Onwards and upwards

Soooooo. Tail of gamers is pretty much over, so to quote Guns 'n Roses, where do we go now. Well 1500pts is a good start to a fantasy army but by no means all I want. I've already got loads to paint for it and the nicer looking ones will show up on this blog. After painting all those sword masters and sea guard I fancy painting something a bit different, a centre piece for the army. And what a centre piece. Last month my girlfriend, who is the most amazing and beautiful girl in the whole world (and dose subscribe to this blog), brought me a high elf lord on dragon!!! I've already build it up and done a bit of magnetization work so it can be a prince or a mage and so the wings come off for transport. I'm planning to paint it in nautical colours and do some water effects on the base and call it a sea dragon. This fits the subtle coastal theme of my army and lets me play it as either a sun, moon or star dragon for coolness and customizability.

Other than that I'm planning to expand my salamanders army and put up some tactic and painting blogs with them. I've already started this expansion with a razorback (see photos bellow) and 5 assault terminators and I'm planning to add a whirlwind, terminator chaplain, devastator squad and maybe some more dreadnoughts. These will all be playing on the nice new realm of battle gaming board I'm getting in the new year (not much to blog about there, I'm just rather looking forward to it) and some will be coming to the 40k doubles tournament in feb with me and Adam (plenty to blog about there).

Finally, after the doubles tournament I'm planning to go green. No, I’m not talking about carbon neutral blogging, or recycling my models. Nope, I'm starting my own WAAAAGH! Probably doing an Evil Sunz Kult of speed, but more on that another time, for now I'll leave you with my razorback.

The elven hoast grows

I'm back.

Sorry it's been a while. This past month I've managed to to get loads of great looking models painted up for my high elves :) but then only had time for one game :(

I had planned to build 1250pts, play with it, blog about it and then go onto 1500pts. Alas, time and work had other idea's and the 1250pts game and blog got put aside. However, the painting did get done, more sea guard and a noble with a reaver bow as well as putting the shadow warriors back into the list. The obvious highlight of this step was the noble. He turned out really great, especially the gold. I base coated the gold in shinning gold and the gave it a wash of ogryn flesh. Then I painted all but the lowest recesses in another coat of shinning gold before building up a highlight of burnished gold and finally methril silver. Turned out really shiny and makes him stand out in the big unit of seaguard that he hangs out with in most games.

The next step was to go to 1500pts. Once again, more seaguard, giving my a huge unit of 32 with every model able to attack when they get charged. To this I added a unit of 5 dragon princes to give my army some manoeuvrability and punch. I used the old models cos I brought and assembled them about 2 weeks before GW announced they were doing new plastic one, Grrrrrr! I'd never painted horses before but I think basing them in white, washing in a watered down mix of astronomican and codex grey and the highlighting in white worked out ok for the majestic elven steeds.

For these guys and the noble I had a crack at using citadel water effects on the base. For the noble I've got him standing on a rock in the sea which looked ok but kind of tailed off at the edges. For the princes I did my standard elf bases but with a few rivers and puddles with turned out much better because they were enclosed which gave a better effect.In the past months I had played a few practice games with the high elves at various point levels and the dragon princes had done ok but no so in my game with this army at 1500pts. I made the sort of mistake that I reckon most fantacy players make once and will never, ever, ever! Do again. My opponent was a Chaos player and fielded a hell cannon and I thought, ahar, a war machine with nothing protecting it his flank. I took the opportunity to charge it with 200pts worth of dragon princes thinking I would kill the crew quickly and then charge back into the rear of his main army later in the game. Unfortunately the hell cannon counts as a monster with handlers not a war machine, making it much harder to kill. I still thought I had a chance and did win the combat by 1 and hopped it would break. Alas my opponent pointed out it was unbreakable, leaving my the princes locked in combat to get eaten next turn. The rest of the game was a closer affair than it could have been but too many chaos units hit my battle line at the same time and I just couldn't cope and I lost badly. In hind-sight I should have used my dragon princes to charge the flank of his marauders (next unit along the line from the hell cannon and slightly in-front) and then disrupt the rest of his battle line. But hey, you live and lean.

That's tail of gamers pretty much over as 1500 was where we were aiming for, but it's far from the end for my high elves or this blog.

To be continued............

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.

A tricky start.

Victory! Is something that has eluded me this month :( I managed to get in two games with my 500pt army, against Tom's lizardmen and Glen's dwarves but lost on both occasions. Tom's army consisted mostly of skinks and a shaman, backed up by a stegadon. I tried to use the shadow warriors to distract the stegadon while my sword masters and archers dealt with the skinks but the skins poisoned weapons caught me out and with a mass of 6's killed all the shadow warriors. My archers managed to avoid being charged by the stegadon but lost the chance to shoot effectively in the process. I was counting on my sword masters to kill the skinks when I got close, but the slipery little buggers kept running out of my charge arch and shooting me with there pesky poison. All very frustrating and I lost.

Game two against glen was closer. My shadow warriors just failed to charge his organ gun from the start and were promptly cut down. The organ gun also managed to finish off the sword masters as they advance because the dwarves dispelled my shield of saphrie. My archers did eventually get revenge on the organ gun and my mage had a good go at trying to kill his thane with fury of khaine but in the end he won on points as the warriors who formed the bulk of his army were unharmed.

So not a great start for me but credit to the other guys they are both more experienced and played very well. Next time I'm planning to add a big block of seaguard as they go with the fluff I'm planning to do for the army (more on that later in my next blog) and some extra swordmasters to make the unit more survivable. Not sure how useful the shadow warriors are going to turn out to be but I'll just have to test them out more.

Tale of gamers, amandum, dum, dum....

I know, I know, I keep chopping and changing what I'm doing here but this should be the last slight change.

I went to start the tale of gamers and was planning to do high elves AND salamanders. I quickly realised, however, that time wouldn't allow me to do two armies well. So I faced a choice, two armies poorly or one army well. GW models are too good to do a rushed paint job on and I've always been one for doing stuff properly so I went for just doing one. As I already had over 2000pts fully painted for the salamanders I realised I really should do the high elves.

This is no bad thing, the elves are fun to paint with plenty of detail and 8^th ed. has made them really potent. So, here we go. Out of the grin darkness of the far future and into the chaotic and magical old world we go.

So to start with I need a legal 500pt army, meaning three units and a character and not exceeding the % points allocation. This posed quite a problem as 500pts is really small for fantasy and particularly high elves. Spent my minimum core on archers then split my other points between the a cheap level one mage, (cos elves need magic) some shadow warriors (cos a unit is cheap) and some sword masters, (cos they rock). That balances the books and should be a capable force with magic, combat and shooting potential.

Here's the list

Mage (High magic)
Silver wand

Talisman of protection

120

12 Archers

132

5 Shadow Warrior

Champion

92

8 Swordmasters

Full Command

Gleaming Pennant

155

As this is only 500pts knocked together to the tight specs in the rule book using only the modles I could get painted in time the only plan is give it a go and have fun. Hopefully more of a plan will develop over time as I get more models painted and get used to fantasy.

Hope to have run-downs on my first battles up soon and will eventually write some fluff for the army, but for now I'll just leave you with pics of my first 500pts

Update

Ok, Ok, I know my first attempt at re-starting my blog last month was a bit of a false start, but I'm going to give it another go. I've been busy the last few months with my high elves and now have over 3000pts built but only about 1000pts painted. The highlights so far has been killing a daemon prince with shooting from archers an seaguard and winning a painting contest on the island of blood launch day with my battle standard bearer conversion (see photo bellow).

But my elves haven't quite provided good blogging material, I've collected them so fast I just wouldn’t have been able to blog on my progress and I'm still learning how to play fantasy so any tactica wouldn't have been much good. Anyway, now I have a new project to blog about. My local GW, colchester, is running a “tale of gamers” campaign to encourage people to build new armies and get them painted up. Before anyone gets too excited I won't be doing a whole new army, I just don't have the time at the moment, not with a full time job and a girlfriend and church and a social life and that annoying need to sleep, eat, wash, do housework ect... What I will be doing is revisiting my salamanders, improving the models I've already done (over 2000pts) with hand painted iconography as well as painting up some of the stuff I haven’t finished yet (look out for a razorback and some assault terminators). I know I need a 500pt fully painted legal army to start with and that I will have to (or get to) play a game at least every two weeks but beyond that is still a mystery but I'll post details when I know them.

I'm looking forward to giving my salamanders a bit of attention and seeing how this campaign is going to develop and I'm planning to get at least one blog up every two weeks. I'll have an army list and more photo's up soon but for now I’ll leave you with my winning high elf BSB.