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Delighted to see the old elves, especially the Wardancers. Great stuff.

Love the naturalistic colors on the elves. Very cool... Gonna do any garishly painted horses? ;-)

Nice work on the skin tones as well. Love the coloration.

Great stuff, and I'm still eternally jealous of your production volume and quality.

Valete,

JohnS

Loving the oldhammer elves great work, nice to see these characterful models getting some love.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. Knowing that someone is reading this pblog helps keep me going.

I started working on a unit of Oldhammer elf cavalry last week:


I decided to work on the horses first, due to my long- and deeply-held dislike of painting horses. As cygnnus alluded to above, my first attempt at painting these models way back when involved a layer of ink from the old Expert Paint set over bare metal. I got a lot of ribbing for having red, blue and purple horses in my army, but at least the stupid things were done. I decided to try real horse colors this time. They turned out pretty well, I think, especially given that I opted to not use the glazes I have some to rely on so much. The bases are 25x50 pill bases from Warbases. Now that I'm redoing the elves on round bases, the old rectangles these guys came on just didn't fit, and 40mm circles just feel odd to me. I like these much better.

The riders are about half finished. I hope to have them ready to show mid week. As always, feedback, comments and general validation is most welcome.

Loving those old elves - I think those are really nice skintones too, some of the best work you have shown off on here I reckon!

I have some of the horses and riders somewhere, I have always considered them some of the best Warhammer models ever made. But now I have a box of the plastic Rivendell Knights, and I think they may be even better

Love these oldhammer elves you are painting.

Looking good, but a bit disappointed there're no horses of a different color...

Valete,

JohnS

The horses look excellent. Are cavalry on large round bases for AoS? I much prefer the ones you have used here.

@Slinky: Thanks! This is the third time I've painted these models so I've had lots of practice with them. I really like the LotR elves, but have never been in a position to pick any up. maybe you can paint them up and I can enjoy them vicariously...?

@bbb: Thanks, I have always loved these models.

@cygnnus: Maybe I'll do something with the next set, when I get around to them.

@Archer: I don't play AoS, and have little interest in doing so. LotR uses 40mm bases for cavalry though, and that's how I based the Melniboneans I did last year. I've never really been happy with how they look on such large bases, though, so I'm pleased that I found these.

Considering you don't like painting them, you have done a brilliant job, that dapple grey is fantastic. Look forward to seeing the riders.

@Camkierhi: Thanks for the kind words. And speaking of riders:









I cranked these guys out in about five morning sessions (about 45 minutes each), relying a lot on glazes to make up for the speed. Three of the riders are identical models, mostly because they stripped cleanly-- other, more varied poses are still soaking in alcohol. I did their shields all in one go while still on the sprue-- I'm running out of unpainted Citadel shields. The spears were a hassle-- the hole in the hand doesn't fit the peg on the model's wrists very well, so I had to build up the join with putty, which explains why none of them are holding their spears at the same angle.

Here's a group shot:

I really like the pill bases. The models rank up nicely, and the lack of square corners mean they look good in a looser formation, meaning I can use them in both Kings of War and Dragon Rampant and/or Songs of Blades and Heroes.

As always, comments, criticism, and validation are most welcome.

They look really good as a unit. Well done. It is amazing how dynamic the old horse sculpts are compared to a lot of the more modern stuff.

Do you need more unpainted old citadel shields? I should have a Baggie of them running around somewhere...

The riders look great, btw!

Valete,

JohnS

They look great together. the armored horse is interesting in how robust it looks for it's size.

The cavalry (and horses alone, as well) look great. The pill bases suit them perfectly, both in shape and size, and yeah - they work great for both skirmish and "block" games like that. That grey spotted horse looks particularly nice. I'll have to keep an eye out for that captain as well.

I wouldn't completely write off AoS though - While I personally discard the background for the most part (my couple of games took place in The Old World, because I decided they did) it's a reasonable little ruleset and the GHB is very reasonably priced while the rest is free. I've got that little skirmish book coming now as well.

Yes but it's a reasonable ruleset where Dragon's Rampant is a good ruleset....Excellent Elves by the way Josh nice gritty look more Melnibone than Ulthuan.

I own both. It's ok to like and play more than one thing. Having said that, I haven't had time to read and digest LR/DR, let alone teach it.

It certainly is and maybe I was to harsh. Equally the way combat is resolved in DR/LR is one of my favourite systems whereas AoS where you don't resolve both sides of the combat at once just annoys me for some reason. I also like the unit flexibility of DR/LR far more.

Archer wrote:They look really good as a unit. Well done. It is amazing how dynamic the old horse sculpts are compared to a lot of the more modern stuff.

I haven't really painted many cavalry models recently, but I remember thinking how much better these horses and the Metal chaos steeds from this era were compared to the plastic horses Citadel released shortly after.

cygnnus wrote:Do you need more unpainted old citadel shields? I should have a Baggie of them running around somewhere...

The riders look great, btw!

Valete,

JohnS

I have plenty of shields, but almost all are off the sprue and poorly painted. I was mostly remarking on how rare it is to find a whole, unpainted sprue among all my bitz.

amazingturtles wrote:They look great together. the armored horse is interesting in how robust it looks for it's size.

The barded horse is a solid hunk of metal; not quite as deadly as a 3rdEd Dreadnought, but stuffing it in a sock it would make a pretty good cudgel.

Azazelx wrote:The cavalry (and horses alone, as well) look great. The pill bases suit them perfectly, both in shape and size, and yeah - they work great for both skirmish and "block" games like that. That grey spotted horse looks particularly nice. I'll have to keep an eye out for that captain as well.

I wouldn't completely write off AoS though - While I personally discard the background for the most part (my couple of games took place in The Old World, because I decided they did) it's a reasonable little ruleset and the GHB is very reasonably priced while the rest is free. I've got that little skirmish book coming now as well.

Llamahead wrote:Yes but it's a reasonable ruleset where Dragon's Rampant is a good ruleset....Excellent Elves by the way Josh nice gritty look more Melnibone than Ulthuan.

Azazelx wrote:I own both. It's ok to like and play more than one thing. Having said that, I haven't had time to read and digest LR/DR, let alone teach it.

Llamahead wrote:It certainly is and maybe I was to harsh. Equally the way combat is resolved in DR/LR is one of my favourite systems whereas AoS where you don't resolve both sides of the combat at once just annoys me for some reason. I also like the unit flexibility of DR/LR far more.

I have only ever given AoS a cursory glance. I think I prefer Dragon Rampant for the same reason I liked DBA/Hordes of the Things. Cosmetic differences aside, troops with similar arms fulfilling similar battlefield roles can get along just fine with one common profile. I have yet to try AoS, though, so maybe the rules would win me over? Of course, I like having everything I need in one book rather than spread out over several different PDFs, so...

Stuff like this makes me miss WHFB. *Sobs* Im going to go somewhere and cry now.

Well, WHFB is still out there, just not supported by GW. I plan to use these for Dragon Rampant, Song of Blades and Heroes/Of God and Mortals, maybe even Frostgrave and Kings of War. Old models never die, they just get rebased for use in other games...

Speaking of other games:


I started these guys just after I finished the Asterian marionettes, but before I got bored and moved on to elves. The marionette sprue comes with the "heads" for three different drones, but only one grav-platform. That offended me, so I broke out the bitz box. The Comm drone (the one that looks like a robot head) is mounted on an eldar Wraithlord torso, with the fancy shoulderpad for a marionette command-type to break up the lines. The little cloaking device thing is on the backback for the same command-type model. I mounted them on round Mantic bases, flipped over and filled with putty. They don't match the older restic drones that come with cyphers, but they look alright next to the marionettes.

I should have a few more elves to show off by the end of the week. As always, comment, criticism, encouragement and validation are welcome and appreciated!

Those elves are killer and these drone conversions are slick. Great stuff!

They look cool as heck bud.

The elf riders turned out amazing as expected, really love the character of them.

Need to get you close to Kansai for a game of Warpath Josh.
That way I might even paint some stuff too.

M.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Need to get you close to Kansai for a game of Warpath Josh.
That way I might even paint some stuff too.

M.

Or you could come up here to Tohoku. Either way, it would be great to actually play with all these models I've been painting.

With Warpath it's always an option. I wouldn't have to travel with a suitcase just for the army

M.

Those Drones look great! Nice solutions to using the extra parts as well. If I ever do anything with the couple of Asterian Sprues I got from one of their KS, I'll have to remember this post.

As for rulesets, a lot really depends on how much work I have to do. I don't have a current, active "proper" miniatures gaming group as my old group got scattered to the winds when we got older with jobs and wives and kids and people moved across the other side of the city (like 2 hours drive away) and all that fun stuff - so my current gaming group is my wife and a couple of longtime friends, the result is that we end up playing 4-player co-op stuff on PS4 a lot, as well as boardgames like Zombicide, Pandemic, etc and occasional tabletop RPGing - and anything miniatures-based involves me supplying all of the models, rules, table, etc and also having to learn and teach the rules.

I'm ok with almost all of that, except for the rules part, because it's such a fething mental drain on me at the end of a day or week at work. So really streamlined is about all I can be bothered with anymore. Hence a preference for KoW, SAGA, AoS and now 8th. LR/DR read really nicely from my bed, but then I have to remember that while re-reading it and trying to teach someone new, and blahblah.

I'd like to get some more, new, regular opponents who are actually miniatures gamers, but that'll require me to get enough energy to go out and meet new people, and I hate the dill weed who runs the closest store (which is still probably a 45-60 min trip to get to), I'm generally over travelling in general, and I'm not naturally inviting randoms into my home. Hell, I don't even go to Jiu-Jitsu anymore because I'm perpetually tired. And clearly, grumpy. :p

Sorry. TMI there - but it hopefully helps to explain a bit about my current attitude to wargame rules.

Definitely Azazelx. I'm lucky theres a regular gaming club and an FLGS within 10 minutes walk of my house, which is surprising given I live in a small town in the countryside. Those Drones do look good Josh as well.

These days, my criteria for wargaming rules include:
Low model count. Kings of War is grandfathered in, but I want to be able to transport enough models for six people in one Reaper case. Even with 1 hour every morning, I just don't have time to paint hundreds of models just for a starting game.
No proprietary miniatures. One of the reasons I won't play 40kv8 is that I don't want to have to update my already extensive Ork and Eldar armies to make them legal.
Second-grader friendly. Sadly, my current life schedule doesn't allow me to get to game nights, so my main opponent is my son. Frostgrave, SoBaH, and DR are playable because he doesn't have memorize a ton of special rules-- just roll dice and add modifiers.

I had a day off from work yesterday, so instead of being productive, I finished these guys:



A couple of wardancers, in startlingly drab colors. There appears to be some gender bending on the one with the spear-- those guns don't match those hips.



One of Scarloc's archers. Note that I forgot to give him a shield. The tip of his bow is broken off, which is pretty common with these models. I have the skin tones done on five more of these guys, so this one won't get lonely.



A mounted archer. The sculpting on hIs face is really weird. Jes Goodwin is usually so consistent, but something must have happened here. Maybe he was getting tired of this particular assignment?




Finally, a mounted wizard. I was originally planning to do the crystal ball in a Dikto-esque cosmic starscape, but I couldn't get it right, so I went with this simple blue instead. All of the models in this set are in fairly dynamic poses, with their hair blowing in the wind, but the heroes' steeds are all static. You'll have to pretend that this guy is leaning into the wind.

Finally, a group shot:

You just have a neverending collection of sweet looking, old school Elves, Josh. I know I said it earlier, but the pill bases really make the models. Are they the Warlord ones? Do you plan to do some stars or such on the Wizard's Horse's tabards? I would also hit that ball with some gloss, to make it super shiny. Or even hit it with the blue gemstone paint as a final coat.

The weirdness of those elves is probably due to the age of them. We're talking really early Jes there, and a lot of those models were variations on other ones, so some weirdness would happen. The Spear wielder might have been based on a male figure originally, especially since those breast look a bit smooshed on. Maybe the Horse Archer was the first one he did, before he got his groove on?

You should probably take a look at 8th, Josh. Leaked rules and lists are all over the place right now (for 1 more day, at least). I had a look at my Iron Warriors yesterday and how "legal" they are yesterday - only used the looser "power rating" point costs, but the equipment and model options are the same either way - and found the following problems:

Obliterators are now bought in threes for 10PR. I have two painted.
My options: Paint another one, or agree with opponent to run them as a pair for 7PR

Only 1 Power weapon in a CSM squad. I have two painted in my squad of 10 - I only did one of them recently because I was rebuilding a model.
My options: Either run one of them (the sword?) as a CCW for a 10-man squad for 9PR, or split them into 2x 5-man squads for 5PR each and keep both power weapons.

My Lord has a Thunder Hammer. Chaos doesn't get those. (Did they ever? I can't remember - I may have originally just put it together as a funky "power weapon" in 3rd because Iron Warriors.
My options: It's now a Power Maul. Or, "Hey Josh, I modelled this guy with a Thunder Hammer like 10 years ago, do you mind if I use those stats?"

Cultists are bought in blobs of 10 for 3PR each. I have 27 of them.
My options: Run 20 of them, or pay 8/9PR and just run the 27. Or paint 3 more.

Now ok, it's a pretty small force that's painted, but I really did have an "oh, it's that easy?" reaction once I started working out how legal my models were.


That sounds like an ideal travel distance, Llama. If I had that (especially the club) within that range I'd be all over it, and no doubt I'd be playing a bunch of the other rulesets I've picked up with a bunch of like-minded souls.