The Ancient Kin – An Elf Project

Greetings Fellow Beasts,

please find here for your perusing pleasure the assembly of a small band of Elven-kind from a range of heritage.

The miniatures below are mostly GW. Though I also have Mantic, Red Box Games, Grenadier and Ral Partha miniatures in the group too.

I was a teenager in the 90’s when Warhammer Quest was released. My brothers, our friends and I spent many hours entertained by that miniatures based RPG.

Warhammer Quest inspired me to assemble a diverse collection of fantasy miniatures. D&D reinforced that inspiration. I feel that it is always a good option to have interesting minis for Characters as well as rank-and-file for minions, groups of NPC’s (friendly or not) and street-fillers.

The catalyst for the project was the beginning of a new D&D campaign where we the players had decided to all play as Elves. As it turned out our DM for this campaign, Damian, prefers pure minds-eye. Minis not required. Oh well ?

Some of the work already that leads in to this project:

As well as these guys, I’ve completed some Spearmen and Archers. The paint schemes were based on some of the very original paint schemes my brother Luke and I worked on in our early days of painting… you’ll know them when you see them…

The bases were an experiment using Happy Seppuku base stamp, an epoxy putty usually used for home repair and metal washers.

At this time I began to put the project together. This core group was drawn from my Dungeon Saga collection to be potential player characters. Technically a couple of these are human… but we’re not looking too closely ?

One slight problem is Senore Swirly Swords here…

The miniature is made of resin. No variation of hot water treatment would keep the swords looking more sword-like for very long. Chop’n’change time! Swords supplied by Mierce Miniatures Melusines (don’t look ‘em up at work ?) I bought a grab bag of Ysian bits from Mierce a little while ago and there were several of these swords included.

They’re oversized for the mini, but we can always say that the swords are made of some magic, super light-weight, durable metal.

Currently working on assembling and rebuilding some the older minis that have suffered the degradations of careless storage, poor assembly or being robbed of parts.

Shown above:

1. A High Elf banner bearer. Pinned through the middle and the gap filled with green stuff.
2. Two Wood Elf glade riders needing arms, shields and mounts.
3. Wood Elves who’ve had their armament (and an arm) stolen.
4. An old Wood Elf mage. Assembled and green stuff applied. Needs horse.
5. This guys weapons were taken to use on another mini years ago… I’d forgotten this until later.

A couple of the minis need re-arming (in one case, quite literally).

Raiding my bits Box was only semi-successful as I have no Elven sprue parts. I do have Skeleton sprue bits though…

A little bit of green stuff, and now hopefully they’ll look less like Bone hands and more like gloved hands.

The next step is to replace the Champion’s sword. I still didn’t remember that I’d stolen it for another mini…

I had a spare spear from one of the Glde Riders so I figured I’d use that to build a replacement sword:

However initial attempts were not successful. The sword was off-set sitting directly on the hand, so it never looked right. My next idea was to build more of a grip for my make-shift sword to attach to, so it would look better. Made from a piece of plastic skeleton upper arm, and the glade rider spear tip, with green stuff to blend the parts together.

It didn’t work. At all. Frustrated I left it and went to bed. I considered purchasing bits on eBay, but other than a semi- complete regiment box, I couldn’t find anything suitable. I determined to sleep on it. And remembered something: I had started a conversion years ago where I had taken this very miniatures sword to attach to another Elf. I still have that elf, in another box, not with the rest of my Elves. And I was never going to finish that conversion. Should I attempt to… “unconvert” a mini? Would it be worth the hassle, or would it make more of a mess?

I’ve decided I’m not going to buy anything more for this project right now. I’ll just work with what I’ve got. But that means either using another sword, or returning the original.

I toyed around a little with a sword from the plastic skeleton sprue. It didn’t look right. So that means digging out the old conversion and trying to retro-fit the sword back on…

This was a conversion I started back in about 2002-ish. Back then we were playing Warhammer Quest and Mordheim. For many reasons I won’t bore you with the project was never completed. Such is life eh?

The net result: this conversion will not be completed. At least not in the current iteration. With some trepidation I removed the sword, and reattached it to the original owner.

But now I have another Elf with no hand. It irks me to have a job left incomplete. It’s a good mini and I could add it to the project. So what to do with it? I don’t remember what the original minis hands were, so I turned to another source for replacement parts: Kingdom Death. A quick check for scale compatability looked ok. One “casting” hand and staff coming up.

The spear is too long though. I tried rotating it 90 degrees, but it stuck out waaay to far. I could see it getting knocked off with the first encounter with a mini case, never mind a player.

I tried a dry fit on a base, with a couple of positions. I settled on upright, maintains the original look of the mini. I shortened the haft of the spear, using some of the detail to hide the cut and join. It’s still a little too long, but it’s a much better fit.

She’s done. This conversion, more than a decade in the making, is finally complete. It’ll be painted as part of the project, and it is my hope another player will pick it up and decide that it is the mini that best represents their character.

In other news Hawk-Guy is assembled, pinned and ready for painting.

As of this date, the models in the project can be roughly placed into three categories:

Those minis to be stripped, and some awaiting priming will required basing. But all-in-all that’s about right. I’ll finish the basing on all minis, then clean up the work space of dust and debris then move into the painting phase of the project. My favourite bit ?

After a short break for Orktober, it is time to return.

All the minis listed as “to be stripped” have been done.

I spent some time last night working on some of the Elves that had been semi-painted or completed an eon ago.

Mixed with their respective groups:

Tonight I have created some more bases, trying something different. I use standard 30mm bases, topped with green stuff. I use Happy Seppuku press molds to create the texture. I thought that tonight’s efforts were only so-so, as I think I used too much water.

Since they’ve dried a little though, they seem to be coming up ok… well, wait and see I suppose!

I’ve begun work on another part of this project, the “Dark Kin”, the Drow, Dark Elves. I’m starting with three old metal Witch Elves, originally intended to be converted to Gangers back in the day…

They are serving as guinea pigs: I’m testing three different skin tones on them. A DnD inspired, Drow Black skin tone. A grey skin tone. A palid, sunless skin tone.

I have gone through a few steps each, though I’m not entirely satisfied with any of them, so I will continue to work with them. Though at the end of the day, they aren’t meant to be “major pieces” more like specialist rank’n’file minions.

Drow so far:

1. 1:2 GW Codex Grey: GW Chaos Black
2. Wash GW Purple Wash
3. 1:2 Chaos Black: AP Skeleton Bone
4. 1:4 Chaos Black: Skeleton Bone
5. Glaze Purple Wash (very thin, watered down)

Grey so far:

1. GW Codex Grey
2. Purple Wash
3. Codex Grey Base leaving shadows
4. 1:1 Codex Grey: Skeleton Bone
5. Glaze Purple wash

Palid so far:

1. Base AP Skeleton Bone
2. Wash GW Purple Wash
3. Layer Skeleton Bone
4. Layer GW Skull White.

Using glazed of purple and the original base colour, I’ve tried to improve the skin on these two in particular. Palid is better, still not happy with grey.

At this point I’m happy with Drow and Palid. Grey isn’t working for me. A bit more work on it, but I might set it aside on finish the other two.

Red Leather:

• Base: GW Base Mechrite Red
• Wash: GW Baal Red
• 2x Wash: GW Shadow Black (old colour!) possibly 1 coat of this would be enough.
• 1st layer: Mechrite Red again
• 2nd Layer: GW Blood Red.

Green/Black Leather

• Base: GW Chaos Black
• 1st Layer: GW Kabalite Green
• Wash: Asurman Blue
• 2nd layer: Kabalite Green again, leaving some visible fro previous layer
• 3rd layer: GW Vile Green

Working on the metals, gems and smaller details.

Ive used a recipe for “Aelven Metal” as inspiration for the lighter metal, “Gun Metal” for the sword blades and my usual recipe for the gold.

“Aelven Metal”

• base: Vallejo Model Colour Silver
• wash: Citadel Waaargh Green
• 1st layer: Vallejo Model Colour Silver

“Gun Metal”

• base: GW Boltgun Metal
• wash: Citadel Shadow Black ink
• 1st layer: Boltgun metal

Gold

• Undercoat: Vallejo Model Colour German Camo Brown
• Base: GW Dwarf Bronz
• Wash: GW Brown Ink
• 1st layer: GW Shining Gold
• 2nd layer: GW Burnished Gold

Gems are:

AV German Camo Brown, GW Mechrite Red, GW Blood Red, a tiny dot of GW Skull White

The bases have been done to match the existing Elves.

After a little feedback in the Hobby Weekender thread ( thanks @dawfydd and @horati0nosebl0wer ) I gave the bases a little bit more of a highlight and adjusted the hair of Palid Elf slightly.

I started work on four GW High Elf Phoenix Guard. These minis have been stripped of their old layers of paint, ready for a new updated look.

They’ll have the same mix of colours that the other High Elves had, with one or two hints of what the Dark Elves have. 

The colours will tie them back to the other High Elves but they’ll also have their own look. 

The clocks are a neutral grey.

For the Elves any Grey will use the following recipe:

Base: GW Codex Grey

Wash: Black Ink (I’m still using old GW Shadow Black)

1st Layer: Codex Grey again

Glaze: Thined GW Asurmen Blue

2nd Layer: 1:1 Codex Grey to AP White.

Continued work on the Phoenix Guard. They get white helmets with colourful embellishments to match my other High Elves, so they may easily be mixed in as part of the same unit, or be designated as unit leaders/ lead-mooks/ sergeants.

Switching back over to the darker side of the project again, I’ve got an assassin from Mantic. He’s listed as a Dark Elf assassin, purchased during the Dungeon Saga Kickstarter. He could be an opponent or a character.

Although the mini will be part of my Dark Elf collection, I’ll paint the mini with the same skin tone as my High Elves. This will hint that he is not of Drow/ Dark Elf heritage, and the skin will match with the first Mantic Elves that I painted.

This was a fairly quick paint job. Started on 14 Dec 18. Basic black cloth, leather armour and a couple of spot colours. I used the same red and teal as I used in the previous Dark Elves, the Witches.