From TeemuL: Blood Bowl High Elfs (25 points)

I have had three quite rough/busy/tiring weekends in the row, some planned, some unplanned, which has naturally affected my output. For example these 5 were "almost finished" last week, but in the end I "barely finished" them for this week.

These are classic Blood Bowl High Elfs, solid metal miniatures, which I bought a few years ago, when they were available as Made-To-Order from Games Workshop. I painted three linemen quite quick after I received them in Challenge x (x means unknown Challenge number, not X or 10). But then Blood Bowl enthusiasm cooled off in our group, covid came after that and so, but now there has been new sparkles, so I decided to move forward with these.

 

 

There are 4 lineman and 1 thrower, so that leaves the other positionals waiting for the future - and since the positionals are pretty much mandatory, I need to paint them before playing - an odd lineman might have been forgotten. The colour scheme quite nicely follows the Oldhammer High Elf style, light and bright and simple. Using mainly white, yellow, red and silver on a miniature might sound like a madness to someone, and I won't challenge that... Anyway, I used white undercoat, then painted the flesh (quite dark compared to some other high elfs, but I figured out these guys are outside a lot) and blocked yellows and reds using traditional colours (the first three were painted before Contrasts and I wanted to keep the look same). After that I painted the silver and gold and washed the silver with blue, to get the texture more visible. Finally some fixing here and there, black boots and mandatory green bases with green painted sand.

You might spot that they all have identical hair colour, that is on purpose. High Elfs are pretty strict with their standards and when forming the team, they can for example select only elfs with proper hair colour. They would only play on a perfect pitch in order to avoid getting mud on their white uniform...

These 5 elfs give me my tenth squirrel, surprisingly no skulls (those are reserved for Dark Elfs, I guess) and no planets. But instead let's give a warm thought to one of our sponsors, Wargames Soldiers and Strategy Magazine. A few weeks ago I was browsing the sponsor webstores looking for something nice. I am restricting myself of impulse buys (of miniatures) so I was mainly looking for a nice ruleset, may be terrain or may be just something to read. I do have too much terrain and reading, but I'm not stressing or restricting myself that on those. Also, I have been mostly a GW person for a long and a long time reader of White Dwarf. But I have learnt that there is so much more in the hobby, as you can see from my entries this year. I have been thinking about reading some general miniature magazine and when I got to WSS website I decided to give them a try. I decided to take a look at the covers of few of the latest issues and pick few (more than one to compensate the postage). I ended up ordering all five of them - the latest was a preorder and hasn't arrived yet. Each magazine seems to have a theme, but there is lots of other stuff as well to keep everyone interested in, I think. So far I have read only the first one, but I really liked it - there was a beautiful battle on Malta, too.

I had the magazine on the coffee table and my son was looking at the German cats on the cover and asked questions, so I said you can take it and read, if you like. Of course, he doesn't read yet, but he browsed the whole magazine. Most likely this is a known friend (the magazine) for many of you, but if not, my warmest recommendations. I already have forgotten half of the minis/rules/books I'd like to purchase. :)

 

 

My personal Squirrel count: 10

- 20mm Napoleonic

- 28mm Sludge

- 28mm Pulp

- 28mm Warhammer 40000 Xenos

- 28mm General (including Gloranthan) Fantasy

- 1:300 Cruel Seas

- 6mm Epic Imperial Fists

- 28mm ADD Boardgame

- 28mm Runewars Waiqar

- 28mm Blood Bowl

From Millsy:

Some lovely looking elfs you have there Teemu! I've always liked the clean High Elf look and you've executed it to a tee. Nice work all round mate.

I can well remember my Orcs and Humans being towelled up by well played Elf teams so I can attest you are onto a winner here. Barks would likely have a lifetime of advice for you too. 

Great to see a shout out to WSS mag, which I really enjoy. The publishers have found a great balance of everything that was good about 80s and 90s mags and then taken it to another level with quality layout and design.