Call The Copse!

Fresh from their hiding at the hands of Kraken's Chaos Gribblies, here come the dryads!

Hi everybody!

These are my old-school metal dryads (because of course they're old-school metal dryads). I really like the look of the more-recent plastic kits, but by the time I had regained interest in Wood Elves, the new army book had nerfed them.

Poor dryads: all bark and no bite.

Nothing too adventurous about the paint jobs: bestial brown everywhere with a coat of brown ink, goblin green lichen with green ink, black heartwood with white highlights.

Quick and easy: they were done a long time again when I was a) not so imaginative, b) lacking painting skills and c) in a rush to get them done.

The early models didn't really go for the 'feminine tree spirit' vibe.

When it came to repainting then, I settled for highlighting the darkest areas of the bark, a few touch-ups and little else because I am a) not so imaginative, b) lacking painting skills and c) in a rush to get them done.

The one on the left can hit a high C.

And naturally I rebased them - that's what really makes these models pop, in my opinion, and once again saves my bacon in the display department.

The second half of this unit is an exception (despite being exactly the same models as the first). I forage on eBay quite a bit, and everything I buy goes into the Dettol Tank of Re-Education.

Where old lead is reborn to be shown new love, not matter how smelly they are (just like human newborns)

With this unit of Dryads, however, I pretty much left them alone, This wasn't laziness (for a change), I just couldn't bring myself to erase the original work.

"I would sooner destroy a stained glass window as an artist like yourself."

The paint job wasn't exactly breathtaking, but neat, appealing and well thought-out. And, I must admit, a lot better than my dryads. If I was to Dettol this lot, I'd have to throw my own into the batch as well.

Stickmen will stick together.

I still can't fathom my own luck in snagging this auction - far cheaper the than price dryads (even unpainted ones) go for these days. I guess I must have inadvertently hit the sweet spot between people offloading these models in favour of the new plastics (or because the army book was getting dated), but before these models started to be considered OOP vintage.

Antique oak right here

And one addition to these models that I really like: green tufts have been glued to them, as lichen-y beards or hairpieces.

Last of the Mahoganycans.

That also reminds me of the original rules for Dryads: in each round of combat, they could choose a tree 'aspect' (Oak, Birch or Willow) to become tougher, extra attacks or harder to hit. It wasn't perfect (too similar to the Wardancers' special rules) but it would have made a nice optional upgrade in the army lists. Being able to pay points to tailor a unit of Dryads could have made them viable (though I suspect it's a *bit* too late for that now);

Stick with us, you're almost done.

And finally, a last dryad by a different painter that I also spared the Dettol (sentimental, aren't I?). This needed more restoration than the others, as it had been chipped badly, but it makes a nice addition.

"I'm Stick Man
I'm Stick Man
I'M STICK MAN, that's me!"

And so, completely by accident, I've ended up with a nice mixture of forest colours in my unit of dryads.

You wouldn't want to be sat behind that Branch Nymph in the cinema.

Despite their less-than impressive début, I have a feeling they'll be more useful in Age of Sigmar, especially as 'Sylvaneth Warhost' is apparently a thing. So I may be fielding them more often (or just get a couple of Branchwraiths to spam them out of the woods).