed for battle in the early days of Age of Sigmar, before they got rebased onto Rounds.
Well, over the next five years I’d had again that itching feeling. The need to go back and grab those models from my youth that I remembered so fondly. So I went onto eBay and picked up the classic Wood Elves army book I remembered from my youth and it was still there, that magic. I stared longingly at the beautiful metal miniatures in the ‘Eavy Metal pages. And then, towards the end of this very year 2020, I made the decision. I was going to rebuild my old army, bigger and better than ever before!
Some of my now-sold Sylvaneth. I did have fun with these but it wasn’t quite hitting the spot.
So we come to today. As at the time of writing I have painted up a few miniatures, and decided roughly how I want to proceed. My goals with this project are thus:
To paint the models in a colour scheme close to those of the official paint jobs back in the 90s.
To base the models on green, square bases as they would have been at the time.
To obtain at least one unit of each type in the army list. Where possible to also have each of the named characters.
To have a lovely painted army by the end of 2021.
I know this won’t be the easiest project – classic Warhammer can be hard to come by if you don’t have deep pockets. But thankfully I’ve had a fantastic start thanks to the wonderful help and contributions by my friends on social media. In particular I would love to shout out my appreciate to James who very kindly sent me a heavy parcel containing Orion, Ariel, no less than 3 Treemen (including Durthu) and a whole bunch of archers and glade guard. I am absolutely thrilled to have these models to start my collection off with. And I’m sure I’ll be shouting out more of the community soon!
So, that’s where we’re at. And since you read this far, it’s only fair I show you the models I’ve painted so far for this army!
Wood Elf Sorceress on Foot.
Skaw the Falconer, a sadly often forgotten named character.
The first Treeman, painted almost entirely in Contrast paints!
And that’swhere we’re at! I’m currently putting the final touches on a unit of Wardancers, so I’ll be hopefully posting an update soon with those chaps. Until then please stay tuned and keep up with my posts on Twitter and Instagram!
And if you happen to have any 90s Wood Elves that are just sort of “in the way” and they could do with a loving home, please give me a shout!
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