Symrivven's Dark Elves and Vampire Counts

[Finn]

I feel I must say that I've gotten a little excited for the new edition, and that in redoing my Vampire Counts I think I'm probably going to make them wintery. Partly in homage to your amazing DE units and partly because I need to use the snow flock I bought for the Christmas Empire army I sold before completing.

Which reminds me - I don't think anywhere in this log we've seen any pictures of larger army groupings, have we? I'd love to see how the units blend together as a whole, I'm sure it's awe-inspiring.

[ChaosVC]

I like how the half bats half women looks so sureal.

[Symrivven]

@thesheriff, I considered using human slaves in my DE army but there is no unit that sucks enough to represent worn out humans. I also liked the storey where a DE lord was confronted with a bretonian force on an open field. He released a whole lot of his slaves only to have them shot so the open field was now littered with piles of corpses. Behind which his shades quickly took up position. Come to think of it, terrain like this might be a great idea.

@silverstu. Yes, the skin goes from white to black with only greys in between, I did use Vallejo's pale wash to cut some corners while shading but afaik that's also just a grey.

@finn. Christmas Empire, With Santa Claus reindeer's and elves? that must have been a sight
And no there is no big group shot yet. This is mainly the result of me having 5 armies all of which are only partly finished. More specifically about fantasy.
VC's atm are only 2 characters with 2 units. DE are now 3 units of 5, a hydra a manticore without rider and an anointed. I also have a unit of witch elves and corsairs painted but I'm not entirely happy with them as I did them with the idea of lets finish this army quickly, after that I realised that just isn't my thing and I started this plog . In addition my DE are parked at my friends place (where we play most often) so I can't just readily make picture of them, and if I would do army pictures for them it should actually be a snow landscape. So maybe I'll do some group shots later on, but don't hold your breath.

@chaosvc, thanks

[Finn]

What a shame! I'm the same way, which is why I started my Chaos log - so I'd have motivation to actually finish the army.

And yes, I was going to have candy cane spears, a sleigh for a war altar (the Santa Claus would've been a warrior priest, clearly), and I did originally look into putting all my knights on reindeer but was only able to find one properly sized set of models, which were prohibitively expensive. Christmas tree and presents under it on my cannon bases too. It would have been an awesome theme army, I just didn't enjoy playing it.

If I could think of a way to do it with my VC, I'd do it. Perhaps I'll have to watch Nightmare Before Christmas and see if I can get some inspiration there, heh.

You should make a snow table . Our group finally got one, out of dozens, and it's pretty much awesome.

[thesheriff]

TBH, Dark elf warriors suck pretty majorly, just always use them with hand weapons, and they never usually get ther basic light armour save anyway

[Symrivven]

With the new edition around the corner I got some extra motivation to work on fantasy again. So let me introduce some black guard (wip).

This is the test mini:


And the (very slow) wip:


Did I mention I hate painting large* units. And the new edition is going to force me to field more larger units.

Finn, VC christmas will be difficult, some things I thought about: black coach -> Santa's sled, black knights -> reindeer with riders, vargulf -> yeti/wendigo, zombies ->snowman, vampires -> santa's, wraiths -> the spirits of the past from Scrooge. That still leaves a lot of units.

Thesheriff, I was about to say they aren't that bad, but I realized that in this edition I never ever fielded them as anything other than fuel for a sorceress with dagger.

*anything in excess of 10man.

[Toshiro]

that's a really beautiful black guard there

[thesheriff]

That is some top notch highlighting. Can't wait for some of the new changes

[Finn]

Excellent work on those black guard. Almost make me want to start playing Dark Elves.

I'll probably just do a winter theme on the VC, maybe have a couple of "joke" minis here and there with santa hats and whatnot.

[Elfboy]

Stunning black guard, love the paint scheme you've got going

[Dayspringer]

Yup, that's a nice looking scheme for them!

[Symrivven]

Good to hear you all like the black guard, progress is soo slow, I really don't like repetition. And that's why I started on something else to break the routine.

I decided to make a new master for my manticore because the old one (which can't be seen in this log for obvious reasons) is just to *****.

I changed the mini dragons wings a bit to make them more dynamic, but the main improvement (I hope) is the head which I'm in the process of sculpting. I never sculpted a head before so I'm quite happy with this result. And yes I cheated a bit by giving him a scarf, but hey its cold out there.



I hope to get the black guard finished in a month then this master and after that, who knows.

[thesheriff]

That looks really cool, the old minature is ****, and yours will be a very nice accompinament to the relativly nice manticore

keep it up

thesheriff

[Scythe]

About time I dropped a reply here. Very nice work, your conversion and painting skills have only become better and better over the years.

*adds subscription*

[Symrivven]

Sometime ago someone asked for a group picture of all the painted dark elves, well here it is.





The corsairs and witches are from my "lets get this army painted quick and dirty" time, but that style didn't really suit me.


I might be evident that I did not finish the black guard within one month (or 6 for that matter). What I did do is work on the new Dark Eldar, some Eldar, this Spacewolf Lord and cataclysm .

I hope to be back with some new Fantasy stuff soon.

[thesheriff]

Breathtaking

That just about sums it up

[Symrivven]

So the black guard are finally done!

2 shots of the entire unit in this post and command group in the second post.

[Symrivven]

Banner:



Musician:



Champion:

[polomarko888]

@AlltoEasy: Most of the stuff I've posted now is a bit older and I hardly have any wip pics for that, but I'll try to make mare pics for future projects.

@MrChair: Yes it was a lot of work and I still need to paint it . In the end it will be well worh it (I hope).


Now some skeletons, My initial idea was to model the mayor blood vessels with metal wire to create a korperwelt like effect. Knowing that I had to do a minimum of 20 and probably something more like 60 of those, I decided against that plan to preserve what's left of my sanity. Instead I painted the mayor blood vessels.




(sorry for the suboptimal pic, but my camera is hell-bent on focusing on the banner )

Your skeletons are fantastic, how did you get so many skeleton heads without the helmets on? they look like the new skeletons released from GW but most of them have helmets, I would love to know where you got these helemt-less heads from.

Polo.

[Symrivven]

It has been a while but if I remember correct if you use the damaged heads to you'll have enough heads without helmets on the sprue.

Ah see here, the sprue 8 bare heads and 4 bare heads with damage.

Good luck with your own VC/TK project.