The trees...they're moving!

So I know these aren't technically elves but the Wood Elves from the land that was hung around with walking trees so why should it be any different in the mortal realms! Sorry, what's that... wanderers betrayal in Ghyran?.... surely that's water under the bridge now! 

Anywho, here's my 3 kurnoth hunters, minus one head. We'll just say he's the unit champion for now until I source a replacement. For those that are wandering where the head has gone I've used it for my Avatar of the Hunt conversion which is currently in progress. 

For those that are interested I undercoated Abaddon black, basecoated the bark areas in Calthan Brown (old foundation paint) and the green "flesh" areas Orkhide shade (another old paint). Bark was then layered dessert yellow and finally ushabti bone before a wash of Aggrax Earthshade. Green areas were layered with Warpstone glow and moot green before a wash of Athonian camoshade. 

New year....Same Armies

I'm back! It's been a while since I last posted and, considering it's now nearly the end of February, much too late for any new years resolutions....isn't it?

Concious of the fact I didn't get anywhere near achieving any of my goals from last year, mainly because I kept getting distracted by my Dark Eldar, Harlequins and Necromunda gang, I've decided to set the bar even lower this year.

With this in mind my main aim for 2019 is to complete the 2000 point Wood Elf battlehost the was my main resolution last year. For those keeping up you might remember I'd painted around 1300points in the end, so surely even I can paint up 700pts in 12 months...you'd think so anyway.

That said I've changed my list yet again! After some more games with my army I'm getting to a point where my Elves are putting up a good fight whilst remaining true to the spirit of my old Wood Elf army, although they certainly wouldn't stand up in a tournament setting! I'm sure things will no doubt change again when I play some more games (2 more games lined up over the next 3 weeks), but I'll try to stay true to this list (try...):


Allegiance: Order
Mortal Realm: Ghyran

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

Battleline
20 x Glade Guard 
10 x Dryads 
5 x Reavers 

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

Endless Spells
Soulsnare Shackles

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 136

I'm thinking I'll update this post as I complete units, maybe even adding their pictures below each unit heading as I complete them if I'm feeling organised!? Then by the end of the year I should have a post that shows off the army in all its glory! 

Probably getting ahead of myself but it's nice to dream. Anyway, let me know what you think of the list. Am I mad, foolish or a genius.

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: