Darkshards

Filed Under: Hobby

Tagged: Warhammer, Age of Sigmar

Having slogged my way through a Marines Errant kill team for an upcoming Badab War meetup¹, I ignored my hobby plans and went straight for a quick win by painting up a unit of Darkshards. I’d already done one Darkshard for a Warcry warband and it made me excited to do the rest.

I keep acquiring dark elves. This is a problem, because while I very much like dark elves, it seems more and more apparent that within a few years every model I have painted for the Darkling Covens branch of my Cities of Sigmar army will be out-of-print and officially unusable. So every time I paint a unit I am basically digging myself deeper into a hole, one which I will have to climb my way out of somehow when the time comes to do something else with these models.

I enjoyed painting these. Green fabric is pretty much my favourite thing to do, and these guys have plenty of it.

A weird aside: while I can’t dispute this is the best generation of Dark Elf Warriors quality-wise, I kinda miss the 6/4 male/female body ratio made explicit by the boob-plate of the previous generation. Most of these could be ladies but it’s impossible to tell, so the hated male-by-default effect kicks in.

The banner is my first successful attempt at a dark-elf-esque representation of the Great Tree of Nuloren.

The Darkling Covens of Nuloren mostly dwell amongst the Great Tree’s roots, underground, or in secluded enclaves in the surrounding forest. They are a formidable faction in the city’s eternal internal power struggle, but they are by no means united – a constant shadow war ticks along in the background, as various sorceresses, warlocks, assassins and dreadlords vie for supremacy. And that’s without even mentioning the Scourge Privateers who prowl the choppy waves of the Greenwave Bay…