Highlands Miniatures Expands Feral Elves Line With Wild Hunt Cavalry Release

Highlands Miniatures expanded their Feral Elves faction with the Wild Hunt, a five-unit April 2026 release built around varied surface textures (fur, bone, bare skin, tribal leather) that reward painters willing to think in material-specific color theory. The studio posted the preview in the final days of March, with the Patreon write-up pitching the drop as "a fast and deadly force" designed to complete a fully functional cavalry-and-infantry roster in a single month.

The release roster spans Forest Riders as elite heavy cavalry, Moonlight Sisters as fast-moving javelin cavalry, Forest Horses, Feral Scouts, and a command group. The star detail from the preview is the Moonlight Sisters' mounts: Moonlight Deers described as "far larger and more powerful than any natural deer," their antlers spreading wide enough that a charging unit creates, in Highlands' own words, "a forest of bone." Every Moonlight Sister also carries a crescent moon emblem, the symbol of her order, on her head. That combination of sweeping antler lattice and small devotional iconography gives painters two distinct technical problems on a single model, which is the kind of challenge that separates a competent paint job from a memorable one.

For anyone printing these digitally, antler orientation is the decision with the highest downstream consequence. Printing Moonlight Deer heads tilted too far back to avoid tall supports flattens the antler tips and kills the layered depth that makes drybrushing the bone structure read convincingly. A more vertical head orientation costs more resin but preserves the geometry that makes a two-stage drybrush (dark bone mid tone, off-white at the outermost tips) look like it was painted by someone who knew what they were doing. The same logic applies to the crescent moon emblems on the Moonlight Sisters' helms: print the heads close to vertical and those moons stay crisp enough to pick out in a single edge-highlight pass.

Scaling up to 35mm rather than the default 32mm is worth considering if the goal is display quality or commission work. The fur cloaks on Forest Riders gain enough surface area at that size to read a full zenithal transition clearly, rather than collapsing into a uniform midtone.

For a palette that pulls the faction together quickly: prime black, zenithal in warm grey. Block skin in a muted olive (pale green cut with a touch of bone white), wash recesses only with a diluted brown ink to keep the zenithal intact on cheekbones and shoulders. Fur cloaks read best off a dark chocolate brown base, heavy-drybrushed in pale stone, with selective off-white tips. The antlers carry naturally from Zandri Dust through a Seraphim Sepia wash to bright bone on the outer tips. Paint the crescent moon emblems last in cold silver with a thin glaze of pale blue in the concave face, and they read as genuinely luminous at arm's length.

Base the unit on a dark, damp forest floor: textured paste in the recesses, coarse grit around the hooves, small tufts and clump foliage at the rear of each base. The contrast between the warm bone antlers and a cool, wet earth basing scheme sells the nocturnal forest atmosphere Highlands built into the lore from the start.

Available through Highlands' MyMiniFactory Tribes feed and Patreon subscription, the Wild Hunt gives painters a rare single-cycle opportunity to build a cohesive cavalry force rather than waiting months for matching sculpts to fill out a roster.