Yeah, I know. It has been quite a while since my last post. What can I say? Life happens…

Anyway, with Nuffleween getting closer, I have been working on painting up a new team for the tournament. I pretty much ALWAYS play bash teams, I decided that I really wanted to try something new this time… And not just a new bash team. I had a bunch of old 3rd edition GW Dark Elf minis, so I decided that it was high time I gave an elf team a try. Once I picked my team, it was time to decide on a color scheme.

Now, I have seen a lot of really well painted teams out there, but I have one major gripe with Dark Elf teams. And that is that pretty much every Dark Elf team I have ever seen is dark. I mean, REALLY dark. Blacks mostly with lots of dark reds, blues, or greens. Very little deviation from that at all. With that in mind, I knew that I wanted to do something very out of the ordinary with their colors. I decided a while back that any time I try to sit down a just think of a color scheme, I generally end up dissatisfied with what I come up with, so I have started using professional sports team color schemes as my guide. Not being a sports fan personally, I fired up Google and started looking at NFL team colors. One that really jumped out at me as a good scheme, as well as very out of the box for Dark Elves was the Carolina Panthers colors: light blue with white and a little black trim.

I now had my colors, but I also kind of stink at fluff, so when I steal a pro team’s color scheme, I usually decide on a team name that is a pun off of the pro team whose colors I am copying. I did it with my New Yorrik Hex (New York Jets) Undead team, as well as my Hittsburg Steelbeards (Pittsburg Steelers) Dwarf team. It seems to have worked well in the past, so keeping with the same vein, for my Dark Elves, I decided on the Scarolina Paingivers (Carolina Panthers), and a friend of mine even whipped up a team logo with a Cold One done up like the panther that the Carolina Panthers uses. Here is the team and the logo…

 I am quite happy with the finished results, and I think I accomplished what I set out to do with this team. It is definitely not a color scheme that I have ever seen for Dark Elves before. The “SP” on the banner was from a print out of the logo. I am not good at freehand brush work, so I took a hobby knife and cut the letters out, then softened them with water and glued them on. I painted over them a little to add some highlighting, but it was a fairly simple banner to make. The banner man mini itself is a bit of a hodge podge conversion. I got it from an old friend and it was originally painted up like a coach, and whatever banner he was originally carrying was cut off at the top of his hand. I ordered the banner and top piece from a bitz supplier and made a new upper banner pole from a round plastic stick. I pinned it all together and it seems to work fairly well for a guy who stinks at conversions.

Anyway, that’s all for today. If I can remember while I am at the tournament, maybe I will do a game by game recap, though I always seem to forget to take notes until at least halfway through the day at tournaments. Hope you guys enjoyed my take on the Dark Elves.

::::::::EDIT::::::::

I have finished the display base in time for Nuffleween.

I leaned on my terrain making skills a little for this one. The big billboard is a simple print out of the logo mounted to a frame and structure built from balsa wood. The two smaller signs on the sides are made out of sheet balsa and bamboo skewers with the alternate logo printed on paper and attached with paper clip “nails.” Holes are drilled in the base to allow the side signs to be put in and pulled out easily for travel and storage. The large billboard has 3 magnets drilled into the bottom of the frame and another 3 magnets drilled into the base itself, again for travel and storage. There is also a magnet inside the ball, underneath each mini base, AND drilled into the display base so the ball stays put no matter where it is. I am pretty happy with the results.