Six inches of enchanted wood - Part 2 of 2

This is the finished wood, ready to be set on the table!

Oh... that reminds me, I need to make a table... hmmm.

Enjoy!

Six inches of enchanted wood - Part 1 of 2

What is the only Warhammer army that has a piece of scenery as a "unit"?

Exactly. My beloved Wood Elves. If you take a look at p.18 in your Wood Elf Army Book (everyone owns one, right?) you will discover the Woodland Ambush rule, which allows the Wood Elf player to place a 6" wood anywhere in his half of the table after scenery has been placed and before deployment.

In other words: I get to build a small wood to carry around with my army.
I am sorry, but you can't get any cooler that that :)

The trees are from Woodland Scenics. Here you see the base which I carved out of styrofoam.

Of course any Wood Elf-specific piece of wood (especially one that magically appears before each battle and can potentially be moved around during the fight by spells) need wardstones.
Making wardstones: This is pretty easy. All you need is a lighter and a metal tool of some sort with a pointy end. Heat the tool with the flame and quickly carve the desired shape into the styrofoam. The heated tool should last for approx. 5 seconds, which is more than enough to trace a quick spiral.

Don't worry about the metal getting all black and covered in molten styrofoam. Just take a damp towel to clean the tool and melt away the styrofoam residues from the tool.

I made some roots out of green stuff (I did not go into too much detail, because of lack of time and because most of the roots will be covered with foliage later anyway).

That's it for now!

I don't have a lot of time on my hands currently to do any painting, so the Wood Elf projects will just keep piling up until they get painted. But everything will get painted eventually...

See you next time!

[EDIT]: I forgot to mention that this piece of scenery is a first step towards re-vamping my very old WHFB table into a decent "rural" setting (as opposed to "urban" Mordheim) for games of Border Town Burning, Empire in Flames and WHFB.

Magic girls

Hey!

After a long silence I finally have something new to share. I had a little spare time (Christmas holidays) and got a chance to speed-paint 2 minis between wrapping presents, buying a christmas tree and doing all the (cool) celebrating.

Another quantum leap towards the goal of seeing my (dauntingly big) wood elf army finished one day.

Here are two wood elf spellweavers!
I hope you like them!



As requested here are the colours I used.
I use mainly Vallejo paints so I added the approximative GW equivalents in brackets for those of you who use GW paints. When there is no direct equivalent to the Vallejo Paint I suggested a mix of GW paints.

Key:
BeBr = Bestial Brown
BlBo = Bleached Bone
SnLe = Snakebite Leather
SuYe = Sunburst Yellow
GrEa = Graveyard Earth
ElFl = Elf Flesh
DaFl = Dark Flesh
FiOr = Fiery Orange

The Brown parts

1. Vallejo Tierra Mate (BeBr)
2. Highlight with mixes of Vallejo Tierra Mate (BeBr) with increasing amounts of Vallejo Arena Oscura (BlBo).

The Yellow Parts

1. Vallejo Uniforme Inglés (SnLe)
2. Highlight with mixes of Uniforme Inglés (SnLe) with increasing amounts of Vallejo Amarillo Arena (BlBo+SuYe).

The Skin

1. GrEa
2. Highlight with a mix 1:1 GrEa+ElFl
3. Wash with GW Devlan Mud and let dry (!)
4. Highlight again with mix from step 2, i.e. 1:1 GrEa+ElFl
5. Highlight some more with 1:2 GrEa+ElFl
6. (optional) Highlight with pure ElFl

The diamonds

1. mix 1:2 FiOr+DaFl
2. Make half-circular highlights with mixes of DaFl with increasing amounts of FiOr until you reach pure FiOr.
3. (optional) Place a pure DaFl arc oposite the pure FiOr to give some more depth.
4. Place a little dot of white on the darkest (top) part of the diamond to simulate the reflection.

I hope that helps!
Don't hesitate to ask me here or on the forum if you have any more questions.

Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald - Part 3

There he is, the finished Treeman built from scratch!
Enjoy.

Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald - Part 2

I am waiting with painting the Treeman, because I want to finish all the modelling before I proceed to picking up my brushes. That's just how I like to do it.

So I thought I'd show you WIP pics of another wood elfy thing I have been doing in order to complete my (hopefully one day) 2000pts Wood Elves WHFB army.

Although this is again a Warhammer post, I think it can't be wrong to post it, as it is of interest to everyone who likes modelling and converting! :)

Today's Menu: Wild Riders of Kournos. A special unit choice for wood elf players. The rules state that these guys are Forest Spirits with all that this implies (special save, cause fear, immune to psychology etc...)

You know what I am about to say "I don't like the GW model so I built my own..." But you're not quite right this time unfortunately. I think the GW models look okay... for a regular cavalry unit. But they most certainly do not suffice to represent the wrath of fear causing forest spirits, stampeeding out of a dark enchanted forest to the sound of horns blowing to the Wild Hunt, ready to tear apart the invading foe.

So here it goes. My own interpretation of "cavalry-like" forest spirits... that are scary. Mommy! :)

Enjoy!

Hard to see on this pic, but the standard (the tree trunk) has little greenstuff glyphs on it. This will be more evident once painted.

PS: A big thank you to DeafNala on the Forum who so generously donated ALL the parts that I used for these conversions!

Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald - Part 1

A few months ago I showed you how I built 2 trebuchets for my little bretonnian force. I do also own a little wood elf army (which is still under construction) and I thought, if the brets get big fat eye catching centerpieces for their army, it would be only fair for my Wood Elves to get at least one.

But what's big, heavy, super cool and does a lot of damage in a Woodie army?

There's only one candidate: a Treeman!

So it is written, so let it be done, I'll build myself a Treeman from scratch. As for the trebuchet, I find the GW metal model to be ridiculously small (for a unit that supposedly causes terror and costs nigh 300pts!) and expensive.

Here are some WIP pics up to the basecoated model awaiting its paintjob.

Enjoy! :)

An elf uses the protection of his much taller "friend" to take a few well aimed shots at the foe.

The whole model was built around a metal wire "skeleton" I made.

A pic of the base. Hard to see here but I sculpted some mushrooms growing on the tree trunk aswell as a rune stone.