In November I'm putting on a game of Warmaster for Omagh Wargames Club. (now recruiting!) The problems are, it'll be my first game of Warmaster too, and I need two 2K armies for it! This plog will be a record of whether I make it or not.
So. I already have a small lead pile of high elves from the depths of time. Dave's plog here was a big inspiration to revisit them. High elves also gave me the idea for the simple scenario in the title of this plog, though it isn't much more fleshed out than that. If I press some BoFA wood elves and eagles into service that'll be comfortably over 2K points. Great. I just need to paint them all, now.
The attached pic shows what I already have ready to paint, or partially painted. One unit each of Phoenix Guard (counts as spearmen in the rules, probably give 'em a magic item); archers; BoFA archers; Shining Helms; Reaver Knights; chariots; and two characters. Better pics when I concentrate on each unit.
All pics hosted at cheddarmongers.orgThe first thing to do is think about the colour scheme for this revamp. The part-painted minis are pretty standard high elves - blue and white. The new scheme won't be much different, but with a warmer blue and duller gold. A bit more regal and cold, maybe. Hopefully it'll just involve a touch-up on what little I've done. Here's a test swatch.
- Warm blue. Coat D'arms royal blue worked up with Miniature Paints indigo. The latter's maybe a little more purple in RL, but I think it looks fine. Light enough, too?
- The warm blue has some accent colour tests orbiting around it. With 'yellow' as the other main colour, I plugged them into a colour wheel and got orange-red for a triad. O-R and blue-green for a tetrad. Not much difference in the oranges, so I'll go for the easier one. I won't use too much turquoise, but the cooler, bluer one looks better to me.
- White. Straightforward - astronomicon grey, CDA elven grey, and white. Probably wash it with blue-grey. (I picked up a pot of celestra grey in the unlikely event I run out of astro. Bit cooler, but that won't matter when it's all layered up.)
- The 'yellow' - pale wood colour. Base of zandri dust, with MP sand (on the left), bleached bone and MP cream. I think I prefer the extra hint of colour with the sand.
- Silver. CDA enchanted silver (= mithril). Best to keep it as clean as possible - no dousing in dip or devlan mud! Black ink for lining, maybe a wee bit of blue ink for depth.
- Gold. The lighter metallic here is MP old gold. I like the colour, but it does need a bit of help not to look like slightly dingy silver. That's where VMC bronze - the darker one - comes in. Also, black rather than brown ink, yes?
- Cool blue. Just for comparison with the warm blue, as a possible accent. Turquoise beats it.
The wood elves will be in different colours, but again nothing too divergent from the GW studio's take. I posted these here ages ago, but here they are again.
A lot of washes and thin highlights went into those cloaks, and I couldn't remember how to do it again, even if I wanted to. I'll be keeping things a lot more simple, but hopefully still looking good.
One other thing is that I have no dragons for this army. Didn't buy any. If anyone knows me from other forums, you'll know I'm extraordinarily fussy about the design and quality of dragon minis and other monsters. Very stubborn and hard to please. There's only a handful that I really like, few of them from GW, and none in 10mm. But I'm also a bit fond of pushing putty, so I might put my money where my mouth is and sculpt a 10mm dragon somewhere down the line. I could try for a griffon too, before or after the November game.
And now the big question. Who are they defending against? What will the second army be? I also have just over 600 points of lizardmen in blisters; but it's going to cost a pretty penny in a short time frame to bump them up to 2K, directly from GW. I think I could get a full 2K army of something else, for much less on ebay.
I bought a few empire units there a couple of months ago, but they never turned up. That soured me a little; and thinking about it, I'd have to agonise over which province to paint and force myself to pick out bright colours on quartered uniforms and blah blah blah. I don't have the time to go obsessive on two armies. I could try chaos or undead instead, which would suit a quick 'n' dirty paintjob. But the theme I've chosen calls out for one army in particular, and after seeing Jo's topic about dipping, I'll most likely go for greenskins.
