Syvaneth & Wood Elves

On to my next project. In fact, this is my next-but-one project as I just finished building a Khorne fantasy force.  However, the paint I need for it won’t be delivered until Wednesday, so I skipped on to the next cranny of the Lead Mountain. 

I picked out a random box to find a bunch of Games Workshop fantasy Age ofSigmar Sylvaneth models that I acquired in the Before Times.

First up there’s a couple of treemen, the bits for which were spread across six partially used sprues. Luckily this time I actually had the build instructions, so it wasn’t a guessing game to put them together. These large figures turned out to be surprisingly delicate but unusually for Games Workshop were straightforward to assemble. Sure, there were parts that were unnecessarily split into lots of little bits, but there wasn’t anything too taxing.

Putting them together from the various sprues I was missing the parts for a lower leg, so I went looking online for replacement bits.  I’ve tried to get bits in the past directly from Games Workshop, only to be told that "they don’t do that". Seems like a missed opportunity to me but what do I know?

Anyway, the various “bitz” seller sites don’t seem to have the parts I’m after, and in desperation I even turned to ebay without success. 

So…well…its down to a bit of manual sculpting as I’ve not yet jumped into the 3D printing pool.  I don’t do much of this and I’m not very good at it but from time to time I do have to sort out some gap filling etc. so… As this was a fairly big part, greenstuff on its own wouldn’t work well.  I’m aware that greenstuff can be mixed in with milliput to make a modelling clay that is greater than the sum of its parts, so after a bit of research I threw the two products together in a roughly 60/40 mix (with milliput being the 60%). I’m not sure if I should have mixed the two products independently and then mashed them together, but I just started with the four components and worked them together.  It seemed to do the job so I set about moulding a very crude treeman leg. I mixed in some plastic bits to try and spruce it up a bit.  Its not great but when painted I think it’ll be fine.

Oh, and I mixed far too much so I made a couple of "logs" for the bases with that was left over.

I found some bits for some wood elf archers, so threw them together with some weird fairy creatures. As I’ll be using this force for OnePage Rules fantasy games, these will do for units with the “warning cry” special ability.

And there’s also a good bunch of branchwraiths which I’ll put together.  Seventeen so far, but there’s more to come.  Now these things are relatively easy to build, but again could be easier.  They pain problem is that their feet are TINY, so there’s very little contact points to attach them to their bases. So that’s a bit of a struggle.

With the figure haul construction completed, I undercoated them in a mix of wraithbone (ivory) and white.  The wood elf archers are going to be predominantly shades of green and brown so I did these in a green undercoat. 

I have a basic idea of the colour scheme I plan to use for the tree beasties, which is intended to make the painting simple and quick.  I'm hoping to get these completed in no more than 4-5 hours.

So I started on one figure with a simple colour test of Games Workshop's Aggaros Dunes contast paint. To give a bit of colour interest I'll also use Plaguebearer Flesh contrast paint to throw a bit of green in there.

I'm happy with the first trial so I'll press ahead.

Ultimately I'll also probably use some other geen washes to mayby highlight the "Celtic" style skin markings on these miniatures, and maybe hint at internal energy glows.  Maybe some Waywatchers Green, or some yellow glazes?  Not sure yet.
I also need to decide what colour to do the little faerie creatures hitching a ride on the dryads. GW's "box art" has the Sylvaneth contrasting colour as a sort of ice blue, and blue sits very well next to brown.  However, I'm thinking that I want to keep the army with a limited palette of green and brown, so maybe I'll do them in a bright "glowing" green?

Typically this is how non-historical projects will develop for me.  I'll have a broad view of what colours I want, but that palette will change and evolve as I proceed.

UPDATE

After a couple of hours work of an evening, I have the dryads finished.  Using Aggaros Dunes this was super quick and simple to do.

To give a bit of visual interest I also used Plaguebearers Flesh to give a subtle green hint on the "loincloth" that each model sort of has, as well as on the hands and other twig-like extremities.

I used Waywatchers Green glaze on the faces, and a light drybrush of Ushabti bone on the obvious skulls, bones, etc. I used Tesserach Glow technical paint on the fairies.

Finally I applied my simple base cover (a mix of coarse and fine sand with some grey rocks, and then dabs of static grass).

I'm not sure I entirely like the finished product, but wood is always difficult to paint.  We think that natural wood is brown, but it almost always isn't, so translating that onto a model in a satisfactory hue is trick at best.  When the whole model is wood(!) it's even harder. But stepping back from the pseudo-artistic anguish, the wargamer "slapdash" approach says "that'll do".

With these little fairies i just gave them a wash of Tesserach Glow and called it done!
In OPR there's a special ability called "warning cry" that is usually
skinned as a watchful pet.  I'll use these as markers for that I think.

Next up will be the treemen, which i'll finish in a similar palette using similar methods.

I also dug out a small collection of very old wood elf figures. These are a mix of bad early-GW (1995?) plastic monopose archers (which I'll probably bin), and some nice metal miniatures from 1993, mostly archers, war dancers, and spearmen.  These look like Jez Goodwin sculpts which is always nice!  The plastic horses are missing tails so I may dump them and replace them with some modern plastic ones from Victrix. I have a bunch of Napoleonics left over from my Turnip28 armies, so they'll do. But I'm not sure yet what I'll do with these. I still have the four more modern plastic archers to paint. I know I want a green and brown colour scheme on them so these older metal models will most likely get the same treatment. 

Bent and damaged but unbowed! The tailless horses will need replacing though...

A treasure trove of antiques! Not all of these will get used I think.

 UPDATE 2

The treemen are done. Interestingly I'm not sure the scheme and painting techniques worked as well on these bigger figures than on the smaller dryads, but they're done and table ready so, "much success". 

The miliput/greenstuff sculpting has blended in fine.

So yeah, I'm not terribly good at doing glow effects.

I wasn't sure how to paint the sword.
I'd considered a bright "magical" green, but decided instead
on a dull bronze.

Sort of glowy face. Sort of.

Ironjaws Orcs

Continuing my journey with One Page Rules Age of FantasySkirmish, next up on the painting table are a few Ironjaws orcs that I got in a second-hand box.  I think the box should have contained five miniatures but there’s only four.  However, I happened to have got a character orc, which I acquired from a Warhammer+ subscription. I used to have a subscription to Games Workshop’s White Dwarf magazine mostly because…err…I have every copy of White Dwarf except numbers 1 and 2. It used to be and excellent gaming magazine before it turned into a monthly catalogue for GW products. Anyway, I cancelled the sub and switched the money to a year’s subscription when GW first released their Warhammer+ account.  It was very much not worth the money, so after I got the “free” miniature, I cancelled.

The miniature was called “Bazdrogg Nekk-choppa” and he rounds out the squad at an even five.

As ever these GW miniatures were ridiculously fiddly to put together, with far more tiny pieces needing to be glue than necessary for the figure. When I came to paint them though, I regretted not keeping the models in subassemblies. There were many little nooks and crannies that I simply couldn’t get my brush into. Normally I’d cover these areas by slapping on a wash, but with the bright yellow, that wasn’t possible.

I chose to follow the box art closely, including the recommended paint colours. I’d usually nip out to my FLGS for the paint, but as I had a bout of Covid I ordered the paint directly from GW. They took a week to arrive, which did not impress me. 

After far more time and frustration than five models should have taken, I finally have these ready.  They’ll add to my One Page Rules goblin force, giving a few more options for force organisation.

So…here’s the results.

Putrid Blightkings

My painting schedule for the year continues at a pace, and after the nice clean lines a Necron army, I’m back on more familiar ground with a brief diversion into the grime and filth covered realms of a Nurgle plague force.

In this case, I found a box of Age of Sigmar Putrid Blightkings.  I think I bought these to use for conversions with my Warhammer 40k Death Guard, but never made use of them.  We’re now playing a fair bit of One Page Rules: Age of Fantasy Skirmish, so these will form the core of a Plague warband for those games.  Most likely I’ll pair them with my plague demons for a nice mixed force.

So, I glued these little fellows together, which was relatively painless for Games Workshop figures, and set to painting. The main colour blocks on these are for diseased flesh so I undercoated them with an off-white base. I used my mishmash of various washes to approximate the rotten skin.

I considered going with a rusted metal for the armour but decided instead to replicate the box art colour schemes, which are also very close to my Death Guard army.  I did rust up the weapons though.

A couple of hours work and I’m happy with the results.

Clearly Nurgle’s rot hit the camera, and these photos aren’t the best quality for focus and crispness.  I also noticed that although they look fine in person, the base rims look awful on camera.  Not sure why but I may need to give them another coat.

Anyway, here’s the result.

The head on this cha seems a little small to me. 
In hindsight, I think I should have found a larger head for him.

He'll make a good "wizard" figure i think.

This figure has an odd retro sort of "single plane" pose reminiscent of old metal figures. Such poses were an artefact of metal casting.

I like this one.  He's super-iconic for Nurgle I think and the bloated leg is suitably icky!

Ugh...blurred image. Its a decent enough shot of the corrupted flesh though,

Necrons get reinforcements!

A few years ago I acquired a box of random Games Workshop Necron stuff. Some of it was already built, some painted but most was still on sprue.  I really had no idea what was in there, but figured its time to get it made up, painted, and added to my OnePage Rules Robot Legions army.

I fixed the broken bits and touched up the paint job on the stuff that was painted.  They’re the older type of Necrons with little green plastic tube weapons and I considered a full spray over and repaint.  But looking at them, aside from needing to tone down the lime green bits they were acceptable, so I just did the minimum, threw them on some new larger bases and called them done. 

There were also some beefy looking Necrons with heavy weapons already built but not painted. I figured out that they could be built as snipers, and I had the options still on sprue.  Sadly, the plastic glue welds were too strong so I couldn’t change them over without breaking the model.  So, no snipers for me! 

For the rest, I found some build instructions online and put everything together. As ever with Games Workshop models these are insanely fiddly and have FAR TOO MANY little parts.  I was constantly curing them with the refrain, “why is this in three parts?!” Anyway, its done now so on to the painting.

I stuck to the same scheme I’ve used for the pervious Robot Legion figures.

1. Black undercoat (spray)
2. GW Leadbelcher spray basecoat, dome as a rough zenithal effect to get the main colour down.
3. Tinbitz for unit commander and special weapon demarcations.
4. Dark green for cables
5. Light green/yellow mix for the glowing ball thingies.
6. GW Waywatcher’s Green glaze to give the rough impression of a glowy effect.  Sort of.
7. Gloss varnish on the green glowy balls (to imply glass)
8. Simple basing with fine sand (for larger bases I added a few tufts for visual interest).

On the big tower things, they seemed to have stone encasing the metal bits.  I’d considered a couple of options here, grey stone, black, or a dark green.  To keep in with the theme/tome of the army I went with dark green and unusually for me I did a crude edge highlight to emphasise the greenness of it.

Overall, these additions will take my One Page Rules Robot Legions army to around 10,000pts.  I’m not sure if I have anymore Necrons lurking around the darker ascents of my “Lead Mountain” (“pile of opportunity”), but there may be a few rogue singles knocking about.  I’ll paint them up to join the others if I find any more.

I checked the Games Workshop’s website to identify some of this stuff I’ve added and turns out it’s the following.

• 1 Overlord
• 5 Assorted “leaders”
• 60 Necron Warriors
• 21 Immortals
• 21 Scarab Swarms
• 1 Canoptek Spyder
• 1 Night Scythe flyer
• 1 Convergence of Dominion set (the three towers)
• 3 Tomb Blades (little flying machine things)

Anyway, here’s a few pictographs of the various bits and bobs finished off.

The Night Scythe flyer

Convergence of Dominion set.
Not sure what this is but I'll use each of these in OPR, probably as a
Death Fortress or something.

Scarab Swarms!

I imagine these would burrow up from the ground so did some
emerging from the sand.

The Robot foot troops

A tin head is for the special weapon chap.  Added ton shoulders make the unit leader.

Canoptek Spyder.  Nice little model I think.

Tomb Blades.  I think these were supposed to be on GW's fiddly
flying bases but I didn't have any, so brass rod and a decent base will do.

Reminds me of something out of Star Wars.

I like the way the Robot pilot is basically welded in!

Some older Necron models.  I left them with the green plastic rods and just
gave them a touch up paint job.

Some "leaders"

This chap is a VERY old original metal Necron model.

This is an older leader figure I think. It was broken
so I added a few bits on and called it a day. It'll do.

A couple of leader figures?  I painted them slightly differently.

Immortals. Shame I couldn't change these into snipers.