Dark Elf Warmaster part I: The Spears

I am not an experienced or talented painter in any way, the below is for my own reference as much as it is anything else. If you have any tips or suggestions, please leave a comment, they are most welcome. 

 The aim of my 10mm Warmaster Dark Elf project is to get an army ready for the table top with as little time spent painting as possible, whilst still having a good looking force. With that in mind I wanted a small colour palette of bright colours, using fast techniques. As I mentioned in my previous post, I bought these miniatures from ebay, as I don't want to do my own 3D printed. The STLs are from Forest Dragon. 

command strip with two troop strips ready to undercoat

I have never worked with 3D printed resin before, but from research I knew I needed to wash the miniatures in warm soapy water. For undercoating I glued the miniatures to a large lolly stick and sprayed with a metallic undercoat, as the main colour will be the dull metallic look of the Dark Elf armour. (Note: my budget would not allow a 20p piece for scale). 

spray undercoat on, start of blocking out in white

From there, the parts of the miniature that are not armour I painted with white. 

Then, the block colours. Again I've kept things quite simple, but tried to make the lines crisp and neat (sometimes I succeeded). 

After the block colours, I apply a wash using 'marine juice', a wash created by Sonic Sledgehammer and made by mixing three parts Dark Tone from Army Painter, three parts Reikland Fleshshade from Citadel, and four parts Lahmian Medium, also from Citadel. This was the first time I've used it, I thought it was quite effective. 

A quick highlight of purple, red, silver, grey and bronze and the paint job was done.

I just need to glue to a base, and add texture and colour to the base and I'm done. I will do this when at least half of army is done, all in one batch.

The total amount of miniatures in this batch has been 60 minis, made up of 12 strips of 5, which makes 2 units in Warmaster (2 strips per base, 3 bases per unit). 

I'm quite happy with these, especially the brighter purple, and will now continue onto the crossbows, with an identical scheme and method. 

The project as a whole will be the following (this list includes the 2 units already painted)

• 6 units of spears - 180 miniatures
• 4 units of crossbow - 96
• 2 units of black guard - 60 miniatures
• 3 units of witch elves - 90 miniatures
• 1 unit of harpies - 18
• 2 units of dark riders - 24 miniatures
• 3 units of cold one knights - 36 miniatures
• 1 unit of bolt throwers
• 2 war hydra
• 1 general on manticore
• 1 hero on chariot
• 1 hero on cold one
• 1 hero - foot
• 1 sorceress on cauldron of blood 
• 1 sorceress on manticore
• 1 sorceress on dark steed
• 1 sorceress - foot

The end of one project, the start of another.

I have finally finished my DBA Ptolemaic army that I started 18 months ago (or was it two years). These were the first miniatures I've painted since about 2005 or so, which was a few Warhammer Savage Orcs. 

Then, one day, I walked into East Manchester Historical Games in Hyde. I'd wanted to get back into the hobby for a while, and having discovered a club just 5 mins from my front door, I now had a perfect opportunity. 

The people I met couldn't have been friendlier, and I soon fell into a group that were playing DBA, 15mm ancients. The game was fast and looked fun. 

I sat down with Keith, we played a game with his minis and I was hooked. 

I decided to collect a DBA army, and the army I chose was Ptolemy, mostly influenced by someone else I met at the club, Carl, and his Seleucids. I bought all the army from Xyston, with Carl kindly supplying the mdf bases for free (Thanks Carl). 

This will be quick and easy I thought. It was not quick, and I had forgotten most of my painting skills. I between being a dad to two young kids, it took way longer than I thought. 

Anyway, to cut a long story short, here is 15mm DBA Ptolemaic army. Please forgive my photography, I will endeavour to take better photos and re-upload. 

Xyston miniatures Pantadopoi Phalangites

Shield transfers by Little Big Men Studios

Close up. The bases turned out better than I thought they would. 

More of the army

So, what is next? 

I have a Republican Roman army for DBA that has been prepared and had the base coat applied. 

However, I do feel like a bit of a change, so I am going to paint something different from 15mm ancients. All those ranks of spears and shields just put me off. 

So instead I am going to do some 10mm fantasy Dark Elves, a completely different type of ranks and ranks of spears and shields. These are resin prints that I bought off ebay some time ago - the sculpts were by the excellent Forest Dragon, with a large and ever growing range of 10mm fantasy, mostly useful for Warmaster. I just wish they were metal as I both refer the feel of metal over resin and plastic and I have found the resin really very brittle, with some spears snapping off. I hope a few coats of paint and a good varnish will help that. 

I don't have any photos of the work in progress yet, but here is an image from the Forest Dragon Patreon page. 

Dark Elf 10mm stl files by Forest Dragon.