This new Warlord Games War Elephant is the first sign of my taking the plunge and finally investing properly in an Ancients army. The elephant and crew come as a part metal and part resin kit. It looks like Warlord are pushing their Ancients range to new levels at the moment, with this and the release of a nice Macedonian Successor Starter Army. I also have the latter which includes another elephant, some (metal) companion cavalry and a hundred plastic Macedonian Phalangites. Like all the other Warlord Starter Armies, it's an absolute bargain and well worth the £75 investment.
Anyway, onto the figure itself. First off there was very little flash to clean up, a couple of sections underneath the howdah. Mainly where it sits in the slots on the elephants back. This didn't take much to cut away and I also noticed how soft the resin is. This is an added bonus because previous resin kits are sometimes quite brittle, and any cutting or snipping has occasionally caused parts of the detail to break off as well. The head fitted onto the body reasonably well and I covered the slight gap with some green stuff. The legs are 'coded' with individual shapes that fit into their particular slots, so you can't go wrong there either.
Once I'd glued it all together I gave it a spray undercoat of GW Storm Vermin Fur. This is a sort of dark brown/grey colour that I find gives a nice balance when painting base layers for darker and also lighter colours (I try to avoid undercoating with black these days, as it's a headache when base coating with colours such as red or yellow). The gold is GW Retribution Armour, which has a very high pigment content. Loads better than other metallic paints that tend to be very watery and need layer after layer. I later inkwashed the gold in a Vallejo strong tone and then dry brushed with the GW gold again. The red howdah and edging on the armour was done with Vallejo Flat Red then highlighted in GW Evil Sunz Scarlet. The elephant skin was done with a thin coat of Vallejo Air Stonewall Grey, inkwashed in strong tone again, then highlighted with Vallejo Medium Sea Grey.
Finally after painting the crew I blu tacked them into the howdah to check their positioning. Luckily I did, because I needed to adjust some of the arms and legs to make sure they fitted OK. It's very crowded in that howdah let me tell you! The main problem (and this is my only minor criticism of the kit as a whole) is that you have to be careful making sure the pikes and spears fit snugly and securely, without the figures getting in each others way.
Now to have a crack at painting the Phalanx!!
