A Sign of Life... and a Look Back at the Last Two Years

First, I want to apologize for my long silence. Two years is a long time, so what happened? Around a month after my last post in June 2022, our second son, Marten, was born. We were thrilled that our little family was complete, but life also became much busier. As a result, I had to scale back on my hobbies. While I used to paint in the evenings and spare moments on weekends, those times were now dedicated to going to bed early and spending weekends with our older son. Though I found some time to paint here and there, I had to pause my blog.
So, what did I manage to work on? I’m sure you’re curious to see which miniatures I painted over the past two years and the current state of my projects. Let's go back to late 2022.

 

Realm of Slaanesh

After Marten’s birth, I continued painting for my small 3rd Edition Realm of Chaos Slaanesh Warband, which I teased at the beginning of 2022. I completed an unreleased Keeper of Secrets, two unreleased mounted Daemonette and one on foot as well as a further Slaanesh Champion.

Expansion of my Realm of Chaos - Slaanesh Warband in 2023

Dark Elves Sorcerer

Then, I returned to my beloved Dark Elves and finished a classic Dark Elves Sorcerer for my 4th Edition Dark Elves project by the end of the year.

Dark Elves Sorcerer

Dark Elves Cold One Knights

Using the momentum of the holiday season, I finished my last Cold One Knight, completing my unit of ten miniatures. 

Dark Elves Cold One Knights (General already missing his Banner)

 

When I saw the unit assembled, I noticed that the back banner on the Dark Elf General riding a Cold One didn’t quite match the style of the others, so I created a new one. By February, my goal to recreate the Dark Elf Cold One Knight unit from the 1995 studio army was complete. 

Studio Dark Elves Armyshoot from 5th Edition Beastiary

I was thrilled to share the final result on social media.

Finished Dark Elves Cold One Knights unit

My First Dark Elves Army

As my 4th Edition army project grew, I needed more space in my cabinets, especially with a planned move on the horizon. So, I decided to sell my old 4th/5th Edition army, which I’d collected and painted in the late ’90s and early 2000s. In April 2023, the army found a new home in the U.S. Although saying goodbye was tough—after 20 years of painting and gaming with it—I knew it was in good hands. Sadly, the package was damaged during shipping, and I had to navigate insurance and repairs for the rest of the year.

My first Dark Elves army painted between 1998 and 2000

More Dark Elves

But let’s return to the good news. I finished two more Witch Elves, extending my unit to eight. I began work on the final two Witch Elves but couldn’t complete them before our move.

Dark Elves Witch Elves painted in mid of 2023

Moving and the Chaos Within

We went on vacation in June and moved in July, so it was a summer without much hobby progress. Instead, I focused on setting up my new, smaller hobby room. Organizing my collection in this limited space was a challenge, and the new apartment required a lot of work. My first time picking up a brush again was in early October 2023. Unsure of what to paint, I chose Tzeentch Champion Aekold Helbrass, as “Chaos and Change” seemed to fit the theme of the past months. However, painting him took ages due to exhaustion and limited time. Before I could finish, disaster struck: one of my cabinets broke.

Attention graphic content that can make a tough hobbyist cry!

In the cold season, moisture built up in the newly constructed apartment, causing the backplates of my cabinets to warp and the shelves to collapse. Three levels of painted miniatures fell, with damage ranging from minor to extensive. My Cold One Knights unit and Dark Elf Sorceress on a Black Pegasus were among the broken pieces.

Recovery

It took time to find the motivation to return to painting. I managed to repair some of the less damaged miniatures, including the Sorceress on Pegasus. 

Repair of the Dark Elves Sorceress riding Dark Pegasus

 
I began 2024 with a heavy heart, struggling to rekindle my enthusiasm. Starting a 3rd Edition Realm of Chaos Nurgle project helped, as the quick progress on a small warband restored my motivation.

Realm of Chaos - Nurgle Warband started in early 2024

Original Warhammer Art

Already in 2023, I acquired an original Warhammer artwork by Dave Gallagher. Thanks to Andy Smith, I own now the famous Dark Elf Warrior piece that accompanies the Urian Poisonblade story in the army book. I received this beautifully colored piece in the end of 2023. It was framed in the beginning of 2024 and now hangs above my workbench, inspiring me daily to return to my Dark Elves project.

Oringal Warhammer Art by Des Hanley, Mark Gibbons and Dave Gallagher

The Unreleased Dark Elves Sorceress I

Next, I painted a special miniature: the unreleased Sorceress I by Aly Morrison from 1993. Seeing a friend buying another copy of this rare figure motivated me to finish it. I even took a few days off work to focus on its intricate freehand details, completing it just before our summer vacation.

The crown juwel of my Collection 
Unreleased Dark Elves Sorceress I

Aekold Helbrass

After the vacation I found some time to continue the work on Aekolf Helbrass. It was a lot of fun painting him. However when putting all parts together I noticed that the miniature doesn´t work how I had expected. I did some finishing touch and even if he loosk finished there is need for an revision.

Tzeentch Champion - Aekold Helbrass

 

 The Road to Golden Demon

Returning to my workbench in late June, I completed the Repeating X-Bowman I’d started earlier in the year. I also began other X-Bowmen, though they remain unfinished. 

Dark Elves Repeating X-Bowmen

 

With Golden Demon 2024 approaching, I decided to enter the Old World category with my Cold One Knights. Although I had to repair the unit, it was a rewarding process. I also designed a plinth emblem inspired by Wayne England’s artwork.

Emblem created by the art of Wayne England

The final result exceeded my expectations, and I hoped it would resonate with judges and fans alike.

Golden Demon Germany 2024 entry - The Old World category

Golden Demon Germany 2024 entry - Age of Sigma uni category

I entered two submissions: my Cold One Knights in the Old World category and a Witch Aelves unit led by a Hag Queen (Lady Gibbons), in the Age of Sigmar unit category. I was thrilled to receive a finalist pin for the Hag Queen and a commendation for my Cold One Knights. The Warhammer community’s positive response to my 30-year-old miniatures was incredibly rewarding. My Cold One Knights also earned a commendation in Darren Latham’s Glow Up Challenge, with compliments on my color choices from Darren himself.

Competition results - 2024

Outlook

After this success, my motivation is high. Although time is limited, and cold-weather illnesses are on the rise, I’m continuing work on my Black Guard unit, finding enjoyment in sculpting. I have some exciting ideas for making it a dark counterpart to the High Elves Phoenix Guard.

Dark Elves Black Guard WIP

With that I am at the end of my review. I want to close with an armyshot of my Dark Elves showing the actual state of this project. Enjoy

 

4th Edition Dark Elves Army projekt - late 2024

Thank you for reading this review and outlook. While I can’t promise more frequent posts, I’ll do my best.

All the best,
GeOrc 

2020 Review and Preview

The Dark Elves Sorceress riding Dark Pegasus dominated
dominated the Workbench in January and February 2020

Unbelivable that this is my first post in 2020. Meanwhile it is already late in March and the world is running through a pandemic crisis. The lock down has also hit Germany and for the first time this year I feel that I came to a rest. So where I am now and what happened.
So far it was a busy year. I started 2020 going into parental leave. We had a nice and relaxed vacation in the first week of January before I started to introduce our little boy to his new day care. Unfortunately, work followed me on my heels. There was much to do and I had to care though I was officially absent for the whole month. This collapsed completly when our day care taker becomes ill and I had to take care for the boy and the job. Things did not get better in the following weeks. The February was dominated by a high work load in my research job and March was dominated by illness of one or more family members. The first day I felt healthy again was when writing these lines. But not everything was bad. We had also a lot of fun and good times and here and there was also some spare time for the hobby. As always when I am terrible busy I concentrate on painting miniatures to get my energy back rather than writing blog articles. Correction... Painting and... buying miniatures.

That´s what this blog article will be about what happened on my workbench and what awaits you later this year.


Tactica 2020

Meeting Aly Morrison at Tactica 2020 in Hamburg

On February 15th to 16th the Tactica Event in Hamburg, Germany took place. This yearly event is all about SciFi/ Fantasy and historical wargaming for hobby people all around europe. Knowing that Aly Morrison and the Perry Twins are regular guests of this events made it a must visit in my time schedule. As I am writing with Aly Morrison since a while about my Dark Elves project, meet him in person, talk about his design work and show him my painted Dark Elves was something I dreamed for a long time now. Additionally, there was a chance to meet a lot of my painting people and other people I know from my tabletop forums. I started my trip on saturday morning with a box full of grim and sinister Dark Elves and get on my way to Hamburg. And what should I say... It was brilliant and mind blowing!

After a first chat with forum people I met at the entrance and some purchases I met Aly in person. This meeting was truely my highlight of the weekend. Aly is a very nice, funny and communictive guy and we enjoyed a lot talking about the design of his Dark Elves range in the early 90s, all about Marauder miniatures and design and sculpting topics. Occasionally, I showed him and the Perry twins my painted miniatures. All three enjoyed my painting and I was happy to get a lot of positive feedback for it. We continued our conversation and all togehter we had a three hours talk through the whole afternoon partly accompanied by some other friends visiting us. Needless to say that now I have tons of information to support my Dark Elves project with interesting stories, design notes and insider information. Be sure to read some of it in my upcoming articles.


The lead pile
The lead pile has grown massively in the last months and thanks to some extraordinary gentlemen my collection has extended by some very special and rare miniatures. Impossible to go through all new stuff but I want to point out some miniatures and the people I have to thank! Due to privacy I shorten the names. You fantastic guys know yourself when reading. If you want to see your full name, let me know. 

Marauder Miniatures - Chaos Army

Marauder Miniatures Chaos Army

Inspired by Ernst W. and his awesome Chaos Army my heart was already weakend for this fantastic range of miniatures designed by Aly Morrison and Trish Carden. Thanks to Ernst I get in contact with Christian V. who sold my a small chaos force consisting of a Knight, a Warrior, a full regiment of Beastmen and Thugs and a Beastmaster with Hounds. Dozens Ebay Auctions later I had a full army consisting nearly of all miniatures made of this range. So far only 5 CD90 Chaos Dwarfs were missing. The picture shows most of the stuff but some of the miniatures are still in their acetone bath for stripping the old paint. Unfortunately, also some recasts sneaked into this beautiful collection. I have to check if I can use them or if I have to replace them by the original ones. There is still a lot of work to do the preparations. But, my mind is already working for a paint scheme and basing ideas. I am really looking forward in excitement to this future project.

Realm of Chaos

Unreleased penis-headed Beastmen

There was need to get the original Realm of Chaos Books for diving deeper into Warhammer 3rd Edition. These books were really two masterpieces Games Workshop built an empire on. There is so much creativity and inspiration in it influencing the path of this company until today. Thanks to Steve C. and his continous support I was able to create a small Chaos Warband consisting of mostly Slaanesh miniatures and some outstanding pieces of this old genius minature range. In this regard I am very proud to get the two unreleased Bob Olleys Penisheaded Beastmen from Jason L. It is never to late start collection the famous lead of the 80s.


Great Spined Dragon

The Great Spined Dragon

There is no collection complete without one of the most beautiful dragons Games Workshop ever created. Since I noticed this dragon the first time in the famous Dark Elves Army from Scott Goldstein aka Lion of Flanders I wanted this beast. For a long time it was on my list and I searched Ebay auctions and the market places to get one for a reasonable priece. End of last year I was successful and get this beautiful beast from a collector in Denmark. It is in a very good condition but need some love and some paint. I am still unsure in which army I will place it but I think it will be a pointy eared one.

4t Edition Dark Elves

Unreleased Dark Elves Sorceress II

Even if my 4th Edition Dark Elves range is nearly complete it sill misses some of the rare and unreleased miniatures. Two cruel and deadly ladys I am looking since ages are the two unreleased Sorceresses. In January around my birthday I put up a wanted list in the Oldhammer Trading Group on Facebook asking for these girls and promissing to paint them best I can and offering a special place in my heart and in my cabinet. And what to say, I was more than happy when Emiel S. offered me one of my holy grails. Even if Emiel is a good painter himself he never felt comfortable painting her. He is happy now that she is out of her dark box and in a new home by her unreleased friends where she will get the painting she deserves. I am very thankful for this awesome miniature and won´t dissapoint Emiel. She is already in preparation and in my schedule to get painted. Stay tuned.


The Workbench

In preparation

Beastlord Rakarth riding Black Dragon while preparation

A lot of miniatures have seen the workbench for getting their preparation in 2020. There were some Spearmen, the unreleased Sorceress and some others. But, after the Sorceress rode her Pegasus directly in my cabinet some space on my workbench was free for the next big monster. Therefore, I started to clean and build the Beastlord Rakarth and his Black Dragon. These old monster kits need a lot of love in terms of pinning and gap filling. Consequently, this kit still needs a lot of work to become ready for painting, Additionally, there is need for a proper base, which still makes me some headaches. It was planned to put him on a stairway with some broken obelisks. Unfortunately, the dragon pose does not work with my inital plan. We will see how I can solve these problems. With time comes a solution. Until then I clean more Spearmen and Crossbowmen and build bases for them. There are still tons of miniatures left which need my knife and sanding paper.


In painting

Pegasus work in progress

Even if there was no much progress on the blog, there was a lot of painting going on the last weeks and months. January and February were dominated by the Sorceress riding Dark Pegasus. She took a lot of time and luckily I was still in my parental leave in January. I wanted to finish her in time to be part of my showcase I showed to Aly in Hamburg. I finished her just in time but was not able to finish her banner pole and her banner. Both are still work in progress. Especially the banner is a really difficult one, as I am dislike the original one and wanted to optimize its design. It took a lot of drawings to get a proper result and now there is need to bring this a freehand on paper. I am still looking for the perfect motivation to get this banner done.

While shirking away from painting the banner I procrastinate in painting everything else which lies around unfinished on my workbench. In this regard three unfinished command crews crossed my way which was a good possibility to get some more banner and freehand excercise. I was able to finish the Command Crew for the Warriors in March. The article for them is following in the next weeks. Additionally, I started my work on the Command Crew for the Executioners... and one more trooper, needed to finish the first rank.    

There is also a third Command Crew, but these guys are from a really fast and sneaky regiment which makes it currently impossible to take pictures. But I stay tuned to get these guys in front of the camera.

So, that´s it for the moment. I hope you enjoyed the summary of the last weeks and months. I hope to finish some more articles in the next weeks. I am looking forward to show you the Warriors with their new Command Crew and also I have tons of pictures of the Sorceress and her Pegasus waiting to be shown. Stay tuned and stay healthy!!

As always I am happy to read your thoughts in the comments.

Kind Regards,
GeOrc