Stormweaver on Unicon (Part 1)

I was excited when GW put up this old classic Marauder Miniatures era High Elf Mage on Unicorn for Made-to-Order last year. So much so that I bit the bullet and ordered it, thinking in regards to it's scarcity and value on the secondary market. Yes, I caved to FOMO.. This particular release was to coincide with the Higb Elves Arcane Journal and this particular fellow on the unicorn  being rebranded as a Stormweaver. 

 

Then it arrived half a year later, I was quite bummed by how sloppy this thing was actually produced. Mould lines everywhere, flash, bumps along the joins, and a leg that I had to bend back into place. It was the physical manifestation of nearly everything that could go wrong with metal casting. After a half a year of waiting, this was a disappointment. 

Flash, ah-ahhh

The flash and mold lines on the rider are going to require some time to work out. When it comes to connecting his two halves together I will definitely be drilling and pinning him for a stronger connection. 

It looks so simple too...

After a lot of scraping, filing, sanding, swearing, and leg bending, I was able to super glue this thing together. There is not joins to guide with connecting the two haves together, you got to just eye it and feel it. Once I got it where together I used a rubberband  to apply some pressure to maximize the bond and help keep it together. I already know that the next step will be filling in the gaps with greenstuff, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

Wound up and bound up so tight

The unicorn from this kit was sold separately for many years. Here in the USA it sold at least through '98 in stand alone blisters. So I am curious to know if anyone reading this recalls getting this miniature back then and if they recall the clean-up being as extreme as what I am going through with this piece. 

From thw GW US 1997 Fantasy catalog.

Hopefully whenever I post part 2, I'll have made significant progress on this thing and not gone mad in the process of doing so.

Classic Eagle's Claw Repeater Bolt Thrower #2

 

I needed a second Bolt Thrower for an upcoming battle, so I whipped this thing out of the Neverness Archive and got it ready. Sorry I didn't have time to take any work-in-progress pics.

Oddly, I have way more crew models than I have Elven warmachines, so I was able to pick out a crew that was totally different to the one that mans Bolt Thrower #1. 

On this one I stuck onto the base  a bolt rack from the plastic Bolt Thrower kit.  I think this works surprisingly well with this original model. I did not notice though, that on both sides of the rack there are two bumps from where the piece was separated from the sprue. It would have a challenge, and time consuming as well, to attempt to remove them . So I had the bright idea to just paint them like gem stones. Why not? Elves stick those things all over every surface they can find! 

Alright, well that's another High Elf unit done for the year, what to tackle next? 

Classic High Elf Archers (Part 3)

 I guess this isn't a standard post for me? Since I rare have posts about standard bearers specifically,  this one will be a bit more fun. Ok, so last year I found a pdf online of the 4th Edition High Elves army book. I never owned it, and when I dug into it I was thrilled with how well it was written and how awesome the artwork in it is. I started to look at some of the isolated spot illustrations throughout the book and thought they might make better banners than the examples banners provided in the book. On in particular struck me, and that was the compass rose on the map of Ulthuan.

Area plotted.

I reduced it to 90% on my printer. I took the copy paper over to my drawing tap and drew a triangle around the compass rose, but I flipped the image so it would fit better. Two of the example banners in the 4th ed High Elf Armies book are triangles and prior to finding them I was concerned about how a proper rectangular banner would cover up standard bearer and the unit Champion. A triangle will definitely reduce this LOS issue. 

Coloring stage.

I painted the banner using watered down Leviathan Purple Contrast Paint. The top of the banner was painted using thinned down Ultramarines BlueContrast Paint. The emblem was painted using yellow ink.

Banner attached .

The backside was painted black. All of the coloring was done before the banner was cut out.

Back banner.

And there we have it, the whole unit of sixteen miniatures is now done. I think they turned out good, despite my own criticisms regarding their faces. It's really the old plastics I have reservations about; they're just so crude that to make the. Look really good would require more time than. I want to currently invest in them. En masse however, they look good enough. 

Ta-da, done!

Alright, we'll see how well they look on the tabletop today, as they are scheduledfor a game this evening. Hopefully they' ll  perform even better than last ti.me. Dice gods willing that is.

"Give them arrows, give them death!"

Phoenix Guard Color Test

While digging  through my small collection of loose unpainted High Elf metal miniatures, I came across this lonely Phoenix Guard.

Primed and ready. 

I was very pleased with how some of the techniques I tried out on the Swordmasters turned out, and I wanted to see if I could replicate some of that success onto this model's color scheme. All the areas intended to become white were painted using Space Wolves Gray Contrast Paint as a basecoat. The non-gold metals was basecoated using Ultramarines Blue Contrast Piant. The gold areas, the main color for these guys, was basecoated using Aggarros Dunes Contrast Paint.  And the flesh of his face was coated with Guilliman Fleshwash. 

Contrast Paint Basecoats.

Next Retributor Gold was painted over the Aggarros Dunes.  I really like how well this seems to work. 

Here is a better view of where Space Wolves Grey Contrast Paint was spread all over the areas that I intend to make white. This is a good base for this scheme and it's a lot faster than the traditional Shadow Grey base that I would've used otherwise.

Space Wolves Grey cloak.

After that I used Ulthuan Grey on all the areas that are going to be white. 

Ulthuan Grey layer.

Polished Blue and Stormhost Silver were added onto the halberd. Stormhost Silver was also the highlight on the Retributor Gold areas also. White Scar was finally added to the white areas and it was done in a few layers. 

After procrastinating forever on how to do the flames in the back of his cloak I finally just took the plunge and knocked it out. The first step, and this was an important one in my opinion, was to use a fine tipped red Micron to draw the outline of the flames.

Micron outline. 

Next, I used Baal Red Contrast Paint to color in the whole thing. 

Baal Red.

Then I brightened it up in layers starting with Wild Rider Red, Fire Dragon Bright and Yriel Yellow. I was very pleased with this process and the results of it. 

"Dance into the fire"

For the final touches I added a few miniature leaves to the base. That with that, this single test model is now finished! 

Finished!

I am pleased with how this guy turned out and I'm looking forward now to building and painting a whole unit of Phoenix Guard. When? Who knows!

Classic High Elf Archers (Part 2)

 I have made some progress with thiese miniatures since Part 1 was written. In fact they're finished now. Well, mostly, but I'll discuss that at the end of this post. 

Before I finished the first ten models of this unit, I took stock in how many more of these 4th Edition WFB era mono-pose Archers I had left and finding only six of them, I decided to just paint them up also. 

Oddly, I finished them first. I then worked on all their gems together before adding the leaves and tufts. Individually, none of these guys are going to get an award for 'Best Paintjob' any time soon, but as a collective they look pretty good I think.  If there was one area I think could be better, it is their faces. Those crude faces are tough to make unfuggly.

Okay, so what's not done? Well, look front and literally center and you'll see the problem: that's right, the standard bearer hasn't got a standard! He's just running around with a big stick!

In part three we'll let that flag unfurl. Come back then and witness that process, as I think I got a neat standard picked out for him. 

High Elf Mage Lady

 

Casting from a high tower.

This is a bit of rarity. This is a High Elf Mage by Ral Partha. It was sculpted by Chris Fitzpatrick prior to him joining GW. I found his Ral Partha sculpts way back in the early '00s and thought that they made better, and definitely unique, analogs for the GW official products at the time. 

With painting this particular model I only got so far as the first stages of the mid-coats before I abandoned the High Elf project altogether. Here we are over 20 years later and I think think she'll work out great. 

After I extended the base, I just went all in on painting her up. Just a few notes I want to touch on: the flesh was done using the old '90s era Elf Flesh over the basecoast of Bestial Brown. Kislev Flesh was painted over that. This was topped with Eldar Flesh which is a Citadel Dry Paint. And finally a highlight of Palid Wythe Flesh. 

This model was a sculpted base that has a kind of summoning or casting symbol etched into the ground. Originally I was just going to leave it dark like a  carving , but looking at it now, two decades later, and I found it really difficult to see. So I went in the opposite direction and filled those groves with white ink. And then hit that (once that white ink eventually dried) with Tesseract Glow. 

Here is a bird's eye view to hopefully give you a better perspective of the glowing triangular rune she is standing in. Even though it's a bit subtle, I'm very much more satisfied with this than with what I was originally going to do. I guess waiting about 25 years has it's benefits? 

Hail to the bird's eye view!

I hope you got a kick out of this one, More elf goodness coming soon. 

Classic High Elf Archers (Part 1)

 I needed to bring out some fire support and decided to go with these classic miniatures from the early '90s. So classic that the three command miniatures are cast in lead instead of pewter, so either these were original release miniatures or they came from the UK which didn't switch over to 'White Metal' until a few years after GW US did. The two guys at the ends of the first rank are pewter. I got them as part of a mixed lot of used miniatures over 20 years ago,  so... who knows? And it doesn't matter really, only to illustrate that these guys, are indeed, quite old. 

Prepped for priming. 

They were basedcoated using the same methods that I explored with the Swordmasters. I primarily used Contrast Paints for this step.

Base coated.

And yes, the second rank are the mono-pose plastics from 1992, but if you ask me they still do the job well. Very well. 

Before any additional work could be done they were called up for action to protect their fellow High Elves from a bunch of feather wearing apes. They proved themselves to be quite versatile, even in close combat. 

They excell at attacking from the rear.

Even though only the Sentinel (aka the Unit Champion)  survived the battle, I was quite satisfied with them and eager to celebrate their sacrifice and get the unit finished. 

+++++++

I wrote all of the above months ago and despite my stated eagerness to finish this unit I was distracted by other things. Now that my attention has returned to them, I'm now geared up to finish these guys. 

Soon.

 -ish.