Spellweaver

And here is the last hero I have painted so far! It is the same miniature as the Spellsinger but if you look closely you will see the Staff is curved in a weird way... that is because it snapped and I was forced to pin it, and while I did my best... it did not ended up completely straight.

I tried giving this one some more fancy colours since it is typically a level 4 wizard, and that's why it has a red sword and some funky eyes. The end result is not particularly good but it is easy to spot him on the battlefield so that makes me happy.

Spellsinger

This one has been painted for a while but did not have time to finish the base and take good pictures, so here it is!

I typically play with two wizards on steed, one with each Glade Rider unit. This is the Spellsinger (lower level) and as such I used a simple metal sword and bone staff, as opposed to the other one where I chose more "magical" colours.

I am particularly happy about how this horse turned out.

Glade Riders (II)

These are the second unit of Glade Riders also fully painted!

The are another six with music.

The main difference here is that I have magnetized one of them, to be used as either a plain archer or a Standard Bearer as I sometimes play a unit of 12 with Standard.

The way I differentiate these two units on the field is by the colour of their arrows (red / blue).

I think they look quite nice once in formation and I am satisfied with the end result despite the huge amount of time invested in them.

Glade Riders (I)

Finally, the first unit I have finished!

These are 6 Glade Riders with music, a unit that is practically in all of the lists I play.

I chose to paint them first because I paint horses and riders separately and therefore transporting them is a pain until they are fully painted.

I am relatively happy with the result but there are lots of things I should have done different. To begin with, spending less time in these! The en result is not as good as it should be for the amount of time I spent on them. I blame my poor eyesight and lack of focus lately.

In addition, I have been experimenting a lot with different styles, techniques and ways to approach these figures as they are the first elves I ever paint. I can clearly see my painting style is better suited for something more grimdark.

In addition, I bought these second hand and I did not realize that at the time, but they were not in the best condition. They have scratches and broken pieces and despite my best efforts, I still failed to notice a few areas that I did not scrape properly and you can notice all of these imperfections.

Nevermind now, because they are painted and ready for battle!

The colours are exactly the ones I posted before. The only change is that I tried to apply more "texture" to the clothes by simulating leaves or other interesting patterns instead of plain highlights. I am not entirely sure if the end result is good or just weird. Need to think more about it. In addition, I decided to skip a few steps and use plain colours from the pot instead of mixing and creating so many intermediate tones, as otherwise I was taking even longer to paint these.

Archers (I)

I finally had the time to go ahead and finish the first test model by adding the last bits of grass to it. Just the first one to test some colours and highlights. I will keep on tweaking the style as I paint more of these.

Project Wood Elves: First Tournament

I have played so far 7 games with the Wood Elves with small variations of the "shooty" list that was posted before, and finally I have decided to participate in a local tournament to have another 3 games in a row.

After that I will focus on the melee variant to try and play a bit with Sisters of the Thorn and/or Wild Riders which so far I have not used. At the same time, the Arcane Journal has been released and I should be getting it in a couple of weeks so all the stars align for the change!

I am honestly having second thoughts about joining a tournament due to the potential ultra competitive folks that might be there, but let's see, I go without much expectations. I'd like to have at least one win, and I would be happy if I have something like 1-1-1, but let's see!

The list I have chosen is the following:

Glade Lord, Great weapon, Asrai Longbow, General, Forest Dragon, Armour of Destiny, An Annoyance of Netlings - 499

Spellweaver, Level 4 Wizard, Elven Steed, Ruby Ring of Ruin, Oaken Stave, Battle Magic - 269

Spellsinger, Level 2 Wizard, Elven Steed, Lore Familiar, Elementalism - 154

5 Glade Guard, Arcane Bodkins - 65

5 Glade Guard, Hagbane Tips - 65

5 Glade Guard, Hagbane Tips - 65

8 Deepwood Scouts, Hagbane Tips - 120

8 Deepwood Scouts, Arcane Bodkins - 120

6 Glade Riders, Arcane Bodkins, Reserve Move, Musician - 132

6 Glade Riders, Hagbane Tips, Reserve Move, Musician - 132

3 Tree Kin, Elder - 160

Treeman - 215

I have played 5 games with this list and have won 4 (the list is tougher than what it looks like apparently?), in a casual friendly environment in which we let each other correct mistakes and undo/redo as we see fit. For example, I typically forget the "reserve move". So things might be VERY different in competitive environment.

Unfortunately, I have not had time to paint it all. I have only one single archer and the Spellweaver and singer painted. I managed to paint base colours on the horses so I could place the riders on top and also painted the tip of the arrows so I could differentiate them in game (red = hagbane, blue = arcane). It is going to be the first time in years that I go to an official event with an unpainted Army. So sad!

Here is the T3 page of the tournament. It is the third edition of the Tournament, I played the first one with my dear Skavens and ended up 17 out of 18 ✌

And here are a couple of pics of the full Army

Project Wood Elves: First Test Model

The paralelisms with the Skaven project continue....

While this is not the first Wood Elf that I paint in my life, it is probably the first Warhammer Wood Elf I paint in 25+ years. In fact, I can say for certain that I have not painted too many Elves of any kind.... 

Before starting I spent quite some time browsing miniatures and looking at other armies. In the end I settled for some style I want to keep with NMM, green and yellow bright colours with some brown, I want to use some glazing and shading and I want to add some texture to cloths. Overall I want to put to work some of the techniques I have learnt in the past couple of years and take my sweet time with each figure as opposed to "get them as fast as I can ready to battle". I have decided that painting this army replaces one of the objectives of the year, as I will focus on Wood Elves instead of painting Kill Teams. My main source for inspiration is this Army from Mariano. I just love how they look like. Of course I know I won't be able to do even a fraction of what he did but I still hope to create something nice.

1. Here you can see the first test models. I am satisfied with the skin and cape, I mean lots of things to improve but shadows and colours are fine. On the other hand I don't like the leather and boots so that needs to change. Same thing with the base, I need to add some grass flock and probably use a lighter shade for the first layer as it is right now "too brown" for a Wood Elf... 
2. As for the horse, I am quite satisfied overall with the skin and leather. I probably overdid a bit the skin since I spent quite some time going back and forth with the texture and the lights, I need to find the right pace and improve it for the future as I have about 20 of those to paint and this one took me two hours!
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4. For being the first test models they are not bad, but far from being what I want them to be. More to come soon but at least some progress is being made!

As I use these posts for future reference for myself, I want to keep track of the paints as well.

I used these for the NMM metal and for the skin of the horse. For the skin I applied multiple layers of 

a glaze of Wolf Grey, and then some with Neutral Grey for the shadows. For the highlights I skipped the bone as the change of tone was too noticeable.

These were "as is" used for the wooden parts. For the leather I used either the flat brown or the beige one as base and then I mixed the base colour with beige red (from the skin palette) to get a lighter version and stippled it. Then added some texture and scratches with even a lighter version mixing it with bone 70.918

These were used for the golden bracelets and for the horse's hair.

These are the ones for the lighter green cloth parts, and the blue is for a glaze to give some depth. I mixed the base green with the yellow to get an intermediate tone.

These are the skin colours, from base to highlight, used "as is" without mixing.

I used these ones for the cape and the lila was for the shadows. I did multiple layers mixing different amounts of them but honestly it is not needed, it can be used directly and then the differences can be finetuned with a glaze of base colour.