Wood Elves!

Normally there is a larger gap between my blogs, but sometimes a lot of progress is made in a short period of time and it is interesting to chart the evolution of a team. It’s also useful to gather feedback as this team will go to one of the GT attendees and I want to maximise the number of people it would be appealing to.

On here, TFF and twitter the idea of doing a elven team looked to be in the highest favour. All 4 elven teams are competitive in both league and tournament settings, the new plastics look great and if I make a team mostly using those then it should be easier to sell than something more unique.

I knew I could do a pro elf team using the new plastics and adding some bits from the harlequins like face masks and legs, but that would not a little too simple of my tastes. Wood elves were more tempting to me as the only team I had done for them was my dryad daemonettes and that was very specialised.




My initial idea was to use the top half of the wild riders with plastic dark eldar legs. I’d already done this for a dark elf runner and thought it could work for a bare chested celtic styled wood elf team. The difficulty with this was that the bodies were a bit static and too thin to combine with the new elfs, which would make finding suitable arms an issue.



The bulkier proportions of the new elfs did open other possibilities, so I went through my bits box. I have an awful habit of buying up boxed sets of GW models that I think look cool and would have conversion potential. This means I have loads of models I will never paint, but a truly impressive bits box that I can rake through when seeking inspiration.

One of these purchases was the Tzeentchi cultists, I thought they might be useful as marauders for a Tzeentch pact team, or possibly the basis for norse players or the pit fighters of a khorne daemon team when combined with blood reavers. Their torsos were a very good fit for the new elfs and neither their shoulder pads nor decorative jewellery were particularly chaotic.

I was able to mock up a few quick test models with minimal chopping, the one potential area for concern was the cultists had larger biceps. I could cut their entire arms off and hide this with a shoulder pad, though some of the elf arms had sleeves that would look odd on otherwise bare chested models. Otherwise these test models looked good and seemed go down well on twitter.



This simple kitbash was a good basis for a team, but I also had to think about the positionals. I went back to my bits box to see what I could find to help with this. I’d also bought the eternal guard boxed set and it had some arms that would suit this team and heads that could work for throwers or linemen. There were also some perfect shoulder pads from dwarfs, they even had celtic knots on them.

The test lineman had his shoulder pad removed and 2 dwarf pads added. As linemen tend to get hit more than the positionals then it seemed right they would have a little more protection. I added the arms from the eternal guard to see what they looked like. I really like these but only have a few arms I can use, there are some missing hands but these are a little too thin for the BB elf arms. They may be better suited for catchers to reflect ST2.



I always see the throwers as the wise heads of the team, them being roughly equivalent to quarterbacks. On this model I left the Tzeentch shoulder pad, it does look suitable for elves, but maybe a bit too refined for wood elves. In either case they may only be given as single pad to avoid restricting the movement of their throwing arm. I gave him the head of an eternal guard as well. I think this suits a thrower the best as it is more decorative and I don’t think it looks very blood bowley so wouldn’t want to use it on too many players.
He was modelled holding the ball, in a more relaxed throwing pose. Something to think about is how players should be shown holding footballs, the boxed set comes with 2 pairs of arms doing this which is quite a lot and I need to add 2 more linemen and catchers. It may be worthwhile looking through my bits box for open hands or fists that match the arms.



The wardancers don’t need a lot of work as the antler mask will really make them stand out. I intend to model them in active poses; either running forward or maybe leaping in the air. As they are in the combat role they also suit having shoulder pads. I don’t have enough of those used on the linemen for the wardancers too, but there are some other ones with runes and celtic knots. I could instead use the spiked shoulder pads from the BB elfs.
I will also give them the more “fighty” forearms, maybe looking for ones with a fist spike.
Other differences can be shown with painting, they might suit having more elaborate patterns on their leggings, maybe diamonds or stripes. They will certainly get tattoos as these are associated with wardancers anyway.



Catchers are the 0-4 positional of the team and I will need to get another 2 of them. Luckily the elf team parts are very interchangeable so I can buy another box and have plenty of options. All the leftover parts can be added to my bitz box as they’d be useful for other elf teams and possibly humans or amazons.
Many of the cultists torsos are modelled with an arm raised which works well in a catching pose. As with the lineman I removed the shoulder pad from this model and covered the gap with an elf shoulder pad. Am thinking of giving them either light or just a single shoulder pad.
Another option is to use the eternal guard arms shown on the lineman. I’ll have just enough of these to use for the 4 catchers and the skinnier look would suit a ST2 player.