18 August, 2026

Dark Elf Project - Fixing Up An Old Army

My new project is fixing up a very old (antique?) Dark Elf army. I bought them at a Games Workshop store in London in 1992, back when my gaming group played Warhammer 3rd edition. I painted them shortly thereafter and they have been in a box in the top of my closet since the late 90s.

When my friends started playing Dragon Rampant and fielding a variety of new and old armies, I got them out to see how many there were and what kind of shape they were in. There were 91 Dark Elves in the box, a few with chipped paint, a few missing (what happened to the mounted general and mounted wizard?), but otherwise in good shape. There were more than enough to make a large army for DR. I got to play a test game against my friend Mike's Orcs while we were at Historicon and had a lot of fun.

I'm adding a general and 2 wizards by Reaper you can see here.  I also got a Reaper troll and griffon rider at Historicon. I haven't decided how closely to try to match the original style for the new miniatures.

I do not want to do extensive repainting. Besides, my painting style has changed, and I like to think improved, in the last 30+ years. I plan on starting with a couple minis at a time to figure out how much I want to redo. There are a lot of colored metallics which I want to leave as is.  I haven't decided if I want to redo the eyes. They would look better, but it might be difficult to match the skintone, and it could start me down the slippery slope of "just one more thing". I am going to apply a matte finish to replace the current gloss finish.

I decided to rebase, getting rid of the old, accursed 20mm square plastic slottabases and switching to 25mm square plywood bases from Litko. Here is the first group I rebased. Painting will start this week. After I finish a few I will post some photos.



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