All at Sea.

This last few weeks I've been so busy with work life and love (and starting a 40k campaign with my flat mate) that I've not had that much time for the high elves but I'm back with a quick update on what I have done. I've now got my first 1000pts fully painted. To round it off I've bulked out my sea guard and swordmasters to 24 and 16 respectively giving me 2 good sized combat units but the main addition is an eagle claw bolt thrower. Painting that much wood was a new challenge so I tried to use a variation of what I did for the bows on my archers. Base coat in snakebite leather and then drag a really old brush over it in one direction with bleached bone to try and get a wood grain effect. Repeat and then dry-brush the edges in skull white. You can't see it too well in the photo but I'm happy enough with the result.

I've only managed one game against an experienced chaos player at the store. We played the mission where you have to kill standards and the general to make you opponent's army break. He Only had one standard (one point) and a general on juggernaut (two point) to count for this; with a breakpoint of one this ment I had to kill his general. Easier said than done when he's on a juggernaut in a unit of chaos knights. My sword masters almost did it with a flank charge after they killed his trolls but they fled and left my mage undefended with my archers and seaguard on the other side dealing (quite effectively) with his warriors. A fun game but ended suddenly, sooner that I would have liked when they charged my mage.

Next thing to add is a noble (with a reaver bow?) and maybe some more seaguard, as well as getting some more games in.

See you next time.

Ahoy sailors!

For the first addition to my high elf army I've gone for 20 Lothren Sea Guard. This is only the start of a much bigger unit I've got planned but twenty is a good start and lets me take full advantage of there ability to fight in 4 ranks. This gives me a few points left to bulk out the swordmasters to 10 for a bit more survivability. To do this I've temporally dropped the shadow warriors as they proved less than effective last time out.

As I started these guy before IoB was launched they are all from the spearmen set with added bows and hand painted seaguard shields (fun to paint but took ages). I've tried to add a bit of variety to the unit with a mix of different poses including a couple with bows taken from the archers and one I particularly like parrying upward as if blocking an arrow.

The new structure of the army has served me better than my 500pt list. Admittedly I lost my first game, against mike's high elves (2 big units of sea guard, a fire mage and a bolt thrower shot me to bits before I could do much. Flame cage really screwed my sword masters) but then I got my first win of tale of gamers against kyles lizardmen. My mage started well shooting down his terradons and using curse of arrow attraction to help the sea guard kill off the skinks in one round. This brought my swordmasters time to sneak round behind the big block of saurus with his scar vet. I deliberately delayed my charge to give my archers, sea guard and mage as much time as possible to shoot but still charged in time to prevent the saurus charging my missile units. Two rounds of combat saw my swordmasters wiped out but took plenty of saurus and the scar vet with them (Swordmaster champions are great in challenges). The remaining saurus fell to missile fire so by the time they charged my sea guard I was able to kill the 3 survivors before they even got to strike.

I like the direction the army is going and I have loads of sea guard still to paint. With that in mind I'm liking the idea of an army from Eataine, the most southerly elven kingdom. Sailing out of Lotheren, the army would have little time to gather forces from too far off so would consist mostly of sea guard with support from other units from Eataine and the neighbouring provinces of Caledor and Saphery.

I'm planning to bulk out the fluff a bit more next time around, as I am the sea guard unit.