Either at last years NAFC, on on the drive home the discussion came up about possible Race selection for the 2017 NAF Championship. After to-ing and fro-ing we ended up with the concept of every Team member taking a Stunty team, and seeing who did the best through the weekend.
This left me with Goblins, Ogres or Halflings for choices, and seeing as I’m a Dark Elf at heart I set to trying to create a Dark Elf themed ‘Halfling’ team. This series (I hope..) of posts will chronicle its development…
++ WARNING – CRAPPY iPHONE PICTURES FOLLOW ++
THE CONCEPT
After wracking my brains I settled on a magic theme, since Dark Elve are known to consort with unaligned daemons. I scoured my various bitz boxes and came across some old Warmaster Harpies that I had planned to use in WFB 7th Ed as a swarm of evil sprites, that idea never took off but I had exactly 12 of them, the perfect amount to be used as ‘Halflings’ with the same gimmick, so summoned by a sorceress to do her bidding on the pitch.
THE TREES
So, with the rank and file sorted I need to source models to use as my two Treemen, I ideally wanted to keep this build all GW, and with their reduced range and recent AoS aesthetic, proved to be difficult to find unaligned generic daemonic gribblies!
I eventually settled on Be’lakor, and some conversion later had my two Treemen. (WIP)
THE STARS
Because Halflings generally suck, they are cheap as balls, which leaves plenty of treasury for Star Players. My initial roster used Zara the Slayer, so she also needed a Dark Elf makeover. I ended up using a WFB Witch Elf since she’s nice and dynamic and already comes with daggers for Stab!
After Zara I started to think about options for the other available Stars, and started searching for my Puggy. After much (much) searching I picked up this awesome, old (3rd Ed.) Chaos familiar from eBay.
THE BOSS
With the actual team sorted I started to look at representing the support staff, which would be the Head Coach Sorceress, who summoned them all, and something to represent a Master Chef in this proxy theme.
The Sorceress was pretty easy, I used bits from the Dark Elf Dragon and plastic Blood Wrack Shrine kit from WFB, with a custom staff added. During my Bitz sleuthing I came across the WHQ Dread King tome on stand, so I added this to my Head Coach as a duel purpose summoning/play-book.
…THAT SMELLS TASTY…
With the Head Coach sorted I started on the Master Chef, I again used a plastic crew member from the Blood Wrack Shrine kit, but used the 7th Ed. Cauldron of Blood to proxy the hot pot. I then needed to craft a base to house both these components. This was chopped up bases to make the steps, Milliput to sculpt all the rocks and a bucketload of skulls to be strewn around the base.
THE TOKENS
After all of this I needed to create some tokens to be used as Re-Rolls, I ended up with two concepts, the first was to use a selection of slaves from an old Dark Elder kit, chained together to represent sacrifices. (WIP)
The second, and more crazy was to uses clear resin crystals, which would have a LED housed inside, which when illuminated represents an available Re-Roll, the Sorceress would uses this reserve of ‘magic’ to try and change the outcome of an event. Once used, the LED is turned off, to represent the crystal drained of its magic.
Here is an early mock-up of the concept (WIP)
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
I need some sort of display base to house all of these components, and to reinforce the proxy theme. I have planned a base with multiple levels and a focal point of a Warhammer ruined gate, which, if my plan actually works houses a resin ‘portal’ and LEDs to illuminate it. This is to represent the rift the Sorceress has torn in the material realm to bring her minions through… It’s a grand idea, with many things to overcome!
++ SUPPLIERS ++
If you have wondered where I sourced some of my components, you can get them here:
Resin Fantasy Football Helmets with Skulls – Clear Resin Gems
