Two Elf and 'Appiness

What's this - Seven months of silence and then two posts in a day?! It would seem a global pandemic is all that was needed to kick my arse back in to blogging and I'm very happy to be back nursing my cold cup of tea again. But how am I going to sustain a regular posting schedule and not quickly burn out after a short burst of enthusiasm as usual? Well, as it happens, I have tons of stuff that I've painted over the last couple of years that hasn't made it on to the blog for one reason or the other. Usually I've been in a massive rush for BOYL or some of the other gaming events I attend over the year and then never got round to doing a write up, or even photograph them for a post. On top of that there's all sorts of stuff that's sat unpainted in boxes for too long and, without the pressures and crazy painting targets I set myself for events like BOYL, I am pretty time rich at the moment. The house may be in bits as lockdown here in the UK found us in the middle of having the house rewired and the loft converted, but I'm sure I'll be able to rummage through the boxes and find most of what I want to share with you. Happily it  also looks like my temporary photo set up isn't producing terrible pics so onwards and upwards we go!

Anyway, getting back to the point of this post - here we have two Elves!

These are a couple of colour tests for a unit of Quithnillian Elves I picked up last time I was down at the Foundry for Dave's Big 40th Birthday Bash - a huge Empire V. Orcs game of 4th ed (a post coming up on that later...).

I'd been eyeing up these chaps for a while as potential High Elf allies for the Wood Elf host that has been languishing for too long in a Quality Street tin - especially as these were some of the first minis I purchased off of ebay as adversaries for my Orcs way back in 2009 when I first started this blog! A  few got painted but most didn't.

I presume the Quithnillian Elves (love the name!) were an existing Foundry line that got co-opted in to the God of Battles range - Foundry's mass battle rule set - but I'm happy to be corrected. Either way, they're lovely minis and quite similar to the Elven Guards on the Warmonger website.

At the risk of this post beginning to sound like an extended advert for Foundry, I also used their paints! I'm really liking their system, especially for things like these Elves or many of the units I painted for Zharradan Marr's legions, where I wanted clean, crisp and bright colours - no grubby Orcs and Goblins with their black and brown ink washes and rust effects here! Yellow is certainly a colour I've struggled with over the years and beyond having to apply a few layers over a black undercoat, it's not too difficult to achieve a satisfactory finish with the three tone system.  I think I may swap the red for the scabbards of the swords and daggers on their belts to match the purple of the robe they have on beneath the yellow surcoat and make it a bit more prominent in the colour scheme. I must admit the colurful illustrations of High Elves in the 3rd ed Warhammer Armies book were certainly an inspiration.

Speaking of which, I was thumbing through the Armies book the other day, as I've increasingly been thinking about getting going on my Elven Host and had forgotten the (guilty?) pleasure of dreaming up and writing down army lists. Many an afternoon were wiled away as the younger me imagined and totalled up points values for armies that I never dreamed of actually owning - little did I know back then!

These guys will be fielded as High Elf Guard as part of a High Elf allied contingent. Being +1 shock elite and having the option to wear heavy armour (possibly the only 3rd ed Elven foot troops to do so?) will give the battle line a bit more resilience! I'll be hashing out the narrative background for the army in more detail, as I go along, but it'll be something along the lines of the retinue of a High Elf noble, including Sea Elf ship's crew and scouts, on a diplomatic visit to their Wood Elf cousins in the Laurelorn Forest.

So just another eighteen Elves to paint to complete the unit and I am in no way regretting all that yellow and white - thank god they're not showing so much flesh!

Might need a rest with some nice green Wood Elf archers next, although I've always wanted to field a Sea Elf Merchant Company - a unit comprised of half spearmen or halberdiers and half archers - and then there's boxes of Black Tree Dr Who stuff, the latest 4A Goblins, Amazons and Tekumel minis...