Enders Wood Elf Army and Terrain Blog

[Ender Shadowkin]

So I’m dusting off my woodies for a few upcoming tourneys (I know glutton for punishment). I kept these blogs over at the battleglad, which has been sadly dead for some time now…. (RIP) so I decided to move them over here and then keep pluggin away.

Turns out you need a bucket load of treekin these days and I probably shouldn’t use my old Golgfags ogre unit for the back rank in a tourney. Mine are custiom made so more wire twisting has been happening of late. I also need some more banners and I’ve been working on my display board. I appoligize if you've seen this stuff already, but I wanted to move the blog over here to keep it together. After I “archive” the photos and notes from my old blog I’ll be adding in the new stuff.
Here is a tournament setup from a few years ago with base (Stag Rider Lord List)

[Ender Shadowkin]

Here are a bunch of pictures I took of the tree man I assembled out of Sprues, Greensuff, Drayad bits, and various spites. I started this project when I was helping my daughters with clay and sculpted the head and feet (simply air dry clay).
Here are the Goals I had:
1. Its gotta be big, at least as big as that new Giant, and everyone knows treemen own giants . . . and dont get me started about the new dragon . . .
2. I wanted it to have 2 legs but still have a shape that could be confused with a tree if it stood still and raised up its arms like traditional tree limbs
3. Its gotta be pretty simple to sculpt and paint . . . I know my limitations.

So I started with the head and fit and added a skeleton of old sprues .. .





Here starting to “skin” it, Just stretch green stuff over the skeleton and poke some barky and stumpy holes, It went really quick and I was quite happy with the curvy organic look. I did this over a couple days so my fingers wouldn’t smush the green stuff I just applied



OK done with the Green stuff

[Ender Shadowkin]

This is the final Treeman all painted and based. The green “bait” spite at the base is an old chaos familiar, the fairies with wings are war master witch elves (with poorly sculpted green stuff wings) and various WE/HE bits

[Ender Shadowkin]

Dryads, you gotta have dryads right? This days I'm running all the brownish ones in a big unit (well 15 of them at least)


A: Two Tone Terrors






b: Meanie Greenies:







c: The Mahogony Maidens (aka mostly browns)

[The Yak]

Nice work mate! I like the names you have given them, the Two Tone Terrors is my favourite at the moment are you thinking of adding the Maple Miscreants or the Pinewood Pugilists?

The Treeman is great and your right they should be as big as giants, I was a fan of the old treemen big (well not as big as your fella) stocky lumps of wood instead of the new ones. Ive got the old special character durthu knocking around somewhere il have to root him out!

Looking forward to seeing more and a few close ups of your woodies would be great.

[Ender Shadowkin]

Nice work mate! I like the names you have given them, the Two Tone Terrors is my favourite at the moment are you thinking of adding the Maple Miscreants or the Pinewood Pugilists?

The Treeman is great and your right they should be as big as giants, I was a fan of the old treemen big (well not as big as your fella) stocky lumps of wood instead of the new ones. Ive got the old special character durthu knocking around somewhere il have to root him out!

Looking forward to seeing more and a few close ups of your woodies would be great.

Thanks Man! More photos are definetly on the way, just need to sift through my old project log a bit.

Great names...Love the Pinewood pugalists. I think that will have to be the name for the treekin from now on, they are suposed to be a bit piney...

Durthu is a nice model, Him and the old treeman wood make great treekin, pricy but nice

[Elfboy]

That's a great armature idea for making a treeman, I might have to give that a bash at some point. The finished product looks great, has a very characterful, gnarly tree look to it. What was your recipe for painting his bark? Also, what did you use for sticking sprue together? I can see some funny looking brown stuff, but can't work out what it is.

[Ender Shadowkin]

That's a great armature idea for making a treeman, I might have to give that a bash at some point. The finished product looks great, has a very characterful, gnarly tree look to it. What was your recipe for painting his bark? Also, what did you use for sticking sprue together? I can see some funny looking brown stuff, but can't work out what it is.

Thanks and go for it. Its a pretty fun and simple project.

The sprues were tacked together with super glue, then I used a thick adheshive called liquid nails to plug a few gaps and generally hold the whole thing together while I jammed green stuff here and there.

I painted it by primering black then dry bushing/blending throgh grey up to white. Then I inked/washed the whole thing brown except for the beard and eye brows (the whole model was shadded like that before it got washed). Then a final highlight of lightened bubonic brown with green highlights picked out here and there.

[Kaos]

Nice treeman and i love them colors of the dryads going from one tone to another, makes them A: look magic B: Alot more interesting than the walking brown bushes.

Bravo-Kaos

[Ender Shadowkin]

OK Here are some elves to go with those trees

Heroes and Glade Guard

The BSB is Kit bashed and the others are all from the 3rd ed skarlocs set

[Ender Shadowkin]

These are the troopers. Anyone have any ideas what to do with 1x10 movement trays? lol






these are going to be run as 1 unit and I need to add a banner (eternal flame baby) , I'll be using the newer female BSB, which has only the eyes painted so far.

[Ender Shadowkin]

Here are my Wild- converted from the old mounted Daemonettes (current Wild rider steeds and weapons)

[Ender Shadowkin]

I had to saw the riders off of the steeds of slaanish (lost some blood on that one), file down some boobs (just need 2 per ), and add some hair. The hardes part though was sculpting on tiney little noses and upper lips <shudder>

[Ender Shadowkin]

Well the title says terrain, and here it is 

First off, we use terrain charts and below is the Athel Loren One. Basically the terrain we have for a region is lumped into 3 categories and you roll a d6 to see what you want to place (or you can always pass). The categories are (1-3 Common, 5-6 Scarce, 6 Unique (only one type of each permitted). You can choose from any of the pieces in the category you roll,as long as there are some left in the box (or reasonable equivalent)

special features Are as per the 7th BRB .. still working on 8th ed version..


Common
Forest
Low Hill
Forested hill
Deep Forest (as woods but only accessible to skirmishers)


Scarce (note I’m trying to keep any real “woods” out of this category for the sanity of my opponents).
Ancient Fallen Log – Log from a huge and ancient tree, defended obstacles
Forest Dwellings – small buildings/tree house/or tents built by elves, beastmen, or others
Way Stone – (arcane Monolith and see see below) impassable.
Overgrown Ruins – Difficult terrain, hard cover.

Unique
Spite Infested Groove – See below
Sylvan Idol ( Ancient Idol) – Ssacred Tree or shrine
Herdstone (Fell Ruins) –impassable.
Elven Hall – See Below
Meadow lake – Pool of water ( very difficult terrain) with stream (difficult terrain) that leads to table edge (chosen by opponent)
Ancient Forest- Cluster of 2-3 fallen Logs, randomize orintation of each log


Detailed Descriptions
Waystones: I was going to use the basic arcane monolith rules (extra magic dice) and additionally state that Forest Spiritis within 6” are subject to stupidity but gain MR +1 (additive to what they already get), thoughts?
Elven Hall: This is an opening to a great elven hall, It acts like a small building, but there is no limit to the number of models that can be and or shoot from inside. Basicically there is a large underground space with potentinally lots of sneaky shooting holes.
Spite infested Grove: This grove is the home of a colony of mischievous spites who may or may not welcome any intruder , roll a dice for the first unit that enters or is deployed here.

1. They Hates you – your unit takes 2d6 S2 magical Hits.
2. Hey that not my shadow!?! Ahhh - the unit must take a terror test.
3. They want to play- The unit looses all sense of time and distance as the woods twist and turn around them. Remove the unit from the table. The must roll a 4+ at the beginning of each players turn to come back. Once back They may be placed anywhere in in any woods on the table.
4. You amuse them- the spites swarm around you for the rest of the battle, all attacks are considered magical.
5. Little Buddies, The Spites go along for a ride adding d6 S2 magic attacks per combat phase until the unit losses a round of combat.
6. Wish Granted, you may freely cast one spell of your choice from the lore of Athel Loren in your next magic phase.


OK Here are the Pictures, Note these are table top quality, some day I may go back and pretty them up (if my attention span is that long)

Here is an Overview of most of the terrain setup for a battle (not we normally just use around 6 pieces of Terrain!, I just wanted to put it all out there for a good visual . ..)

[Ender Shadowkin]

Woods (I've got a few of these, made with trees from the rail road store):



Deep Forest, Made as per the Generals Compendium. These got a little beatup in transit to my friends house (he has a sweet camera and setup)(Storing and moving terrain is one of the biggest problems




Note that the Top comes over to you can mover your units through them.

[Ender Shadowkin]

Fallen Logs, these are the 3 I have made, the log is a piece of bamboo.




Way stones, gotta have these




Overgrown ruins, Aquarium decorations with some added painting and flock.

[Ender Shadowkin]

Wooded Hills - nothing too fancy, Coniferous tree bases on my standard hills, I need to finish painting the tree bases.



Forest Dwellings, these arn't necessarily woodelf dwelings, perhaps beastmen or other forest creatures. The actual pieces are half coconut shells and double as jungle dwellings with my lustria set. I should eventually work on some more Elven dwellings (tree houses and such)


Spite Infested Groove, This is a single tree that drops into one of my other Woods. The castle is an aquarium piece. The spite is a warmaster witchelf with some green stuff. I need to add a few more of those . . .

[Ender Shadowkin]

Sylvan Idol, This doubles as a High Elf Shrine to Isha. And in Athel Loren it could be a reall really old shring, when I use it I will add some more tree and grass bases around it. I need to take another photo like that. . .



Meadow Lake, I've got a whole set of river sections that will lead from the lake to a table edge. The second photo has the grass bases a little too dense in the middle, they are movable.




Here is a dryad in the lake

[Ender Shadowkin]

Back to some models. Here is my Stag Rider. I liked the idea of stag rider, but did not like the GW stag, so I converted one out of the old pegasus and some dryad bits (little blue guy is a skink war master model).

This is where I started..


This is what my goal was...



The rider is actually the Stag model rider, he is pretty sweet...

[Ender Shadowkin]

couple in progress shots






Next up is a branch wraith converted from the morathi model