Starting the Wood Elves
Wood Elves the first army I seriously attempted but which got derailed early on after only a few beast handlers and a couple of cavalry were painted. Probably by WH40K which took over from fantasy for a good many years.
And while I have thought about doing a wood elf army I have never gone back to it seriously until now. Inspired at the time (and now) like many by Gary Chalk's excellent elf drawings.
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| White Dwarf 41, Artist Gary Chalk, © Games Workshop |
One of the key features is that I want this to be primarily a metal army. So this does limit the figures choices and I would really like this army to be centred around Skarloc's Wood elves, but they are just too expensive these days.
So I have decided to use other Nineties designed figures instead. So will be basing this army around the ex-Grenadier figures (Now Fornlorn Hope or Battlezone), Celtos (Now Brigade Miniatures) and probably Ral Partha Europe. With a few vintage Citadel miniatures thrown in for good measure.
Does that make them still Oldhammer?
I also plan to buy and prep the army before getting started on some serious painting. Something I don't normally do. It is usually buy a few figures, paint a few figures and repeat. This means the army does grow in an organic way but sometimes I get distracted before I complete the main units. I have drafted out a 1000pt WFB 3rd Edition army with 500pts of stretch goals.
Rather than the traditional greens and browns, I plan to continue with the greys and muted colours I used for the elves in the Fae army. Best typified by Prince Nuada from Hellboy 2. Elves which aren't really just Wood, High or Dark elves.
For some weird reason, I would like to mount them all on a slotta style base but Ex-Grenadier elves all come with a wide integral base. Now I am not bothered about mounting them on a 25mm base (instead of the standard 20mm WFB 3rd edition base) because most of the games I play put elves on a 25mm base anyway. But it does mean I need to decide how I want to do this as I don't want to mount the integral straight on top of a slottabase. As it makes them just a bit too tall and the integral base generally sticks out a bit around the edges.
So I could either cut base off, but for now I will try making a Milliput base and fitting the existing base inside. Although some of the bases will have to be reduced by cutting a section out of the middle.
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| The left figure's Integral base has been reduced by cutting the central section by a few mm |
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| Once set, the bases can be tided up. |
Making your own bases for a whole army sounds like a real chore. There must be an easier way. Using the indented bases available from the likes of Freebooter Miniatures and then infilling, perhaps?https://www.freebooterminiatures.de/produkt/bas-001-p-basis-25-x-25-mm/
ReplyDeleteIf it was me, I’d probably ditch the slotta idea and mount them on low profile metal or plasticard bases.
Sounds like a beatiful project! I've always found the wild (and somewhat scary) of the Wood Elves quite appealing. They were my first love when I started with Warhammer Fantasy in the sixth edition.
ReplyDeleteExcellent project... I would use indented bases like CS says above, or just build up with sand and flock. I do this and you can't see the cast base at all. As for using new figures for Oldhammer... absolutely. It's the narrative and way you play the game. I don't know much about Warhammer elves but Oakbound do a great range of wood elves that are very late 80's in style. Looking forward to seeing this project develop .
ReplyDeleteGood shout, I had forgotten about the Oakbound elves
DeleteInteresting project: we like that you try to find your own way to create more personalized elves, even if you deviate from the canonical aspect of the Warhammer elves. And we too agree that Oldhammer is not strictly limited to a miniature manufacturer. For our warband of dog men we are mixing miniatures from different manufacturers and it seems to us that the result is more creative and goes beyond simple collecting ...
ReplyDeleteWe too are using indented bases for those miniatures that are not slotta bases, so that all members of the unit have the same looking bases at the end: we are testing the 25 mm PK PRO bases (https://www.pk-pro.de/25mm-Squared-Inverted-Base) which are made of resin and with some casting residues, but which have height, dimensions and edges inclined very similar to GW
Thanks for the comments. I am still going to try with the 'mock' slotta bases but I will try cutting out some slotta bases instead.
ReplyDeleteTotally oldhammer. I love anything with Celtos in, some of my favourite miniatures ever in that range.
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