PaintSlam

Tag: Wood Elves

  • Check out my OLDHAMMER Wood Elf Army so far (It’s so beautiful TT_TT)

    Check out my OLDHAMMER Wood Elf Army so far (It’s so beautiful TT_TT)

    Hey folks, as you will probably know I’ve been building an oldhammer Wood Elf army for the last couple of years! Thanks to some canny eBay bidding, some lucky finds and some incredibly kind and generous folks on Twitter I’ve been able to amass the Wood Elf army of my childhood dreams.

    It started out with a focus on the 1996 release for Warhammer 4th edition (soon to be replaced by the exciting new 5th edition), but has since introduced models from the 80s, 2000s and today (to quote my local radio station!)

    So this here blog post is to show you *everything* I’ve painted so far for this army. Now, I’ve still got a heck of a lot of unpainted and unassembled stuff in a big box of lovely metal yet to add, but I think this is already a gallery to be proud of. So grab a cup of tea and some hobnobs, and enjoy…

    Boys from the Wood

    Here you can see the core infantry units in the army. With two full units of 16 archers, 10 Waywatchers, 12 Scouts, 14 Wardancers and 25 Glade Guard (aka Eternal Guard) consisting of 15 of the 90s shield versions and 10 of the 80s models. The Wardancer unit includes the Warhammer Quest wardancer character, who can be played as Wychwethyl The Wild in the 4th edition army book.

    Bark as bad as their bite

    The forest spirits have gotten in on the action too, here you can see my unit of Dryads as well as two classic Treemen, one of which is the original Durthu!

    You can be my Oak of Ages

    Here’s Orion, King in the Woods and his lovely lady, Ariel. This is Ariel before she (re)merged with Alarielle during the End Times of the Old World! I based her colour scheme on that of her appearance in Total War: Warhammer 2.

    Wood you please behave

    Here’s the lesser characters and heroes of the army, who serve underneath Orion and Ariel. This is where some of the more recent models come into play, such as the 2005 Battle Standard Bearer and Spellweaver, and the much more recent Araloth, more commonly known as the Nomad Prince kit. You can also see the custom BSB I made from the plastic Wood Elf hero from Warhammer Quest, based directly on the one seen in the army book and White Dwarf of the era.

    Horsing Around

    My army currently includes two units of Glade Riders, one of which is armed with spears and the other is a unit of archers. I found the archer models much harder to find than the spear ones, probably because the spear chaps used to come in a box set whereas the archers were only available in blister packs. I also love the Elven Attack Chariot, which is one of those fabled kits I always wanted as a child but was never able to obtain. I’m super pleased with how it looks with the rest of the army.

    What a drag-on

    Here’s my centrepiece model, my pride and joy. The Wood Elf Forest Dragon. This is the original version that was used as the base for the later Sisters of Twilight kit. I really tried to capture the colours of the original ‘Eavy Metal scheme with this and it even uses the original banner. I’m absolutely delighted to have this model standing front and centre in the army in my cabinet. Truly one of my all-time favourite Warhammer miniatures!

    This miniature even inspired how I painted the recent Stormcast Eternals dragon that the good folks at Warhammer Community kindly let me paint for an article:

    And, for now at least, that’s the whole of my Wood Elf army. Although it’s certainly not the end of it! Stay tuned to the blog and my social media channels for more classic Oldhammer goodness in the near future! Thanks for reading!

    If you enjoyed this article and want to help support PaintSlam, please consider joining the Patreon! Your support helps me keep the lights on and keep producing content like this!

  • Yet more Wood Elves for my Age of Orion army!

    Yet more Wood Elves for my Age of Orion army!

    So I’ve had a busy couple of weeks since the last update post. I’ve been hard at work both with working on my Wood Elves, a little bit of commission work and restarting my Twitch streams!

    Rather than waffle on and on and on, I thought it would be better to just share all the new models I’ve added to my 90s Wood Elf army as a nice little gallery post!

    So, without further delay, check em out!

    Wood Elf Lord on Elven Steed. I have since added a banner and a spike to the end of the spear.
    Wood Elf Mage on Elven Steed. I always really liked this model!
    Wood Elf Glade Riders. Imagine my face when I actually managed to get these ancient transfers to lift from the paper!
    Scarloc! Technically he’s 80s but he’s in the army book, so here he is.
    Aenur, Sword of Twilight. I don’t know how he snuck into the army but I’m not going to ask him to leave. I saw what happened to the last person who tried that.
    Battle Standard Bearer. I copied the banner from the army book as a vector illustration in Adobe Illustrator (download it for yourself here!) and got it printed out for me via an online service. Very happy with the results!
    Waywatchers! Absolutely classic models. The Contrast paints worked really nicely on these models I think, so I only did minimal highlights and stuff at the end.

  • With arrow and spear

    With arrow and spear

    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 King (In the Woods) Is Back

    The King (In the Woods) Is Back

    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.

    I think I’m going to need some Wild Riders!

  • The (un)Safety Dance!

    The (un)Safety Dance!

    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!

    In the meantime, I’ve spent the first part of 2021 (speaking of which, don’t forget to join us for PaintSlam21!!

    ) 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…

  • My big project for 2021: Warhammer Age of Orion!

    My big project for 2021: Warhammer Age of Orion!

    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!