I've finished my first regiment of Desert Elves from TTCombat's Desert of the Dead Kickstarter, so it's time to start a blog!
I can honestly say this was the best Kickstarter I've ever backed. It promised a lot -
WHFB/
AoS models at the price of about one GBP per mini, highly detailed in resin with a great Egyptian theme of an all female elf army combining elements of Dark Elves and Daughters of Khaine. TTCombat ran a great campaign, kept the backers up to date on the progress of the project - which ran a bit long, but hey, COVID-19 messed everything up - and delivered what they promised. They even improved on a couple models, such as the Carnogon (Dreadlord on Black Dragon equivalent), which they significantly embiggened because they felt it needed to be even more impressive.
4.6 kilograms of minis. Something like 400+ infantry, 55 Cavalry, 30 snake ladies, 2 hydras, some dinosaurs, war machines and heros. Pop can for scale!
The great unboxinating. There were a few missing parts (two mount bodies and some lances), but when I contacted TTCombat they sent me replacements within a week (
UK to Canada). One baggie even had an extra 2 infantry miniatures, so sometimes packing errors work in your favor.
I'll be replacing the
MDF bases with more
AoS friendly bases as I build them.
An example of cast quality. Some diaphanous flash and the odd bubble to be found. The occasional small mold line. The resin seems to be similar to the stuff Forge World uses, but a bit more flexible. Way better than Finecast resin.
The first regiment of elf spears I cleaned up. One of the spears was broken due to a bubble in the shaft. This was easily repaired with a small pin job. As you might expect, those thin resin spears needed a bit of heat treatment to bend them a bit straight. Nothing unusual when dealing with resin. I think there were 5 unique sculpts per regiment, plus command. TTCombat did have alternate command models as an add-on so that regiments can mix it up. The minis ship with square bases for ranked infantry but the
KS also sold round bases basically at cost for people who wanted to use them in
AoS. They're all slotta bases despite the models not having slot tabs - apparently TTCombat had trouble sourcing basic bases at prices that weren't way more than the slotta bases. I've never had a problem filling base slots (usually I just use some paper glued down with PVA to cover them), and I was planning on using base toppers anyways.
Base toppers made with Super Sculpey and Green Stuff World's Egyptian roller and base cutters. Sorry about the blurry photo.
The first regiment I just super glued them to the base topper. A couple popped off during painting and had to be re-attached, I think I'll pin future regiments. The base toppers are actually really helpful in changing the minis center of gravity, as the resin is very lightweight, so the topper makes it bottom heavy and thus more stable. Bonus.
I primed these minis with Stynylrez' Neutral Primer. Since I needed to paint a lot of these minis I wanted to keep it simple, so I painted on bronze (Vajello Brassy Brass), skin (Reaper Bronzed Shadow) and Leather (Vajello Beasty Brown), then gave them a coat of Agrax Earthshade. Then I worked up the skin with Reaper Bronzed Skin and Bronzed Highlight, painted the hair, spear shaft and eyes (INSTAR Alpha True Pure Black). I decided against painting normal eyes, instead giving them black eyeballs. These minis have VERY detailed eye sculpts so it might have been easier than normal to paint the whites and iris but honestly thought it was too much trouble. Since they're Dark Elf replacements it'll help them look a bit more sinister.
The magenta is INSTAR alpha Pure Magenta, which acted a lot like a contrast paint, and highlighted with Vajello Model Color Magenta. The white robes were done with Vajello Ghost Grey and Dead White. Then the brass was brightened up with Vajello Bright Bronze (mostly on the spear and shield). Gems were hit with Contrast Blood Angels Red. Then the bases were painted with
GW Zandri Dust, a coat of Agrax Earthshade, some
GW texture Armageddon Dust, a drybrush of
GW Ushabti Bone, hitting the feet for a bit of cheap weathering.
I poked away at these for about 2 weeks to get the 20 minis done. Probably about an hour and a half per mini all told, which seems a bit slow but there's a LOT of detail to work around in the hair and skin. Anyways, here they are!
Given how many minis I now have, this is probably going to be a very long blog, though I do have other projects on the go. I'd like to get a 2000pt
AoS army done before the end of the year, probably a pretty standard Dark Elf army, as the people I play with don't have any problems with Compendium forces like bolt throwers or mounted sorceresses. Once that's done I can veer off into Daughters of Khaine for a Har Kuron army.
