Warhammer High Elf army project - The beginning.

To set the scene, back in January 2014 I took the (perhaps slightly unhinged) decision to collect and paint a high elf army, despite never having played one game of Warhammer ever. Why?, you might justifiably ask. 

With a busy job, a young family, and a body that tells me that it doesn't appreciate having to be made to play sport anymore it seemed like a good hobby I could pick up and put down whenever I wanted to.

I had dabbled in W40K back when I was a young boy, and played a little back at University (although it didn't exactly carry much street cred). I gathered together a rather strange mix of Dark Angels and Eldar but got a bit bored with them from a painting point of view... there's only so much green armour you can paint!

What stuck in my mind from very early on as a kid on were two models: Prince Imrik, Dragon Lord and Eltharion on Stormwing. But I never bought them, and over the years it just nagged away at me.

Then 2014 came along, and so did a New Year's resolution... along with a little bit of Christmas present cash.

I splashed out on a Imrik (£36) and Eltharion (£20.50) direct from Games Workshop as I couldn't get them cheaper on ebay. But then, the ebay spend kicked in... and I went a little mad...

Thanks to Ebay, I bought:
1x High Elves Battalion (£46.99 all in) - containing 8x Silverhelms, 20x Spearmen, 20x Archers and 1x Tiranoc chariot.
1x Island of Blood High Elves miniatures set (£31.48 all in) - containing 10x Seaguard, 10x Swordmasters, 5x Reavers, 1x Mage and 1x Prince on Griffon.
10x Swordmasters - stuck & basecoated (£11.98 all in).
1x set containing 10x Seaguard, 5x Reavers and 1x Mage all basecoated but not stuck together (£17 all in).
1x Mage Lord Teclis (metal) (£6.50 all in).
That's £170.45 spent on a childhood whim. I must have been mad. I did offset it a little bit by selling off some unpainted W40K models at least. I felt that was more than enough to be getting on with, despite the obvious units missing, such as Dragon Princes, White Lions, Phoenix Guard, Shadow Warriors/Sisters of Avalorn and Repeater Bolt Throwers. The first priority was having something fun to paint and collect, even if I never got to field them on the table top.

At the time I loved the fact that the "new" High Elf models were all slightly different from each other in the rank and file, meaning that they look a bit more interesting, and more importantly, each one will feel a bit more like an individual to paint. They used to be extremely lacking in detail and carbon copy rank & file troops.

Having previously looked around for inspiration for a colour scheme, I found some superb painters demonstrating their skills on the Ulthuan.net site. Some of these guys were just amazing, and I wanted to use this as an excuse to improve my painting skills. I particularly liked, and am in awe of Gwydion's High Elves . Bearing in mind the size of the task ahead of me, I created a blog post on fumbbl.com , but I got distracted by blood bowl teams too, and spare time was becoming a premium.

I took a look at various army colours, using Google's image search too, and also consulted colour wheels etc. In the end I decided to just go with what felt right. I loved the plushness of purple robes, offset by orange trimming, on a background of grey armour pieces (with boltgun and mithril platelets). I love Gwydion's woodwork - not that I am ever going to get close to that lovely craftsmanship... I'll just have to accept my take on it (ie what my limited ability will produce).

I decided upon a plan to paint one of each of the troop types to see if I like the scheme. So far I've 'completed' a Lothern Seaguard model, and have started on an Ellyrian Reaver. I have to say I rather like it, as I personally think they compliment each other - but the "success" of paint schemes tend to be down to personal taste. Anyway, here is a picture of my first test model - the Lothern Seaguard:

The phone camera at the time wasn't great, and actually photography was something that also needed to improve in tandem. In the photo the shield and the robes seem to blend into one, but it looks better to the naked eye. The jewels need work though, and the robes could use a nice enriching purple wash. To be fair it was the first model I'd painted in years. I didn't use a magnifying glass, and I still prefer natural light which isn't very plentiful in winter time! Right, enough of the excuses.


Picking this up again in April 2015, after working on a general colour scheme for the army, I moved on to a unit of High Elf Sword Masters which I bought off eBay pre-undercoated. 

This is what I started with;

And this was closer to the finished article;

I tarted up some of the bases and bits and pieces... but didn't take any more photos. 

I'll pick this up again, but I have a serious amount of Blood Bowl teams to get sorted first! The great thing about this hobby is that the models can be stuffed into a box and brought out years later.

One thing that did change in this time was that Games Workshop binned Warhammer Fantasy Battle and the old world, and replaced it with a heavily copyrighted new environment called Age of Sigmar. It looks like I never actually will play Warhammer in it's old form. Actually it was great that I had purchased most of the models I wanted as GW discontinued many of them!