Elven Sevens

It’s time to turn my attention to another Blood Bowl team, one I’ve been chipping away at for the last couple of years; the Elven Union. I’ve not made the fastest progress with them but after several visits to the painting desk I’ve managed to complete five of them. This leaves me a long way short of a full team, but just two more players will give me enough for Blood Bowl 7’s so I decided to start with that.

I also painted a couple of markers for the team (because easy wins right?). For some reason they’ve proved to be a real pain in the bum to photograph so the pictures aren’t the best but hopefully you get the idea.

Whilst I was about it I decided to grab the Elves I’d painted previously for a quick repaint. Instead of gold and silver their armour was split into gold and a kind of nasty off-gold that at some point in time I must have liked but which now looked decidedly iffy. Plus I couldn’t remember for the life of me how I’d painted it even if I wanted to. Here’s how they used to look.

And here they in their smart new colours.

Of course we can’t let this moment pass without a group shot of the team.

As is so often the case working on these has me fired with enthusiasm for tackling the rest of the team. Then again there are various other things I’m keen to get painted so it probably won’t be straight away. Plus there’s the fact that if I paint too many elves at once my regular readers start to worry about me and I don’t want to add to their woes – the poor things suffer enough just by being my regular readers!

God Of Murder – Part 7

I’m keen to tackle some more Daughters of Khaine this year to build on the little collection I started putting together last February. With this in mind my first task of 2022 was finishing off three of the snake-like Melusai. I started with one of the Blood Sisters, the elite shock troops of the war covens.

Then I followed her up with two of the venomous Blood Stalkers who rain down arrows on those who defy their dark queen.

I find I have a bit of a mental block about painting these sinister snake-women, for some reason I often feel like they’re going to be a struggle to paint – even though when I actually come to putting brush to model they’re quite straightforward. Hopefully knocking these three out in short order will help to convince me of the error of my ways and encourage me to crack on with the rest.

I’ve got big plans for these cruel she-elves so expect to see more of them slithering off the painting desk in the weeks and months ahead.

Khainite Shadowstalkers – Part 1

Most of the warbands which have been made specifically for Warcry are made up of various sorts of barbarians who like to spend their days beating seven shades of shit out of each other for the glory of the Chaos gods. Most, but not quite all. Alongside these violent and generally underdressed loons we have the Khainite Shadowstalkers, elves who serve Morathi the Shadow Queen as spies and assassins. Branded with the magical shademark they can pass almost any barrier, and slip with ease into the wartorn Eightpoints to do a bit of murdering on their queen’s behalf.

I’ve been fancying the idea of painting up a warband of these shady characters lately, and have been experimenting with ways of creating the effect of shadows on their robes and cloaks. These two were painted very much as an experiment but I’m pleased with how they’ve turned out so expect to see their colleagues emerging from the gloom in the near(-ish!) future.

This doesn’t mean I’ve stopped working on my Spire Tyrants of course – as regular readers will know by now I can’t have too many Warcry warbands!

God Of Murder – Part 6

My efforts to clear some of the clutter from my painting desk continue and today it’s the turn of two of the bigger miniatures that have been hoarding more than their fair share of space. Back in February when I started working on some Daughters of Khaine I called the series of posts “God of Murder” in honour of Khaine, the bloody-handed god that these elves worship. Inspired by painting up the warband I dug out these two Avatars of Khaine and got them assembled, reasoning that I could get them painted up fairly quickly. I wasn’t wrong either, actually painting them took next to no time at all. It’s just unfortunate that it took me the better part of a year to actually get on with it but we can’t have it all. Behold the God of Murder himself (or at least two statues of him, animated by dark and – presumably – gory magic).

I often thought of these as being rather small – at least in comparison to a lot of the other monsters that can be found roaming around in the age of Sigmar, but once I got these assembled it really came home to me how big they are, towering imposingly over the ordinary elves.

I’m still feeling very enthusiastic about these murderous she-elves so now I’ve got their dad’s statue collection up and running I’m hoping to tackle a few more of the Daughters themselves shortly.

Morgwaeth the Bloodied

Back in February I put together a Warcry warband of Daughters of Khaine, based around the Blade Coven from Warhammer Underworlds. The only model from the Blade Coven which I didn’t paint was the leader, Morgwaeth the Bloodied. Her moment, however, has come at last. 

With her done the whole set of bloodthirsty elves are ready for action. 

Who knows, perhaps someday I might even try playing Underworlds! 

God Of Murder – Part 5

One of my all time favourite Daughters of Khaine models, and one of the miniatures that attracted me to the faction in the first place, is the Slaughter Queen. I’ve been meaning to paint her for absolutely ages and the other day I thought “Why wait?” and cracked on at last.

Her hairdo is a bit ridiculous, which should put me off, but somehow I still think she’s awesome.

God Of Murder – Part 4

We’re into the last week of Fembruary now so it’s time to put the finishing touches on my Daughters of Khaine Warcry warband. Just like the two Witch Elves I showed earlier in the month these two come from the Morgwaeth’s Blade-coven set. Of course this also means that I only need to paint up Morgwaeth herself to complete another Warhammer Underworld’s warband so at some point I’ll do that too. For now though let’s concentrate on the final Warcry recruits.

First of all here’s a savage Sister of Slaughter, the berserker she-elves so savage that even the Witch Elves must look at them from time to time and think “Steady on”.

Alongside her we have a second snake-bodied Melusai, this time in the form of a Blood Stalker. I must confess that I was struggling a bit with this one but, very fittingly for Fembruary, my fiancée gave me some very helpful pointers and stopped me from making a hash of things. The benefits of having a professional artist in the house!

Finally here’s a shot of the whole warband gathered together.

Although the warband is finished for now I’ve got various other Daughters of Khaine models I’d like to add so at some point I’ll come back to this project and add a few more recruits. We’re also almost at the end of Fembruary and for me work and other “real life” commitments are starting to get particularly busy. That said there are a few more models I’d like to complete that are within stretching distance of getting finished so we’ll see what, if anything, I can manage over the next few days.

God Of Murder – Part 3

Time for another update to the ranks of the Daughters of Khaine. This time I wanted to give the warband some air superiority in the form of two airborne predators – the Khinerai. These daemonically tainted, winged elves are the spiritual successors of the old Dark Elf Harpies of the WHFB era, which for my money were amongst the very worst models Games Workshop ever produced. Shall we take a moment to look back at the ugly models of yesteryear?

Ghastly weren’t they? Between the lumpen sculpts and the hairy chests there wasn’t much to love about these and I spent a sizeable chunk of my youth hoping that someday GW would get around to replacing them. Thankfully that day came at last with the arrival of the Daughters of Khaine army book and the accompanying Khinerai Harpies. These come in two varieties, the Heartrenders and the Lifetakers, so naturally I painted one of each.

The Heartrender swoops over the battlefield impaling her prey on cruel javelins…

…whilst the Lifetaker plunges out of the sky to hack her victims apart in close combat.

I can’t honestly pretend that I enjoyed painting these that much. The way they attach to the base via the tail alone means they tend to spring around, a little shiver passing through the model every time the brush touches it. Taking a firm grip of the miniature itself rather than just holding it by the base is vital but tends to lead to me planting my great big thumbs in the middle of something I’d just painted, or smearing and smudging paint everywhere. My bad habit of using the side of my hand as a pallet worked against me here as well. They’re also packed with details, which usually I’d enjoy but in this case only made things trickier, especially when working in the awkward spaces created by the splayed wings and arms. My impression is of a set of miniatures designed by someone so excited by the possibilities created by working in lightweight modern plastic that they forgot about what it would actually be like to paint them. In the end I’m happy enough with the results but mostly just pleased to call the damn things done.

We’re now halfway through Fembruary and I’m still having a lot of fun powering through my backlog of unfinished female miniatures. To be honest I’ve no idea how much longer I can keep up painting at this rate but I’ve got a lot more models that deserve to be painted so I’ll see what else I can manage over the coming fortnight.

There’s A Guy Works Down The Chipshop Swears He’s Elvish

I spent some of the weekend working on something a world away from the blood-thirsty savagery of the Daughters of Khaine, but still distinctly violent and elvish – my Elven Union Blood Bowl team. Readers may remember that back in December I dipped my toe into starting an elf team (after claiming I’d paint a human team to follow up my Orcs – something I’ve still done naff all about). I’d come up with the idea of putting heads from the Warhammer 40k Harlequins onto the bodies of Blood Bowl elves some time ago, and even built a few of them, but it wasn’t until December that I found a colour scheme I really liked. Here’s a reminder of how the two test models look.

I’ve been keen to get back to the rest of the team ever since so, when I started looking out models for Fembruary, I took the opportunity to dig through the elves I’d built and check if any of them were female (there’s probably a joke in there about it being hard to tell with elves…). Turns out three of them were so I started chipping away at them through January, whenever I felt like a change from working on the Tzeentchian cult that was preoccupying my mind at that time, and once Fembruary rolled around I knuckled down properly and got them all finished. Looking at them now I realise they actually show something of an evolution of the team concept (if that doesn’t sound too pretentious!). This one is built straight out of the box, with no converting whatsoever.

This one is a straightforward head-swap, much like the two boys I showed previously.

And this one is where things got a bit strange and scary, a reminder that elves don’t just waft around being poetic and melancholic, they also curdle milk and steal children. Getting that mask to fit was a right nightmare too I can tell you!

Anyway, with these ladies ready to take to the pitch the team is already almost half done.

Usually this is the point in a project where I’d starting thinking about focussing and trying to get the whole set completed, but at the moment there’s only a couple more that are built (and they’re both boys so won’t be getting touched this month). I’ll keep chipping away at them though, and we’ll see how it goes. For now though, it’s time to dig around in the pile of neglected models and see what I feel like tackling next.

God Of Murder – Part 2

Time to get properly started on my coven of Daughters of Khaine for Fembruary. When I first thought of putting the warband together (quite some time ago now) my plan was to base it around the Melusai and Khinerai and leave the old fashioned Witch Elves out of it. I like these bloody-handed killers well enough but the miniatures never quite interested me enough to consider buying them. However that was before Morgwaeth’s Blade-coven was released for Warhammer Underworlds.

I really like the models in the set, so if I was ever going to paint a Witch Elf then these were the ones for me.

Whilst the first one was built straight out of the box this second one was tweaked slightly to give her a shield instead of a second dagger. No real reason for this beyond allowing us to use a variety of equipment in games of Warcry.

It can be easy to see the Witch Elves as falling into the “hormonal teenage fantasy” class of female miniatures, given that they spent their entire costume budget on boots and underwear. The savagery of their expressions gives the lie to that however, at least on these particular miniatures, and the end result looks – to my eye at least – more cruel  than sexy.

Finally I’d like to give a shout out to that well-known blogger and podcaster, all round top bloke and friend of this blog, the Imperial Rebel Ork. Despite his many virtues he persists in the belief that all elves are foppish, pretentious wimps, a patently ridiculous argument which he laid out in Episode 47 of his podcast. Hopefully these ladies will be sufficient to show him the error of his ways – if not the rest of the warband are on their way!