By this time next year!

[emptyhat]

Ok, so with the switch over from 7th to 8th 40k happening I think this is the perfect time to get back into classic Fantasy. I've got plenty of models to paint and I've been ebaying up a few holes in what I've got so I should have a nice solid core to paint up: High Elves, Wood Elves, Vampire Counts. Maybe Lizardmen but what is really holding them back is settling on a colour scheme. Skaven are being held back by the basing choice of making a bajillion gs rats which would look awesome as heck and will happen after this successful project (maybe).

So the goal is by this time next year +1 week, 8th of June 2018 I'll have a nicely painted Fantasy army for at least one of the above but preferably 3.

First up for before photos we have High Elves:



There are a couple more ebay bits on the way, a box of Silver Helms, a lot of 15 Silver Helms and a second bolt thrower. I think a box of SH has either 5 or 8 in it so that should give me 32 Silver Helms to work with which is a decent cavalry base for a Cavalry list.

So what we should have on the painting list:
Core:
28 Spearmen (old school)
20 Spearmen/Seaguard -(Someone glued the arrow quivers to these guys backs but I think that multipart seguard do need a bit more conversion then that, so we'll see if they get the quivers pulled off or more love lavished on them.)
10 Seaguard (IoB)
11 Elyrian Reavers
34 Silverhelms

That's about 1700 points of core before upgrades start piling on.

Special
10 Swordmasters of Hoeth
15 Dragon Princes of Caledor

Only about 600 points of Special right now

Rare
2 Eagle Claw Bolt Throwers
Great Eagle

190 for Rare

Lords/Heroes
1 Alarielle the Radiant

2 Griffin Princes/Nobles
1 Horse Prince/Noble
3 Arch/Mages

1 Handmaiden to the Everqueen

If I get on with this army pretty well then I might pick up some Sisters of Averlon and/or a pheonix and a dragon mage as a reward for getting it done. The Loremaster of Hoeth looks pretty good too. And of course there is always the desire to hunt down a few more boxes of Spearmen (curse you for OOPing al the High Elf core GW!) to get up to around 80 spearmen because that just looks glorious when all arrayed as the glittering host.

So that's where High Elves are today, we'll see how things look next year.

[flamingkillamajig]

Try to learn how to speed paint horde armies. Back when 8th Fantasy was still a thing they had certain threads detailing how to paint skaven quick and well. Not sure where those threads are now if they still even exist.

If i recall a favorite tactic of a lot of people was to use silver helms and throw a BSB on horseback inside the unit with banner of the world dragon. As soon as the unit died down they'd switch units to another cavalry unit. Ugh annoying ass high elves.

A lot of the elite elf units were also really good. White lions also get like a 3+ armor save vs shooting attacks, phoenix guard get a 4+ ward on top of their normal 5+ armor save and swordmasters are just super choppy. Great weapons are strikes last which generally cancelled out 'always strikes first' so they tend to strike at initiative step too. Phoenix guard on the other hand get ASF only so they usually get re-rolls to hit.

[emptyhat]

I got a bit indulgent and picked up some more Elf boxes today. So I'll have to update my HE paint list to include a High Elf Lord on a Dragon, a Phenoix, an extra Noble and Prince, and 10 Pheonix Guard.

I suppose I'll have to buy another box of Pheonix Guard now to fill out the unit.

[Long John Silver]

Do they still come with square bases?

I've got a few boxes of fantasy empire infantry for stuff for 40k and I'm making some Cadians with halberdier arms for a small fantasy army. Need to dig out my old metal wizard models for Heroes. The story is that the wizards summoned help in the constant struggle against the hated High Elves but were sent weaponless Cadians from the 40k universe. They then equipped the cadians with medieval gear. Problem is I need lots of flakless tank crew torsos for the archers or crossbowmen as they don't have light armour.

[emptyhat]

I probably have some you can have.

[Long John Silver]

Schveeeeeeet! I don't care if they have the vehicular legs attached - they get cut off.

Nice High Elves, or whatever they call them now. I love Silver Helm cav and used to own quite a few before stupidly trading my 3rd ed fantasy elves for something worthless at school.
Personally I'd just do the standard scheme - bright silver and white robes. Nowadays white robes are easy peasy even off a black basecoat. Just use 'Celestra Grey' over the black, maybe twice to get a good grey/ white, then layer 'Ulthuan Grey' over that, then finally pure white on the edges. The wash phase use a blue wash only in the recesses.

[emptyhat]

So for the first fortnight, two steps forwards:





And maybe a step back:



I maybe have all the Elves I need for this collection now but I suppose another Spire of Dawn set might be nice to make the Swordmasters and Seaguard more functional, and I'd really like more spearelves so I can put either a big block or four reasonable sized ones on the table, for visual effect if nothing else. Oh, and a second pheonix so I can have one of each.



Gonna come back and fix a couple of things on the archers and do the bases but at least they are better than when I started with them.

I think I might just go with classic green flock and static grass for most of the bases. I'm also stil working out how I want to handle the elf flesh and the white robes so both those areas are a little touch and go. I'm also not fully sold on how I'm painting the wood, it's ok I guess. I might take a quick break and paint something for VCs, or I might move on to getting those Dragon Princes painted up next.

[Long John Silver]

I don't like the bright yellow on the later archers but the first ones look good. Maybe it's too fluorescent a yellow; if you want a yellow try a more earthly mix of 75% Averland sunset with 25% baneblade brown. If you only have Yriel then add a touch more brown.

Also; Shhhhh! It's not a step back to buy more kits ....

*carries on buying moar Taurox, strictly for the motor pool....*

[emptyhat]

The last picture is actually the before picture. That is how I painted them back in 1998(?). The colour scheme is based on whatever paints I had that hadn't dried up and the brushes used were whatever ones still had a bit of flex on them. Spray cans for undercoating was also considered too extravagant because that money could be spent on more models or flying saucer sweets instead.

[Long John Silver]

Oh OK, I see that now. They're better with purple trim anyway.

Honestly you just don't have enough dragon prince cavalry. If you double the regiment size it'll be like something out of LoTR, charging at the orcs.

[emptyhat]

So you think about 30 would be right? That would cost at least 870 points of Specials though, so only deployable in 3.5k games and above. It would look pretty boss though.

[emptyhat]

With all the heat and the pollen it has been hard to keep up with painting, summer is just such a tiring season. But I did get these guys done. I might need to do another coat on the banner to smooth the white out a bit with a thin layer of white and medium. I'm thinking about basing all y models soon, probably with goblin green and static grass.

[emptyhat]

It's been a little while since a progress update and after that summer heatwave of discontent I took a break & painted some Chaos Space Marines, but with Total War 2 dropping, I'm back to working on the High Elves. Things are mostly wip right now but I'm partway through 20 Phoenix Guard, 10 classic spears, the IoB Reavers and some Dragon Princes. Hopefully I'll have a couple more units done in a fortnight.

[emptyhat]

Ok, I've been putting the foundation colours on some stuff and a little layer work on some other stuff but I did start and finish repainting my old metal mage model. Before:





And after:





They've moved from practicing at the school of Dalmatian magic to the lore of death.

[flamingkillamajig]

Lol was that elf mage Cruella de ville?