Dark Elf Warriors - Swordsmen II

My Swordsmen regiment got into the next round of extension.   In order to close the first rank I painted the command crew for this regiment. In case you missed the first part creating this regiment, read here. Here, the Champion was already done and the Musician and Standard Bearer followed their leader on their heels. Or let us say they tried. There is a lot of competition on my workbench to get into my focus and to get some colour. Therefore, painting them was interrupted several times to work on different projects. Despite some serious time half finished on the pile of shame... these two guys were able to motivate me finishing them. Here the story of their odysee on my Workbench.

The Miniatures

Full regiment of Warriors - Swordsmen

Two sets of Command Crew miniatures exist. For the Swordsmen unit I choose a selection which reflected best the look and equipment of the troopers. The Champion with raised sword was the best choice. Additionally,  I took the Musician with sword and the Standard Bearer holding his sword still in sheath. I placed the Command Crew around the centered Champion. What I did not recognize at this moment was, that the banner was placed far left due to the fact that the Bearer hold it in his right hand. It would have been better to place this guy in the middle or on the right side so that the banner has a more centered position. Unfortunately, the musician does not work on his position because of its diagonal orientation. Put him on the left would mean to present his backside to the frontline. Switching with the Champion is still an option I have to think about. But, I always loved the idea that a regiment is arranged around its leader in the center. I will play with different options in some upcoming units. Perhaps I get this problem solved later.

Painting the Command Crew

Commmand Crew with basic colours

First detail work on these guys

How mentioned in the beginning, those two guys were not alwaysPart I of this regiment. I started on these miniatures with less time on an evening in early January. Just for relaxing I added some basic colours, the red, black, grey and gold (see WIP pic). I had a lot of further short session focusing rather on finishing specific elements than finishing a colour completly. What I also did was painting the faces very early. This normaly helps me a lot to keep my motivation high to finish these dudes. Not this time. I made a break here to paint the Sorceress riding Dark Pegasus and continued my work on them in March. Then, I painted both in parallel for a long time as you can see in the second WIP picture. I focused later on finishing the musician first as this was the easier miniature. In contrast, the banner of the Standard Bearer promised already very early to become a difficult task. And it would get a lot more difficult than I thought at the beginning. When testing the banner I noticed that most of the upper half of the miniature and the miniature to his right was covered by the banner. One option to solve this was with a lot of drapery in the banner, but this would complicate the freehand work a lot. I looked for other options and I get inspiration in the 8th Edition miniatures which shared a lot of similarities with this old range. Here the Standard poles were higher putting the banner over the heads of the regiment. Therefore, the second option was to extend the standard pole. I decided for the latter even if this meant to change the original miniature in this case.... and to change it on a already painted miniature! I did it and in the end I extend the banner pole by 1.5 cm which was already enough.
in my favor. Consequently, my time was very limited for them. When ever I paint miniatures only in very small sessions I miss to take pictures. This has happend here as well.... shame on me! Therefore, I can only tell the rough story of the process. If you are interested in a detailed painting description take a look on

The Banner

My technical experience in creating paper banners was nearly that old like this miniature range. In consequence I made a lot of mistakes here but learned a lot how to do better. Therefore, do not take this article here as a tutorial. I will write a detailed tutorial as soon as I will have optimized the technique. However, I took some pictures and can guide you through my learning curve.

I started with a pencil sketch of the banner. For the central symbol I wanted the winged skull. This symbol is carried by the unreleased master sorcerer on top of his staff. I had used this motif already by the shild from the General on Cold One. In terms of heraldry I wanted to link the regiment to these characters. The Swordsmen already carried the winged gem designed by Wayne England on their shields. I decided to replace the gem by the skull and fit the tail to the Banner shape. I added a rune looking similiar to the symbol in a smaller version on the front and on a bigger version on the back. The final design looked this way:

Banner design based on Wayne Englands artworks

Then I started with the painting process by putting the banner with Patafix on a wooden stick. Then I painted the basic colours. I noticed here that it would have been useful to seal the paper somehow. Due to the missing sealing the paper became rough and partly fibrous. Definiatly something to do better the next time.  

Banner with some first basic colours

After all basic colours were painted to front and back I added some drapery by bending the banner carefully. Two times my banner get some slight fractures. Not much but definiatly a warning to be more careful next time! Then I started the detail work aligning to the drapery. I played a lot with the contrast to make sure the symbol stand out from the background and the single elements had a good visibility. From time to time I checked the banner on the Standard Bearer to get a feeling for the final composition:

Testing the look of the banner on its Bearer

Here you can see the final Banner from the front and back. I am happy with the result and I like the simplicity creating that old school feeling a lot. However a bit more texturing and details could have been an advantage as well. I will have to think about what can be improved for further designs. Finally I fixed than banner with PVA glue to the horizontal bar.  

The finished command Crew

Here you can see final pictures of the Command Crew. These two chaps were nice additions to this regiment and I am happy to have the first rank done. The red colour scheme works great on these miniatures. However, I am looking forward to paint these guys in purple too as part of my Spearmen unit. I am curious what looks finally better when beeing able to have both in a direct comparison.

The first rank

Here you see the finished first rank of my Dark Elf Warriors - Swordsmen. Five miniatures done, 15 further troopers to do. For the moment I need a break from these guys. I am a slow painter needing a lot of variety. Therefore, I am only able to paint 2-3 miniatures of the same type. But, I would be happy have a playable regiment of ten men. Therefore I am looking forward to break down this large unit in smaller pieces. My next goal is to paint first two and then three further troopers to have ten troopers ready for battle. 

I hope you like the final result. As always I am happy to read your thoughts in the comments.

Kind Regards,
GeOrc