Warband Fantasy - High Elves

After a long diversion into other games, I'm returning to finish the Warband armies I have lurking on the north face of my particular lead mountain.

Yes folks there is a Lead Mountain (https://www.summitpost.org/lead-mountain/154686), although its just a hummock compared to the pile of unpainted miniatures possessed by the average wargamer...

What with this pandemic quarantine in place I guess many of us are using the slowdown in the (largely uneccessary) busy pace of modern life to reevaluate things, sort out the garden, spend time with loved ones, and the case of wargamers, address that inevitable backlog of hobby projects and unpainted armies, in expectation of being allowed out to play in 2021.

Anyway, I have four army packs for Warband that I haven't yet got round to, and so, having finished (mostly) my Primaris upgrades to my Warhammer 40,000 space marines, I'm switching tack down from 32mm to 10mm figures.  Variety is the spice of life and all that.

First up, the High Elves.  The Pendraken Starter Army pack contains:

1 Command group
1 Magic user group
3 Warriors packs (75 figures)
1 Archers packs (25 figures)
1 Knights pack (12 mounted figures)
1 Bolt throwers pack (4 bolt throwers plus 12 crew)

I figured I could stretch out these figures to make enough units for a full army.  I also found this little dragon figure which I think will match the 10mm scale very well, and since the High Elves can include a dragon unit, well, why not?!

For no particular reason I chose to start with the Knights.  I think there's enough in the pack to make two 6-figure units, so I clean up the miniatures.  These require very little cleaning as is standard for Pendragon's figures, which are usually free of moulding flash and need only a bit of work to flatten the base.

I also prep the base.  I use mdf 10x5cm basing as is standard for Warband units.  However, the only commercially available basing I can find are in my view too "shallow", typically being 2mm.

At this scale, I've learned from experience that such bases are prone to warping, but also, I prefer a deeper base, which I think is easier to pick up (without touching the figures on it), and also just, well, looks better to me.  It'd be good if suppliers started doing 3mm or even 4mm thick mdf bases.  Until then, my solution is simply to glue two bases together.  I score one side of each and use neat PVA glue.  Left overnight to dry, the bases that result are sturdy, easier to pick up, and don't warp.

Too thin...

Score and glue

Just right!

I paint smaller figures like this in an assembly line and simply Bluetack them to lollypop stick for easy and quick daubing.

And that's as far as I've got for this evening.  Mainly as I now have the tricky task of deciding on a colour scheme for the army.  A quick search of the internet images shows that by far the most common colours used for High Elves are white, blue, and silver (or gold).  

This is a pleasing and iconic colour scheme and hard to argue with, portraying a clean and noble aspect to this fantasy race.  Trouble for me is I dislike the colour blue, and white is difficult to paint in any scale!  However, I think I'll have to step up to the challenge and go for this combo.

That presents a further decision; what colour to undercoat the models?  In 28mm I'd simply go white or light gray, but 10mm presents additional painting challenges for that, since you often have to rely on dark recesses and suggested details, which makes a light undercoat sifficult to pull off in that smaller scale.  Hmm...thought needed.


To be continued...

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...continued.

This evening I spent a couple of hours making a bit of progress on them.  I decided on the traditional blue/white/silver theme and went with a light undercoat.  I chose Citadel's Corax White spray to undercoat, which surprisingly wasn't so much white as a sort of ivory colour.


No matter.  First up was a simple wash on the horses as I wanted them a light dun colour to keep them light.  Skeleton Horde Constrast paint from Games Workshop did the job nicely.

I then did the deeper parts of the rider, with the saddle in Macragge Blue, and the rider's boots in Eshin Grey.


I thin used Apothecary White contrast paint to give the caprison a light grey wash, ready for the white highlights later on.

Finally I finished the metal parts in silver, the exposed flesh, and the cloak a greeny-blue.

And finally, the caprison and rider's coats got a white highlight.



So that's it for today.  Next up, I'll do a little washing maybe and some details.  Then basing and call it done for the cavalry.

Final Edit: A few simple washes to and the units are based up.  Once the basing material is dry I'll paint the edges b rown and these are done.  Next onto the bulk of the figures - the Warriors.

Update: The warrior units are done.  With the High Elves I see them as fighting in small units of highly drilled and disciplined soldiers and so I tried to represent them in formal rank and file units.