New Talent: A's first Elves

Introduction

My 12-year old son (I'll call him "A.") has expressed an interest in my model-making and gaming for some time now.  He was interested enough to find out that I had several sprues of Mantic elves lying about; these were things that I had picked up at occasional shows or in "lucky dip" bargain boxes.  Once A. had determined that I had no particular use for them, he asked if he might build and paint them.  I wasn't going to refuse and put him off the hobby, so I said that he could.  Some while later, here are the first results:

Elf bases for Hordes of the Things

1 base of Elf Shooters.

A. decided that he'd like the elves to be based in elements suitable for playing Hordes of the Things.  I helped him to choose the composition of these bases and showed him how to cut out the parts, glue them together, paint the figures and finish the bases.

I also suggested the colour schemes and painting techniques that would be suitable for a raw beginner.  However, I'd like to stress that I did no more that a small demonstration on maybe 1 figure and rescue a few of the bigger mistakes; the rest is entirely his own work.

A Hero base, with bodyguard, standard and pet!

3 Spear bases

I helped most with the decals, I think.  We searched for drawings of "firebird" or "phoenix" on the Internet and then I printed these out on decal paper.  I think we ended up with 4 distinct designs.  A. had a bit of trouble applying the decals despite my repeated demonstrations; I probably had to rescue about 1/2 of them.

Conclusion

All the elves together.  About 50% of the force necessary for a HotT army

These models are certainly not up to my own standard of painting.  Then again, I've been doing this for 40 years or more, so it shouldn't be any surprise.  While I know that the painting isn't as neat as it could have been with more practice, I am deeply impressed at what A. has achieved on his very first attempt at such models.

He's now wanting to build Tau for Warhammer 40K and more elves to round out this force.  Whilst I've got plenty more elf infantry sprues, I'd like to get him a wizard or 2, some cavalry and perhaps a few eagles; that sounds about right to me.  Hmm, I could be onto something here...