Preparations for meeting Lizardmen & Warriors of Chaos - The Lonely Wardancer

And Saturday’s tournament VS Lizardmen and Warriors of Chaos, I have decided to use this army…

~ Lord ~

Level 4 Spellweaver (General , Lore of Life – Moonstone of the Hidden Ways, Wand of Wych Elm)

~ Heroes ~
Noble (Battle Standard Bearer - Light Armor, Asyendi's Bane, Hail of Doom Arrow)

Branchwraith (Cluster of Radiants)

~ Core ~
16 x Glade Guards (Musician)
10 x Glade Guards (Musician)
6 x Scouts (A small mobile bunker for my Spellweaver & Battle Standard Bearer)
10 x Dryads
9 x Dryads (Branchwraith join this unit)

~ Special ~

6 x Wardancers (Bladesinger)
8 x Tree Kins (Tree Kin Eldar)

~ Rare ~

1 x Treeman
1 x Treeman
1 x Great Eagle

As you can see I’m planning to field a unit of Wardancers. Yes I know they are horrible overpriced in 8^th edition. But I feel that in 2500 points game with a lot of dangerous units they might have a possibility of doing some interesting things. 

Well onto the Wardancers, I have some old models and I decided to paint one for fun. I watered down some colors for the first time with and interesting result. 

Branchwraith

Have a small friendly tournament coming up this Saturday, and even if there’s no paint requirement I always like to use painted models more than gray/black ones. So the coming days I will paint in a leisurely manner and try to get as many models done as possible. 

Characters are most important, so here is my Branchwraith.

At the moment when I painted this I had a raging fever so it was a strange experience, I took very much care not to use too much paint on any area, and because of this it took me about 2,5 hours to finish this simple model. Happy with the final result, the model looks natural and the colors blend nicely.

My army so far - Treehuggers & Friends

So here’s a picture of my painted Wood Elves army so far. It’s around 2300 points all and all. I have about 2000 points more sprayed black waiting for me to get time to paint it. What I have left is,

20 Glade Guards
16 Glade Riders
8 Dryads

11 Wardancers
3 Waywatchers
1 Mage on Elven Steed
1 Lord with Great Weapon

1 Waywatcher Lord

1 Wardancer Lord

1 Branchwraith

Now enjoy the picture of my forest living elves and their tree friends…

EBay gets me some nice models and saves me time!

Wanting to take the step to larger battles I decided to browse EBay to see what I could find. I came across a fellow member from Asrai.org selling some of his Wood Elves, so all credit for the painting of these models should go to Greenleaf.

First, a modified Treeman, it is nice to have a bit of variation.

Second, a unit of 10 Glade Guards, I do hate painting them so 10 I don’t have to paint are very welcomed.

Last, nut not least, 6 Tree Kin. They are the new models that I don’t care much for, but I will have a unit of 6 old Treemen as my first Tree Kin unit so once again the variation will be a nice addition to my army.

Will try to use these models as a reference when I’m getting to painting the bases of all my models, They look awesome and I can only imagine what the army would look like if I did that good of a work on the rest of them.

Great Eagle & Spellweaver - The Flying Hero & The General

Today I present two new models for your viewing pleasure, one is the mighty Great Eagle, and the second is my leading general and Spellweaver. 

The Great Eagle gave me quite a lot of work; I realized that I don’t really know how an eagle looks. Spent a few hours researching the topic and decided that I would go for a bald eagle look, however I went towards a more brown tone to better suit the army. 

The Spellweaver is very standard, I almost copied the one Games Workshop have on their page, changed the gold to silver; I think silver goes better with elves then gold. Happy with the work I did on it, both Great Eagle and Spellweaver took me a combined time of 4h.

Next up will be a short report on the small tournament that I played the 28^th of November, sorry to say I forgot my camera but I will try to make the report vivid so you can all follow the action (=

Treeman & I level up!

Continuous work on getting my army painted before the tournament and today the focus is on a Treeman. 

I’m quite happy to announce that this will not be a boring “only basecoat” post. I actually tried out quite a few new techniques on this one, the biggest one probably being the use of a wash. Bought Devlan Mud wash the last day and decided to give it a try on my Treeman. I also highlighted lots of parts with Bleached Bone. These two techniques combined came out to this result. 

I really feel that I’ve leveled up my painting skill on this model. Learned a lot and will most definitely try to utilize my new skill and knowledge on future models. 

Also the time I used on the Treeman was only around 3 hours, might sound like a lot to some of you guys, but for me it’s a big step forward.

Tree Kin - Basecoat

So today I have a bit of an Easter Egg for you!

I really don’t like the look of the Games Workshop Tree Kin models; I would consider them when I’m assembling my second Tree Kin unit. This because if there is one thing I can’t stand in an army it’s having too many models that look the same. 

That being said, I will of course need to have some Tree Kins in my army of fluffy elves. My choice of models is the old Treemen models. As for the painting it’s so far only a basecoat. I wanted to go for a color theme that makes them feel a bit young, to separate them from my Treeman. So I went for a light green color on the bark and moss. 

Hope you enjoy!

Battle Standard Bearer - Basecoat

Life never permits you perfect control. Even so I have been putting my painting aside for too long.

I have my first 8^th edition tournament coming up, it’s a 1750 points, all painted tournament. It’s at the 28^th of November so I have to pick up the pace in order to finish all I have to do.

I painted my first character ever today, a Battle Standard Bearer. It’s only a basecoat, but I must say that visualizing the final result is quite rewarding. 

Glade Guards Update

Haven’t posted in quite a while so I thought I would give a short update.

Family and life has taken most of the time lately so my painting time has been very limited. But I have managed to get a few spare moments in and basecoated another five of my Glade Guards.

Enjoy and feel free to comment!

Four Glade Guards Bascoated

Not the most exciting post I've made but anyways, painted a total of four Glade Guards today. Picked four that was different from each other to learn the areas on the models for future references.

I realized one thing, its sometimes difficult to know where the leather begins and ends. But in the end it doesn't really matter as long as the models looks good enough.

Anyways, remember that this is just the basecoat, there are still plenty more work to be done on them.

My Wife Decided that Wood Elves have Boring Colors...

So my wife doesn't like my selection of colors. It goes something like this:

"It's to much brown and green, why can't you paint more beautiful colors? More blue, pink, red and yellow!"

So I gave her one of my old Glade Rider horse's and this was the result.

Just thought I should share the joy of the blue horse (=

New Glade Guard - Basecoat

Since it was my birthday yesterday my time for painting was severely limited. Something I would not dream complaining about. But today I’ve had some spare time to start painting my Glade Guards. 

Must say that I enjoy painting my first Glade Guard from the new edition of models (and by new I mean after 5^th edition). Games Workshop seems to have changed the plastic in some way making the paint stick to the surface with greater ease. Also the details are clearer and more fun to paint.

So for my basecoat I’ve used:

Skin - Dwarf Flesh
Bow - Snakebite Leather
Leather - Dark Flesh
Clothes - Catachan Green
Cloak - Dark Angels Green
Arrows - Bleached Bone

Think I will do the basecoat of the rest of the 24 Glade Guards before moving on to details. Mostly because I want to be able to use them for gaming if I feel like it.

Assembling Glade Guards is a Pain!

I hate assembling miniatures, takes forever and its incredible boring. Anyways, spent about 4 hours today doing just that, piecing together 24 Glade Guards. 

I decided that I would most likely use them as either two units of Glade Guards, or one unit of Glade Guards and one of Scouts. Because of this I made.

• 2 Lord’s Bowmen
• 2 Musicians
• 1 Standard Bearer

Here’s a picture of the bastards, will see if I have some time to begin painting them tomorrow but its doubtful. 

Second Dryad Unit - Finished

Believe it or not, but I actually got the time to finish my Dryads today. Painted a total of seven Dryads, took me about 7 hours. I must say that I’m pretty happy with the result. The highlighting of the old bark turned out great and I think the leaves painted with Kommando Khaki are a nice contrast to the other Dryads Snot Green.

So without further wait here they are!

Thought I should add a picture with all that I have painted so far, the quality of the photo is a bit poor will try to take a new with natural light tomorrow.

Three Dryads from the New Unit

Here it is another update on my new unit of Dryads. 

Looked over my work with a fresh eye, after a good night’s sleep, and realized that it didn’t cut it. The color of the leaves didn’t feel right and the old bark needed a bit of love as well. So I redid my work and also painted another two models. 

Enjoy!

Second Dryad Theme - Some Details

Added some detail, colored the leaves and added some color to the old bark. Not 100% happy with the result but I like the color theme. Have to see the result once I paint a couple more and place them side by side.

Second Dryad Theme - Highlights

So looked around my colors and selected my Dark Flesh and my Blazing Orange for highlights. Mixed them together and watered it down to a milky texture. Then I simply washed the whole model. 

However this didn’t really produce the result I was after (it still looked too much like a simple basecoat). So I picked up my now trusted drybrush, removed almost all the paint from the brush and added another layer of highlight using Scorched Brown.

This result was produced,

Second Dryad Theme - Basecoat

Basecoated one of the Dryads with Vermin Brown. I think it will prove to be a good starting color for my orange theme.

Second Dryad Unit - Leaf Squadron

Decided that I would not like all of my Dryads to be too similar. And looking towards the future I guess I will be using my Dryads in either units of 8 or 12, because of this I made the decision to paint my 24 Dryads in three different themes.

Because it was my first time assembling Dryads, my first unit turned out a bit funny. I managed to reverse the second headpiece of all eight models. This lead to them being more “branchy” and less “leafy”.  This I think will only enhance the appearance of my army as a whole, due to the fact that I will have one unit of Dryads that look a bit less lively and have a slightly different head structure. 

So for my second unit of Dryads I have gone for the “more leaves” approach. Meaning I have selected headpieces with leaves for all eight of them.

I will also try to get a bit of an orange theme for these ones, painting the leaves orange, gray, black for contrast.

So here they are all sprayed with Chaos Black,

The New Addition - First Unit of Eight Dryads

So after my first try at painting miniatures in a very long time I felt like trying out something new. I glued 8 Dryads together and sprayed them black. Painted them up using a wide mix of brown and green colors, took me about 20 hours over the space of four days.

Here’s the result,

And the four I'm most happy about, mainly because they have some more details to paint, separating them from the rest of the unit.

I’m still a sapling when it comes to painting and any criticism is very much welcomed. 

For the record, 

  I used no watered down colors

  I didn’t mix any colors

  I only used dry-brushing techniques after the initial undercoat.

So I Decided to Start off with Something Old…

Feeling confident that my skill as a painter was indeed better then when I was 12, I still was a bit worried about painting any of my new models. So looking over my old models I decided to paint some old Glade Guard models. I picked out 4 unpainted models and began to try to do a decent work.

This was the result of about 12 hours of painting,

Back to Basics - Warhammer Resurected

As this is my first post I will do a quick introduction

- I’m 27 years old, born and currently living in Sweden, in a town of about 130000 people called Linköping. Since I was 6 years old I have been a devoted gamer in all areas. I remember Christmas when I was 6 years old and my father had bought me “Drakar & Demoner” (More or less the Swedish equivalent to D&D). Oh little did he know that he had just changed my life forever. I still pick up those old rulebooks and invite some friends over for some old RPG fun.

- Not long after I picked up Warhammer, coming from a game where I had on more then one occasion enjoyed playing a Wood Elf, jumping the treetops filling my enemies with arrows my decision was simple, I started playing Wood Elves. This should be around 5th edition I think, we didn’t pay too much heed. A bunch of friends played almost every week for 6 years and then the rest of the life caught up, other games, other friend and parties.

- So now, almost 15 years later I go through my boxes in my storage area and I stumble upon my old army. Well, army is kind of strong word, almost all was broken, half painted and missing. But even so nostalgia sets in and I bring them back to my house, much to my pregnant wife’s distress I bought some glue, and assembled everything that I found. This is what I turned up,

  •   18 Glade Guards, no standard, no champion no musician
  •   8 Glade Riders, no standard, no champion, no musician
  •   10 Wardancers, no champion, no musician
  •   Orion & Ariel
  •   Durthu
  •   Elven mage on Elven Steed

I realized pretty quickly that this wasn’t going to cut it and off I went to the Games Workshop site and ordered,

  •   1 Wood Elves Battalion Box
  •   1 Dryad Box
  •   1 Wood Elf Lord
  •   1 Wardancer Lord
  •   1 Battle Standard Bearer
  •   Bunch of Colors & Brushes

So here I am, ready to spend hours and more hours painting and assembling my armies from the Woods.

Wish me luck!