High Elf Hobby Update

It's been a while since I posted a hobby update, and my focus has been pretty firmly on my High Elves. I have decided that they will be my main focus for a while, because the army needs attention. Ensuring I make them my main focus in terms of events should help keep my hobby efforts similarly focused.

Basically everything I'm showing here has actually already appeared in my tournament reports, but I haven't had a chance to actually try to show them properly. So I'm playing catch-up.

This is the Blood of Caledor mage I put together for a tournament a couple of months ago. It's essentially a kitbash of the High Elf commander set and maybe a head and staff top from either the mage set or the dragon one.

I like the option to take combat-focused, armoured mages. I'm not saying it's a good idea - I just like having the option.

Being a character the mage managed to actually get eyes painted. Lucky him. I think it's a him. It can be hard to tell with Elves, with all the flowing hair and prettiness.

My Caledor themed characters have kind of evolved to be based around white, silver and gold. It seems very "vanilla", but it actually works quite well given that the broader part of that army tends to avoid white. So they stand out.

As an example of how I am avoiding white, here are some not quite finished Silver Helms for my Caledor contingent. There's basically no white on them, and my Spearmen and Archers are the same.

I say the Silver Helms are not quite finished for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the banner isn't done. I made it from plasticard and attached it with glue and green stuff, and I have hand undercoated it black, but it's not actually painted yet. I will come back to it. The other reason they're not finished is that I gave them custom helmets and shields stolen from Dragon Prince STLs, and frankly it went too far. They look very similar to Dragon Princes. So I plan to add to the unit, and as I do I will add a mix of more plain shields and heads, in order to try to lower the vibe a little.

Here's an example of how the white character tends to stand out in the not-white unit.

So fancy. Maybe not dangerous or capable, but fancy.

Needing multiple characters on Sun dragons for the most recent event, I ended up going with the "character standing on the ground in front of his or her spindly little dragon" vibe. Something I had already done once, previously. I already painted the dragon more than a decade ago (man, why am I so old??)...

I'm not convinced I made the banner bright enough (I was in something of a hurry). I might need to go back and make the colours a bit bolder.

The model is glued to a small piece of steel, so he can sit on a magnet sunk into the base. The model itself is a digital kitbash of a Last Sword character holding a banner from their Dragon Princes. I deliberately sunk it into his head a little to give it some increased strength - otherwise the pole would just have snapped.

Yeah, it's the same on both sides. Double the painting! Hooray!

Then we have my Archmage, following the same logic and approach. I would have liked something more armoured and Caledor-ish, but I discovered I didn't have any suitable legs, so another Last Sword print did well enough.

Not sure you can count as having Full Plate with such a floaty dress on half of you. Maybe I painted it wrong, and failed to interpret the detail correctly.

Again, the dragon was painted approximately forever ago. But now he has a practical use!

Flowing white robes are not necessarily my favourite thing to try to paint.

The effect looks OK on the table top, but you can see that it would have benefited from more subtle layering.

And then we have the Merwyrm. This is another Last Sword print, however the model was meant to have wings. A Merwyrm can't fly, so I figured that would be confusing. I considered giving it more flippers, but it begs the question of how it's moving around on the field and what claws it's supposedly whacking people with, so instead he got some printed Tyranid arms, and greenstuff to try to hide my sins.

The wings on the proper model were nicely connected to the rippling fin things along the side. I did my best with the green stuff, but it's not really the same. My instincts were telling me to paint him with shimmering metallics like fish scales, but I was very tight on time and didn't know if I could pull it off. So I chickened out. Maybe next time.

The base was a bit awkward. I have a policy that all my bases are compatible, so I can mix armies etc and it doesn't matter. This model needed water, so this was my compromise. Actually pretty happy with how it came out. I tried to give it waves with PVA and some green stuff.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how he came out. I may not use him again in the near future, however - he is not really all that capable on the field.

That's it for now. Having talked about all my High Elf focus, I'm actually pivoting briefly to try to get some Wood Elves usable for the Snake Eyes team event in a few weeks. So I guess the next hobby update you see will be those guys. Till then!