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Ravenborn

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  1. Ravenborn

    Prologue

    By Ravenborn,

    Alright, here we go...
    So I’ve been painting minis for over thirty years now, and I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. At the very least, it’s a hobby that helps me achieve some level of zen meditation, a way to block out the real world for a little while.  Not that the real world’s terrible, or at least my little corner of it, but it’s always a nice break to escape to the realm of Sigmar for a fantasy recharge. 
    I’ve loved GW’s versions of the dark elves since Trish and Aly Morrison broke off from GW to form Marauder Miniatures. They were a couple of the original GW sculptors, who also share the ignominy of sculpting the original Nagash. Well, everyone has at least one skeleton in their closet to hide... 
    As I was saying, they made the first complete, fleshed-out line of delves, complete with some really characterful mastiffs. If anyone is familiar with the Dakka site, that’s where I picked my “Mastiff” moniker from, when I’d post my 40k projects.
    Anywho... I always have had a soft spot for the delves. Surprisingly, I’ve never picked up a single Drizz’t novel, nor read any Malus Darkblade. But I’ve always gravitated to bad guys with a sense of style (team Empire over Rebellion all the way!) and these guys had it in spades.
    Unfortunately, my painting productivity is best described as “glacial”, so  completing the hundreds of figures required by a WH Fantasy army was itself a fantasy, so I stuck to 40k.
     Until AoS.
    I still held out for a while, not wanting to get involved until they had point values for armies. I kinda assumed they wanted to kick around the rules for a while before committing to figuring out relative costs. In any case, when they finally released the  “proper” game with pts, I dug up my half-completed delf units to see what could be turned into an army.
    Congrats on reading this far, thanks! Here, have some photos of my Dark Elf army, which has been put on hold since the Daughters of Khaine finally gave me a fun and competitive army to play:




     
    Damn, GeeDub really made some amazing models for the delves. Really hoping they revisit them some day, I’d love to field corsairs and cold one knights again, and not just as allies.
    In my next post, I’ll start talking about my Daughters of Khaine and post WIPs, which is what the blog is intending to cover.
  2. Ravenborn

    Dooooooom snek!

    By Ravenborn,


    Dooooom snek?
    Alright, back to the evil snek girls!
    I took a break from my girls to work on Cities of Sigmar (dark elves, of course), then some Yu Jing goodness for Infinity, but the release of the new endless spells for DoK, and a new army book has me excited about working on these again.
     
    I felt the previous DoK book had one very powerful list option, which felt a bit OP to me. I game with a small group of friends that has limited gaming time, meaning we’re fairy casual and don’t have the time to adjust play styles and adapt to our opponents. Rolling in with a supposed “glass cannon” army that was still tougher n’ most orcs felt a bit disappointing.
    The new book really seems to be designed to encourage trying different troops and play styles, which is a definite win.
    So, to start again, I’ve been waiting for DoK-specific spells since endless spells were introduced... it still felt like GW didn’t consider them a “real” army, when even beastmen were getting specific terrain and endless spells.  Finally, the wait is over!
    I painted this guy as a creature of shadow and sorcery, rather than blood. It fits my theme a little better. I haven’t committed to a specific temple yet, but I like the concept of coming from Ulgu, striking from the shadows. 
     
    Next up; warlocks!

  4. Ravenborn

    Bloodwrack Hurricanum

    By Ravenborn,

    Wow, my elves have been on hold for eight months now. I needed to sell my house to downsize, and that meant  packing away all hobbies and distractions while I shifted my attention to house repairs and upgrades since the seller’s market has been brutal for the last five years. I honestly wasn’t sure if I could find a victim, er, buyer, to pay enough so I could afford the move, but here I am, finally, in my new home.
    So. The new Cities of Sigmar book was quite the pleasant surprise, giving me something to dream about while replacing flooring and painting bathrooms. I’ve been enamoured with the dark elves for over twenty five years, and as much as I like the Daughters of Khaine, I’m more excited by cold one knights and corsairs. The cold, efficient brutality and pokey heavy armour gets my imagination going, and I ended up with literally dozens of conversion ideas. With the house sale complete, I rushed out and picked up several kits to make these dreams a reality.
    First up; a Hurricanum/Bloodwrack Altar. To be honest, I wasn’t too sure I’d build the Altar for my girls. I’m never excited about duplicates when it comes to large kits, and this was no exception.
    But after reading through the CoS book and comments about the weaknesses of “pure” CoS elf lists online, I realized a Hurricanum would be a requirement for a competitive list. I’m an average player, and play for fun more than wins... but wins need to be an option, at least, if I’m going to keep playing. I saw the new Anvilguard Get Started box, and knew I wanted a Kharybdis and extra Corsairs...
     
    But what about the chariots? Never really been on my radar. Until now. I realized if I combined that with an altar, I could replicate a lot of the the aspects of the Hurricanum; two powerful mounts with a “balcony” looming above, all pulling a massive eldritch contraption. Perfect. 
    So, here we go;
     
  5. Ravenborn
    I was going to work on corsairs next, but got distracted by my old bolt throwers. 
    These are the old metal versions. I built them about a decade ago, with the brilliant idea of putting in spaces for the crew to sit on the base. 

    Of course, the rules for DE bolt throwers in AoS were lacklustre at best, so I only used them once or twice.
    Now, with Cities of Sigmar, I realized I could run them as Sigmarine Celestar Ballistae, and have decent rules with great old school models that keep my CoS army completely dark-elfanized.
    I needed to rebase them first, and I also wanted to replace the bolt heads to something a little sleeker and more consistent. I have some Wild Rider javelins that fit the bill perfectly, though I had to pick up a second box to get six for each of two throwers, plus spares for the crew to hoist around.
    I do love this hobby  Especially all the plastic, which is so easy to work with. I had to remove the metal spears, and that took a whole night in itself; gave me flashbacks to doing conversions 20 years ago, when everything was metal!

  6. Ravenborn
    GHLUBLARGALGURGLE!!!
    170 pts of tentacled horror ready to haunt my table. C’thulhu would be pleased.
    The beastmaster chaperone is not glued in place, just pinned, so the angle’s a bit goofy. But I need to move on to something new already. Going to update some corsairs for the army.
    This was a lot of fun to paint, but I kept repainting areas over and over. I just couldn’t get the dark plates on the back to work, until I realized the secret was to reverse it out, and paint a light colour between the plates. I’ve seen something similar on tortoise skin, where dark plates sit on light skin, giving a really interesting contrast. 


  7. Ravenborn

    Scorpion’s Sting

    By Ravenborn,

    Well, here’s my first completed unit for my Cities of Sigmar armies. It will be all dark elves, but some units will be conversions of non-elf units for fun. Up next; finishing my Kharybdis. 

  8. Ravenborn
    Took a break from painting due to well, life.
    I’m now a grandfather!
    Lots of other stuff going on that’s not nearly as much fun, but I’ll save that for therapy.
    Anyways... warlocks. Love the concept, like the individual models... but I’ve been trying to get excited about painting them for years. My primary issue is that there is no real variety in their poses or gear. Individually they look dynamic, but as a group they’re a bit lacklustre, particularly when sitting next to models designed since rank n’ file was jettisoned. 
    So I’d paint a couple, figure out the colours... then lose steam as I realized I’m painting the same model ten times.
    I got the bright idea to turn them into riding bowmen. I got the inspiration from Mongol riders, with special saddles that allowed them to sit higher when they shot their bows, similar to the dark elf saddles. I may be wrong about them being Mongol, could have been Chinese. I haven’t been able to find the reference, but it’s not important.
    My first attempt was frustrating. I used a bow and arms from a Melusai archer. The arms were a good proportion for the warlock body, but the bow was just far too tall to be fired from horseback. 
    I ended up buying the wood elf stag riders to use their torsos, but that was a dead end as well.
    Enter... the Namarti. Elves bodies, good proportions, shortbows. They were perfect, and surprisingly easy to fit on the existing lower bodies. I liked the neck armour and belts as well, they added some colour to the riders, which helps tie them in visually to the rest of my army. Throw on Melusai quivers, and they looked like light, fast archers. Exactly what I wanted.
    Took me a while to figure out the heads. So many options, but in the end I decided to go with executioner heads. I like the sleekness of them, and decided that hair would look too busy with the quiver. I may add some very short hair, which won’t interfere with the quivers, but that’s a later problem.
    On that note... anyone have spare executioner heads? I should have ten, but managed to lose four. Ah well, I’ll figure something out.
    After all the time wasted on figuring out how to end up with a product I would be excited to paint, these ended up being surprisingly fast to assemble. Now, time to paint!
     
     



  9. Ravenborn
    So... painting the three Queens let me finally nail down my colour scheme. It’s different from what I originally intended, but much better. It has good contrast, balances dark accessories reasonably well with all the pale skin, doesn’t seem too derivative of anyone else’s work (that I’m aware of) and let’s me enjoy paiting the armour (blue grey) lighting effects (pink) and some rare highlight items (gold). Even leather is fun (black, blue, white). If that sounds odd, painting is kind of a zen thing for me, very relaxing. Painting grey is boring. Sounds wierd to say that, but, neutral greys and browns are boring to paint. Brighter colours are fun.
    Anyway... now I want to apply that to a unit of troops.
    I have half-finished Doom Warlocks, an Altar and twenty Witch Elves, but want to apply the paint to clean minis. Painting my half-finished minis will get me distracted again (“hey, maybe I should keep that yellow after all!”) so I’ve packed everything away out of sight except for my Queens. Once I get the Sisters of Slaughter done, I’ll get back to the other half-finished units. 


    Hunh. Apparently, someone lost their head in my last game. Poop.
    I magnetized all my models so they stay safe in my metal toolkit, but the biggest problem with Dark elf models is also their greatest appeal for me: lots of barbs and pointy bits to hook on each other. 
    My greenstuff work was pretty hasty, I wanted to start painting last night so I had to patch up a lot of shoulder gaps where I kitbashed Khinerai arms to SoS bodies. I still need to greenstuff eyes, but wasn’t up to that last night. Ugh. I can’t remember what tool I have that was fine enough to do the eyes for the Queens.
  10. Ravenborn

    Do hags dye their hair?

    By Ravenborn,

    I hate February. It’s hard to keep any painting momentum going, when my brain wants to curl up in the fetal position under my desk and hibernate until Spring. 
    And by “Spring”, I mean June. I love Canada, but it sucks too right now . Sigh.
    Anywho, here’s proof I’m still making some progress on the girls:


    Overall, I’m pretty happy with how they’re turning out. A big reason for the slow progress is that I’m still figuring out my colour scheme. I’m moving more to dark blue and pink, rather than purple, pink and gold. 
    I think the hair needs to have a lot more pure white, like my Slaughter Queen on the left. It’ll help them stand out from my regular witch elves on the table. She’ll end up on my Altar.
    And I’ve managed to break two sickles already, and they haven’t even been in the battlefield. Damn.
    What do you think looks best for hair?
  11. Ravenborn

    Hag progress.

    By Ravenborn,

    The first hag is coming along nicely. I base coated it blue grey, and it really changed how I looked at the colours. I decided not to use gold for the mask as I have on other models, but to instead go with “cold iron”, like the altar. I like it a lot; it’s less regal and vain, more dark and practical. The magenta cloth still adds some brightness, still in the cool tones. Only the flesh is warm. I considered going for pale blue, as if they were no longer entirely human, but decided it would be looking more undead than my goal. The contrast makes the model  easier to read on the table too  
    I want to place a small dot of plastic in the eye socket to paint magenta, so it gives the facemask more life. Not sure how to do that, but I’m open to suggestions.
    The hair will blend to white, like my other girls. The model is about 2/3 complete. 
     





  12. Ravenborn

    Three hags and a nag.

    By Ravenborn,

    Just a quick update. I put the Jalopy of Doom on hold to work on my priestesses. (...of Doom).
    I’ve never been excited about the hag models. Bigger hair is a fairly reliable way of depicting officers in Warhammer, but these girls just weren’t doing anything for me. I wanted them to be more mysterious, more creepy and even terrifying to the average Johann.
    I finally realized the best way fix this was to use the Melusai masks. It definitely set them apart from the rank n’ file welves. Then I replaced their knives with sickles.  This gave them a druidic feel. All in all, I think they’re more interesting and unique. It also fits my fluff... the Temple of the Shattered Veil has rejected Khaine to worship Morathi directly, despite not knowing the full truth of his demise. The priestesses are slowly taking on the features of the Melusai, gaining scales and snake eyes. The masks allow them to deal with the other factions of Order, but each hopes to one day shed their humanity to gain the full power of becoming a Bloodwrack Medusa.

    I also repainted my Doooomfire Warlock leader. Got some conversion ideas for this group as well, but took me a while figure out the colours. Originally had pink manes, but it was too bright. Turquoise tones it down slightly.

    This is how they looked before:

  13. Ravenborn
    Honestly, I’ve been hesitant to start the altar for a couple of years. I love painting warriors and wizards and creatures... but machines, not so much. I rarely feel any real inspiration for colours or styles.
    Strangely enough though, last week I finally got struck with a bolt of inspiration  and realized I’d better run with it immediately before I lost it. 
    I’ve been painting my cold one knights and corsairs with dark blue-grey armour, and ended up applying that to my bolt thrower. I figured that might still work for the altar, along with magenta flames and runes to help tie it into my welves.

    So far, so good! In fact, I’m actually enjoying painting the sharp edges with high contrast, it’s fun to figure out lighting angles.    I’m using mostly GW paints for the blue-grey, but decided to add a bit of Vallejo prussian blue to each step of stippling to add some colour saturation. I think some if the blades will be light grey NMM, so the blue helps with the contrast.   The OSL for the runes and flames are fairly subtle, because I’m too scared of overdoing the effect and having to repaint everything. These are gaming models, so I’m trying to boost my productivity and complete these for table.    I’d love to get this completed inthe next two weeks, minus the Avatar of Khaine, guardians and hag/slaughter queen.   

    Doesn’t this look like something the Addams Family would drive? It’s the Jalopy of Dooooooom!!
     
  14. Ravenborn

    Rise of the Witch Elves

    By Ravenborn,

    I’ve always loved the Witch Elves... they were one of the units that really defined the dark elf personality and helped differentiate them from the high elves which were ubiquitous in fantasy, even back in the 80s. 
    But a few things kept me from adding them to my delf army:
    1. The price.
    2. Low armour (glass cannon doesn’t suit my play style).
    3. The price.
    4. Liked the corsair models as well, and they cost less while having higher survivability.
    5. Did I mention the price?
    $70 CDN was ridiculous, and still is. But now that they have a competitive list that’s also fun to play, it’s more worthwhile to make the plunge. I have to admit, I was getting tired of getting crushed because of the basic list available for the delves.
    I’m really bad for painting and repainting models, trying to figure out colour combinations. I’m never satisfied, always feeling like there is a “correct” combo that’s just out of my grasp. It’s terribly inefficient when it comes to finishing models, but... whatever. It’s my thing. 
    So it took me a couple of years to reach a colour scheme that satisfied me with my original delves. I finally settled on dark purple and golden yellow, with dark blue armour and white hair. After all that work, I was finally happy, and started repainting all my stuff for a final time... 
    ...but I was underwhelmed when I applied that scheme to my welf. 

    It was ok...ish. The golden yellow really popped on my other models because the rest of the palette was so dark. The contrasting colours really worked. But when applied to a model that was 80% skin, the yellow was lost.
    So, time to experiment again.

    The pink hair was a model I was making for a Blood Bowl team a couple years ago. Liked the colour, but decided I wanted to keep the hair paler. More vibrant than my first model though; these murderers are defined by vanity and visciousness, so I wanted a little more colour than silver.
    So, I finally figured that out. This is where they currently stand:
     

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