More Elves WIP

Ok, so I'm doing some further work on some more 1st Age Noldor Elves. A bunch of West Wind Arthurian minis here (plus an errant Footsore) with West Wind Saxon and GW Galadhrim heads, GW Warhammer Elf plumes, Oathmark Elf plumes and a bit of Greenstuff here and there. I think thesewill look the dog's flopsy bits once painted!

 

Simarils Rampant - Tolkien's Silmarillion 1st Age Noldor Elf Conversion

I recently joined a new group on Facebook called 'Wargaming In Middle Earth.' It's a group dedicated to all aspects of Middle Earth gaming with all sorts of figure scales and rules. What drew me to it is the excellent conversion work of Graham Green, who converts historical Dark Age figures into Tolkien-esque Elves to try to create Elves that actually look like what Tolkien himself would have envisaged, rather than the Peter Jackson or Warhammer things out there that everyone seems to do. Anyway, this really floated my boat as I've always had my own vision of Tolkien's Elves, based on Victor Ambrus' brilliant illustrations in the old Tolkien Bestiary by David Day. Here's an example of one of them. I love this picture!

So I decided to have a go! Thus, after a couple of weeks of chopping, glueing, greenstuffing, agonising over colour scheme and panicking over what on earth I was going to do with the shield, here is my first ever Dark Age historical to 1st Age Tolkien Elf conversion! 

The base figure is a Gripping Beast Arthurian Pict Noble, with a GB sword. The shield is also GB, from the Normans range but it has had the boss filed away. The head comes from a GW LOTR Guard of the Galadhrim Court. The cloak is my very first attempt at large scale sculpting of flat cloth and I'm dead chuffed with it, although it took a bloody age to do! The cloak clasp is also greenstuff and turned out well despite being a rather happy accident after some experimenting with different ways to make said clasp!! He is painted in my usual style. The shield design is based on one I saw on a LBM shield transfer set for Mantic Miniatures Elves. It was hell's own nightmare to paint, to be honest! But I like it now it's done.  

I don't have any particular Elven kingdom in mind for this fella, although the blue colour scheme suggests Fingolfin or Fingon's houses. Apparently the star suggests a link to Feanor. I'll just leave it pretty open. He's gonna be joined by a  war band of similar conversions. I have a bunch of West Wind Arthurian awaiting some conversion work and I have ordered a box of the new and rather lovely Oathmark plastic Elves, so expect more 1st Age Elf goodness over the next few weeks. I'm also painting the evil army, completing several WIP Orc units that I started ages ago and a large wingless fire-drake (Glaurung). Expect pics of these bad guys shortly. These will be used in games of Silmarillion-based Dragon Rampant (I'm calling it 'Simarils Rampant') so that gives you an idea of the force sizes to be expecting.

Anyway, here's that Elf. Hope you like him!

                                                                                               

It's been a while...

Sorry, it's been a while since my last post. Life has been ridiculously busy for the past few months. My wargaming and painting mojo has pretty much completely disappeared. All the plans I have had for projects have really stalled in a mire of apathy. I don't really know what to do about this. I am sitting here with stuff to do on the painting table next to me and I planned to do stuff tonight, but like every other night when I have had an hour spare, it's not happening.

Anyway, what I do have are some pictures from back in February half-term when Cameron and I played a couple of fabulous games of Dragon Rampant. I won both of them too, not because he played poorly, but because I had outrageous dice. He took it very well and still really enjoyed the games. Pretty mature for a 9 year old, I'd say. There are some adult gamers who could learn a lot from his attitude!

Anyway, I'll make no promises about what's coming next. For now let's just enjoy some Dragon Rampant Elves vs Orcs eye-candy...