High Elf Upper Middle Classes?

   Reading a lot of the Old World High Elf novels and fluff, I slightly disagree with how a lot of people put their armies together. Ulthran has a serious class structure and very little in the way of a trained military, with the bulk of their armies being made of militias. The call goes out and your family sends it quota of fighters - the poorest send archers, lower middle class send spearmen, but those who want to stand above their peers but are not yet true nobility, send knights to join the Silver Helm units.

   So while I am happy that units of archers or spears might have a local unit marking on their shields and banners - either supplied shields from the garrison itself or they know what unit they always join and their personal shields are painted accordingly, I see Silver Helms working differently. Each guy will have their own heraldry and their own equipment, while a commander might be expecting a certain amount of units of their regular troops, I suspect Silver Helms are an unknown factor and lumped into a single mixed unit as they start to arrive.

   With all that in mind, I painted my knights in my normal white and blue scheme, but instead of giving them a single unit wide province colour, I gave each guy their own province colour instead, mixing the main 4 colours that will be seen if this army gets big enough - yellow for Tiranoc, purple from Ellyrion, black from Nagarythe and red from Chrace (although, I see the latter two not having many actual knights).

   I still have another 4 of these guys to paint, but in the meantime, this is my 750 point Battle March army ready for a campaign I have joined.

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Reinforcements For The Garrison

   It's been a bumpy few weeks with work and other stuff but I am back on the painting band wagon to keep this project moving. The chariot from the last post was painted basically straight after the Spearmen from early September and just not posted for some reason.

   This post is the second unit of Archers, this time from Ellyrion, a neighboring province which uses purple as an accent colour. I think this unit shows how the army scheme will come together with the white and blue going across all units, but each unit having an extra colour that will vary across the army.

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Quick Be The Charioteer

  I have the next infantry unit built and sprayed ready to go, but I thought it might be nice to get a unit done that I know I will struggle to paint when the motivation is gone - a Tiranoc Chariot.

   The box I bought came with 2 chariot kits, and from what I understand in full games, these work better in pairs as they just don't have the hitting power alone, but this army is only going to be small to start with and I would rather use the second as the other unit type to get the most from this box.

   I stuck with a similar paint scheme to my other units from Tiranoc - the whites and blues with the yellow accent and even put a similar badge on the banner of the chariot as the spearmen have to really tie this garrison together. I went with less fantastical horse colours too - planning on leaving the colours a lot of people like to paint their elvish horses (greys and whites) for the units I feel would be richer - the chariot feels more like a working unit with real working horses.

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High Elf Spearmen

   Quick on the heals of the High Elf archers comes a unit of spearmen. I'm still expecting this to be a fairly slow project, but while momentum and time is on my side, it makes sense to just chug on through and see how far this will carry me. I'm doing a Battle March army for the moment - 600 points with a slightly different set of force org rules - so there isn't a lot to get done - somewhere about 40 models, although, I have three different lists written to allow me to paint what I fancy.

   This unit of spearmen is from a similar province (I think Tiranoc by the colour and motifs) as the mounted noble and the last unit of archers. I kept the same white and blue from all the studio elf armies, and added the yellow accent colour. This should make a core of models that look like they might be the original garrison who have been reenforced by units later on.

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High Elf Archers

   I was very much hoping my High Elf noble from a few weeks back was going to scratch an itch, but when I saw my local hobby shop had a High Elf Battalion on the shelf I stopped thinking logically and found myself sitting in my car with it before any sensible thoughts had happened.

   When planning an Elf army, I knew I needed a box of both Spearmen and Archers, and the Battalion box gave those and a box of Chariots for barely a couple of quid more. For the size army I plan to make*, this single box will give me a full army, barring a hero who can actually join any units.

*at least initially

   When I buy a big box, one thing I always make sure I do, is to get a unit of the basic infantry done asap and I picked the archers as they seemed like the unit I would find the most phaff. I tried spraying them white and working from that, but it doesn't suit my style of painting, so they were quickly resprayed black** and worked back up to white.

   I plan to make each unit unique with the head cannon that this army isn't from a single province and is more of a unit from here and unit from there job. So this unit of archers are from a similar place to my noble (probably Tiranoc), with the normal High Elf white and blue, but also a yellow accent colour.

   I, also, plan to redo the banner, but at this point it isn't bad enough to stop me getting on with the next unit first.

**badly as it turned out, so some of them have a texture on their backs

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Bigger Bugs Pt 23

   Much as the High Elf post suggests otherwise, painting has been very much on the back burner for the last few weeks. I decided last week to try and get painting again, so I picked a model I thought might be fun to do, then eventually made it to a shop to pick one up.

   The model I picked was a Tyranid Biovore. I just really enjoyed painting my Tyranids and one more mid sized beastie felt like a good idea. It's painted in the classic theme that I have used for the whole swarm, with the red gun on top and I seriously enjoyed myself to the point I am tempted to pick something else up.

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High Elves?

   A few months back one of my mates was saying he really wanted to get into Warhammer The Old World and I talked him out of it on the grounds of cost and actual ability to get games in, but it got the thoughts going around in my head.

   Over the next few weeks, I toyed with ideas for a High Elf army and even bought the Battle Marches rulebook (which gives rules for really small games), but I just couldn't settle on what to buy, or if buying anything at all was even a good idea.

   The middle ground I came to, was to buy a figure that I know I had at least two of as a kid and that felt really nostalgic. I'm not going to say how much he cost as it still makes me sad, but I was so pleased to get him. This is an old High Elf Noble on horse.

   When I was a kid, the noble was always painted in gold armour to stand out and his bird crest was always red, this time around, I thought I would try something a bit different.

   He looks good in my little cabinet, but I think he is missing something. I also think that this might have scratched the itch for the moment?

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