Graeme's Wood Elves - OWAC 9 Introduction Post

 

Graeme's Wood Elves - OWAC 9 Introduction Post

Back in the OWAC saddle again!

After the embarrassingly swift trips to the Field of Bones in my last few OWAC attempts, I'm back with my Wood Elf army.

If many of the figures look familiar, it's because many were in my line up for OWAC V, and the rest were in my original plan for OWAC VI, before I defected to #teamskaven! Yes, they've been languishing in a cupboard for almost four years. If you're interested, you can check out the posts here:

OWAC V: https://oldworldarmychallenge.blogspot.com/2021/12/graemes-owac-v-introduction-post-wood.html

OWAC VI: https://oldworldarmychallenge.blogspot.com/2022/12/graemes-owac-vi-introduction-post.html

Hopefully I've learned from some of my previous mistakes - this year I have enough figures fully prepped for the full OWAC, and then some:

My goal for this OWAC is to focus on completing the mandatory 30 archers for a 3rd edition Wood Elf army, and to build from there.

Since OWAC 9 is based on selecting a pice of old GW art and theming the project around it, I'm going for the box art for Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers Regiment of Renown:

In my 30+ years of collecting, I never actually owned a Skarloc RoR box! This year I managed to buy a lot of Wood Elf archers with the front and back covers of the box, which is where I got the photo from. I plan on getting it framed and hung up somewhere for inspiration for the challenge.

I'll not be following the colour scheme too closely, as I'm going for a combination of a summer palette with a weathered and ancient look for these Wood Elves, but it's definitely a good reference to work from.

Now for a closer look at the army.

The bulk of the army will be made up of archers, and archer elites.

Archer unit one:

Archer unit two:

Archer unit three:

Archer unit four, made up of the figures from Skarloc's archers Regiment of Renown, with a small conversion of Glam, to make him look a little more like the illustration on the box. I'll be treating them as regular archers for the challenge, rather than scouts. This means I should be able to hit the compulsory archer minimum number for the force.

Archer unit five:

You'd be forgiven if you're getting bored of seeing Elven archers by now, so there's a few units of non-archers too.

A fairly large unit armed with spears. At this point they only have spears, but I'm looking for suitable shields to add somewhere, to match the 3rd edition army list. If anyone has added shields to these figures, either slung on the back, or attached to the arm, I'd be really interested to see how you did it! My attempts so far haven't looked very convincing.

Beastmaster with bears:

A small unit of Wardancers, armed with two hand weapons. There are a couple of conversions in there, for the sharp-eyed:

Finally, some wizards to lead the army:

I've converted a few of these models, just for some variety, and am quite pleased with how they turned out.

There are a handful of heroes, more infantry troops, and some bonuses in the works, but we'll have to wait and see if I find the time to finish the prep and include them in this year's challenge.

Just for the book keeping, here's an estimate of points for a 3rd edition WFB army, based on what's prepped:

Characters

1 Wood Elf Sylphseer (Level 15 wizard) - (206 points)
Equipped with a horse, and hand weapon

2 Wood Elf Spellsingers (Level 10 wizards) - (236 points)
Equipped with a hand weapon

2 Wood Elf Woodfeys (Level 5 wizards) - (156 points)
Equipped with a hand weapon

1 Wood Elf Guardian Wardancer (Level 10 hero) - (103 points)
Equipped with light armour, and two hand weapons

Total: 691 points

Troops

10 Wood Elf archers - (110 points)
Equipped with longbows and hand weapons

10 Wood Elf archers - (110 points)
Equipped with longbows and hand weapons

10 Wood Elf Guards (+2 missile elite) - (150 points)
Equipped with longbows, light armour, and hand weapons

7 Wood Elf archers - (110 points)
Equipped with longbows, light armour, shields, and hand weapons

5 Wood Elf Glade Runners (scouts) - (80 points)
Equipped with longbows, and hand weapons

20 Wood Elf Warrior Kinband - (180 points)
Equipped (for now) with spears, and hand weapons

1 Wood Elf Beastmaster - (15 points)
Equipped with light armour, and a hand weapon

5 Bears - (100 points)

6 Wood Elf Wardancers - (138 points)
Equipped with light armour, and two hand weapons

Total: 993 points

So, currently not quite enough archers to hit the minimum compulsory number for 3rd edition, but I'm still planning to add some models to the archer units, either with troops, or musicians and standard bearers. If I don't manage that, the Guards will be demoted to regular archers, and I'll update the points values.

It's a bit daunting seeing all these Wood Elves together on my worktop. I'm going to be realistic, and state right from the start that there's no way I'll get all of these painted - I'm just too slow. I'm going to start off painting them in batches of three or four, and see how far I get.

Nice to see some great looking armies in the works for OWAC9. Fingers crossed we make it to the finish line!

Good luck to everyone!

 

Mariano Sánchez - Wood Elves - The circus is comin´ to town

 Rank & file month #IV

Hi,

This is a special post for me. As some of you know, some years ago, I decided to paint all Wood elves from the Marauder catalogue and the Citadel "Red" catalogue ´91. Well, now it is done! And I want to thank all colleagues from the OWAC, without the challenge I´m pretty much sure  I wouldn´t have achieved the goal.

On my army you can find, at least, one of each of the models on the catalogues, but some models have been painted many many times. 

What have I painted this month...?

A new unit of 10 wardancers, the third one, a bear to use as a filler, a Silvan King mounted (a miniature I have tryed to paint several times with no success, I hate it), and a baggage train taht I really enjoy both converting and painting.

Current situation of the painting list:

• Silvan King mounted - 217
• Sylvan Chieftain mounted - 182
• Wood Lord mounted - 143
• Wood Lord mounted - 142
• Sylphseer mounted - 210
• Sylphseer mounted - 210
• Wood Fey - 78
• Wood Fey - 78

• 10 Glade runners (music and standard bearer) - 192
• 10 Warrior Kinbands (music and standard bearer) - 156
• 10 Wardancers (music and standard bearer) - 230
• 6 Falconers - 78
• 4 Warrior kinbands - 52 
• Treeman - 238

• Bear filler - No points
• Baggage train - No points

Time to show you some pics:

Wardancers

So many Wardancers!!!

Silvan King mounted and Bear filler

Baggage train

Hope you like them.

For the last month I have 3 cool models to paint, Ariel, Orion  and an Ancient Treeman, so I think I´m going to enjoy July painting work...

Paul's Wood Elves of Averlorn: Rank and File #3 - The dance of war! (365 pts)

Having blitzed my big archer units in the first two months I felt like moving on to the more dynamic Wardancers would be a bit of a reward, but for whatever reason I floundered a bit and needed two cracks at this month.

I'll start with one I enjoyed painting, the champion or leader sculpt (I'm counting them as standard Wardancers for points count though), which I ended up painting in a colour scheme which is a deliberate nod to the Howling Griffons Space Marine Chapter. Absolutely no Elvish reasons for this, but purely I've seen some nice examples on hobby pages in recent months and just fancied replicating that here and taking the chance to paint (slightly) less green and brown this month, something which I hoped to fully embrace with my other Wardancers, although it didn't quite turn out that way!

The rainbow colour scheme is easy to identify but I have to be honest I think the idea was better than the execution here I've been trying to get more proficient at showing depth, and picking out detail while only using tones and shades of one colour, or very closely matched set of colours. That could have worked better here (I would have liked more noticeable difference between the Indigo and Violet Wardancers), but the lack of variation in tone actually started to make me want to rush to finish and move on to something else, and by the end of the first batch of eight I had grown pretty fed up of painting these sculpts. 

The inclusion of the sky blue cloth allowed some contrast in places, and seemed to both work in terms of a complimentary colour for the rainbow scheme, and ties them in to one of the spot colours being used elsewhere in the army.

That same sky blue carries over into the second set of War Dancers. I painted these after taking a short break after finishing the first set and enjoyed them slightly more working to the winter colour scheme, which felt appropriate after we had a very cold snap and even some surprise snow here in very early March. This again ties in with the Chrace High Elf/Wood Elf sub-army that is taking shape and I decided to play up to that while also having some variation across the unit which still felt essential for the individual fighting style of the War Dancers. 

Here are a few shots of my Chrace themed High Elves from previous OWACs alongside their new wintery Wood Elf kin:

And finally for this month, the Wardancer Champion is actually a Warhammer Quest sculpt and I wanted to paint him in a way that might suggest he's spent some time adventuring, and maybe even in human cities. For a while I thought about painting him like an Elven version of Rufio from Hook, but while I think that could look good for the sculpt it really wouldn't fit my army scheme. 

While references, both visually wonderful and humorous, to David Bowie Elves abound in the more Oldhammer Wood Elf ranges/armies, I've never felt these Middlehammer era sculpts have quite the same Bowie-esque vibe, so in this case I've gone with an emerging Dexy's Midnight Runners colour scheme (albeit with denim and leather reversed from the picture below) but also tying back to the Winter/Chrace Wood Elves theme. 

I'm glad to say by this point my enjoyment of painting had returned but I was definitely looking forward to something other than Wardancers next month, although possibly continuing with the "Dexy's" colour scheme.

Total for the Month:

15 Wardancers (20 pts each) - 300 pts
1 Wardancer Champion - 65 pts

Total: 365 pts

Total for the half way point:

32 Wood Elf Archers (Hand weapons, Longbows) 11 pts each - 352 pts
Wood Elf Archer Standard Bearer and Musician 22 pts each - 44 pts
Wood Elf Archer Champion (Hand weapon, Longbow) - 51 pts
Wood Elf Mage (Hand weapon) - 59 pts

21 Wood Elf Archers (Longbow, Hand weapon) -  231 pts
Wood Elf Archer Musician and Standard Bearer - 44 pts
Wood Elf Champion (Longbow, Hand weapon) - 51 pts

15 Wardancers (20 pts each) - 300 pts
1 Wardancer Champion - 65 pts

Total: 1197 pts (74 models)

Tom's Bony Bit:

I am really proud with my my work this month. Although  it was a big challenge I have learnt a lot since the start of the OWAC and my painting technique has improved. I used techniques from the skeletons and the wraiths on the cavalry, and tried free hand for the first time with one of the shields!

The colour scheme is really taking shape across my army and I have decided to make them an army of The Red Wizards of Thay from Dungeons and Dragons when they are not on Warhammer duty.

I used purple on the leaders sword to show it is a magic weapon and to tie in to the magic spot colour of my army.

Total for the Month:

5 x skeleton horsemen (w/ light armour, shield, lance) - 140 pts

Total: 140 pts

Total for the half way point:

16 Skeleton  Spearmen inc. musician and standard bearer (w/ spears and shields) - 180 pts
14 Skeleton Warriors inc. musician and standard bearer (w/ hand weapon and shields) -  144 pts

5 Specters 175 pts
5 Wraiths 325 pts
2 Skeleton Spearmen 16 pts

5 x skeleton horsemen (w/ light armour, shield, lance) - 140 pts

Total: 980 pts (47 models*)
*52 by OWAC rules

Here are some pictures of everything i have painted so far in the OWAC, plus a few things I painted last year.  

Good luck all, Tom :)