The Oldhammer experience

2 weeks ago I posted my Oldhammer Dark Elves Champion from 4th/5th Edition and well.... the reactions and feedback for this miniature blow me totaly away. More than 260 likes in the Oldhammer FB Community and more than 1700 likes on Instagram.

Additionally, a lot of very friendly and positive comments, how much they love this miniature and its paintjob. It seems that  still a lot of veterans exist out there, still in love with the Dark Elves of this age. All these positive reactions have motivated me to dig deeper in the past and in the early days of my hobby career.

Today I want to tell from the story how I decieded for the dark elves. I was still in school but already infected by the Games Workshop virus. Some classmates mentioned my new interest and gave me the hint that there are other players at our school. After I get connected to them, I get the Beastiary and the Rulebook of the 5th edition from them. I do not know how much time I spent, reading on these pages and looking at the armies and miniatures in these books, but it was a lot. My view stared on thes epages and I studied the armies, thinking about which one I wish to collect. Quickly, two armies get in my focus, dominating by their impressive dragons. The Chaos army with Egrimm van Horstmann on his Two headed Chaos Dragon Baudros in its centre and the Dark Elves army using Rakarth, Beastlord of Kharond Kar on his Black Dragon Bracchus as a center piece. While I really loved the Egrimm miniature, the beginner in me feeled the majority of the Chaos force very disturbing, especially the Chaos Demons. Checking the Dark Elves army I an impressive dragon, cavalery riding raptors and half naked girls with big swords.

  This army really was different compared to all others and the decision was made. In the end its was the With Elves and the Cold One Riders which favored this decision and that is why I want to deal with both units in my next paint jobs.


Being a gentleman and so I let the women go first! I already prepared a unit of Witch Elves in the weeks past. The unit consist of all 9 available miniatures of the 4th/5th Edition. Additionally, I added the plastic Witch Elves Champion which was officially realeased in the City Expension of Talisman Board Game.

I know how frustrated I was back in 1999, when calling the mail order in UK trying to order this Champion only to get informed that this miniatures and many others were not available. Luckily, the Talismann plastic miniatures were released years later again and I made sure to get the champion as well as the plastic sorceress which was from an other talismann expansion. All ten Witch Elves were situated in a temple ruin environemt. This reflects the setup from the Beastary picture. I always loved the idea how these religious fanatics stray through the temples of other races to capture and sacrifice their victims on the altars of Khaine. In my opinion, a High Elves surrounding suits best, as the eternal battle between both races is one of the most epic ones in the Warhammer World.

I painted a first test miniature to get an idea if the colours work. As my Dark Elves Champion prototyp combines purple and red colours with a focus on purple, I decided to focus on red colours for these Khaine related troops. 

In contrast, the details were painted in purple. For the hair colours I used the classic light white colour scheme supplemented with glazes of magenta, purple and blue. For this first psycho lady I used the magenta variant, which worked fine with her massive hair. While most of the miniature is very filigree, the weapons and the typical Dark Elves headdress were a bit clumsy. For the headdress I added a gold lining around the triangle to get a higher degree of detail. For the swords I used complex reflections, battle damage and blood spatter to maximize the degree of detail. Unfortunately, the swords still look very oversized. Anyway, I like this girl and I am curious how the other Withc Elves will look using this colour scheme.
I hope you like it.
Kind Regards,
GeOrc