Wednesday, November 15, 2023

More Auralan Wardens for Age of Sigmar

A unit of Auralan Wardens, 28mm plastic AoS figures from GW.

There has been a lot of travel, and a lot of travel for work, for me over the past several weeks. This is not great for hobbying (although work pays for hobbies, so, you know). Despite the challenges, I have been managing to paint. Where I have been really been falling down on the whole "post stuff" side of the painting equation. Time to remedy that with a few posts here as fall approaches. Up first, we have something of an abrupt break of the recent run of 30k content - a unit of Auralan Wardens from the Lumineth Realm Lord faction (a.k.a. "high elves"), multi-part plastic figures from GW's Age of Sigmar setting.

Long, pointy spears on these fellows...watch out, bad guys!

I started painting GW's Lumineth Realm Lords new high elves back in the spring. I had tried a demo game of AoS in that period at the FLGS in Sault Ste Marie, and had a fun time. As a replacement for Warhammer Fantasy Battle, well...it just isn't. I know WHFB fans have strong feelings about AoS (myself included), but a fun game is a fun game, and I enjoyed AoS. Hence, the Lumineth Realm Lord new high elf project.

View showing the rear detail on the figures - and, once more, how long those spears are...practically pikes (although still not as long as a pike)

Another view showing some of the side and rear detail.

And the project made great progress. I got nearly all of the models I had purchased painted. Not bad! But note the "nearly" in that preceding sentence...yes, when it came to this last group of elves, I faltered. I had already painted one unit of these troops, and I thought it would make sense to have a second unit of these guys in the collection, as they seem like solid basic troops to build the fancier stuff in the army list around. I duly assembled these models back in the spring, primed them, and even painted one of them...and then, something else came up....

Officer to lead the unit. Only an elf would bring a wand and a lamp to a fight...and still seem scary...


Again, the details on the sculpting of these plastic figures is really something, very nicely done.

And then they sat there, as my hobby-squirrel-brain chased other stuff. So nearly six months and 50 or so Space Marines later, I thought it was time to finally clear these out of the pending pile. Painting the things you had been procrastinating around always feels a bit like trying to push your paintbrush through some kind of mind-numbing fog, but I got it done, here they are, and the initial little Age of Sigmar project is complete at last.

Getting this unit finished was something akin to "clearing the baffles", knocking off a unit that had been sitting, primed and ready to go for months. I even had one figure painted, but the other nine just sat there in their black undercoat and their really long spears getting in the way and knocking everything else on the hobby table over when I moved them around.

Really like the poses of these warriors.

These fellows have yet to see a game - and truth be told, I have no idea when they will, as work-related travel essentially consumes all opportunities to game or try and game in either Sault Ste Marie or Toronto. But that is no reason to stop painting, is it? Glad to have these fellows finished.

The officer pose looks even better massed in a group...

It would seem GW is close to re-releasing "Warhammer Fantasy Battle" in the guise of "Warhammer - The Old World". Personally, I'll believe when I see it, and I feel for the WHFB fans who have been jerked around by GW by years of vapour-adjacent teaser-style marketing efforts ("Look! A map!" "Look! A Brettonian!" "Look, an arm holding a weapon!"). If and when "The Older World" actually makes a commercial appearance, it will be interesting to see what happens to AoS...but lets hope that, in the meantime, I get these guys on to the table for at least one game...

Ready for a battle...sometime...I hope...

That's all the rambling I have for now, but I hope to have pictures of more stuff very soon!

2 comments:

Dallas said...

Great looking "high elves" there dude!

Curt said...

Lovely high elves, Greg! I really like the bone armour and the rich woodgrain of the spears.