Greetings venerable brushbearers! Today I would like to share photos of what is already painted, before next year reinforcements will arrive. The army is a pleasure to use on the battlefield, even though the newest additions are still waiting to be tried, or in the case of the chariot, failed to do anything in the last 6 games I tried to use it... :P (well I guess being killed by artillery fire or magic actually is "drawing enemy attention", not nothing;) )
First half of the army was painted in the second half of 2020, and the army had it baptism of battle on the Oldhammer Poland 2020 event. Even though the results were mixed, I had a lot of fun, and enjoyed the games much more than the previous year, when I used my dwarf army. It's not that I had a bad time using dwarfs, but playing something more mobile, casting spells, having a big flying monster - boy is it more fun!
From the two Cynath twins, only Urathion had his monster mount, and so poor Chimerion had to use his awesome magic powers to move across the battlefield. The mage "elemental magic" was one of the few dark elf models that I painted few months earlier, as a test piece, and I am not 100% happy with him.
After Oldhammer Poland 2020, few of the participants tried to make a "Tale of 4 Painters" and even though I quickly failed to attend, the first part of it saw me painting Chimerion in his new, red dress and his mount - Rudolphia the Red Nosed Hydra ;)
Latest character addition to the army is not 100% done yet. I converted a model that I plan to use in two ways - more often, as a chaos/dark elf/slaanesh character riding a chariot pulled by steeds of slaanesh, and secondly as the illustrious Witch King himself. To finish him, I still want to add a banner (guess I should make two, and figure a way to swap them between the slaanesh and witch king versions) and obviously, Malekith needs normal cold ones to pull his chariot (even though his mom could give him these steeds as a present ;) ).
Two other character entries are a dark pegasus riding noble (still missing a shield:( ) and another test piece - old Morathi on foot.
Moving on to the units, at first I painted few scout units, mainly because I had a bunch of unreleased models, that I wanted to paint instead of normal x-bow men, but also because I regard them as the one dark elf unit from the 4 edition book, that is really cost-effective. Later I painted two additional units for the "a tale of 4 painters" sake, and the remaining models I used for them, were some 3 edition/marauder dark elves, and I think they blend well enough with the rest of the army.
The first dark rider unit, consisting the two unreleased dark riders was painted for the Oldhammer Poland event, and the second one later for the "tale". I must say I prefer the first unit much more,probably because of the older plastic horses, which are less goofy than the ones used in the second unit.
For the sake of playing 6-7 edition WFB and 9'th age, more dark riders are necessary for a full aggressive army list. But I am bored of the normal metal dark riders, and so am in a process of figuring out how to make the next unit. The three options that are most probable are:
- using Melnibonean cavalry models
- using 3 edition darksteed riding dark elves
- the one I am most interested now - converting 3 edition dark elf assassins and/or 4 edition wardancers to make a "hair metal version" of the warlock unit, that was added in 8 edition of WFB. That way I will have a unit that can serve both roles. But it will cost a lot or time and money, as I would need to buy the wardancer/assassin models that I will cut in half for rider torsos...
My favourite dark elf unit by far are the Cold One Knights. I loved both the 4 edition version, and later the 6 edition one. For me they are the epitome of being a dark elf, wicked nobles of Nagarythe.
Unfortunately I must say that they are rarely useful on the battlefield. The scouts and dark riders are the "heavy duty" units, and they need to perform well, for the "flower of Nagarythe knighthood" to stroll the battlefield and bask in their (unearned) glory :P
Last unit/two units are the Harpies. It's funny how these models are different from the later versions. These are just "some ugly flying monster", instead of "boob flashing flying monster" and I must say that I love them that way. They are also good for adding some colour to the otherwise dark coloured army.
The two last entries for now, is the second Hydra and a Bolt Thrower. The Hydra was really annoying to assemble, but I really like how it turned out, and I don't really remember why I painted the Bolt Thrower - it is quite a strong machine, but I never fielded it, and rather spend my points or more aggressive stuff, instead of a war machine. Guess it will be useful after I painted more infantry, then I can rotate between an agressive army list, and a "gun line" army list.
Feel free to ask any questions and leave comments on what you think about them:)
