Painted CMoN Lord on Eagle

This is the last model, and the centerpiece model, to my current Wood Elf army.  Don't worry, I have roughly a billion other Wood Elf and High Elf models to paint for this army, including another Treeman that I'll probably paint fairly soon, but for now this model completes my initial 2500 points. 

I saved this model, which is the Cool Mini or Not Lord on Eagle for those interested, to paint last.  It's an epic model that deserves to be saved for last, as a treat to finish up an army. 

Anyway, the army now marches to war, and I'll have more on that later!

First Eagle Painted

Two models left until I can field my new Wood Elf army.  Very exciting stuff!  The GW Eagles are not very much fun to assemble, but I do like how they look in the end.  This one is painted a bit plainly, but nicely, as I have other plans for my other Eagle and the Eagle that my character will be riding.  I'll have another Eagle up tomorrow!

Project Glade Guard - Complete

Last night, I glued magnets into the bases of the thirty Glade Guard I painted, finishing them up for now.  Long term, I'd like to run string through all their bows, but for now, it's not a priority.  Right now, I'll be working on two Eagles and a character on an Eagle, so that I can run the army at 2,500 points.  Here's a shot of the finished Glade Guard.

I actually painted thirty-one in all, as I had to finish the last of the original twenty.  There's three full command groups in there, so that I can run them in groups of ten with up to full command if I want.  I am particularly pleased with the free hand "Leaf in the Wind" banner.  Wash would be proud. 

Here's a shot of the whole army.

Right now, I have painted:

Fifty Glade Guard
Twenty-four Dryads
One Treeman
One Spellweaver
One Branchwraith
Six Treekin

Two Eagles and a character on an Eagle are incoming!

Project Glade Guard, Part Two

I ended up putting about twelve hours into the twenty Glade Guard yesterday.  While they're not finished, they're certainly a lot further along than they were, and should be done by the end of the week.  I do have to return to work today, so further painting will occur in the evening.  Here's the plan:

This is what the GG currently look like:

The cloaks are not actually attached yet.  Tonight, I will highlight and wash the greens on the cloaks and then make thirty bases.  Tomorrow night, I'll paint the arrows and quivers, and then attach the Glade Guard.  At that point, I'll just need to do the eyeballs. 

So wish me luck, and check twitter for updates!

Project Glade Guard

I've got a whole day off here today, with no real interruptions.  I also have thirty Glade Guard that I've been working on, in various stages of completion.  Ten are done except for their bases, and twenty have their green sections completely finished.  I also have twenty that are completely done. My goal is to finish the lot to an excellent standard with my time today.  It won't be easy, but I think I can just finish it if I work into the evening.  I'll be tweeting up pictures throughout the day through @quietlimit, and will hopefully have a full contingent of fifty finished Glade Guard to show off at the end of the day, being that much closer to a fully painted Wood Elf army of Avelorn.  If nothing else, this will be a great project for the day!

Weekend Goals: Memorial Day Weekend

Okay, so hobby production has been poor lately, because of a severe lack of free time.  But this weekend, if the stars align, hobby could happen.  Not on the actual weekend, mind, but because I have Monday off (and indeed, my office is closed) and my wife has to go to work for a teacher work day, I have an entire day to get things done.  Fun side note:  this will be the first non-sick day off I've had in a year and a half. 

My mission:  Glade Guard.  I started a couple months ago with nineteen Glade Guard finished and thirty-seven in on the sprue.  I currently have thirty complete and twenty-seven assembled and base coated.  My plan is to use Monday to knock out twenty more Glade Guard, which will bring me to fifty finished and allow me to run my first Wood Elf list (once some Eagles are done).  It will also free me from Glade Guard jail and allow me to paint fun things for a while, such as Eagles, my General on an Eagle, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and well, anything but Glade Guard. 

So wish me luck, as I really want to get this done.  I've put a lot of effort into making these GG look good, each and every one of them, and really worked to step up my painting. 

Adding Bow Strings and Arrows to Glade Guard - An Easy Conversion

After putting my Glade Guard together and painting them, one of the things I really didn't like was that there was no string in the bow and no actual arrow.  I mean, this guy here is in the "shooting an arrow" pose, yet he's pulling back on nothing and just holding a bare bow like a jerk.  I decided to correct the problem.

First, I drilled a small hole in the "pulling" hand, which is bare plastic with no detail on top anyway.  I got some thread from the sewing section at a local store, and ran it through the hole.  I figured out roughly where the string would meet the bow on the top and bottom, and ran those sections of the thread, one at a time, through some superglue.  Then I wrapped the string around the top part, and once it had set repeated the process on the bottom, cutting the thread each time with scissors. 

I got some small needles for the arrow, and clipped them down to the proper size.  They're glued at the hand, so that it looks like the feathered part of the arrow is under his hand, and glued again to the bow.

Hope you enjoyed it!

Painted Treeman

Getting the Treeman done finishes up the "Wood" part of my Avelorn army for now.  What I have left to do on the Wood Elf side consists of Glade Guard and Eagles for now, and then I hope to either work on the High Elf side of Avelorn, or another army altogether for awhile.

I got this model in trade for painting an Arachnorok a while back, and made some small modifications.  I removed one of the legs in order to give the Treeman more of a "striding forward" look, and added in some of the Treekin parts to give him more short, aggressive limbs.  In painting the model, I continued to try and add as much color as possible, and pushed color on the base as well, even adding in some flowers.

The army as a whole is really starting to come together, with only a few models left to do.  In other news, this picture was taken with the IPhone 4S camera, which I mentioned yesterday.  I'm pretty amazed at how well it turned out. 

New Army Case / Display Board

I'm constantly looking for a way to easily and safely move my models around, and I'm constantly disappointed.  Foam is great for smaller armies, but it's tough with larger fantasy armies both in terms of setup time and the sheer amount of foam you need.  I have a nice wooden case, which holds a decent amount, but it weighs alot and is very large, so it only gets broken out for grand tournaments and the like. 

I think my latest attempt at creating a case might be the best so far.  I took a storage bin and lid, flipped the lid upside down, and glued some sheet steel to the underside of the lid.  The steel is painted, so that the lid can now be used as a display board, and my magnetized models now sit on the steel.  When I want to travel with the army or store it neatly, I can place the bottom section (the container) on top. 

The one downside is that I can't find a larger lid for even a huge storage bin, and will have to do some more looking around for that.  Right now, I can fit my 2500 points of Wood Elves on the bin I have, but I"ll need something larger for Beastmen or future projects that are not so compact.

Treekin Painted, and Hopefully Not Too Horrible!

I was pretty worried when I started my Avelorn army about painting the Treekin models.  I've only seen them a couple times where they looked good, such as Bobby's Wood Elf army.  The models themselves are...not great, but I've never seen an acceptable substitute unless one changes the entire theme of the army.

One of the things that changed my opinion of the models somewhat was the fact that I got them in finecast.  Call the material whatever names you like, but I once again got flawless models.  The benefits of having finecast was that I could easily change out the parts that I used for each Treekin.  My front rank, rather than having multiple unwieldy tree limbs all over the place, now have more "human"-like limb structures, which I think makes them more dynamic and easily recognizable as moving monsters, rather than weird, mutated trees. 

The second thing to do was to make sure that there was plenty of color on the models so that they weren't dull.  I picked out all the faeries in light purple, and did the eyes in the light blue from the regular elf models.  Then I made sure all of the vines and leaves were bright green, and even gave some treekin green hair and beards as the model allowed.  Basing was kept dense and colorful as well.

I hope you enjoy the models, and comments and criticisms are welcome. 

These Dryads are Finally Painted!

Man, you'd think Dryads would be the easy part of a Wood Elf army to paint.  In a way, they are, but for some reason with me they sucked up a ton of time. 

I initially basecoated a dark gray for the wood, and then highlighted up to white.  The wood area is then washed with Ogryn Flesh, which makes a nice brownish gray which you'll see on a lot of actual trees, instead of the straight brown colors that most people use on Dryads. 

The most important part going in, though, was to paint all the details that could have any real color.  The problem with dryads/treekin/treemen in my opinion is that they look quite dull in most armies, due to the colors that make the most sense to use when painting the models.  So I went out of my way to pick the Dryad parts with leaves, and to paint those leaves brightly.  I also took some liberties in making their "bark skirt" into a set of green leaves around their waists.  I finished that off with bright blue glowing eyes, and bright basing.  I think they came out well.  Comments and criticism are always welcome. 

Branchwraith Painted

This is my Branchwraith for this month's Tale of Painters on Warseer, and is an addition to the Army of Avelorn.  She's converted from the Dryad kit, as I'm not really sold on any of the Branchwraith (or Drycha) models I've come across.  I'm running her as a Level One with a Cluster of Radiants (extra dispel die) for 140 points.   To keep her thematically consistent with the rest of the army, I've empahsized her leaves and used blues for her eyes, the owl's eyes, and on the stone behind her. 

This brings my total painted army so far up to 752, so not bad progress.  I would like to get the full contingent of Dryads done by the new year if possible and not derailed by lack of time and Skyrim. 

Army of Avelorn - Painted Glade Guard

I'm working on my Tale of Painters Avelorn Army on Warseer, and today is the day to report my monthly contribution. 

UNIT: Nineteen Glade Guard

HIGHS: I think my overall painting has improved from my last army, and continues to do so.  The basing looks great.  Every model has eyes.  I also wanted a banner that was easy recognizable as my flaming banner, so I bordered it with red and yellow, drew the elven rune for fire (thanks Google!) on it and put some jets of flame around the rune. 

LOWS: I'm not sold on the brown wash over green, and may have to go back and fix it.  The Glade Guard models also suffer from the same molding era as a lot of the Beastmen models, in that they have quite a few vague, half-formed details on the models that I find to be a pain. 

POINTS: Nineteen Glade Guard + Full Command and Flaming Banner = 262 Points.  Overall points are 262 + 350 for the Spellweaver for 612 points. 

NEXT MONTH: Dryads, which are surprisingly fun to put together.

Army of Avelorn: Painted Spellweaver

This will be my first entry for Warseer's Fantasy Tale of Painters, since the one model weighs in at around 300 points all by herself (the minimum monthly entry for ToP is 200 points).  I needed time to assemble some of the other models, like Glade Guard, so painting a single model seemed a great way to both get that time and to continue to work on the paint scheme. 

I'm pleased with the eyes, basing, greens, blue, and the wood.  I would have liked the Spites on the base to come out a little brighter, and I think the gold works well in some places, but lacks a bit of definition on her back.  Overall, I'm highly pleased with the results, and feel that this scheme will make a gorgeous High Elf / Wood Elf army...in a year or so. 

Comments and criticisms are always welcome. 

Avelorn Basing

One of the things that I've been dinged on in the past with my armies has been basing, and rightly so.  I went with plain sand (Space Marines and Dark Elves), plain winter grass (Bretonnians), and a mix of dirt and yellow/green grass that ended looking bland (Beastmen).  When I started the Army of Avelorn, I was determined that my basing would be excellent and would really add to the army. 

Basing for the army begins with either dark brown basing sand or a mix of said sand and painted cork (for back ranks).  Bright spring grass is added, followed by a combination of small rocks, lichen, and/or tufts of wilderness and swamp grasses.  The idea is to make a really verdant base, and use the cork, sand and rock to break up the colors with grays and browns. 

It's a bit more work than it's been in the past, but the idea is to constantly improve with the models, and I think it's a step in the right direction.

New Army: Avelorn

So, the Beastmen are done and dusted.  While they'll be the army I play with for quite a while yet, I have to keep my hands busy with a new project or two, right?

That new project is going to be the Army of Avelorn, which I've been dreaming up and for which I've been picking up models for almost a year and a half.  The army will eventually consist of hundreds of models, and by my estimation almost 10,000 points without upgrades, and will be playable as either a Wood Elf or High Elf army.

For those unfamiliar with the background, Avelorn is the wooded area of the High Elf island of Ulthuan, where their Everqueen lives.  The High Elf book describes the elves there are more "Fey" and similar to the Wood Elves, and notes the presence of Treemen and Dryads in the area.

I remember reading that and originally having the idea to make a large army that could be used with both books.  Plus, I really liked the theme, whereas I'm kind of lukewarm on just plain High Elves or Wood Elves.  Several other factors helped start me down the road, such as the great deal offered by Island of Blood and winning some old Wood Elf stuff in tournaments.  I want to do some overlap with models that count as things in both armies like Glade Guard counting as High Elf Archers, but don't want to force things and will have units such as White Lions being only High Elf White Lions.

With a new army, I'm also trying to improve the look of things.  I love my Beastmen, but there is always room to improve as a painter and hobbyist.  For the Wood Elves, I'm going to try and use more blending and bright color, and improve from plain basing to a much nicer, scenic look.

Anyway, here's some pictures of my first model, who will be a Glade Guard in a Wood Elf army and an Archer in a High Elf army.  I'm happy with the greens and blues especially, as well as the bow and feathers, but need to work more on the smaller eyes to make them pop. Comments and criticism is, as always, very welcome.

Wood Elves and Eighth Edition

If you've read my previous what not about Beastmen in Eighth Edition, you'll probably note that I have a pretty low opinion of the average internet forum doomsayer. Beasts seem to work great in Eighth, and yet every knuckledragger with a dial-up connection has decided they are a bottom tier army.

Likewise, the Wood Elves are decried as a totally useless army by the masses. The old style Wood Elf army of multiple small skirmishers dancing around the table and hiding behind terrain is gone for good. It won't do enough damage, and it won't be able to break large units. Because this style of army doesn't work, the argument goes, Wood Elves are now the worst of the worst.

The problem with this example, like how people view Beastmen, is a anti-Darwinesque inability to adapt to the new rules and strategies that come with a new edition of the game (combined with the self-confidence that it takes to declare someone else's army terrible without letting Eighth breathe for a few months). The haters are correct: the MSU Wood Elf army is not in good shape. Luckily, that style of play isn't all that the Wood Elves had to offer, and I think they'll be just fine.

The other day, my opponent Brad brought two Treemen, an Alter Lord, an Alter Noble, a big units of Dryads, a Level Four Sorceress with Lore of Beasts, and lots and lots of bows. Those suckers were lined up to fire at me until I made pee pants all over the forest. I had my Lore of Death Beastmen and was feeling good.

Brad's army didn't conform to the old MSU way. There were big ranks of bowmen. The dryad unit was big and punchy. There was a Level Four Mage, and she didn't know treesinging! Instead, Brad used some new strengths. He used his shooting to whittle down the troops that he could shoot, and ignored the ones that he couldn't. He tag teamed down my Ghorgon with his two Alters, using their superior speed and movement (and they were equipped, tellingly, with items from the new Common Magic Item list). He used his treemen to threaten my flanks and then charge in when the opportunity presented itself, smashing enough rank and file to scare off my Gors (and my General). He held back where he needed to, and pushed where he needed to until my army fell under the pressure.

There are a lot of neat things in the Wood Elf book that didn't make an appearance yesterday, like Treekin or access to the Lore of Life. However, Brad did something that I think more entrenched players might have a bit more trouble with: he played differently in order to fit in with the new edition. Conventional wisdom has Wood Elves trying to "fit in" poorly with the new rules by taking big blocks of expensive ranked infantry, or just struggling miserably against the big blocks of Eighth. Instead, Brad used different strengths of his book, and hit me hard.

Eighth hasn't really sunk in yet, and we don't know who the winners and the losers among the army books really are just yet. All I know is that I'm not willing to count anyone out yet.

Identify this Forest Dragon?

This past weekend, I won a Wood Elf Forest Dragon at at tournament.  It's not the Sisters of Twilight set, but rather an older model with a David Bowie type Elf riding up top with his giant feather hat.  Does anyone recognize this model, and could tell me what edition or year it's from? 

This is the first model of my High Elf / Wood Elf joint "Avelorn" themed army, and it's always exciting to get something like that.  I really am tempted to tear into it and put things together, but I need to finish up some Beastmen, Khador and Trollbloods first. 

8th Ed. Thoughts...so far

So this last weekend I was able to get in a few games of 8th Ed. with a friend of mine. It was his WE vs. my VC, and we got around to playing 1500 and 2500pt games. Anyway, here's some initial thoughts of mine (Blair) on the new rule set:

The game runs a lot smoother. Movement is a ton less complicated, and with pre-measuring you can really get your troops exactly where they need to be. TLoS also helps in this, I think. At first reading I thought it was going to be a pain, but it really simplified the shooting/magic phases. Some 'house rules' might be good, such as not being able to see through forests and such. As for our games, we just agreed beforehand on which terrain blocked what (i.e. you can see Cav behind that hill, but not infantry). This might get a little hairy during heated tournament games, though.

It's a lot harder to direct the movements of your opponent. With Ld checks on march blocking, free reforms after combat, swift reform, no terrain Mv penalties, etc. that big nasty block can really get where it needs to go.

Terrain has changed from hampering movement/LoS to more of a 'tactical vantage point'. You want to keep it between your ranked infantry and his (so if he charges he'll lose Steadfast), or hunker down in it if it will give your troops a big bonus with less drawback (i.e. stubborn units in Forests). I really like this change.

Scouts and Fast Cav have sort of moved toward a more offensive role. They aren't nearly as good at redirecting, but can get up in your face much faster. The march and shoot for skirmishers is huge.

Magic is a lot more balanced IMO, but also very random. It's almost impossible to rely on it, but if you can get a good spell off (be it a huge damage spell, or a augment/hex during a crucial combat) it can completely change the game. Really, it's worth sacrificing your Lvl 1 wizard to roll 6 dice and hope for IF, even if it blows him up.

Mid-game choices are more important than in 7th, or at least there are more of them. Deployment is as important as ever, I think, but what you have your units do after Turn 1-3 is crucial (Is it better to pursue/overrun, or reform? Should I swift reform my block in case he tries for that flank charge? Do I try for that charge now or wait a turn so I can be sure I'll make it? Should my wizard try and blast that support unit to pieces, or give my spearmen +1 Atk in hopes that it will swing combat?)

All in all, I'm liking the changes. I think tactics are sort of shifting away from precise unit placement, to more of 'get your units to the right places on the board'. The lazerbeam statues, hills that give units flaming arrows, and buildings that give stubborn are also a nice twist to the game.

Team Blizzardmen: A Combined LIzardmen and Beastmen Force

Most times, I try and make the pictures make sense, but this is what came up when I searched Google, and I laughed so hard we're going with it instead.

Lon and I are going to play in the WFB Doubles tournament on the 19th with a combined force of his Lizardmen and my Beastmen.  We're working through several different ideas on how to best combine those armies.

Our original idea was to spam magic like crazy, using the Herd Stone and an Engine of the Gods.  We took four level two mages altogether, with the Stone providing each with more power dice.  We were generating near twenty dice a turn!  We figured this would be a pretty fun weird way to play, since we both usually play combat, plus it would be fun to surprise our opponents with the sheer craziness of the army.  We figured it would be effective, but we needed to play test it before the tournament to see if it would actually be fun to play, and not just mean. 

We got in a game against Brad and Blair, with their combined VC/WE force, and learned a few things about our combination.  We won the game, but more through combat!  Lots of dice are nice, but the magic wasn't particularly effective.  Worse, it was slow, and it wasn't fun to just roll a bunch of dice.  I've never played super magic/shooty heavy before, but I'm not sure how people stomach watching their opponents' faces as they lob buckets of dice at them.  Yuck. 

So I think we're back to the drawing board, to think about things like magic defense and combat goodness!  I hope anyone who can makes it up to the doubles tourney on the 19th, as it's going to be a great time and a fantastic way to say goodbye to 7th Edition!