Executioners

The first time I came across the unreleased executioners was when studying the Beastiary of the 5th Warhammer Fantasy Edition.

Dark Elves Army as shown in the 5. Edition Bestiary

 

Dark Elves Battle Force

I quickly realized a second pictures showing these miniatures as part of a small Dark Elves battleforce charging some Dwarfs in a Scenario example. I never forget my call at Mail Order UK trying to order these miniatures as well as some other miniatures featured in the armybook but without a counterpart in the shops. My disappointment was boundless when realizing that these miniatures were never released. I got some more snippets of information about the executiones when I came across Richard "Orclord" Hales Stuff of Legends Website. Surprisingly, the Executioniers had a release, even if this was a short one. You were able to get them on the US Games Day in 1999 together with the unreleased Warhydra. Well, I thought then I keep my eyes and ears open and try to get them when the time is right. In the meantime I got the chance to get a look on the Executioners, the hydra as well as on the unreleased Sorcerer in real life. In  autumn 2000 I joined Harald and Natalie Bussing to the DUZI Event, where Harald led his impressive Dark Elves Army in a 4000 points tournament battle. He showed the best of their Dark Elves collection, which also includes a unit of Executioners lovely painted by Jennifer Haley. Additionally, the unit includes a beautifully converted command group from her consisting of a Champion, a musician and a standard bearer.

   

Executioner unit from the collection of Harald & Natalie Bussing, painted by Jennifer Haley

Shortly after this event I found an offer on Bartertown, a trading site where it was also possible to get hard to find Tabletop miniatures. The offer was about 40 executioners and 1 warhydra. The guy prefered to sell the whole bunch of miniatures with some discount or splitted in two equal batches.

However it was hell of a lot of money, that´s because the offer was still available. I get that deal and my girlfriend of that time nearly killed me. I thought to take them all and to refinance the deal later by selling some of the minis. In the end that never happend. My army was 40 Executioners richer and I was poor but more than happy!


The miniatures

There exist eight different executioner miniatures. As common for that time two miniatures base on one identical basic armature. Two basic poses exist with axe holded vertical or hold diagonal in front. The axe blades vary by a round or square blade design. Characteristic for the miniatures are their hoddies which were more or less decorated and their corded bracers. The minatures also carry a lot of bags and very detailed front decoration.

Executioners as shown on the SOL website

 
I painted a bunch of these miniatures in the past for my 5th Edition army. For the painting I decided for a mix of the dark painting scheme from Jennifer Haley as well as the Games Workshop colour scheme. Additionally, I converted my Champion the same way Jennifer Haley did.

Executioners painted in 00/01

It is a nice looking unit, but the paint job did not highlight all the beautiful details, these miniatures have. As I started to rework through my 4th/5th Edition Dark Elves I also decided to paint a unit of Executioners, because I am very interested in seeing how the unit will look when painted with my skills from today. Therefore, I started the preparations to get a unit ready for painting. Here you can see this unit containing one copy of each available Executioner. The unit was reinforced by a generic command crew consisting of a musician and a standard bearer. All miniatures were prepared very qualitatively to remove properly all mold lines. Then I have based them on a temple ruin scenery underlining they temple affiliation. The central Executioner with the biggest blade was again used to display the Champion of the unit. His base was designed in a way that it is interchangable with the already painted Dark Elves Champion which should alow to lead this unit alternatively. However, I would love to rebuild the Jennifer Haley Command Crew but also to sculpt my very own from scratch. But these will be different projects.

New Executioner unit ready for painting 2018

  

Here they go. I can´t wait to see them painted. Stay tuned
Kind Regards,
GeOrc