The Witch Elf Champion

Today I want to talk about a very special Witch Elf, the plastic miniature of the Talisman City of Adventure Expansion.  This miniature was very often used as a Champion model in various Dark Elves related Games Workshop publications. You can see it in the Dark Elves Armybook as well as in the 5th Edition Beastiary often as a centerpiece in the front row of the Witch Elves unit. Was a metal miniature for a Witch Elf Champion missing? Propably no.
There exists a metal Witch Elf standing out from the Witch Elves miniature range. The miniature sculptured by Aly Morrison was much more detailed and decorated with a lot of juwelry compared to the other other Witch Elf miniatures. It shows a Khorne rune on her headdress, skulls on her boots and a lot of jewelry in her hair. While, always two Witch Elves were produced from one identical basis, limiting the eight Witch Elves to four armatures, this miniature has no twin. Finally, for most Dark Elves units a maximum of eight metal miniatures were produced, suggesting that this ninth outstanding Witch Elf was planned as a Champion model. However, this Witch Elf was often banned to the second row, replaced by the plastic Talisman Witch Elf. What made this miniature so special?

The Witch Elf Miniature
The Talisman Witch Elf based on the artwork of David Gallagher which decorated the Dark Elves Armybook of the 4th Edition. In a direct comparison you can see that a lot of the details were adopted for this miniature as the pose varied a bit. The identical details include her face expression, the metal bikini, the shoulder armor design, the headdress with the Khorne symbol, the swords but as well as tiny details like her necklace. The pose was propably varied for two resons. While the artwork pose with outstretched arms requires a lot of space the later miniature pose with one sword over her head is more compact, fitting better on a 20 mm base. Additionally, the arms in the artwork were streched also in the backside direction, which was difficult to reproduce in a miniature this time, because the metal casting favours more planar poses. Taken together, the change in the pose was probably related to the production process. While the pose was probably a limiting factor, it is surprising how much detail this early plastic miniatures possess. Really outstanding are her necklace and the hilt decoration which are nearly identical reproductions of the artwork. Her face, head and tiara is so much detailed, making it hard to understand every detail. To see the 3up version used for the CAD translation would be a real pleasure and would allow to see this ministure as it was planned by the designer. After talking a lot about the good features of the miniature, it contains also a lot of weakness. In general the proportions of the miniature are to broad. This is true for her head, arms, legs and affects the whole vertical dimension. Consequently, the miniature appears to short and broad. I remember a friend always talking about the Pancake-headed Witch because her beautiful face suffered from the circular streched head. A further design fault in my eyes are the missing straps of her metal bra. I had no clue what was the idea of the designer to drop a proper fixation for her two shells. The crippeled underside of her bracelet in contrast to the artwork design looks for me as a problem with the mold or the casting process of this detail as I have seen painted miniatures without that error. A further feature I dislike are the ribbons on her sides and on the backside. These have no match with the artwork and miss the filigree form of the comparable details as the ribbons used as a loincloth. Again a look on the 3up sculpt or an information of the designer would be very welcome.

Some Games Workshop Dark Elves History
While the metal Witch Elves of the 4th/5th Edition Dark Elves were all designed by Aly Morisson, the Talisman plastic With Elf did not look like Alys work. So far I was not able to identify the sculpturer of this miniature. The Talisman City of Adventure Expansion was produced in 1994 and the box set was announced in White Dwarf 179 from November 1994. This date is about half a year previous to the 4th Edition Dark Elves release teasered in White Dwarf 186 in June 1995 and starting fully with White Dwarf 187 from July 1995.

It is curious that the advertisment for the Talisman box set shows a miniature looking like a metal witch elf from the 3rd Edition Dark Elves range. The same picture was used on the backside of the the box which was also mentioned in this article for a lot of other figures. These miniatrues probably display the miniatures used in the playtesting indicating that the production of the plastic Witch Elf figure was finished after these shots were made but perhaps just in time before release of the box. The White Dwarf article also mentioned a Dark Elf Warrior which was playtested but finally dropped and did not make it into the box. The White Dwarf article shows the character card using also a 3rd Edition Dark Elf Warrior. It was mentioned in this side note, that the plastic Dark Elf Warrior of the 4th Edition release was a dropped Talisman miniature. Curiously, the design is also found in the background of the cover artwork from David Gallagher. I also want to mention here  We know from the Reddit Interview with Mark Gibbons that "Usually the miniatures were already sculpted but there were plenty of occasions where the illustrations served as concept art for the sculpts". Therefore, it would be interesting to know in this case if the Talisman Witch Elf and the Dark Elf Warrior were the first miniatures of the 4th edition, serving for David Gallaghers Artwork or vice versa. If you have any information about these early days of 4th Edition Dark Elves History let me know in the comments!   

Painting the plastic Witch Elf

After I finished my first test minature of the Witch Elves unit one week ago I can not resist to lay my hands on this miniature. Knowing already in advance that this will become a real challenge to make her look fitting between the metal miniatures. I used the test miniature as well as David Gallaghers cover artwork as reference. I started with my usually used pale skin tone. There was need to do a lot of shading on the sides to reduce her volumes and giver her a slinker and more streched look. I also used freehand techniques to add some more details to the skin, so that she get as detailed as her metal sisters.

I painted her bra with a spherical reflection effect which helps to put this detail into the focus. The hair was a pain in the arse as it is a very rough sculpt compared to the metal miniatures. There my typical shading using lazes did not work here and I was used to use a lot of mixed colours to get the blendings properly done. I used again the blue glazes to add more effect on her blades. Because these were smaller compared to the metal Witch Elves I avoided to much scratches and blood effect which I used normaly to cover the clumsy weapons. I hope you like the final result. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Kind Regards,
GeOrc