Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

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Shannar, Sealord
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Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#1 Post by Shannar, Sealord »

A few of you might remember that I'm a bit of a crazy high elf collector, I've been at it since the mid/late 80s. I have one of every HE sculpt from the army book era (so 1993-the 8th edition sculpts), and many models from before that as well. I've been slowly working on painting them, but mordheim gets far more of my attention. The thing is I really dislike a lot of the plastics, and have no need of them as far as building an army. I don't like the 6e spears, but those I'll use simply because they made very few metal sculpts. I have 6e archers, and silver helms on sprue, and whenever I look at even extremely well painted ones they look so ugly compared to the metals that I can't get excited to someday paint them. Same for the plastic White Lions and Phoenix guard. Just ugly. Even the plastic RBTs don't really have an edge over the previous metal ones.

At this point I don't think I'll ever have motivation to paint them. Should I just sell them? I'm not hard up for cash or anything, but I don't think minis are made to stay on sprue and sit in boxes. At the same time it's kind of fun to be able to look at how the models have changed over the years. I've got units of all 4 (5 if you count mordheim ones) eras of Shadow warriors painted up. I'd kind of like to do the same thing with the other units. But I like the plastic shadow warriors. They aren't my favorite of the sculpts, but they are good. I can't say the same for the others. It's tempting to simply drop the plastics from the collection and make the focus 1st - 6th. Wei mostly play 3rd anyway. But I already put the time into finding all those other models at prices I was willing to pay.

Maybe I should go full curmudgeon and use the time/space to make a true oldhammer or RT army.

If anybody has any thoughts on this at all I'd love to hear them. Any of you have similar issues where you love and hate the hobby at the same time?
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RE.Lee
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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#2 Post by RE.Lee »

I get what you mean (except for the plastic White Lions, which seem to be very nice models, but I digress).

My collection is nowhere near as impressive as yours. I do have a good deal of plastic elves on the shelf as well, though, that will most likely never get painted. The 6th ed plastic Silver Helms, Spearman and Archers are pretty bad models and not very good on the field so they just get cannibalized for bits and bases. Same goes for the LSG and SMs of Island of Blood.

I'm keeping them though, in case my son or any other children in the family wants to try their skill on some miniatures. If that doesn't happen I'll just sell them en masse on ebay one day. Funny this is even a problem - I still remember how I'd cherish every last bit back in the nineties. I'd give anything for such reinforcements when my battles were 4 spearmen and 4 archers against 5 saurus warriors! :lol:
cheers, Lee

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Shannar, Sealord
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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#3 Post by Shannar, Sealord »

RE.Lee wrote:I get what you mean (except for the plastic White Lions, which seem to be very nice models, but I digress).

...

Funny this is even a problem - I still remember how I'd cherish every last bit back in the nineties. I'd give anything for such reinforcements when my battles were 4 spearmen and 4 archers against 5 saurus warriors! :lol:
I think the issue with the plastic White Lions is the same issue most of the new plastic have. They were clearly trying to hard, and some of the things they did just because they could, not because it was actually an improvement.

I remember those days as well. The hero quest and battle masters minis always fought in our warhammer battles. There were some strange alliances at times too haha.
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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#4 Post by Prince of Spires »

The question mainly is how important is being complete to you? From what I've seen, for years your goal was completeness. If that's the goal then you shouldn't sell them. Probably. Since then at some point in the future you'll regret it and will want to get them to complete the collection.

But that's if (part of) the goal is collecting the miniatures (which, incidentally is who GW think is their main customer group). If you're actually more leaning towards painting / playing with the miniatures, and collecting is only part of it because you need some goal and some excuse to convince yourself or your significant other that you need more miniatures, then being complete is not actually that important. And then the question indeed becomes will these miniatures ever see any use in some setting at all? And then available time is limited and valuable and perhaps better spend on other things

As RE mentions, having kids who potentially want to play with them and "paint" them up is a good enough goal in some cases. But I don't know if that applies to you or not.

As a side note, I do believe that almost all WH players have at least some models still in their box lying around. The desire to own / purchase models or seeing a good deal and picking them up while not really needing them is stronger then already having enough models in the first place. It's generally why I first talk with my wife about purchasing more models, since she usually talks some sense into me...

Can I suggest an alternative, which perhaps you didn't consider yet. How about getting someone else to paint them for you? I know there's a few people around who offer (semi-)professional painting services for miniatures. I have no clue about what the going rate it. But it would be a way to get them painted to a decent standard and get the collection complete (which is worth something), without actually having to do the painting.

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Shannar, Sealord
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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#5 Post by Shannar, Sealord »

The completeness is a thing, and when they ended WFB it became possible. AoS elves simply won't be a part of it.

It started as wanting to have one of every unit, and where needed a couple of them, so i could fill out whatever army list I might want to play. That was the only reason I picked up a lion chariot. The 6th and 7th edition characters (and there were more than anyone could ever use, even without counting all the earlier ones) were added simply because I really liked those models. 8th came with a bunch of new units. Without the new units that I wanted to try out the collection would have ended with 7th edition and probably would have only been the metals plus a lion chariot. Then someone offered to trade me a pile of high elves (many still on sprue, most of the rest metal) in exchange for some mordheim terrain that I'd made. All of a sudden I was only missing a couple 4th edition sculpts here and there the new WL, the new PG, the ugly ever queen and the loremaster. Why not finish? With careful buying, trading, and selling extras I picked up all that for less than $25. I've since discovered two 4th edition WL scuplts that were not in the catalogues. Not as common as the other 4, but not truly "rare" either. I got impatient with those and spent $10 (plus $4 in postage) getting them delivered. Those are already painted to match my other 4e with lions.

If i put my painting time into the high elves, or even alternated like I always intend to do, I'd be making pretty good progress. But we play so much more mordheim, so all my attention go into that. Plus there is something I really like about painting up 20 Reiklanders then 20 dwarfs, then 20 skaven. When I get home in a couple weeks I've go 12 Kislev to paint and then I move onto amazons. It's nicer than 10 WL then 15 WL, then however many come in a box. Or even WL then PG, then DP. I'm nearing the end of my mordheim painting, but they are putting necromunda out again. With that I expect to be able to pick up some of the old metals cheap in a few months to add to the gangs I have from the 90s. If those end up with priority too.....
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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#6 Post by RE.Lee »

Painting hordes of infantry can be daunting. I've just finished my 30 Bestigors and 30 of the Gors and the thought of having to paint another 20 Gors is making me sick :roll: Getting just a few miniatures of a certain type done is much more rewarding, at least in the short run. Because nothing quite beats the rank after rank of glorious warriors (be it elves or men of the Empire)! :lol:

That said, I'm much more happy with my finished project of Tomb Kings and almost finished projects of Empire/Beastmen than the never ending story if the High Elf collection. Having all those models really takes away from enjoying playing with particular units. Building a 3k army and then sticking to it seems more fun to me currently. It is also much simpler :wink:

So, I'd keep the excess models, just in case, but forcing yourself to paint them? Nah.
cheers, Lee

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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#7 Post by Mireadur »

I think IoB seaguard and latest dragon princes are top, also the plastic tiranoc chariot is perfect IMO. For the rest i agree with you. I also have a thing for old 4th ed plastic bowmen and spearmen... They are better than 6th plastics! of course their metal versions were the real deal :P
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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#8 Post by SpellArcher »

Mireadur wrote:of course their metal versions were the real deal
Not my cup of tea but technically these were superb.
Shannar, Sealord
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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#9 Post by Shannar, Sealord »

I like the metal archers quite a bit. I wish there were more sculpts of the spearmen. Lately I've started to prefer Jes Goodwin stuff though.
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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#10 Post by Aerendar Valandil »

I'm with you on the 6th ed. plastics, they were actually quite bad, although both boxes had differnt flaws: the spears were too thick, the arms and feet too big, although the helpts were ok - which fitted the much better proportioned archers with the bad hairdo. The cavalry were a chore, just 6 were painted..

They were an nice try, with a lort of options - just the results were not that good.

From the three infantry boxes about 1/2 is painted: in command groups (for the 4th ed. archers and spears, which i do like), some random characters and assembled figures, and a bunch of ghosts (as 3rd. ed 'spirist of the ancestors').
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Re: Trying to decide what to do with some high elves.

#11 Post by SpellArcher »

Shannar, Sealord wrote:Lately I've started to prefer Jes Goodwin stuff though.
Some great, great work on Warhammer, though GW set him to work pretty heavily designing Space Marines.
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