2018 - towel thrown

So following on from my last post here's what Ive managed to get painted unit wise for my Wood elves over 2018 (more or less):

Heroes
Arch mage on dragon
1 x Spellweaver
1 x Wayfinder

Battleline
20 Glade Guard
20 Eternal Guard

Other Units

10 Wardancers
3 Warhawk Riders
5 Hunting Hounds
5 Way watchers

All told that lot comes to about 1300pts painted and based to a tabletop standard that I'm more than happy with.
Left to complete are the following:

Avatar of the Hunt
Nomad Prince
Glade Lord on Great Eagle
3 x Kurnoth Hunters
10 x Dryads
10 x Reavers
5 x Wild Riders
5 x Waywatchers

Finishing those off would put me over the top of 2000pts giving me some flexibility when selecting units but alas at this point this will be added to the list of stuff to paint for 2019.

Going forward i've got plans to add in a Treelord, 10 x Wildwood Rangers, a Repeater Bolt Thrower, Chariot  and maybe some Sisters of the Watch. This would take me nicely to around 3000pts and see the army finished for the time being. This I could see happening in 2020, assuming I achieve my goals for 2019 (which i now won't of course!).

All of this is assuming we don't see a major release relating to Wood Elves or Wanderers in the next two years. If that happens then may God have mercy on my wallet!

The End Times

So it's been a while since I last posted and with the end of 2018 fast approaching it's time for a final push to try to at least complete one of my goals. For those of you that have good memories those goals were:

1) Complete a 2000pt wood elf army for Age of Sigmar

2) Paint 1000pts of Word Bearers

3) Paint 1000pts of Night Goblins

As you can probably guess from the lack of posts showing completed word bearers and Night goblins, the second and third of my objeftives has fallen by the way side. The first one though....that's what still in with shout of achieving. 

Allegiance: Order
Mortal Realm: Ghyran

Leaders
Avatar of the Hunt 
- General
- Trait: Legendary Fighter
- Artefact: Ghyrstrike 
Glade Lord on Great Eagle
- Spirit Blade
Archmage On Dragon 
- Magestaff & Book of Hoeth

Battleline
20 x Glade Guard 
10 x Dryads 
5 x Reavers 
5 x Reavers 

Units
5 x Hunting Hounds 
3 x Warhawk Riders 
10 x Wardancers 
5 x Waywatchers 
20 x Eternal Guard 
5 x Wild Riders 
10 x Wildwood Rangers 
3 x Kurnoth Hunters 
- Greatbows

Endless Spells
Quicksilver Swords 
Soulsnare Shackles 

Total: 2500 / 2500
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 171

The Narrative Approach

***Rant Alert****today's post is less about progress and more about an epiphany I had the other day with regards to "my" hobby. If it comes across as a little pompous and self important that's not my intention. I just thought that documenting my feelings on this on this here blog might mean I actually reflect on them and actually take them on board this time! Anyway, enough of this and onto today's post.

Like many of my fellow gamers I'm an avid reader of white dwarf. Also like many of my fellow gamers I'm also loath to throw anything out in case I need it at a later date. For those of you that can't see where this is going, this means I now have quite the stack of old White Dwarf magazines.

Anyway, the other sag I was going through some of the oldest one's in my collection and came across an article in issue 290 (old numbering before the mag was rebooted) called "The Narrative Approach" written by one Paul Gaynor. I'd actually go so far to say as this is my favourite white dwarf article of all time looking back. In it Paul talks about creating themed armies in Warhammer fantasy, using his own army of Night Goblins led by scrap collector Ma the Grub as an example (as well as showcasing some other very cool armies also). He talks about building an army around a central theme and the importance of sticking to that theme rather than just picking the best units/combos etc in a list. 

All of this got me thinking about both my own list building and also that of the rest of my regular gaming group's, when it comes to Age of Sigmar and 40k currently. I realised I've become a little obsessed lately with squeezing the best possible combos and units into my lists, reading up on the best units etc... to use in the hope of getting one up on my fellow gamers in our semi regular game sessions. This has resulted, in my opinion, me starting to lose appreciation for an element of what got me into the hobby in the first place, namely the fluff behind the armies I collect. It's also led to me being a bit more over competitive in my games than I ever used to be and perhaps even a little bit "sulky" at times when games werent going how I thought despite all the work I'd put into my lists. (Leading me on to my second favorite WD article about "The Face" written by Jervis Johnson). 

Ultimately it meant that when it came to lists building I was ending up building very samey lists that we're boring me and then subsequently not enjoying the games i was playing with my friends.

This isn't good! After reading that article several times over the last few days i think I'm ready to take it's message to heart. Starting with my wood elves I'm going to review my original list and go back to the drawing board. My intention is to come up with strong theme to base them around in the age of Sigmar and then to use this blog to document their story. 

Hopefully this will mean I can take a little more enjoyment out of my games going forward and spend a little less time trying to min/max my lists. 

Anyway, let me know what you think. Do you have a similar issue to me that's affecting your enjoyment of the hobby? 

Harnessing Malign Sorcery

Continuing the hobby butterflying (not a word?) I’ve moved away from my Necromunda chaos gang and back to my Wood Elves. An update on the Necromunda campaign will he posted eventually, let’s just say though it’s not going well for the Disciples of the Bird.

With the release of Age of Sigmar 2.0 and more importantly Malign Sorcery expanding the list of available spells (both endless and garden variety) I thought now was a good time to paint up some magical support in the form of 2 Archmage seconded from the Eldritch Council. I believe my original 2k list posted at the start of the year had a Spellsinger in it so it’s not as much of a deviation from this list as I first thought, although the fact that the second Archmage is mounted on a (now) fire breathing forest dragon is a bit left field.

Without further ado here is the first Archmage, painted over around 5 1 hour long sessions in the morning before work:

Base colours added - tallarn sand, asurmen blue, orkhide shade, chaos black

 Metals based with boltgun metal, greens layered with Loren green, boots and leather with calthan brown

 Greens highlighted with warpstone glow and moot green

 Blues hihjlighigh with enchanted blue and washed with asurmen blue.

Finished Archmage with classic green flocked base. Good thing about this guy is I can also use him as a glade captain battle standard bearer or a Shadowdancer, or a Spellsingers if I feel like playing wanderers.

Last but not least is the finished (more or less) dragon.

So the dragon is the Carmine Dragon model I posted about 6 months ago. Originally it was going to be a forest dragon and indeed it was used as such in my last game with the wood elves. With the release of the malign sorcery rules though and with my original wood elf mage needing some TLC I decided I could magnetise him to sit on top of the dragon. Looks better than the glade lord model I was going to use as well in my opinion! Rules wise this guy can either be an Archmage on Dragon or a Drakeseer. Plus if I want I can take the mage off and use it as a regular Carmine dragon. I've got plans eventually to paint up and magnetise the glade lord I originally was going to use but that's for the future.

Trials and tribulations in the Underhive

Continuing on from my last post about Necromunda Underhive......so far in our campaign we have Houses Delaque, Van Sarr and Escher represented. I myself have Cawdor gang from when my group played using the Community edition rulebook, however whilst I wait for GW to release the new Cawdor models I thought I'd make use of the Chaos Cult rules in White Dwarf.

So far I've played two games with them, both standard gang fights. The first was a hard fought draw with the Delaques. Although I forced them to bottle first and subsequently was the only one with models left on the battlefield, it finished a dead heat of 12 all in terms of model value killed. Unfortunately I'd take several casualties in the game that meant I was missing 5 of my 13 gang members (including my leader) for the second game against the Van Saar.
This quite game was, quite frankly, an unmitigated disaster for me. Although my 8 man gang was facing off against only 4 van Saar the fact they were hitting on 3s saw most of my guys pinned and then down pretty early on. Coupled with this was my Heavy stubber missing the enemy gangers and fragging two of my own cultists that I'd been stupid enough to leave in the way meant I lost in a big way. After this game I ended up with 2 dead cultists, 1 dead champion and a captured cultist. A variety of serious injuries on the rest means that in my next game I only have 2 cultists, a champion and a Witch available...should be interesting!

Anyway, here's some WIP shots of my gang of ruffians and no hopers:

Necromunda Campaign - Sector 8472

++incoming vox transmission++my lord Marduk, I have activated the cell as instructed to explore the newly accessible Sector 8472. My enlightened brothers and sisters have joined me in casting off the shackles of the false emperor and now stand ready to topple Hive Primus from within. Although our numbers are few our faith in the true Gods will see this vision become reality.
We are not without opposition however, the lapdogs of the hive houses work to counter our holy work, more out of greed and jelousy than because they perceive our true purpose I suspect. In particular the Detectives of House Delaque and the Star Fire Scorpions have recently crossed our paths in the underhive ways surrounding the Sector. We fought those meddling "Detectives" to a standstill with the faith of the Dark God's burning in our eyes, the purity of the word on our lips and the corpses of the slow and simple to aid our assault. Then, filled with renewed vigour (it should be said I and 4 of my brothers received a vision from Tzeentch advising us to be elsewhere) the Witch "Tim" led our holy warriors into battle against the hated Star fire Scorpions. Reports from Tim state our warrios were outnumbered almost 10 to 1 but that our faith shielded us from the worst of their hi-tech sorcery and that a vital mole (Brother "Wheels") has been inserted into their camp.
My Lord I beseech you to send the aid you promised, the way is being prepared for the Holy Warriors of the Mighty Lorgar to set foot on Hive Primus, we stand ready for further guidance and teachings ++ end transmission++

Bit of a while since I last posted to be honest. It's been a bit mental at work recently and that coupled with the start of the World Cup has severely impacted on my time and also motivation to paint. Anyway, the piece above is a recent bit of fluff that I've posted as part of the development of a chaos cult gang for a Necromunda Campaign my group have started playing recently. The Disciples of the Bird are devotees of the word of Lorgar and are working to bring Hive Primis down from within. In reality they're a jumped up rabble of mutants and ne'erdowells that are just about capable of causing an annoyance to the more established underhive house gangs. Still, Necromunda is a fun system and I'm enjoying painting up my rabble of Cultists. It helps also that a large band of cultists are included in my first Word Bearers list that I posted at the start of the year, so two birds one stone I guess!

From the Webway they strike....

Ah, the joy of being a hobby butterfly. So with the recent game with my Wood Elf army under my belt and with the rumours of Dark Eldar on the horizon I suddenly lost the momentum I had to finish painting my Wood Elf 2k list and revisited the True Kin. I think I mentioned in my introductory post that Dark Eldar were my favorite 40k army, indeed I've been collecting them since around 2005! I've got around 2000pts painted up for them at the moment, mainly because the release of the new range caused me to put my original models away in storage and their in various stages if disrepair at the moment. Currently I've been painting my conversion of lady Malys as well as some of her Harlequin allies to add to my Kabal.

Battle Snapshot - Wood Elves vs Free Peoples Part 2

So continuing on from the last post this one will be a (relatively) brief summary of the battle that was fought.

Following the rules for the scenario, as I finished deployment first I got to choose who got first turn. Wary as I was of the large unit of Glade guard opposite my Avatar (particularly their +1 to hit and -3 rend arcane bodkins) i resolved to take first turn.

Turn 1 went pretty much as planned for me, my wild riders on the left flank advanced forward to threaten the great eagle's

and the dragon the knights , both eyeing turn 1 charges (despite the trees that had suspiciously just popped up...)

Shooting and battleshock accounted for 18 Glade guard removing the threat to my Avatar (phew). My wardancers took my left hand objective as well with the eternal guard holding my right.

Finally my Forest dragon got the charge on the knights and promptly ate 4 of the 8.

In response to this onslaught the bloodied but unbowed free peoples advanced stoically across the board, Spearmen moving to threaten my centre and taking my left most objective from the Wardancers by virtue of greater numbers.

Eagle's (who I forgot to charge with the wild riders!!!) flapped over to my Wardancers and proceeded to line up their charge. Shooting was pretty uneventful with the remnants of the Glade guard, stone thrower and cannon all missing their targets. The free people salvaged their turn with a pretty eventful  combat phase though.
With piercing cries the eagles tore apart 6 wardancers with 1 eagle being taken down in return as it tried to take flight again

Meanwhile the knights in combat with the dragon had received support from the free guild general (represented by Theoden in this game). Unsurprisingly the dragon laid waste to the knights leaving 1 alive.

More surpringly was the fact "Theoden" not only lived after rolling a 6 on his master of defence save against the dragons gaping maw attack (we like to think Theoden propped open the jaws with his sword), but that he promptly caused a wound with his hoarfrost blade putting the Dragon at -1 to hit for the rest of the game!

I was on 3 points at the end of the turn with the free peoples on 4 after holding 3 objectives, 1 of which was taken from me for an extra point.

Turn 2 began with the Avatar moving to engage the Spearmen, Wild Riders careening forward towards the stone thrower, Dryads moving to charge range of the liberators and Glade guard taking back my left most objective. Shooting was uneventful with the Reavers largely failing to harm the treelord, waywatchers taking a wound off a liberators and avatar spitting 3 Spearmen on the spear of Kurnous. 

Between the kurnoth hunters and glade guard though 8 dryads were killed. Charges were made by the Avatar on the Spearmen and Dryads on liberators. The avatar promptly fluffed his attacks (an ongoing theme) and only killed 3 spearmen, the Dryads lost 4 of their numbers to the rightous anger of the liberators, before the Spearmen, with a flurry of stabbing blows took 7 wounds off the avatar leaving him on only 1 wound! The ongoing combat between dragon, Theoden and friends saw the last night get nommed but Theoden remaining unscathed and promptly putting 3 more wounds on the dragon. I was really regretting charging him in alone at this poiny and the -1 to hit caused by the hoarfrost was causing a real issue!

Free Peoples turn 2 saw the block of 12 Dryads in the centre move to threaten my Glade guard, closely followed by the Unforged.

The treelord moved towards the Forest Dragon on my right to bail Theoden out and the artillery on my left shuffled sideways to get away from the approaching wild riders.

In a good turn of events for me shooting from them was again lackluster with the cannon and stone thrower combination only killed 1 wild rider, the crewmen bracing themselves to recieve the charge next turn.
The free people Dryads, picking arrows from their bodies lined up the charge on the Glade Guard who'd just tried to make pin cushions of them.
Combat started with the Spearmen attempting to finish off the Avatar. The phoenix stone had restored 1 wound in the free peoples hero phase but I wasn't confident 2 wounds was going to survive 15 spear attacks. The dice were rolled and 5 wounds were inflicted on the Avatar. I'll admit i thouhjt this was the end...especially after failing the 1st 4+ save (forgetting to roll master of defence as well)  I rolled the remaining 4 saves 1 at a time and somehow made the rest! Phew! Bowed but not broken the avatar struck back but, perhaps feeling the pain of his wounds, again fluffed his attacks only killing 3 Spearmen. In the Dryads v Liberators no Dryads were killed but 1 liberator was dragged down in return. The free peoples dryads enraptured the glade guard giving them a bonus to hit but poor dice meant only 5 were lost. Imspiring presence from the avatar meant battleshock wasnt an issue. Finally with the Treelord breathing down his neck the Glade Lord on Forest Dragon finally got his act together and managed to hit twice with the gaping maw attacks (claws all missed). 1 attack was saved but the other got through to inflict 5 wounds, promptly ending Theodens stubborn resistance!

At the end of turn 2 no objectives had changed hands so the score became 6 - 5 to the Free Peoples.

Turn 3 began with units embroiled in combat across the board. The Reavers moved to intercept the onrushing treelord, desperate to protect the wounded and disoriented Forest Dragon.

The eternal guard shuffled forward to charge the Dryads in support of the beleaguered Glade guard (although I subsequently forgot to charge d'oh!)
In the shooting phase the the only thing of note was the Kurnoth Hunters putting 3 bolts straight into the Unforged approaching the eternal guard, killing him outright.

Combat saw the Forest Dragon charging the approaching treelord who promptly ensnared him in tangling branches inflicting a further penalty to hit. The Kurnoth Hunters charged into the Spearmen to save the struggling avatar, along with the remaining Wardancers whilst the Wild Riders charged head long into the stone thrower.

The Avatar at this point finally got his act together killing six Spearmen, and with the phoenix stone and cloak of Isha kicking in at the start of the Wood elf turn restored a further 2 wounds, was starting to look like his old self. In response the Spearmen fluffed their attacks and were promptly wiped out by a combination of the kurnoth hunters and battleshock. 

The free people Dryads continued tearing apart the glade guard, although once again battleshock wasn't an issue thanks to another inspiring presence at the start of the turn from the Avatar. In response the Wood Elf Dryads finally got their act together (supported earlier in the turn by shooting from the nearby Waywatchers) and took down another of the liberators. Battleshock at the end of the turn saw another flee the field. The wild riders decimated the stone thrower crewmen but remained locked in place with the war machine.
The clash of Titans between forest dragon and treelord was entirely one sided. A combination of the ongoing effects of hoarfrost and tangling branches saw the dragon and glade lord missing with all his attacks. In response the treelord promptly knocked a further 4 wounds off him reducing him to 3, luckily the follow up impale attack was saved!

Free peoples turn 3 saw the Avatar restore another wound but then lose it again to an arcane bolt from the Battle mage. The branch wych cast mystic shield on the treelord before moving to support the war machines in combat with the wild riders. Shooting saw the free peoples cannon missing the wild riders entirely and the treelord stanglethorn missing the forest forest dragon. Onto combat and the Dryads continued their decimation of the Glade guard for no losses in return. The wood elf Dryads in response finished off the remaining Liberator, freeing them up to seek the nearby battle mage in turn 4.
Finally in the "clash of Titans" the treelord and Forest dragon continued flailing ineffectually at each other.

Turn 3 ended with 2 objectives each again moving the score to 8-7 to the Free Peoples.

With the closing time of the store fast approaching I think we stopped taking alot of photos around this point

Turn 4 saw me trying to claw back the one point deficit before the game ended. With us playing the mission slightly wrong we were both under the impression that the only unit capable of taking any of the objectives was the eternal guard (by virtue of having greater numbers). To this end they marched across the board, falling just short of the free peoples objective.
In the shooting phase the legendary marksmanship of the wood elves failed with the Waywatchers, remaining Glade guard, and kurnoth hunters all missing their targets.
Combat saw the Avatar charge into the free people Dryads and the wood elf Dryads charging the battlemage.
The avatar slew 3 Dryads (continuing his streak of hitting with only 1 of his close combat attacks all game!) and the Dryads took down another few Glade guard in response. Both units passed their subsequent battleshock tests however. The wood elf Dryads saw their mugging of the battle mage back fire by missing all their attacks and losing 1 of their number in return. Finally "the clash of Titans" once again proved underwhelming with the crippled forest dragon missing the treelord again but the treelord only inflicting one wound in response, again fluffing his impale attack. On the left the wild riders finally broke free of the stone thrower.

With their numbers dwindling the free peoples attempted to dig in. With little to no movement to speak of the stage was set for the cannon to do something, lining up a shot on the regenerating avatar, the shot hit home but unfortunately failed to wound. The free people crewing it had some serious questions to answer after this game!
Combat saw the free people Dryads continue plugging away at the glade guard. The avatar broke his streak and failed to either hit or wound with any of his attacks this time. The battlemage continued his battle with the Dryads, fending off the crazed forest spirits for another turn. Finally the forest dragon and treelord once again missed with everything (He was hitting on 6's at this point!).

At the end of turn 4 the game was still finely balanced at 10-9 to the Free Peoples, but with their numbers dwindling it was going to take a miracle for them to prevent a wood elf victory in the final turn.

Turn 5 began with the Eternal Guard moving to take the free peoples objective 2. Granting two points if I could hold it but giving up their hold on their original objective.
With time running out and nothing else really of importance at this stage of the game we skipped straight to combat. The Avatar finally finished the last of the Dryads, with the help of the Kurnoth hunters and the central wood elf Dryads continued ineffectually pawing at the free people battlemage, losing another of their number to his stave. Finally with the forest dragon once again missing with everything (He was hitting on 6's at this point!) The tree lord finally got his act together and put the dragon out of it's misery with his sweeping blows, setting him up for a charge into the Eternal Guard next turn!

With time rapidly running out the free peoples last turn was streamlined to just the important elements with the cannon taking out a couple of eternal guard and the Treelord strangle root attack killing a couple more. Lining up what would have been a devastating last charge on the Eternal guard I blew a sigh of relief as the Treelord cake up short on charging them!

So with that the game ended and scores were as follows: 12-11 to the Wood Elves!

The final turn objective grab by the eternal guard saw them claim 2 points but relinquish their hold on their original objective. This tied the game but with the extra point from my holding of my other objective it put the Wood Elves over the top by the skin of their teeth!

Battle Snapshot - Wood Elves vs Free Peoples Part 1

So after being postponed by the so called "beast from the East" (it snowed here in the UK, not like us to be over dramatic..) I finally managed to get my newly painted wood elves on the table. I was playing an intimidating mixed order army led by that wily general Hayd (fellow blogger of Salamanders fame).

We were playing at Boards and Swords, a new gaming venue in Derby, which if you're ever in the area I can definitely recommend going to visit. They've got a great selection if tables, plenty of great scenery and a great and very helpful owner.

Note that I've called this post a battle  "snapshot" as it'll be more a selection of highlights and photos rather than an in depth blow by blow account of the action.

The game itself was a 2000pt game playing the Total Conquest scenario. For those that dont know this basically involved the two armies fighting to control 4 objectives in the middle of each quarter of the board. Units of 20+ models could claim them (slight problem here as you'll see) but if not the side with the most models in a unit claimed the objective. We may have played this slightly wrong as we thought that a unit could only take the objective if they had more models than the original unit, even if that original unit wasn't there....turns out we were wrong about this!

Anyway, to business, the two armies were as follows:

Wood Elves (me) "Guardians of the Hidden Paths"

Avatar of the Hunt - master of defence and phoenix stone
Glade Lord on Forest Dragon
Spell Weaver - Heartwood staff
20 Glade Guard
10 Dryads
5 Reavers
20 Eternal Guard
10 Wardancers
5 Waywatchers
5 Wild Riders
3 Kurnoth Hunters

Free People's (of Middle Earth) - Hayd

Free guild General on Horse - master of defence and relic blade (I think)
Branchwych
Treelord
Battlemage (lore of beasts?)
Duardin Unforged
20 Dryads
20 Spearmen
20 Glade Guard
5 Retributors
8 Knights of the Realm
2 Great Eagles
1 Stone Thrower
1 Great Cannon

Deployment looked like this:

Glade Guard, Eternal Guard, Drayds, Waywatchers (behind hedge) and Forest Dragon

 Wild Riders opposite the Great Eagles, Stone Thrower and Great Cannon (yikes!)

Avatar and Wardancers opposite the free people Glade guard and Spearmen

 Free People Knights lined hoping to stay the dragon, with free guild General lurking just out of site behind the house

Free people centre consisting of Spearmen, Glade Guard, Dryads, Baytle mage, Unforged ( hiding behind wall), Branchwych, Treelord and Retributors


Thats deployment done,I'll get into the highlights of the game in the next post.

Call of the Wild Hunt

So one of the benefits of playing Grand Alliance Order rather than purely Wanderers is that I get to keep using all of the old wood elf units in my lists, as well as including as many tree spirits as I'd like without needing to worry about allies allowances.  Yeah, sure it's perhaps not as competitive as using pure wanderers or pure Sylvaneth but I get to use my old models still which is great. Plus I can even use some of my older models like the wood elf chariot (currently in many different bits). Anyway I digress, my talk of wild hunts and compedium units may have given you some clues as to what this post is about:

Yes that's right, I've decided that my Wood Elves are missing an Ancient Star God of a dead race to lead them...

Actually no, this is going to be my Avatar of the Hunt (formerly Orion). This all came about when I was looking at some of the other warscrolls in the order alliance and was thinking about adding in a Repeater Bolt Thrower to provide a bit of long range threat. I came close to getting one but then took a look through the wood elf compedium and came across the war scroll for this guy.

Between the Spear of Kurnous and the Hawks Talon this guy is quite the threat at range! Additionally he's also quite a threat in close combat as well and with the right magic items (hello phoenix stone) and command trait (inspiring?) will be the resilient commander I think my force needs.

Anyway, the idea for the model itself came from this post on dakka dakka

https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/112651-.html

1. I've got some work to do to get anywhere near the level if quality of this conversion but I'm enjoying giving it a go. More pictures to follow later!

The Eternal Struggle....over?

I would imagine that most of us like to sit down of an evening and paint solidly for a few hours with perhaps our favorite audio book on, a podcast or TV show. I'd like to do this as well but unfortunately my 7month old little girl doesn't yet understand why. As such I find that my painting time is restricted to a half hour here and there as my little girl naps/before work when she's still snoozing.
Painting in this manner means you learn to break a task up into many small steps, choosing to paint one colour on everything then moving onto the next colour or calling it a day as time permits. Doing things this way takes time though, which is why it's taken about 4 weeks to get my Eternal Guard painted to what I think will do as a tabletop standard

Gotta say I'm very pleased with how they've turned out. One of the disadvantages of painting piecemeal in the way I've described above is that you don't see the big picture and it can feel like you making not progress at all. The irony of painting "eternal" guard as a result wasn't lost on me don't worry!

Here's another close up of my intrepid band of wanderers, I've stayed pretty close to the standard colour scheme to keep thing simple and so that they fit in with my Glade guard (finished last year).

There's probably still more work to be done to really finish them. Off the top of my head I could do with looking at some of the hair colours again, maybe highlight up the gemstones and have another go at painting the wood of the spears. All said and done though I need a break from them at the moment which is why I'm moving back to this guy!

That's right the Glade Lord has finished his back and been suitably scrubbed clean of the old paint job. I'm hoping to get this guy painted in the next week in time for his debut in a game I've got planned for next Friday evening. Here's hoping I can convince the little one of the importance of that!

The Eternal Struggle

Rich here, so despite my plans to paint Night Goblins this month as part of the Malign Portents muster I find myself drawn back to my Wood Elves (well mixed order Wanderers if we’re getting technical). I can't help but feel like this is something to do with playing through the season of Revelations campaign on Warhammer total war recently...

For the most part I’ve finished the actual forest dragon, I just need to get an appropriately sized base as well as thinking up an appropriately wood-elfy name. Meanwhile the Glade Lord that will serve as dragon rider is still enjoying a leisurely bath in some white spirit. This is something I'll have to get round to sooner or later but the fact the legs don't quite fit on the saddle of the dragon mean I'm putting it off...

So this brings us to today's update and continuing with the wood elven theme I'm painting up some eternal guard. 

These were yet another eBay purchase and rather "conveniently" all 18 came without any shields. Im unsure yet if I'm going to purchase the shields separately; I always liked the lore behind the old eternal guard where they were supposed to be that skilled with their spears they counted as having shields. Sadly thats not the case anymore so it leaves a tough decision....

In any case here are some pictures of the Eternal Guard painting progress:

Once again my photos are taken using a smart phone in poor light. I'll try to take some better photos when i finish them. Being honest that's also the reason I've not posted any pictures of the forest dragon. Anyway, all comments and criticism welcome. Let me know whether you think they should have shields or not as well, it's a tough choice for me at the moment.

Bearers of the Word

My final army that I intend to work on this year will be my Word Bearers. Chaos space marines we're what originally got me into this hobby and I still remember clumsily daubing regal blue onto my first chaos marines when I was 11 (some would say my painting hasn't advanced much from there). My chaos marines have been through various incarnations since then, first night Lord's, then Black Legion and Sons of Malice before I've finally settled on Word Bearers. The excellent Word Bearers trilogy by Antony Reynolds was what converted me to the teachings of Lorgar and is well worth a read if you get the chance. The fact that the Hours Heresy series has them as the original traitors is even better! Plus it helps that a member of my gaming group collects the hated sons of guilliman...

I'm keeping the goal easy with these and only aiming for 1000pts this year, plus with space marines being elite troops the model count won't be as extreme as my moon clan grots.

My aims behind this force are for it to consists initially of marines on foot supported by Daemon Engines and mobs of cultists and daemons. In my mind they implacably advance chanting verses from the book of Lorgar, led by a fiery Dark Apostle. To achieve this my first 1000pts will consist of:

1 Dark Apostle (first choice for Word Bearers!)

1 Aspiring Champion 

10 x Word Bearers, aspiring champ with powerfist and plasma pistol

20 Cultists ( because word bearers without cultists should be illegal)

10 Daemonettes 

5 x terminators with powerfists. 1 with heavy flamer

1 x Chaos Decimator with seige claw and butcher cannon

Thats roughly 1000pts and represents a pretty good variety of stuff to paint. We've got heavy armour, a walker, some daemons and basic humans so should keep me interested. 

Anyway, let me know what you think. Not having played chaos for years or even owning the codex I'm going to need all the pointers I can get! 

Something stirs within the woods - Forest Dragon WIP 2

Work continues on my Forest dragon whilst I wait for the goblins I've ordered here to arrive. 

As you can see I'm almost finished blocking in the main colours. For those that care these are the colours and steps completed so far:

1) Undercoated with chaos black spray (thinks its abaddon black these days)

2) The scales and rougher parts of the skins are painted in Loren Forest

3) Horns and other bony protuberances were based in Rakarth Flesh. 

4) Smoother skin and wings was painted with a mix of Loren Forest and White Scar

5) Mouth and tongue based with mechrite red (an old base paint I still have)

Next steps for me are generally shading, highlighting and tidying up the model as a whole but what you see there is a basic approximation of the how the beast will look when it's fully painted. Hopefully I'll have it finished before the goblins arrive but who knows...