If You Go Down to the Woods Today: A Tale of 4 Armies

Well, it's not really a big surprise given that I said I'd be moving on to my Wood Elves.

I've moved on to my Wood Elves.

Specifically some Deepwood Scouts, which are essentially Glade Guard with the ability to skirmish and, well...erm...scout.

I distinguished my Scouts when I first built and painted them by giving them hoods and making their cloaks a darker brown, which is more than enough to make it clear on the table top.

Now that they are back to proper skirmishing, rather than that bizarre checkerboard ranking they had to endure in 8th edition, it's even clearer.

As my Wood Elves are much newer than my Vampire Counts army, there wasn't that much that needed doing on them.

I gave each model a wash of Agrax Earthshade and a dry brush of Ushabti Bone to pick out details. I then went back over the skin, stitching and gold trim to highlight them up.

The drybrush didn't look right on the cloaks so I gave them a coat of Wyldwood contrast paint.

I finally decided to give the bows and arrows a more wood-like colour and so went with Baneblade Brown and a coat of Skeleton Horde contrast paint.

Finally I finished off the arrows with white fletchings.

Obviously, the big issue that needed addressing were the bases. I'd previously transferred this army onto MDF multi-bases for Kings of War, and opted for moving them back over to Warhammer: The Old World onto the new 25mm base sizes to give me an army I could to take to play with outside of my immediate gaming group.

I'm not certain I'm going to go to events, but it gives me the option.

I figured popping them off MDF would be fairly straightforward, but I was wrong. It was a real challenge to get them off what were incredibly strongly bonded bases without snapping any legs or feet. In fact, the force needed actually broke a couple at the waist joints (yes, I assembled plastic miniatures with super glue, what of it?).

I'd never been fully happy with my basing of my Wood Elves, either for Warhammer Fantasy Battle or Kings of War. I think this because I'd gone for more browns, which had made everything look a bit drab.

So this time I aimed for a dash of colour to provide contrast.

My initial basing was done with Stirland Mud and a few small stones glued in place and washed with Agrax Earthshade. Then I added some Battle Zone Field Scatter from Javis Countryside Scenics which is pre-mixed flock with varied colours including grey and pale orange stone and darker, more wintery green static grass.

The final touch was some Autumn Leaf Litter from Green Stuff World to add that splash of colour. It's not actually as vibrant in real life as in the pictures, but it does set off the brown models and should really tie the army together as I used orange for some of my elite units.

I ended up doing more work on this unit than I intended, but I'm really pleased with how they look now. I've started in on 20 more Glade Guard to get the core of the army done before I start moving to the more unique units.

Acquired: 10
Painted: 156
Lead Mountain: 851