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.