Hobby round up

The last couple of weeks have been a little quiet on the hobby front as I found myself between painting projects, and a little distracted by the release of 6th ed 40k.

My limited exposer to the 40k meta/scene etc has given me a fresh enjoyment of 40k. Not enough to pursue it too much, but enough to get back into the odd game/possibly attend an event or 2. However, I am no fan of allies/fortifcations: I prefer to cover my weaknesses with tactics...not by adding a runepriest and fortress of redemption to every army! Hopefully the tournement scene agrees (and keeps the points of games in the 1500-1750 range) and stops the game becoming a farce.

Anywho. FANTASY!!!!!

I have inherited Ben's display shelf in his move to Australia, and I have begun displaying my armies on it-very exciting. I also used it as an excuse to paint up some of the High Elf stuff I have avoided due to never, ever, ever, ever seeing a situation where I would take over the usual suspects (ie my seaguard). This lasted all of 2 nights when I got to painting the gold. Now my High Elf gold is actually mitharil silver washed with the old GW sepia wash a few times. Sadly, I ran out of this and bought some of the new stufff from GW. This was the first time i have been disappointed with the new paints. The wash (or whatever they are called now) refused to layer, was shiny, and pooled in a way the old stuff didnt.Thankfully I got some of the Vallejo sepia wash as a stop gap and it does the job of replicating gold fine. One of my Wlion units has been done with it, however I was a little disappointed with its performance on the demigriff skin (hidden with other washes).

My Helfs will be rocking it at Call to Arms. I wont reveal my list JUST yet. I think the list I am using will be really fun and hopefully a little anti-meta in an interesting way.

The woodies have been sitting there looking cool. I'm happy with my latest list. ETC has been fustrating as usual because it has flooded the net with lists that a) are 2600pts, b) are designed for a game that I dont recognise as WHFB 8th ed c) have very little relevance to how I want to operate. There have been some interesting lists (fav is the one with all the eagle nobles), but of little value to my exploration of 8th with them.

The Empire is still a work in progress. I have been assembling knights with the Blazing Sun upgrade pack to be my ICKS, kit bashed my mounted general, and started painting my plastic stank.

My latest Empire list refinment is looking like this:

Alector: Bsteed, Ha, ent sh, SAHeroes, Wcloak, Pofool    218
lvl4: light, scroll                    225
BSB: Bsteed, FPA, sh, SoM                129
Engineer: la                        66
Captain: Pegasus, FPA, ch.sh, relicblade, dbane gem    131

13 ICKS: FC-steel                    390
10 xbows: sb                        100
5 archer detach                        35
5 archer detach                        35
5 Knights                        110

2 cannon                        240
3 Dgriffs                        174
3 Dgriffs                        174

Hellblaster                        120
Stank                            250

2397

Main changes are:

1) switch Runefang GTM to archlector: GTM was great, but the knights were acting as an expensive delivery system + he had no protection other than 1+ as. With the Archlector I achieve a few things. Sword of anti heroes gives me a way to counter character buses (or at least deter them from engaging), whitecloak adds protection to the unit by forcing all bad guys in b2b with the Alector to suffer -1 to hit. On top of that is hatred to make the ICKS more killy + obviously the prayers to add complexity to my magic phase.

2) dropping the RICK Rollers: Just another expensive knight bus. Stank does the "hold up stuff" better, and dgriffs are killy enough + with a unit of vanilla knights I can still rush a flank.

3) adding stank-see above.

4) return of the Captasus: ie the K'daai Destroyer. But also there to do other stuff too! I enjoy using flying characters in Empire lists and bringing him back means I get to use my cool model + adds some interesting dynamics to a rather unsubtle army.

5) standard in the xbows: mainly for Blood and Glory-but also because I have a cool converted banner for that unit. My army is a little light on conversions for paint scores, and with the removal of the bounce-lit flagellants a little light on paint score in general! I have 10 xbows all painted up with bounce lighting from the tourch banner to help bring my paint score back up a bit for what is usually my most competitive army.


My hope is to get the Empire ready for the event after Call to Arms which is the last 2400pt event in Welly for the year. Hopefully Neil will be running the 1200pts event (possibly my favourite outside of Homecon) which will see another run for the Highelves.  The Woodies will have to (sadly) stick to fun games for the time being. They can pull of wins when I need to, but dont get big enough wins to be competitive in 20-0 system. ETC'ers will disagree, but they get a points boost (and i think a VP's boost) to compensate.