Friday Showcase - Gamezone Elf Hero

On this week showcase is a miniature I painted only yesterday, and for being a rush job, it came out looking better then I was expecting. This is the Gamezone Elf Hero with Phoenix that I decided to use as my Kings of War elven king. I still haven't locked down how to get good shots without one or more parts of the pic going out of focus, but the general idea is still pretty clear.

I painted my a bit differently to how the studio paint job for the miniature was done. I think this was mostly due to my history with the Warhammer High Elves, that I naturally went back to something akin to those schemes even though I didn't really plan on it. namely the silver armor, white cloth, and blue and red accessories.

I went into this project more or less blind, as I had the miniature for a while, but never really thought about how I was going to paint him. At first I was thinking of doing the phoenix in blues and whites, but decided that would be overloads of blues. When I first got the miniature I was thinking of using him as a Lord of Aenarion in Warhammer Quest, but eventually that idea fell to the way side as I just didn't care for that particular class as much as I did about the Elven Ranger.

Only a couple things annoyed me about the miniature overall, and it was the runes they placed on the cloak and the 'under-cloak" (Not exactly sure what that white part of the miniature is supposed to be exactly). The runes were so small and close together,that, as you can tell from the pictures, I simply could not get the runes to come out entirely crisp. most of this was due to the fact that while I have a detail brush, it simply wasn't detailed enough for those runes. I needed a brush with far fewer bristles in place. The runes on the white came out looking far worse then the runes on the blue though due to how much they crammed into the various spots.

Another thing that really irritated me was how flimsy the blade staff was the hero was using. I continually found it bent on one side or the other, and had to flex it back into shape. I could see it easily snapping off with even a slightly wrong fall. I think I have become spoiled by Dream Pod 9's amazingly tough pewter they use.

Overall I am happy with him though since I did only take a short while to paint him up, he came out looking decently tabletop ready. The only thing that really bugs me about how he ended up is the shine he got from the dip. I expected this, as I saw what happened after I dipped my PRDF a while back, and I would use a matte varnish if I didn't have such terrible luck with the stuff.

Like any of my other paint jobs, I'm not aiming to win any awards for him, but as long as he looks good on the table I assume that's a victory. I am hoping that as I get the rest of the Mantic Elves painted up, he matches in well enough to look like part of their force.