Apologies for another lengthy delay since the last. I'm currently separated by international borders from any hobby equipment as I've recently moved to Spain and haven't brought any of my stuff over yet. Sadly other things had to be prioritised...
Nonetheless, I did take some photos a while back which I haven't had the opportunity to post yet. I have showed you pictures of my Khemri and Von Carstein armies and now it is time to show some pictures of my oldest Warhammer army, my Dark Elves!
So where to begin on this walk down memory lane. I suppose the beginning is as good a place as any! When I first got into the hobby in the early nineties Dark Elves were my passions almost straight away. I remember the plastic one pose warriors, rakarth on his dragon, male sorcerers (before the fluff changed) and so much more. I must have had at least one of most things. All of that old school stuff has since been traded or sold over the years. The models in this post are from when Dark Elves got a much needed reboot and some fantastic sculpts. Onwards to more photos and I will elaborate more on the way.
The army pictured above is only a small portion of what my total force was. It happened to be all in the same case that I stumbled upon. There were also a lot of crossbowmen, more bolt throwers, Malekith, lots more knights a cauldron of blood... Where all of those models are now is anyone's guess!
The models pictured would have been painted by me approximately 14 years ago I think. My Dark Elves, or smurfs as they were known due to their blue tinged skin, saw a lot of action and were generally very shooting heavy, however towards the end of my time with them I branched out somewhat in favour of lots of small hard hitting combat units.
Here we have a few Witch Elves and an Assassin. There were lots more of these girls and I used to run them in only 2 ranks with a very wide frontage to get maximum attacks. The new plastic models are fantastic but I still think for their time these models were very impressive.
The purple that you see if I remember correctly is broadly speaking liche purple with
various highlights and washes added. The skin was always based on space wolves grey.
Here we have small unit of corsairs led by none other than Malus Darkblade himself! This unit I entered in Golden Demon (around 2001/2 I think) set on a nice display base with a couple of slaves lying about (the dark eldar ones from Vects raider). I placed as a finalist and received an invite to warhammer world where I got a tour of the factory! Those were the days.
The pictures sadly don't do them justice as even today they look very nice. It makes me think though how much the standard of painting has improved over the years as I can't imagine them getting anywhere near the finals now!
Here we have a unit of spearmen, who I understand are now called Dreadspears. These guys were once again revolutionary at the time with the ability to have the front rank with their spears pointing forwards in the shield nook, with those following having their spears at various angles. It was a great plastic kit for its time. I'm unsure yet how I feel about the new plastic kits being rather more 2 dimensional and less poseable, however I imagine it makes ranking and painting a lot easier!
Behind you will see a few cold one knights on the prowl. My favourite cavalry in the warhammer world without a doubt!
A couple of twin sorceresses converted from beastmasters. Even then magic was very powerful and I liked to run lots of wizards in the army to overwhelm my opponents. These models were some of my first attempts at greenstuffing.
You can see the host of Naggaroth advancing behind these two menacing fellows...
and here they are brought into focus! Sadly only two of them, but here are the Black Guard! Once again I think these sculpts are beautiful. I loved the models but sadly they suffered the curse of being made of metal and therefore very expensive. For some reason I never managed to finish painting a whole unit of these guys. The two pictured would have been painted shortly after the corsairs which explains the move from black to silver armour.
To finish off a photo of the limited edition Malus on foot sculpt.
I've still got a real soft spot for Dark Elves and all this end-times excitement is pushing me ever closer to starting a new dark elf army. It is proving harder and harder to resist ordering a few boxes of the lovely new models...
Thank you all for taking the time read through this. So, what do you think? Is it about time I made a return to the old world for the end times?
