A Band of Dark Elves

At MilleniumCon 2009, a bunch of guys from LSHMS (Lone Star Historical Miniatures Society) had a table in the dealer area where they were selling items other members wanted to get rid of, they were kind of running a flea market before the actual flea market day of the convention. Anyway, they had a big lot of old GW Dwarfs for sale which I bought. The old Citadel and Marauder minis were much better sculpts than what Games Workshop was doing at the time. I was happy, I had spent all of the money I had budgeted for shopping at the convention. The next day, they had a big lot of GW Dark Elves. Again, the older Citadel and Marauder sculpts. Well, guess who went over her budget.

The sad thing is that it has taken me so long to begin painting them.

When I took a closer look at the Dark Elves, I discovered that not all of them were from Citadel or Marauder. These spearmen are from Heartbreaker’s Tim Prow range.

Just as GW was converting their fantasy lines to plastic, they produced a command pack for the Witch Elves. Here are the musicians from two of the packs.

You will have noticed by now, I’m not using GW’s color scheme for my Dark Elves. I also chose not to use D&D’s Drow theme. Instead, I’ve chosen for a “bruised” flesh look, which is a fancy way of saying the skin has violet undertones.

Toward the end of Warhammer 3rd edition, the Witch Elf sculpts began to have an enormous amount of hair which has carried on to today.

This Witch Elf with the gruesome mask, is one of the priestesses guarding the cauldron of blood.

The Plan

I tend to be more productive with my figure painting if I have a goal. I think I’ve found the perfect one – Warrior Heroes: Warbands from Two Hour Wargames. This game allows you to begin with a small band of warriors and if you are successful, that band will become an army. I’m doing it with a bit of a twist though, the leader of each retinue will be a magic user. The ruler of Gorath, the high witch queen has died, so every magic user and warrior in Gorath has taken up arms to improve her or his position in Dark Elf society.

I need a big goal, because I have lots and lots of Dark Elves to paint. So far, I only have 18 done. And before you can ask, all of the miniatures in this post or sadly out of production.

The Count

I’m inching slowly toward the goal of painting 500 miniatures this year. With the completion of these Dark Elves, my total is 444.

• 43 28mm Fantasy Figures
• 182 6mm Ancient Greek Figures
• 2 28mm Dark Ages Viking Figures
• 58 10mm Seven Years War Figures
• 12 28mm Old West Figures
• 11 28mm Colonial Era Figures
• 101 28mm World War Two Figures
• 35 28mm Science Fiction Figures
• 47 Pieces of Terrain
• Rebased 13 Science Fiction Figures

So, if I manage to paint 500 figures a year, the lead pile will be gone within 10 years! It may be sooner, for once they can have safe conventions again, I plan to start selling off parts of my collection. Of course conventions are a double edged sword because I tend to buy as much as I sell.

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