Thursday 17 December 2015

A-Waywatcher In A Manger

As we creak open another chest, please be assured that my takeover of this Advent will be short-lived, and Kraken's getting back the reins soon.

Pro tip: when you search for 'big chest' on Google, keep the Family Filter on.

But for now... Waywatchers!

This is just a rebasing, but the poor chaps are the last of my Wood Elf units to be stuck in their original green flock, so I though it was time to liberate them with some woodland deadfall.

If they all look a bit jaundiced, it was because I was quite careless about highlighting their yellow hair.

These boys go back a long way - all the way to my 1997 Wood Elf army, in fact.

They're such lovely models that I was very tempted to drop the lot in the Dettol and start over. But I put a lot of work into them, so let them stand for the historical record.

Robin Hood.

They originally had white bows (washed, as I recall, in wood varnish, as I hadn't heard of Quickshade back them), but I darkened them up when I unified my army for the first time. The rest of the paint jobs has survived untouched, I think.

Robin Without Hood. It's *possible* they duplicated the sculpt here.

There's some nice details here - I was bemoaning the details on the Gor a few days ago, but I think this strikes the right balance. Ropes and pouches and long cloaks: you can imagine these guys camping out in the woods for a long time, setting traps.


In fact, setting traps was one of the Waywatchers special abilities: the enemy took hits IF they charged the Waywatchers and IF they were in a wood. Characterful, but ultimately rubbish in battle terms and not worth the points cost over Scouts.

Certainly, they weren't the stone cold killers of 8th Ed (haven't tried them in AoS yet, but I'll give it a go, much to the chagrin of Chaos Warriors, I'm sure).

This represent the peak of my 'crazy eyes' period.

For some reason I only bought 9 of the original set, so when the minimum was raised to 10 in 6th Ed, I picked up this one. For a paint job several years apart, he blends in well - the skin is a little pinker and the eyes are far, far crazier.
(I'd reached the skill level where I could paint a tiny black dot, but had no control about where it went)

This model was also holding a huge sword - which generally doesn't work on Wood Elves (champions excepted) and certainly not on Waywatchers, so it was cut off and he got a downward dagger instead.

For a character that did nothing other than get punched by Bruce Willis, he really caught the public imagination.

Ahh, the One With The Gimp Mask - the kind of model you wish you had more of, and yet are glad there's only one to stand out.

At least I got some non-crazy eyes in the mask. There's enough crazy going on there.


And a view from the back, just to show off the models' details.

Stylus 2015 would have found a way to colour each leaf a different colour.
Stylus 1997 was quite happy with a base+ink thank you very much.

Let's put some hustle behind this rustle.

And with that, my Wood Elves are maybe 2/3 completed. We're getting somewhere (and maybe, by 2018, we'll actually arrive).

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