(Originally posted to A Year of Frugal Gaming)
If I’m going to get anywhere with my resolution to have all my Dark Elves painted by the end of the year, I’ll have to have a plan ready before I lose too much time.
Having ransacked the shelves and boxes that house my collection, I’ve taken stock of the unfinished models. When I say ‘ancient’ below, I’m referring to the (mostly, if not exclusively) Marauder miniatures that Games Workshop sold in the mid-1990’s. I expect most of those models are also made of lead, and were carved by hand using flint tools.
Paint needs removing 
- 1 Dark Pegasus, without rider
- 1 Manticore with partial rider
- 1 badly damaged Hydra that has been glued, puttied, pinned, and soldered and still won’t stay together. I really don’t know what to do with this one, except corrosively strip the various layers of adhesive and paint off, and maybe try something new (like magnets). It’d be nice to get it back together, but I have a bad feeling I’ve ruined it.
These models will need some extensive work on them. I got the Dark Pegasus and Manticore in an eBay sale, and they don’t have (complete) riders. I’m planning to put a Crone Hellebron conversion on the Manticore eventually, but I’ve not started looking at parts to complete that yet. I don’t want to rush them just to fit within the year’s resolution, so I may treat these models as ‘bonuses’, if I have the time to do them.
- 19 ancient plastic swordsmen
- 1 ancient Corsair that needs some repairs (weapons missing!)
- 4 ancient Corsairs
Unassembled / modelling required
- 2 modern Cold One Knights
- 4 modern Black Ark Corsairs
- 3 ancient plastic swordsmen that need a weapon swap.
- 2 Gamezone harpies
Undercoating required
- 1 modern Hydra needs a nice base added (bits of enemies, etc) before undercoating.
- 20 ancient Corsairs
- 2 ancient bolt throwers and 1 modern one, all with their matching crew. I may delay the ancient bolt throwers to try and give them a bit more sex appeal, since they are rather… blocky.
- 7 ancient Cold One Knights
- 10 Dark Riders to undercoat (horses already undercoated).
- 12 ancient Witch Elves
- 6 ancient Crossbowmen
- 12 ancient Black Guard
- 1 ancient command group
- 2 ancient assassins
- An ancient male sorcerer
- An ancient Morathi model (with clothes on!)
- 1 Chariot crew
- 1 modern Hydra Beastmaster team
- 1 modern Sorceress on foot and 1 mounted on Cold One
- 1 modern Master on foot and 1 mounted on Cold One
- 1 modern Assassin
- 3 modern Cold One Knights
- 1 Malekith on Black Dragon
- 1 Lokhir Fellheart
I do have an additional Cold One knight, left over as I got four ancient Cold Ones without riders as an eBay win and inherited a rider without a steed from a friend of a friend’s old bits box. But I’m unsure yet whether or not to make a Black Chariot with four Cold Ones pulling it, or two regular chariots, or have a Black Chariot with three creatures and use the spare to bolster the Cold One Knights. Having three chariots would be fairly nice… Although I often face cannons (boo).
Unpainted
- 10 Dark Steeds
- 12 modern Crossbowmen
- 4 modern Witch Elves
- 1 ‘middle-child’ Beastmaster team for the (damaged) Hydra
- 6 Mengil Manhide’s Manflayers
So my first task will be to assemble the remaining Cold One Knights and Black Ark Corsairs, and perform any repairs on the existing models. Then I can devote a bit of time to painting each week before the good weather comes and I can undercoat the bulk of the models, which will give me a lot more to work on! I figure I can probably get about 2 hours a week, spread across evenings and the weekend, to chip away at this mound of metal. I’d rather hoped that there would be more models ready to paint, so if I got the time before undercoating weather came along I’d be able to get ahead on things. No matter, I like a challenge!