spring clean challenge – ebay rescue wood elves

As part of the spring clean challenge, and as something to do during social distancing, I took a number of old Citadel plastic wood elves that I had acquired from ebay and jumble sales (about 30 years ago!) to turn into a unit for Oathmark, Saga, Warlords, and other similar fantasy miniatures games.

Most of the minis are from the first plastic set that GW did for Warhammer Fantasy, back in the 80’s. There are a couple of ‘Middlehammer’ era miniatures in there though, a Sylvan wood elf from their first Lord of the Rings range in the 80’s, and an Advanced Heroquest elf. There is also a simple unit filler in there, for games with ranked units. Because all of the games these days have different numbers of minis in the ‘basic’ unit (ie 5’s in Oathmark, 8’s in Saga, bases of 10 in Kings of War) using unit fillers is a good way of having the ‘right’ number of figures for a given game.

I didn’t want to just strip the minis and start again. This meant that I had to work with the existing primer or paint job. One mini had a broken bow, which I replaced with one from an Oathmark elf.

`Because I wasn’t stripping back the minis I had to work with the original colour schemes in many cases.

I did make sure that I painted most of the cloaks Scale 75 Abyssal Blue, to provide a unifying scheme. I also painted nearly all the bows in Vallejo German Camo Dark Brown.

One of the minis had a neat, nice paint job which I kept, even though at this stage it didn’t fit in with the scheme I had chosen for the unit.

The unit was painted as a single batch, with me taking a given colour and applying to eg the trousers on one mini, the tunic on a third and fourth, and then the gloves on a fifth. This was done whenever time and Corona-brain allowed. Eventually, everything was base coated.

Having done the base coat I used a Vallejo Game Colour black wash over most of the minis. I used Army Painter Light Tone for the faces and any light hair. This did a good job of bringing the unit together. I chose black rather than sepia or umber brown as I was using a lot of dark blue and grey, and didn’t want a muddy tone to these particular elves.

I’d based all of these minis on mdf rounds, with slots, from Warbases. I like adding some weight to plastic minis and either use mdf or 25mm washers. I know that pennies and two pence coins are cheaper (round here you can get a bag of 95 pennies for only a pound…) but I find that textures and paint sticks easier to washers and mdf than coins.

The basing texture I use is an art material that they sell in Hobbycraft, the Range, and other places. It doesn’t smell, and dries quite quickly. It is water soluble so if you get some in the wrong place it washes off with a damp brush.

At this stage, all I have done is paint the finished texture in Vallejo Olive Grey. Later on, I may add flock or similar. I wouldn’t add tufts until I’d done the flocking.

The unit filler for this unit is just a textured base. So long as you don’t take the mick using fillers is a good way of adding to your force by choosing easier to paint/cheaper items than minis.

Future ideas I have are for multi based minis, basing one mini onto a cavalry base, stakes, arrows stuck in the ground, broken shields and weapons. A lot of these double up for fatigue and other counters for various games.

I am not going to add any additional highlights to these minis at this stage. I am comfortable doing  that after they are based. At this stage I have a 15 strong unit of wood elf archers that look good from 3 feet away, which I brought inexpensively and was able to recycle from ebay and other sources. That works for me.