Ulthuan

Introduction

High elves have always been my first love. I got into the hobby around 2004 and my interest level has fluctuated in that time… after a short break from the hobby I came back to it in 2010 and rebuilt my high elves with a load of new box sets and stripped back the old models where they were salvageable.

I decided when I got back into it to do my High Elves with NMM and went for a theme that with hindsight was a little too busy, I then couldn’t raise enough motivation to actually finish any of it!! So at the end of 2012 I bought a WoC army instead. By about the middle of last year I had enough units to (theoretically) field about 5,000 points fully painted

So now it’s time to go back to the high elves. It will be a Caledor theme, with a sub theme of dead dark elves appearing as unit fillers where appropriate. Normal Metallics will be used rather than NMM, the main colours will be Red and Cream but Blue will also be used for all Gems and also for tertiary cloths and plumes. Red will be used for ALL Dragons, Dragon Armour and Dragon Iconography.

I’ll start with an index listing all the models I have and/or intend for this army.

Index

Key
Red = Finished
Blue = Work In Progress (minimum basecoated)
Green = Considering buying
Black = bought, not yet WIP

Lords/Heros
3 Dragons – I’m doing 1 climbing up the rock (while killing a load of Dark Elves), 1 flying towards the rock (Asterion Style) and 1 Forgeworld Carmine Dragon - All assembled, but I keep adding finishing touches to the model before I get round to spraying
1 Mounted BSB holding the banner out of the dragon box built
1 Griffon (Being done in Chracian colours for display only) half painted (kinda lost interest, it lacks dragons!!)
1 Prince on Lion (being done in Chracian colours for display only) Half painted (kinda lost interest, it lacks dragons!!)
Several mages on foot - 1 finished
2 Mages on Horseback - 1 base coated
Several Nobles on foot - 1 finished
Hopefully somehow I’ll be able to put together at least one mounted Prince

Core
2 x 5 IoB Ellyrion Reavers - Nearly finished - so many bloody details!!
58 archers stripped back, but they need a good clean before painting
2 x 28 Spearmen - Finished
I just went nuts and bought 70 more (60 more and a couple of fillers), this means I'll be able to field 3 units of 7x6. They are now mostly assembled, this is going to be a mammoth paint
12 Silverhelms – Just doing finishing touches, soooooooo many gems!! I should really come back and actually finish this

Special
21 IoB Swordmasters - Finished
18 Dragon Princes Built – The old, much better looking ones including a champion from the 1993 models for a bit of variation
24 Dragon Guard (Black Guard Models, Phoenix Guard Substitute), 24 includes unit filler - all Finished
30 White Lions (done with Corsair Models) - Considering
Shadow Warriors - All Finished

Rare
1 Phoenix
4 RBT (2 Old Metal ones and 2 plastic ones which are Built) - All done
5 Terradons (great eagles) - Done

Current Army Shot

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Spearmen





Well how else is my general supposed to get messages to the front lines? Also I like the way my 2 units are in very different poses, but they are done as a unit (one with spears all down ready to fight, the other with spears all up)

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Dragon Guard



And in case you were wondering where that Dark Elf head that my champion is holding had come from...



There's something slightly amusing about using Dark Elf Models to depict a scene of dark elf butchery!! Dead/dying dark elves will be a running theme throughout this army

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Current WIP Pics

I set myself an aim to finish off the spearmen and the silver helms this month. The Silver Helms are nearly done, but there are so many gems to get through that I got (slightly) bored and moved on to the Eagles (baby dragons) - I'm now not far off finishing both

These WIP pics were from earlier in the week

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Welcome back mate.

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Lord Elessehta Silverbough of Ar Yvrellion, Ruler of Athel Anarhain, Prince of the Yvressi.
Beastly member of The Mage Knight Guild.

Well, you certainly like dead dark elves, don't you? Is that four already?

I suppose the best kind of dark elf is a dead one.

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"I say the Eatainii were cheating - again." -Aicanor
"Eatainian jerks…" -Headshot
"It was a little ungentlemanly." -Aicanor (on the Eatainii)
"What is it with Eataini being blamed for everything?" -Aicanor

Depends how you're counting

• 1 in the Dragon Guard (he got beheaded, poor chap)
  
• 1 on the base of one of my eagles (took a volley of archer fire including one in the eye and one in the crotch - I hope for his sake the eye one killed him before he felt the other)
  
• 1 in on a base you can see in the WIP pics - I decided to paint him up at the same time for consistency but this fella actually got disemboweled by some swordmasters
  
• Then 3 of them got killed off by my Dragon. I built this ages ago (like 4 years?) but as I said in my introduction my interest in finishing my high elves with the old paint scheme dropped. These three include 1 guy who's being eaten by the dragon (legs just sticking out of his mouth), 1 guy who has been pinned to the rock by the dragon and is probably therefore crushed and finally one guy who has just been decapitated and is in mid motion of dropping to the floor. Now this was an idea I had because when the prince is riding he is holding a great weapon in one hand and a dark elf head in the other, but when the Mage is riding he's casting rule of burning head and sending the flaming head back towards the enemy - WIN/WIN - I can change between the mage and prince and both make sense in the scene
  
• If I get more spearmen then I might do a few of them ripping a couple of cold ones to shreds

Currently only 1 completely finished though

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Silver Helms





I still need to do gems, faces and flowers but I decided to glue these guys together last night after finishing the rest of them (barring perhaps a few touch ups)

These and the Eagles (baby dragons) should be finished over the weekend hopefully

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Baby Dragons!! (Eagles)





I think this was my favourite base - everyone needs a little gentle encouragement now and then

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

I just realised after posting those pics - I haven't done the eyes. White Eyes would not work - any suggestions?

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Perhaps yellow to make them look reptilian?

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"I say the Eatainii were cheating - again." -Aicanor
"Eatainian jerks…" -Headshot
"It was a little ungentlemanly." -Aicanor (on the Eatainii)
"What is it with Eataini being blamed for everything?" -Aicanor

I did purple in the end - looks good and I'll get some photos when I get chance

This week I kinda panic bought 60 spearmen, with a couple of dead dark elves I've managed to add 70 to my ranks so I can now field 3 units of 42 (6x7)

Main reason for buying now was that they've become "direct only" and GW have run out. That combination means only one thing to me. They're being phased out.

I know a lot of people really criticise the spearmen and archer models but I actually really like them. They're versatile sets that with a little ingenuity can make an amazing unit. Game wise they've fluctuated in terms of how good they were over the years but in a balanced rules set they deserve a place.

So anyway I've spent today assembling them, I'm not even close to being done and I'm not sure I want to dive straight into painting them. I think it will be my swordmasters, Ellyrian Reavers and finishing off my silver helms that will be next to see a paint brush

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Hey Andrew,

I'm really liking the look of your army! I also love the idea of a Caledor themed army. I may have missed it, but where are the elven steed models for the Silver Helms from?

Thank you you wait to see the new/bigger Spearmen blocks :p ETA maybe middle next year ish?

The silver helm steeds are from the chariot box, legs are from empire Knights, the shields are from the Spearmen box

Then the command - the banner topper is from the dragon box, the champion helmet is from the dragon box, helmet wings from the nobles box, steed from the Mage box and shield from the silver helms

I kinda think it makes them look pretty unique

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Ok, so my swordmasters became my current active painting project... and I reckon I'll get them finished by the end of next weekend. I really should finish off the gems and other details on the silver helms next so that I can tick them off.

Between doing swordmaster painting though I have managed to assemble the rest of my spear men (I now have 3 units of 42 and am simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the idea of painting 70 more of them (above you can see just 56).

I've also assembled my Carmine Dragon thing is I was starting to think this blog needs more dragons and dragonyness and the completion of the swordmasters and silver helms isn't going to help with that. But now I'm stuck with how best to attach the rider. The dragon isn't looking in the same direction as his body (it's kinda side on) and there's no saddle built in and barely space for one. So the options are as follows...

1. Sculpt a saddle immediately behind the head for a rider to sit. This will require removing spikes and (maybe) extending the neck length as there really isn't much space there naturally. This will test my sculpting to the max, I've built a saddle before for something else but there was more space to work with and no neck extensions required.

2. Build a riding platform using the chassis from the chariot kit. I could sit this between the wing joints on the dragons back. However, this would still require pretty extensive modifications to it in order to squeeze it in to that gap and would then need connections building to attach it to the main body of the dragon (rather than have it appear to be floating). Currently I'm leaning towards this but it's still not easy.

3. Put the 'rider' on the base. I'd probably put him on the tree stump which the dragon is standing on but even that feels like it's a cop out. It feels like this would be taking the easy way out.

What solutions did you guys find? What problems did you encounter? How did you overcome them?

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

I planned to have my swordmasters finished this weekend and nearly achieved it. I still need to do gems and final touch ups but I wanted to share what I've currently done I just put grass on the bases to take the photo but obviously I also still need to do flowers

The dark elf musician you can see was generating noise complaints so these swordies sorted him out

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

So over the weekend I went down to London for the rugby and while I was there I visited darksphere and bought a phoenix, 1 box of shadow warriors and my shhhhhh secret Santa present (which obviously won't be shown in this blog until January, but I wanted to start work on it sooner rather than later)... I've picked something that's universal enough that it should fit into almost any HE army, but different enough that it will still look awesome and cool and a fresh idea I'm giving away no more clues!!

Sunday evening and Monday evening I finished the swordmasters and assembled the phoenix... Tempted to paint this guy up now as it's likely to be a bit of a quick job but I did really promise myself that the dragon would be next - and let's face it this blog NEEDS a dragon (or 3). So maybe these other flyers will be done soon after that

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

The dragons are a bit lacking, I look forward to seeing that change.

Honestly I've got way to many sitting without paint myself. This AoS crap has caused me to want to paint my really really old stuff though. So it's more likely I'll paint up my C08 elves than it is I'll do a dragon...

I just finished base coating my dragons wings. Starting to wish I had invested in an airbrush!! Once they're dry I'll basecoat the rest of the body etc... might even leave it until Wednesday which will be my next painting opportunity.

I'm really excited to show you guys the base diorama I've got going on for the dragon though

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Sooooo I decided to increase the number of spearmen I had. With 60 extra models and a couple of new unit fillers I have boosted the number of spearmen to 3 units of 42 in a 7x6 formation. I've spent this weekend finishing building them (while watching the Rugby of course)

Many thanks to Lithlandis Stormcrow who I did a trade with. He provided me with some much needed extra 2 handed

2 of the new unit fillers are taking up 6 bases each. One involves a Dark Elf Cold one rider being pushed off his cold one as his beast has 2 spears jammed into him. The other involves a Cold one on it's side being butchered.













I should add - What with Secret Santa and other projects taking a priority I don't expect these to be posted before 2017

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

What with Age of Sigmar and other things I kinda fell out of love with the hobby... I've had a few half completed models sat on my desk staring at me now for 10 months or so without me even lifting a paintbrush.

However, I took last week off work and got a spot of painting done This carmine dragon is now finished, with diorama base and a prince wielding a great weapon













How's the rest of the forum doing? Seems quite quiet

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

What are you playing now - 8th, The 9th Age, KoW...AoS ?

I think most of us went through a similar reaction to you and the forums suffered a hit as a result. It's not to say that AoS isn't or couldn't be a decent enough game in its own right, it's just that it completely replaced Warhammer and it isn't the same type of game at all, so it doesn't scratch that particular itch for me.

I'm now a dedicated T9Aer, which is strange in a way, because I loved 8th...but now I can hardly remember the rules and it's kinda wierd when I dip into Spell Archer's blog and get a little blast from the past - it's surprisign how quickly I've moved on. Swordmaster is now a devotee o KoW and continues posting his excellent BatReps, although I think they get fewer comments in part because the forum has lost people and in part because KoW is competign with all the other systems. And then Spell Archer and Prince of Spires for example are flying the flag for 8th Ed, which was - and still remains - an excellent game, warts and all.

So we're about, we're just a bit spread out over the various systems. If you take a peak over at the HBE forum on T9A it's very active, although it's failed to capture the atmosphere we had/have over here. I daresay the KoW forum has active elven players, though I don't know that forum too well.

Anyways - could job getting out of the blues and back on the painting horse - looks like a very productive break!

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The 9th Age: Alumni

Former Roles: Advisory Board, HR, Moderator and Highborn Elves Army Support

Well my brother and I have been playing a "fixed version of 7th" for about 5 years, it steals some ideas from 8th so is kind of a 7.5 if you like.

Buuuuuuut... We're lucky if we get 1 game a year due to us being so geographically spread out. I care more about the painting side now anyway (I'm just slow at it!!) For me the main hit of AoS was it destroyed the community, which in turn hit my painting motivation.

Most of my gaming time is dedicated to Euro boardgames (that's been the case for 6+ years anyway). According to Boardgame Arena I'm the UKs number one ranked player at Stone Age and Tzolk'in favourite games are Antike, Powergrid, Le Harve, Marco Polo, Eclipse, Imperial 2030, Zhanguo, Concordia, Nippon, London, Notre Dame...

The rest of the wargamers within our group moved on to KoW briefly and then kinda dispersed to other areas (RPGs, boardgames, historical Wargames). The historical side of things is how our club started 40 years ago, I'd be tempted to try it one day but you kind of need a specific army for each scenario, so it looks much less flexible than Warhammer ever was.

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Good to see you Andrew! Nice dragon, I like the attention to detail on the base especially.


I think this sums things up for a lot of guys. Many found themselves unable to play a fantasy battle game they liked and so just drifted into inactivity. It hit the guys who were pure painters slightly less hard I guess. As Ferny says, many of us are still playing (and painting!) merrily away, there's just been a bit of a diaspora. The British tournament scene for example is still busy, it's just that four systems are being played instead of one.


Bravo!


I think a lot of us, soon after that, converged on Warhammer from historicals (especially WRG Ancients) and RPG's (especially D&D).

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A New Blog (Orcs and Goblins)
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=70550
Cavalry Prince Reloaded
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=70001

Very nice dragon! (though the rider would have a hard time staying on it )

Yeah, I've gotten into Euro games over hte last few years. One of the nice things about it for me is that my wife really enjoys them too, so now I've got a Monday games night which we both attend, and then my 'wargames' time on a Tuesday too .

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The 9th Age: Alumni

Former Roles: Advisory Board, HR, Moderator and Highborn Elves Army Support

For me it's Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays are Eurogaming plus sometimes the occasional ad-hock game on a Saturday. If we assume that it's 4.5 hours on a weekday evening or 6 hours on a weekend then I can easily be gaming for 15+ hours a week, what with work, a relationship, family time and stuff I guess it's no surprise that I find myself painting less. I'm lucky also that my girlfriend and family also like board games, but they prefer lighter ones (TTR, Carcassonne, Settlers...) so I only get to play my favourites down at the club.

Ironically my motivation (for many things) has actually picked up when I added yet another thing into the mix. I decided to try to get fit again this summer. I used to be very fit; I played rugby and was quite active, but over the last couple of years I've slipped into bad habits and haven't been exercising.

Over this last 3 months I've lost 12.5kgs pulling me back down to a BMI of 23.1 and putting me around 14.5% bodyfat (vs 26.6 and around 26% body fat before). The target now is to lose another 5kgs of fat, build another 3 kgs of muscle and bring back a lot of my endurance. I reckon I can get there in 12 months or so.

Anyway back on topic; I've also made myself a list of what I think are the next "easy wins" on my painting for this army. 6 Shadow Warriors, 10 reavers, 4 RBT and a character. I've estimated that at about 50 hours and I'd like to find time to get that all done before the end of the year. I'm not going to take part in secret santa this year (not active enough on here) so I can use that time instead

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Shadow Warriors done!!





I'm liking going through these easy wins!! It's filling me with a quick feeling of accomplishment

Next up will be the RBTs I think, mainly just because I think they'll be a faster paint than the Reavers. Talking of cavalry I still need to finish the Gems and flowers on the Silver Helms then I'll post them too and tick that off as finished

I think the 60 odd Archers, 18 or so Dragon Princes and 60 odd more Spearmen are all perhaps the *most important* painting jobs because well, I always use Archers and Dragon princes... but they're also longer and therefore results are not as quick.

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log

Wow - that's an impressive amount of gaming!

I also started a health kick about 3 months ago. I don't actually know if I've lost weight (diet is still appalling), but I've definitely increased my endurance. I've been doing the Couch 2 5K app and trying to hit fitbit targets. Not there yet, but I feel better for trying .

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The 9th Age: Alumni

Former Roles: Advisory Board, HR, Moderator and Highborn Elves Army Support

Phoenix Done!!

I said this guy would be quick









It was such an easy paint, and yet so fun, and such a bold result!! Primed in White, then mixed white with yellow and Based the body with that/based the wings in yellow, then 2 shades of orange, 2 shades of red and finally 1 shade of red mixed with black. The contrast has really created a sense that the heat is coming from within the model.

He's now just in the process of setting in place with the glue/base. The little hole for the flying stem is a long way back on his body so the model wants to tip forwards constantly. I've propped it up with supports so it should stick right. Have anyone else found any other solutions? Perhaps making a second hole further forward?

I'll go through and update the list now too. Then hopefully make some more progress on the RBT crew tomorrow

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Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log