White Lions of Chrace - finished!

White Lion Champion, standard bearer, and musician

Continuing with my attempt to expand the small High Elf army I started a year or two ago, I just finished up a unit of White Lions of Chrace. Although my experience with them is very limited, in any High Elf army at the moment, you will probably see a unit of White Lions (very choppy!) or Phoenix Guard (an amazing anvil unit by all accounts). 

White Lions guard the entrance to the Purple Tower.

Simply put, White Lions are about as hard core as it gets when it comes to High Elf hammer units. Sure, Swordmasters put out the hurt, but Lions have a 3+ save against missile attacks, +2 strength and are stubborn too.

I quickly got these guys up to scratch over the last couple of weeks to play a game, but spent some time adding a bit more detail the last few days and thought they were ready to post.

• Completed the green gems on the command models (Champion, standard bearer, musician)
• Painted on a few more details and highlights.
• Painted gloss varnish ("'ard coat") onto every gem on each model outside the command unit.

The gloss varnish was a bit of experiment, but I think it came out ok. If you are looking to save time, then focusing on the command unit or first row and making compromises on the other models can save you a lot of time. It was much faster just to have a nice Dark Angels Green basecoat on each gem and then varnish it, rather than do the four steps and have the steady hand that gems usually take (base coat, lighter basecoats x2, white dot).

Does it look as good as painted gems? No, because it doesn't "pop" as much. It does provide a basic gleam though!

A few compromises at the moment, as this unit came from a big HElf eBay purchase a while back:

1. There are only 19 of them at the moment (but my usual opponents don't mind if I proxy a couple of Spearmen to bring the unit up to 21)
2. The unit champion doesn't have the correct arm! Look closely and you will see that he uses an Archer champion arm, which doesn't have the correct pauldron (but it is at least pointing at the enemy.)

Coming from painting Skaven, it was quite refreshing to have a complete unit at 19 models!

More pics below.

White Lion champion

Standard bearer

Standard Bearer

Musician

Three White lions. Gems here were just gloss varnish over a dark green.

Next up? 

I'd like to go to a single model (probably a Prince) and then 1 or 2 mounted heroes (a Prince and a Mage). This is because I have 8 Silver Helms done from my first attempt at the army. From what I hear running these 3 x 3 is a good balance of offence and size, while still allowing me to push a mounted hero in the 2nd file (protecting them from attacks back). It will be fun to run a unit of cavalry for the first time next time I field this army!

Cheers,

*Squeek*