Army of the Four Winds

Howdie.  The past few months have been busy, filled with one small crisis after another, but I am hoping to get back into regular posts on Miniatures of Wrath.  To ease back into it, I thought I would share some photos and background on my last big fantasy project, which I stopped working on and gaming with about 8 years or so ago.  I gamed a Wood Elf army for Warhammer in the 80's, somewhere in the late 90's started playing Warhammer again, but was unsatisfied with the look of the old miniatures. 

Previously, my wood elves were painted in shades of green and brown, but I wanted something different.  After all, if the wood elves are rustics in tune with nature, they'd have some connection with the changing patterns of the world around them.  Taking some inspiration from Vivaldi's Four Seasons (one of my favorite compositions) I began to repaint Scarloc's Wood Elf Archers (the habitual core of my Warhammer army) with winter colors.  Then, I started to paint the supporting spears the same way... but redirected into bright fall colors.  And thus began the Army of the Four Winds...

I wanted to bring together all four seasons, dividing the army into units painted for each.  Here are some images of Scarloc's Winter Tempest....

Unfortunately, my camera tends to wash out the colors, these are really sharp looking.  Though I originally painted these for Warhammer, somewhere in the early 2000's I switched them over to group basing for Chipco Fantasy Rules.  Here is the supporting spears, Autumn Leaves Falling (yes, I gave specific names to each unit, nerd that I am)...

Summer of course was still represented, with this cavalry unit Sunlight on the Meadows (I know, the names, right?)...

Where I stopped was the second supporting spear unit, painted for spring, Silent Rain ...

Now, I did want to add some more strength to the army, so later on, I painted plastic High Elf archers, to go with some heavy cavalry.  The heavy cav would be visiting High Elf nobles or merchants, the archers are a stand of personal retinue and two stands of ships companies or marines.

Of course, being wood elves, they should find cooperation from their animal neighbors, at least those with the size and strength to assist.  From the old days, I had a couple of Grenadier giant eagles (Fantasy Warriors), though I lost one rider.  The rider below is not attached.  These never fit very well for me with the Warhammer army, but made great flying monsters for Chipco, as my Lords of the Skies.  I found a large scale toy Elk for a large Chipco monster, the Lord of the Forest.  I had a dragon that I was going to include as either the Lord of the Mountain or the Lord of the Lake but never repainted.  Also, I had an old Zoat Mage which I also never repainted (looks a bit shabby next to the rest), but included as a magical Chipco character.

There are a number of other bases of miniatures that I never repainted and am not showing here, as those old 80's paint jobs just don't cut it.  So my final images are of the Four Winds themselves...
the Winter North Wind
the Spring East Wind
the Summer South Wind, and
the Autumn West Wind
which I represented with scratch built chariots, using mostly Grenadier models for the crew.  The horses came from a a private collection that I purchased, and chose to use in creating the chariots.  These four chariots were a extremely effective strike force in "one" version of Warhammer for me, and continued to be a visual treat in Chipco.  So here are the Four Winds...

The Army of the Four Winds represent the epitome of my painting, and design theme ability.  It is the only theme army I created, and obviously I created it before I had children (ha!).... I can not believe that I could commit this time and energy into any new project again.  But it hasn't been gamed with in about 8 years, and has sat in storage for the past three years, so... I am taking this army with me to Fall In 2011.  Iron Ivan Games will have a vendor table in the dealer hall, and I will be trying to sell this army there.  Honestly, it will be a little sad to see them go... but I don't have much time for gaming anymore, and have made that dreaded decision to cut back and focus only on the games that I enjoy the most.

Thanks for sharing in my nostalgia, I hope that it was worth your time.