Here's a review of last weekend's action at the Fall Brawl, and event held in the NOVA area (Burke, VA):
I played my standard Tomb Kings-- King w/ flail, collar, & cloak
Icon Bearer w/ Hidden Dead
Priest w/ scroll & jar
Priest w/ scroll
10 skeletons w/ standard
25 skeletons w/ command & undying legion
25 skeletons w/ command
3 chariots
2 tomb scorpion
23 tomb guard w/ command & rakaph
bone giant
screaming skull w/ skulls of the foe
Game 1 - Played a fairly sedate Lizardmen list-- Slaan in Temple Guard, 2 big blocks of Saurus, 1 small block of Saurus, 3 skirmished skink units, 2 units of terradons, 2 saurus heroes (one with track shoes, one with cold one), and a stegadon. Game was in the back in the turn 2 shooting phase after his slaan died to a screaming skull hit-- he had only 4 guard + a champ left, so no look out sir. Only four dice of magic defense allowed me to cast at will-- leaving my king in the screaming skull crew not only kept my early smiting on the catapult strong, but also kept the crew safe from his suicide hero. The crew did die to terradon rocks, but the damage was already done. Bone giant ripped up the 5 temple guard left and a unit of saurus, which was pretty well the game. 16-4 win
Game 2 - Got to play the same back alley abortion that Jer played game 4-- Dreadlord with Potion of Strength, Hydra sword, & pendant; BSB w/ 1+ save & GW; Mage w/ 2 scrolls; 3 units of dark riders; 2 units of harpies; 2 big units of black guard (1 w/ armour piercing, one with ASF); hydra; shades w/ GW; 2 RBTs. From the time I saw the list, I knew this game was a loss. The list is horrendous, but I decided to keep the game close. At the end, he had his BSB & 1.5 guard units left, to my 3 characters. Yeah, no units, over-running into my bsb at the bottom of 6. An 8-12 loss, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.
Game 3- Played bunker shooting dwarves w/ 3 crossbow blocks, ironbreakers, longbeards, bsb, thane general, lord on anvil, stone thrower, 2 bolt throwers, organ gun. Like all static setups, I utterly wrecked him. King was beating on the lord at the end of the game and had him down to one wound. That was all he had left short of the stone thrower and a crossbow unit. The first time in forever that I tunneled my scorpions-- btw, they rock a gunlines shit.
Game 4- Played Lizardmen with almost maxed lord (1 mystery away from using all his points) 2 skink combo units, ancient, normal steg, salamander, 2 terradon units, temple guard, 3 skirmisher units. Held on as long as I could, and even got a decent miscast out of him that killed 6 temple guard. Game ended with my king crumbling to combat res and leaving 2 temple guard alive with multiple banners on turn 6. Lost 2-18 and should have gotten skunked instead. An attempt at a much softer list, which is appreciated.
Overall, I liked where this tournament was trying to go, but they actually have to pull the trigger vs. the overly hard lists. The minimal comp they are putting together does not cut it at all. I did like the objective sheets that they used and the variable levels of victory. This kept everyone playing the whole game and gave a small benefit to forces that aren't ItP. My master plan would be a 10-15% point increase to all ItP units, and some meaningful restrictions on dark elves-- they were over 50% of the top 5 tables for crying out loud. The best option would be to tell people with hard lists to pound sand, but considering the tough list that Jer and I played was part of the inner circle, there's zero chance of that happening. To be competitive, I'd need to bring an A list army instead of a B- one. Otherwise elves will ninja you and make for an unwinnable game. Khemri in that environment are unplayable because of the tough characters you now fight. I will start rolling my king with the flail of skulls now, mainly because it gives him some monster and character killing cred and scares some opponents.
As an overall, I'd say it's an event to skip if you want to play nice lists. My friend Jer who went had a worse go of it bringing DoW and playing the Dark Elf list that was worse. The organizers mentioned that they weren't going to do anything about this for future events, so I think that I'm probably not going to be returning. I honestly don't see the point of playing "big 1" warhammer (the other two big three lists were nerfed by tourney rules) and the area (NOVA suburban hipster wasteland) has nothing in it that really endears it to me. It probably would be a decent tournament to go to if you wanted to play a mid-top end list and not worry about the standard evil lists beating your face in. IF someone was looking for a place to experiement with the Suicide Elf list (dark elves with ring of hotek and no mages-- lots of troops) this would be the place to go.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Building a New Army Part III
Building an Army Part III - Modeling & Painting Choices for the High Elves
In the last installment of this series, I mentioned the next part was going to be about playtest games and organizing the Dark Elves. Well, that didn't happen. I've been busy the last week or so with other stuff so no games besides Fall Brawl, and I just haven't had much time to seriously think about what I want in the Dark Elves yet. So instead of publishing nothing, I've decided to do some work on the high elves as far as modelling and painting goes.
Now that the High Elves have exited the list design stage, I need to start picking out models, doing conversions, and painting figures. Before I start doing anything else, I decided to raid my basement of shame and collect all the high elves that I could get my hands on from there. Checking out my various boxes of stuff, I came up with the following:
* 40 Phoenix Guard including 2 command sets
* 20 White Lions including command
* 2 Repeater Bolt Throwers from 5th Ed with crew.
* 40 old 3rd and 4th ed elves of various armament, including lots of spears
* Lots of old characters, including Teclis and several other special characters
* Current Plastic Spear Box (16 elves)
This gives me a good start on the army. Going unit by unit:
Phoenix Guard - Just using some of the guard that I already have.
Hector - I'm taking one of the heroes that I have sitting around, adding one of the separate halberds and a hoplite shield (I have a pile of them available from some old Crusader hoplite figures) I may also use the Avatars of War High Elf Hero to fill the role if I want someone more flashy here.
Archers - Don't have these yet, but I plan on using the old monopose archers from the 4th edition box set, so as to match the RBT crew.
Bolt Thrower - Using one of the ones I had sitting around.
Cassandra - This is going to require a new figure. I'm thinking about using the Avatars of War Light Elf Mage for her.
White Lions - Using some of the figures I have here. Their champion needs something special, so I'm thinking of building a custom one from spear elf parts mixed with the white lion components from the chariot boxed set. Command may be completed using the remaining elf components from a chariot crew mixed with spearmen parts.
Vaul Swordmasters - Here requires a bit of work. Since the actual swordmasters are very hard to convert to give hammers. Instead, I'm going to work them up out of parts from elf spearmen and white wolf cavalry hammers. The "leader" for them will have no hammer, but will have a blindfold to show that he's been ritually blinded as befits a follower of Vaul.
Shadow Warriors - Here I am again going to use the stock figures for the rank & file, but will give them a converted Everqueen model with a bow, or else work with a female archer from the wood elf line.
Loec Spearmen & Chariot - To show the Loec look for the unit, I plan on using a number of the old elf warriors with the conical Loec-style joker helmets. To give the unit more of a Greek look, I'll give the unit some hoplite shields as I am with Hector. I also plan on giving the Loec faction one of the chariots by using more of the Loec warriors on its back.
Paris - Here I plan on either using a Harlequin mostly stock. I will obviously have to remove the gun the figure has in favor of a bttle standard or another hand weapon.
Isha Spearmen & Chariot - While I was initially going to use Maiden Guard models, it has been next to impossible to find these figures anywhere. So It looks like I need to do a conversion for these figures. Luckily, Micro Arts studio does some Amazon torsos and heads which look like they will fit with the high elf spearmen figures. Add hoplite shields as with the other spearmen, and I should have a unique looking unit. The Isha chariot will have similarly convereted crew.
With all these things seen, it looks like I will need the following boxes and figures from various places (probably the warstore and local sellers)
* One extra Spearmen box
* 2 Chariot boxes
* One Shadow Warriors box
* Avatars of War Elf Hero
* Avatars of War Elf Mage
* 5 Amazon Head Kits
* 5 Amazon Torso Kits
* 1 Harlequin w/ power sword
* 1 Everqueen
* 10 4th Edition archers
As far as the painting goes, my plan is do my standard dip + highlighting to make for a very quickly but well painted army. In this case, I really feel that going with metallic paints is a bad choice for most surfaces. Lacquered armour of various colors will both look much nicer on the units, but also will show a different look than most high elf armies. Many parts of the painting choices are going to be taken from what I consider the best looking 40K army, Craftworld Eldar. I plan to use white on the linens and plumes to unify the army's color scheme, as this color looks rather good with dipping and also can be highlighted practically to white to get a much lighter effect if need be.
Sitting down for an evening with a White Lion, I was able to produce a test model fairly quickly. Here's the model at various stages of completion:
Note that the dip process does not always produce the shoddy models that it is famous for. By using brush control of the minwax instead of the traditional dipping method, polling is eliminated and drying time is decreased to under two hours. Highlighting can bring the colors of the model closer to the original colors before the dip process started, and can add to the illusion of 'depth' that is the final goal of painting. All of this is accomplished in much less time than standard techniques, and additionally protects the paintjob from the chipping that is common with metal models. This is also my first attempt with brush on dullcote-- it looks to be a bit cheaper and I've been worried about the whole toluene issue. I am very impressed with the stuff. It has coverage at least as good as the spray version, and much less is used in general. My only suggestion is to use a trash bursh-- one of the 10 cent ones that you can get at Michael's-- because the Dullcote will dry on the brush and start to ruin it. Not something you want to have done to your nice $20 Series 7 certainly.
I chose to use browns as the primary colors on the model to match with the rustic look I'd think followers of Kurnous would try for. Green gems were chosen to stand out from the rest of the model. With this successful test model, I now am working on completing more white lions, maybe enough to field the whole unit painted in a week or so.
Next: More completed High Elf models, and perhaps a playtest game or two.
In the last installment of this series, I mentioned the next part was going to be about playtest games and organizing the Dark Elves. Well, that didn't happen. I've been busy the last week or so with other stuff so no games besides Fall Brawl, and I just haven't had much time to seriously think about what I want in the Dark Elves yet. So instead of publishing nothing, I've decided to do some work on the high elves as far as modelling and painting goes.
Now that the High Elves have exited the list design stage, I need to start picking out models, doing conversions, and painting figures. Before I start doing anything else, I decided to raid my basement of shame and collect all the high elves that I could get my hands on from there. Checking out my various boxes of stuff, I came up with the following:
* 40 Phoenix Guard including 2 command sets
* 20 White Lions including command
* 2 Repeater Bolt Throwers from 5th Ed with crew.
* 40 old 3rd and 4th ed elves of various armament, including lots of spears
* Lots of old characters, including Teclis and several other special characters
* Current Plastic Spear Box (16 elves)
This gives me a good start on the army. Going unit by unit:
Phoenix Guard - Just using some of the guard that I already have.
Hector - I'm taking one of the heroes that I have sitting around, adding one of the separate halberds and a hoplite shield (I have a pile of them available from some old Crusader hoplite figures) I may also use the Avatars of War High Elf Hero to fill the role if I want someone more flashy here.
 |
| From I Heart Ninjas |
Archers - Don't have these yet, but I plan on using the old monopose archers from the 4th edition box set, so as to match the RBT crew.
Bolt Thrower - Using one of the ones I had sitting around.
Cassandra - This is going to require a new figure. I'm thinking about using the Avatars of War Light Elf Mage for her.
 |
| From I Heart Ninjas |
White Lions - Using some of the figures I have here. Their champion needs something special, so I'm thinking of building a custom one from spear elf parts mixed with the white lion components from the chariot boxed set. Command may be completed using the remaining elf components from a chariot crew mixed with spearmen parts.
Vaul Swordmasters - Here requires a bit of work. Since the actual swordmasters are very hard to convert to give hammers. Instead, I'm going to work them up out of parts from elf spearmen and white wolf cavalry hammers. The "leader" for them will have no hammer, but will have a blindfold to show that he's been ritually blinded as befits a follower of Vaul.
Shadow Warriors - Here I am again going to use the stock figures for the rank & file, but will give them a converted Everqueen model with a bow, or else work with a female archer from the wood elf line.
Loec Spearmen & Chariot - To show the Loec look for the unit, I plan on using a number of the old elf warriors with the conical Loec-style joker helmets. To give the unit more of a Greek look, I'll give the unit some hoplite shields as I am with Hector. I also plan on giving the Loec faction one of the chariots by using more of the Loec warriors on its back.
 |
| From I Heart Ninjas |
Paris - Here I plan on either using a Harlequin mostly stock. I will obviously have to remove the gun the figure has in favor of a bttle standard or another hand weapon.
Isha Spearmen & Chariot - While I was initially going to use Maiden Guard models, it has been next to impossible to find these figures anywhere. So It looks like I need to do a conversion for these figures. Luckily, Micro Arts studio does some Amazon torsos and heads which look like they will fit with the high elf spearmen figures. Add hoplite shields as with the other spearmen, and I should have a unique looking unit. The Isha chariot will have similarly convereted crew.
 |
| From I Heart Ninjas |
 |
| From I Heart Ninjas |
With all these things seen, it looks like I will need the following boxes and figures from various places (probably the warstore and local sellers)
* One extra Spearmen box
* 2 Chariot boxes
* One Shadow Warriors box
* Avatars of War Elf Hero
* Avatars of War Elf Mage
* 5 Amazon Head Kits
* 5 Amazon Torso Kits
* 1 Harlequin w/ power sword
* 1 Everqueen
* 10 4th Edition archers
As far as the painting goes, my plan is do my standard dip + highlighting to make for a very quickly but well painted army. In this case, I really feel that going with metallic paints is a bad choice for most surfaces. Lacquered armour of various colors will both look much nicer on the units, but also will show a different look than most high elf armies. Many parts of the painting choices are going to be taken from what I consider the best looking 40K army, Craftworld Eldar. I plan to use white on the linens and plumes to unify the army's color scheme, as this color looks rather good with dipping and also can be highlighted practically to white to get a much lighter effect if need be.
Sitting down for an evening with a White Lion, I was able to produce a test model fairly quickly. Here's the model at various stages of completion:
 |
| From I Heart Ninjas |
 |
| From I Heart Ninjas |
 |
| From I Heart Ninjas |
Note that the dip process does not always produce the shoddy models that it is famous for. By using brush control of the minwax instead of the traditional dipping method, polling is eliminated and drying time is decreased to under two hours. Highlighting can bring the colors of the model closer to the original colors before the dip process started, and can add to the illusion of 'depth' that is the final goal of painting. All of this is accomplished in much less time than standard techniques, and additionally protects the paintjob from the chipping that is common with metal models. This is also my first attempt with brush on dullcote-- it looks to be a bit cheaper and I've been worried about the whole toluene issue. I am very impressed with the stuff. It has coverage at least as good as the spray version, and much less is used in general. My only suggestion is to use a trash bursh-- one of the 10 cent ones that you can get at Michael's-- because the Dullcote will dry on the brush and start to ruin it. Not something you want to have done to your nice $20 Series 7 certainly.
I chose to use browns as the primary colors on the model to match with the rustic look I'd think followers of Kurnous would try for. Green gems were chosen to stand out from the rest of the model. With this successful test model, I now am working on completing more white lions, maybe enough to field the whole unit painted in a week or so.
Next: More completed High Elf models, and perhaps a playtest game or two.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Building a New Army Part II
Building a New Army Part II - Designing the High Elf List
Now that I have my armies and basic ideas laid out, I now had to go about assembling the lists for the two armies. Here I started with the High Elves.
First I chose the basics of the characters. This usually helps line up exactly what I want from the rest of the list. After doing a quick check of the important Trojans, here's the list I came up with:
* Hector - An okay fighter and the leader for a lot of the siege, but he was eventually killed by Achilles.
* Paris - Not much of a fighter, but the guy who started the war, and the one who eventually killed Achilles with a poisoned arrow.
* Cassandra - A great seer who had the ability to tell the future, but also the curse that nobody would believe her.
Seeing these characters, I quickly came up with an idea as to who was going to be what. First, Cassandra should definitely be archmage, seeing as she was a very good mage. That really leaves Hector and Paris as Nobles, with Hector the army's general. I also decided that since Paris was such a looker-on, I was going to make him the Battle Standard, so that he'd be better at looking on versus fighting it out with the enemy. The choice to make Hector a Noble instead of a prince also gives the advantage to Achilles (most certainly a Dreadlord) in combat, as it should be.
After figuring out what my characters should be, I sat down to look at the various High Elf gods to see what units should line up with what gods. I chose to include all the High Elf gods listed in their army book, with the exception of Khaine, who obviously will fight with the Dark Elves:
*Asuryan. He's the main god, as well as called the Flame Eternal. Hector should obviously be the stand in for Asuryan, and he should get a bodyguard of Phoenix Guard, who are protectors of Asuryan's shrine.
*Moreg-Hai. The crone goddess and patron of ravens. Archers are also listed as being under her purview. Cassandra is also going to be her avatar.
*Vaul. The forge god, who is said to have blind priests with two handed hammers. Swordmasters converted to have giant hammers and blindfolds would be a good stand-in here, so that's what I'm going with.
*Kurnus. The hunter god. Good unit choices would be white lions, lion chariots, or reavers. With my no-cav theme, the first choice made the most obvious choice, since the chariots are rather fragile and expensive for a chariot that's less hitty than the famous cold one chariots.
*Lileath. The moon goddess. She's mentioned as the last hope of the Shadow Warriors, so those will be her unit.
*Isha. The wife of Asuryan and the patron of the Everqueen's Maidenguard. Obvious choice here, but with no rules for the Maidenguard anymore, I decided to use the Spearmen rules for them. Additionally, Maidenguard chariots would look rather cool, so I also gave Isha two Tiranoc chariots under her influence.
*Loec. Not the most known god in fantasy, he's mostly associated with wardancers. He is known much more well known in 40K under the guise of the Great Harlequin (Who else is it going to be?) Paris was sort of a tricky git, so I decided to put him as the avatar of this god, probably modeled with a great harlequin or a shadowseer figure. Loec's unit would be spearmen again, this time modeled with a more Greek look to them-- hoplite shields, mixed colored uniforms, and possibly Corinthian-style helmets. Yes, I know the figure-8 shield was the one used at the time of Trojan War, but it doesn't look as good and won't be as iconicly recognizable.
******
Given these ideas, I started finalizing the list. As far as equipment and sizes, here's what I came up with:
Hector - Noble w/ Dragon Armour, Shield, Halberd, & Temakador's Gauntlets
20 Phoenix Guard w/ Full Command
Cassandra - Archmage w/ Level 4 & Seerstaff of Saphery
10 Archers
10 Swordmasters
15 White Lions w/ Full Command
6 Shadow Warriors
20 Maiden Guard (Spearmen) w/ Shields & Command
2 Tiranoc Chariots
Paris - Noble w/ Battle Standard, Shield, Dragon Armour, Additional Hand Weapon, Longbow, & Talisman of Loec
20 Spearmen w/ Shields, Command, & Banner of Ellyrion.
*****
At this point, I had a few points left over. Looking at the weaknesses in the list (mainly missile fire) I decided to add a repeater bolt thrower and 4 more archers. This put me at 2240, just under the point limit for the army but not enough to really add anything of value. I could always add a musician to the swordmasters, which would add another cool modeling opportunity and would put me less than 5 points under my limit, which I love to always get very close to. I'll probably play a few test games with this army to see how it ends up working out against a variety of armies.
Next: Test Games for the High Elves, and designing the Dark Elf army list.
Now that I have my armies and basic ideas laid out, I now had to go about assembling the lists for the two armies. Here I started with the High Elves.
First I chose the basics of the characters. This usually helps line up exactly what I want from the rest of the list. After doing a quick check of the important Trojans, here's the list I came up with:
* Hector - An okay fighter and the leader for a lot of the siege, but he was eventually killed by Achilles.
* Paris - Not much of a fighter, but the guy who started the war, and the one who eventually killed Achilles with a poisoned arrow.
* Cassandra - A great seer who had the ability to tell the future, but also the curse that nobody would believe her.
Seeing these characters, I quickly came up with an idea as to who was going to be what. First, Cassandra should definitely be archmage, seeing as she was a very good mage. That really leaves Hector and Paris as Nobles, with Hector the army's general. I also decided that since Paris was such a looker-on, I was going to make him the Battle Standard, so that he'd be better at looking on versus fighting it out with the enemy. The choice to make Hector a Noble instead of a prince also gives the advantage to Achilles (most certainly a Dreadlord) in combat, as it should be.
After figuring out what my characters should be, I sat down to look at the various High Elf gods to see what units should line up with what gods. I chose to include all the High Elf gods listed in their army book, with the exception of Khaine, who obviously will fight with the Dark Elves:
*Asuryan. He's the main god, as well as called the Flame Eternal. Hector should obviously be the stand in for Asuryan, and he should get a bodyguard of Phoenix Guard, who are protectors of Asuryan's shrine.
*Moreg-Hai. The crone goddess and patron of ravens. Archers are also listed as being under her purview. Cassandra is also going to be her avatar.
*Vaul. The forge god, who is said to have blind priests with two handed hammers. Swordmasters converted to have giant hammers and blindfolds would be a good stand-in here, so that's what I'm going with.
*Kurnus. The hunter god. Good unit choices would be white lions, lion chariots, or reavers. With my no-cav theme, the first choice made the most obvious choice, since the chariots are rather fragile and expensive for a chariot that's less hitty than the famous cold one chariots.
*Lileath. The moon goddess. She's mentioned as the last hope of the Shadow Warriors, so those will be her unit.
*Isha. The wife of Asuryan and the patron of the Everqueen's Maidenguard. Obvious choice here, but with no rules for the Maidenguard anymore, I decided to use the Spearmen rules for them. Additionally, Maidenguard chariots would look rather cool, so I also gave Isha two Tiranoc chariots under her influence.
*Loec. Not the most known god in fantasy, he's mostly associated with wardancers. He is known much more well known in 40K under the guise of the Great Harlequin (Who else is it going to be?) Paris was sort of a tricky git, so I decided to put him as the avatar of this god, probably modeled with a great harlequin or a shadowseer figure. Loec's unit would be spearmen again, this time modeled with a more Greek look to them-- hoplite shields, mixed colored uniforms, and possibly Corinthian-style helmets. Yes, I know the figure-8 shield was the one used at the time of Trojan War, but it doesn't look as good and won't be as iconicly recognizable.
******
Given these ideas, I started finalizing the list. As far as equipment and sizes, here's what I came up with:
Hector - Noble w/ Dragon Armour, Shield, Halberd, & Temakador's Gauntlets
20 Phoenix Guard w/ Full Command
Cassandra - Archmage w/ Level 4 & Seerstaff of Saphery
10 Archers
10 Swordmasters
15 White Lions w/ Full Command
6 Shadow Warriors
20 Maiden Guard (Spearmen) w/ Shields & Command
2 Tiranoc Chariots
Paris - Noble w/ Battle Standard, Shield, Dragon Armour, Additional Hand Weapon, Longbow, & Talisman of Loec
20 Spearmen w/ Shields, Command, & Banner of Ellyrion.
*****
At this point, I had a few points left over. Looking at the weaknesses in the list (mainly missile fire) I decided to add a repeater bolt thrower and 4 more archers. This put me at 2240, just under the point limit for the army but not enough to really add anything of value. I could always add a musician to the swordmasters, which would add another cool modeling opportunity and would put me less than 5 points under my limit, which I love to always get very close to. I'll probably play a few test games with this army to see how it ends up working out against a variety of armies.
Next: Test Games for the High Elves, and designing the Dark Elf army list.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Building a New Army Part I
This is the first article in a series that hopefully will cover me designing a tournament army from the ground up, including the modelling, painting, and list design issues that show up.
Building a New Army Part I - Ideas and General Guidelines
On the way home from JimCon this year, Gina was all aflutter about her new army idea (an amazon-themed Dark Elf army-- very cool idea that looks to be turning out pretty well so far) and this got my thinking. Her idea was more of an "art" army, in that the design would very much be about the modeling and painting versus other concerns. This gave me the idea to do something similar for next year's JimCon (the only big tournament that I go to anymore)
After a bit of consideration, I came up with a theme idea. Basically, it's Elves meets the Trojan War. Before this gets too complex, let me explain the basics:
High Elves at least have been given a vaguely Greco-Roman feel to them. Citizen spearmen, the various names of the regions, ect. So I decided to carry this through to the logical conclusion and make an army that really reflects this-- the armour, mythology, ect. Easily the biggest conflict in Greek mythology would be the Trojan War: it latest years and involved nearly as many important figures as the quest for the golden fleece. Of course, the Greeks were only one side of the conflict-- to do this right you'd need to have Trojans also. Dark Elves could easily stand in here for them, and also give me the opportunity to a "match pair" set of armies. It's a common concept in historicals gaming, and I think it should work fairly well with two classically opposed armies like dark elves and high elves. As an extra twist, it might make things interesting if the High Elves were the Trojans in this equation. Just to mix things up a bit.
Another interesting part of the Trojan War (and here I'm talking about the mythological event, not the historical one) is early on the gods did take sides in the battle, helping out their favored sons to either defend Troy or help it sack it. I think this might work out well in wfb also-- there are piles of high elf and dark elf gods that get mentioned for a text bubble or two in the background section of the army books, and then never get mentioned afterwards. They need to be used more than this, so decided I had to use them in these armies.
******
Given all those ideas, here's the basic guidelines I came up with for the armies:
1. Since for the time period in Greek history we're talking about cavalry wasn't usable, I've decided to go without also. Chariots should certainly be in use, and I plan to use at least a couple of them in these armies.
2. Every god from both sides (High Elf & Dark Elf) needs to be represented with at least one unit if not an attached hero. Unit champions and the like should be converted up to match what I can find about the various gods.
3. These lists shouldn't include a bunch of over the top or cliched combos of items, ect. I'm planning on taking these armies to JimCon in the future, so there's no excuse for making them overpowered slop that I copied off of the internet somewhere.
With these guidelines in mind, now I have a place to start making my army lists from. In my next installment, that's what I hope to explain and work on.
Next: Part II - Developing an initial army list for the High Elves
Building a New Army Part I - Ideas and General Guidelines
On the way home from JimCon this year, Gina was all aflutter about her new army idea (an amazon-themed Dark Elf army-- very cool idea that looks to be turning out pretty well so far) and this got my thinking. Her idea was more of an "art" army, in that the design would very much be about the modeling and painting versus other concerns. This gave me the idea to do something similar for next year's JimCon (the only big tournament that I go to anymore)
After a bit of consideration, I came up with a theme idea. Basically, it's Elves meets the Trojan War. Before this gets too complex, let me explain the basics:
High Elves at least have been given a vaguely Greco-Roman feel to them. Citizen spearmen, the various names of the regions, ect. So I decided to carry this through to the logical conclusion and make an army that really reflects this-- the armour, mythology, ect. Easily the biggest conflict in Greek mythology would be the Trojan War: it latest years and involved nearly as many important figures as the quest for the golden fleece. Of course, the Greeks were only one side of the conflict-- to do this right you'd need to have Trojans also. Dark Elves could easily stand in here for them, and also give me the opportunity to a "match pair" set of armies. It's a common concept in historicals gaming, and I think it should work fairly well with two classically opposed armies like dark elves and high elves. As an extra twist, it might make things interesting if the High Elves were the Trojans in this equation. Just to mix things up a bit.
Another interesting part of the Trojan War (and here I'm talking about the mythological event, not the historical one) is early on the gods did take sides in the battle, helping out their favored sons to either defend Troy or help it sack it. I think this might work out well in wfb also-- there are piles of high elf and dark elf gods that get mentioned for a text bubble or two in the background section of the army books, and then never get mentioned afterwards. They need to be used more than this, so decided I had to use them in these armies.
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Given all those ideas, here's the basic guidelines I came up with for the armies:
1. Since for the time period in Greek history we're talking about cavalry wasn't usable, I've decided to go without also. Chariots should certainly be in use, and I plan to use at least a couple of them in these armies.
2. Every god from both sides (High Elf & Dark Elf) needs to be represented with at least one unit if not an attached hero. Unit champions and the like should be converted up to match what I can find about the various gods.
3. These lists shouldn't include a bunch of over the top or cliched combos of items, ect. I'm planning on taking these armies to JimCon in the future, so there's no excuse for making them overpowered slop that I copied off of the internet somewhere.
With these guidelines in mind, now I have a place to start making my army lists from. In my next installment, that's what I hope to explain and work on.
Next: Part II - Developing an initial army list for the High Elves
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