Project Wood Elves: First Tournament

I have played so far 7 games with the Wood Elves with small variations of the "shooty" list that was posted before, and finally I have decided to participate in a local tournament to have another 3 games in a row.

After that I will focus on the melee variant to try and play a bit with Sisters of the Thorn and/or Wild Riders which so far I have not used. At the same time, the Arcane Journal has been released and I should be getting it in a couple of weeks so all the stars align for the change!

I am honestly having second thoughts about joining a tournament due to the potential ultra competitive folks that might be there, but let's see, I go without much expectations. I'd like to have at least one win, and I would be happy if I have something like 1-1-1, but let's see!

The list I have chosen is the following:

Glade Lord, Great weapon, Asrai Longbow, General, Forest Dragon, Armour of Destiny, An Annoyance of Netlings - 499

Spellweaver, Level 4 Wizard, Elven Steed, Ruby Ring of Ruin, Oaken Stave, Battle Magic - 269

Spellsinger, Level 2 Wizard, Elven Steed, Lore Familiar, Elementalism - 154

5 Glade Guard, Arcane Bodkins - 65

5 Glade Guard, Hagbane Tips - 65

5 Glade Guard, Hagbane Tips - 65

8 Deepwood Scouts, Hagbane Tips - 120

8 Deepwood Scouts, Arcane Bodkins - 120

6 Glade Riders, Arcane Bodkins, Reserve Move, Musician - 132

6 Glade Riders, Hagbane Tips, Reserve Move, Musician - 132

3 Tree Kin, Elder - 160

Treeman - 215

I have played 5 games with this list and have won 4 (the list is tougher than what it looks like apparently?), in a casual friendly environment in which we let each other correct mistakes and undo/redo as we see fit. For example, I typically forget the "reserve move". So things might be VERY different in competitive environment.

Unfortunately, I have not had time to paint it all. I have only one single archer and the Spellweaver and singer painted. I managed to paint base colours on the horses so I could place the riders on top and also painted the tip of the arrows so I could differentiate them in game (red = hagbane, blue = arcane). It is going to be the first time in years that I go to an official event with an unpainted Army. So sad!

Here is the T3 page of the tournament. It is the third edition of the Tournament, I played the first one with my dear Skavens and ended up 17 out of 18 ✌

And here are a couple of pics of the full Army

Project Wood Elves: First Test Model

The paralelisms with the Skaven project continue....

While this is not the first Wood Elf that I paint in my life, it is probably the first Warhammer Wood Elf I paint in 25+ years. In fact, I can say for certain that I have not painted too many Elves of any kind.... 

Before starting I spent quite some time browsing miniatures and looking at other armies. In the end I settled for some style I want to keep with NMM, green and yellow bright colours with some brown, I want to use some glazing and shading and I want to add some texture to cloths. Overall I want to put to work some of the techniques I have learnt in the past couple of years and take my sweet time with each figure as opposed to "get them as fast as I can ready to battle". I have decided that painting this army replaces one of the objectives of the year, as I will focus on Wood Elves instead of painting Kill Teams. My main source for inspiration is this Army from Mariano. I just love how they look like. Of course I know I won't be able to do even a fraction of what he did but I still hope to create something nice.

1. Here you can see the first test models. I am satisfied with the skin and cape, I mean lots of things to improve but shadows and colours are fine. On the other hand I don't like the leather and boots so that needs to change. Same thing with the base, I need to add some grass flock and probably use a lighter shade for the first layer as it is right now "too brown" for a Wood Elf... 
2. As for the horse, I am quite satisfied overall with the skin and leather. I probably overdid a bit the skin since I spent quite some time going back and forth with the texture and the lights, I need to find the right pace and improve it for the future as I have about 20 of those to paint and this one took me two hours!
3. 
   
4. For being the first test models they are not bad, but far from being what I want them to be. More to come soon but at least some progress is being made!

As I use these posts for future reference for myself, I want to keep track of the paints as well.

I used these for the NMM metal and for the skin of the horse. For the skin I applied multiple layers of 

a glaze of Wolf Grey, and then some with Neutral Grey for the shadows. For the highlights I skipped the bone as the change of tone was too noticeable.

These were "as is" used for the wooden parts. For the leather I used either the flat brown or the beige one as base and then I mixed the base colour with beige red (from the skin palette) to get a lighter version and stippled it. Then added some texture and scratches with even a lighter version mixing it with bone 70.918

These were used for the golden bracelets and for the horse's hair.

These are the ones for the lighter green cloth parts, and the blue is for a glaze to give some depth. I mixed the base green with the yellow to get an intermediate tone.

These are the skin colours, from base to highlight, used "as is" without mixing.

I used these ones for the cape and the lila was for the shadows. I did multiple layers mixing different amounts of them but honestly it is not needed, it can be used directly and then the differences can be finetuned with a glaze of base colour.

Project Wood Elves: Ready for paint!

Some updates!

I managed to finish greenstuffing all the miniatures and fixing the ones that were still "half done" in the last picture. I also found some time to cut a quick base for the extra wood that you can bring to the game and add texture to 3 trees that I magnetized and I can transport with the rest of the army. Lastly, I sprayed everything with a zenythal black/white coat, so this is how the army stands today!

Last weekend I did another test game against Orcs & Goblins and it went ok-ish despite making multiple errors (I was fairly lucky with dice). I still don't know how to properly use for my advantage the evasive and reserve move, it is just too new to me. And I don't know either how to place the scouts or move them so I can evade properly, as both units were overran on a fire & flee move.

Nevertheless, I had lots of fun and it is such a different way of playing that I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Here is the current iteration of the list, I am leaning now to have two lists. One more shooty and one with some combat.

This is the current shooty variant:

Glade Lord, Great weapon, Asrai Longbow, General, Forest Dragon, Armour of Destiny, A Resplendence of Luminescents, An Annoyance of Netlings - 509

Spellweaver, Level 4 Wizard, Elven Steed, Ruby Ring of Ruin, Oaken Stave, Battle Magic - 269

Spellsinger, Level 2 Wizard, Elven Steed, Lore Familiar, Battle Magic - 154

5 Glade Guard, Hagbane Tips - 65

5 Glade Guard, Hagbane Tips - 65

5 Glade Guard, Arcane Bodkins - 65

8 Deepwood Scouts, Arcane Bodkins - 120

8 Deepwood Scouts, Hagbane Tips - 120

6 Glade Riders, Arcane Bodkins, Trueflight Arrows, Reserve Move - 132

6 Glade Riders, Hagbane Tips, Reserve Move - 126

3 Tree Kin, Elder - 160

Treeman - 215

Titan Maniple

After having shown already all the Titans and Knights I wanted to show a group picture. Those are Titans from Legio Mortis and Knights from Ærthegn House already shown before. Here are the posts: Warhounds, Reaver, Warlord, Questoris and Lancers.

Warlord Titan

Here it is! The biggest and meanest of them all! The Warlord Titan.

This is the last Titan I have for my Army and with it I am crossing off the first objective of the year.

I painted it also from the Legio Mortis and with the same techniques mentioned before, with oils for weathering and proper treatment of decals.

This was a blast but I am tired of painting big robots... time to change game! I still have to paint a few vehicles for Legions Imperialis but I need to use the airbrush for the base layer, and I can only do that with good weather, therefore it needs to wait...

Lots of photos and details below.

Reaver Titan

First miniature of the year! It took a while but here is the first of the two remaining Titans.

This is a Reaver Titan from the Legio Mortis. I have followed the same techniques as for the Warhounds but a little bit more refined. It is also the very first time I have used oils for weathering and I must say that I love the results. Much easier to use and control than what I was expecting! For this figure I used only one colour, Sepia, from Abteilung 502, because it was a test, but since then I have bought Burnt Siena as well to have different effects. Might add a few more in the future.

I am particularly proud of how well the decals fit with the model, it is a time consuming technique because of the multiple layers, but overall the results are amazing! I tried to tune down the weathering compared to the Warhounds because this one stays much further away from close combat. The couple of figures added to the base are just for fun to show the scale, because in "reality" the marines should not be so close to the feet.

I hope you like it as much as I do.

Project Wood Elves: First miniatures

So the first miniatures arrived! I have again a deja vu with the Skaven project as I also posted first the sketch of the army list and then when the first ones arrived.

This is what this post is about according to Grok

As outlined in the first post I wanted to test the army lists a few times before buying and building stuff... but somehow I ended doing something completely different!

First miniatures

Since there a few things that I need regardless of the list I end playing, like Glade Guard and Glade Riders, when I found a relatively good second hand deal I thought it would be good to have them already. So I went ahead and bought them, that was 28 Glade Guards and 13 Glade Riders in total. Sadly, they were in pretty bad shape, especially the Riders, and needed to undergo several baths of alcohol to rub all the layers of paint they had, a few models did not survive though!

Big Ones

After having these and once I started to clean them I thought: wouldn't it be nice if I could have something "new" and big to pair with these tiny flimsy elves? So I thought about buying a Dragon and/or a Treeman... I tried searching for a Dragon but finding one that was complete turned out to be a real challenge! I could not find one for a reasonable price, so I turned my eyes to the Treeman... after talking it over with my brother, I ended up buying Treebeard on a hunch! I always liked the miniature and suddenly I had an idea regarding my Treeman, I would use a proper Ent for it and the chosen one could not be any other than Treebeard, so here it is!

While I was doing that, I asked a good friend of mine that owns a 3D Printer for advice regarding printing my own Dragon, since it was proving to be quite difficult to find. We ended up hunting STL files in the depths of Telegram and figuring out what would be the best to use and so on. Only problem was that he lives in the US so printing something for me would not be an option! (more on that later)

Other stuff

As one of the key ideas for the Army was that it should be easy to transport and store, I went ahead and bought a bunch of bases of the right size (since I needed to rebase all the second hand elves I had already), magnets and a GSW Army case. The project was barely starting and I had already spent more than 100 euros on material 😅😅

The big surprise

For work related reasons I ended up traveling to the US, and that left the door open to get my Dragon printed from my dear friend. But that "Dragon" turned out to be a whole Army that he ended up printing and shipping!

I received a package in my hotel that I ended up opening once I got back home. It was filled to the brim with miniatures! You can see below a picture of all of them still on their supports! There is much more than a Dragon there, there is even an amazing Boba Fett inside! Sadly I lost a few pieces of the Dragon rider (I blame the jetlag for that) that my friend needed to print again...

All in all there is 1 Dragon, 3 Treemen, 5 Wild Riders, 2 Wizards on horse, 5 Sisters of the Thorn, 1 Wizard on foot, 1 Battle Standard Bearer, 8 Scouts, 8 Waywatchers and 2 Eagles!!!

This clearly sent my whole plan of slowly building up the Army to the trash but I could not be more happy!

Assembling the Army

Having all of these miniatures I sat down and started to clean, stripe and assemble everything so I could get it "battle ready" even if they were not painted.

It took me quite some time to strip all the paint and restore/repair some miniatures and to carefully remove the supports. After that I rebased everything and glued magnets on the bases, then assembled the Army case and stored everything inside!

Here you can see a few pictures of the whole Army. I am super happy with how easy it is to store and transport, even though I am not yet done with all the preparation.

I have assembled the following list that is enough to field all three variants of the Army I have come up with so far:

• Dragon
• 2 Eagles
• 3 Treeman (can be used as Treekin)
• 1 Treebeard (he is twice as tall than any other Treeman)
• 5 Sisters of the Thorn
• 20 Glade Guard
• 8 Scouts
• 8 Waywatchers
• 1 Wizards on foot
• 1 Battle Standard Bearer
• 6 Wild Riders
• 2 Wizards on horse
• 12 Glade Riders

Next steps

You might think that the Army is done and ready to be primed but you would be wrong 😆

Almost all Glade Guards are missing torsos, arms and heads that I have set aside for proper cleaning. I still need to assemble those.

All the Riders (Glade, Wild and Sisters) need to be assembled, as only the horses are ready.

Lots of green stuff is needed in many miniatures that have gaps and require minor damage control and repairs.

Gravel and some minor details need to be added to the bases.

Finally, get everything primed and ready to be painted!

There is still a lot of work to do but I can already field the Army in a game without proxies! That is definitively something I was not expecting to be able to do so early in the project!

Project Wood Elves: army list testing

After having presenting the Stillmania project, here are some further thoughts on it!

I wrote down a few ideas first:

• small army with few miniatures (ideally less than 60)
• focus on shooting
• include some stuff because rule of cool
• easy to transport and to magnetize!
• include Tree stuff (Treeman or Treekin or both)
• must have a Dragon!

After that I drafted a few lists with slightly different styles:

LIST 1

• Characters
• Glade Lord on Forest Dragon
• Spellweaver on horse lvl4 with Battle Magic and Ruby Ring of Ruin
• Spellsinger on horse lvl2 with Battle Magic and Lore Familiar
• Core
• 3x5 Glade Guard with Hagbane Tips
• 2x5 Deepwood Scouts with Hagbane Tips
• 2x5 Glade Riders with Reserve Move and Hagbane Tips
• Special
• 1x5 Sisters of the Thorn
• 1x5 Deepwood Scouts with Hagbane Tips
• Rare
• Treeman
• Great Eagle

LIST 2 

• Characters
• Glade Lord on Forest Dragon
• Spellweaver on foot lvl4 with Elementalism
• Shadowdancer with Spear of Loec
• Glade Captain as BSB
• Core
• 1x12 Glade Guard with Banner of Midsummer's Eve
• 1x6 Deepwood scouts with Hagbane Tips
• 2x5 Glade Riders with Reserve Move and Hagbane Tips
• Special
• 1x5 Sisters of the Thorn
• 1x5 Wardancers
• 1x3 Tree Kin
• 1x5 Wild Riders
• Rare
• Great Eagle

LIST 3

• Characters
• Glade Lord on Great Stag
• Spellweaver on horse lvl4
• Waystalker on foot
• Waystalker on foot
• Core
• 2x8 Deepwood Scouts with Hagbane Tips
• 1x5 Glade Guard with Trueflight Arrows
• 1x9 Glade Riders with Reserve Move and Hagbane Tips
• Special
• 1x6 Wild Riders
• Rare
• Great Eagle
• Treeman
• 2x6 Waywatchers with Arcane Bodkins

Some testing

The first list was tested vs Khemri and vs Chaos undivided.

In the first case it was a victory for the Elves but mostly because of very good dice rolling, and that with poison is not a clear indication on how it would usually play on the field.

The Treeman was useless by itself so clearly I need to use it differently or field a different unit. In addition, against an army with high armour save, poison might not be as effective, so another type of Tip might need to be tested.

Also, the first list has so much shooting and avoidance that it might end up being boring so I might need to mix in some Wild Riders to have some combat ready units. 

The second test game was completely different. The poison was mostly ineffective and overall the shooting bounced back on the armour save of the Chaos warriors that managed to get to combat and smashed to pieces the whole Army. It was a super clear defeat for the Elves.

After that game I draft a new variant of the list with more riders and slightly different approach to shooting, that you can see in list 3. I have planned now a couple more games with the different lists to see which one feels better.

New project for The Old World

I have a new and exciting project that I want to share here as first post of the year!

A bit of context

At my local Club (ITGC Berlin) we are quite hyped with The Old World.

We have been playing quite intensively since November more or less. I personally have played roughly 1-2 times a week for most of the last 2 months, excluding the xmas season. We also attended a Tournament at the beginning of the year.

I have played all of these games with my trusty skavens. But I am starting to be tired of them because of mostly two reasons, (1) they are super difficult to transport, because they are not magnetized and use "old" bases with adapters, which means I spend at least 20 minutes each game setting it up and (2) they are a legacy army and will not have further development.

Because of that, after the tournament, I decided to build a new Army as 2025 project, despite having vowed before to never ever collect another 28mm Army 😅😆 and also regardless of the fact that this will most likely make me fail the 2025 goals, because instead of painting Kill Team I will be painting The Old World... Anyway, that's life 😬

After much thought on the topic I had a couple of goals:

1. it should not be a legacy faction
2. it should not be something that I have played before*
3. it should not focus on combat but on shooting/magic as main source of damage (as opposed to pretty much all other armies I have collected so far)
   
4. the miniatures should look cool and offer a nice hobby project!

After going over the available factions I quickly realized that despite playing Warhammer Fantasy for 20+ years and lots of editions, I have never played Elves! So it was set, I would play Elves, now the question was: Dark, High or Wood? Since my brother has been playing Dark Elves since forever that one was out. I am not a big fan of High Elves so the only logical choice was Wood Elves which incidentally was also the very first Blood Bowl team I bought.

It was set: I would collect a Wood Elves Army!

* the ones I have played before, excluding bands and skirmish, are Skaven, Daemons of Chaos, Chaos, Orcs & Goblins and Dwarfs. I always wanted to play Bretonnia and Undead and those would have been my natural first choices, but I already have an Army of each for Kings of War, which were incidentally built as well in Stillmania fashion...

Club Crazyness

Now, let's look at how does this combines with the hype at my local club!

Since we are quite excited about the game and building up new armies, a bunch of us had been talking about doing something nice as a group about it. In the end, one of the club members decided to start a Stillmania group project!

For those of you that are not familiar with Stillmania, you can see above a summary of it, and if you Google or read old White Dwarfs you will get tons of information about it.

In short, it is a very peculiar way of building and collecting armies. We will of course not follow all the rules stated above (in particular the gloss varnish), but we will follow the spirit of it - mostly by choosing and focusing on a single list. In my case I will target a 2000 points list with 1-2 extra units so I can swap some stuff in/out as required by some games.

So far we have five participants with Empire, Chaos undivided, Dwarfs, Chaos and Wood Elves. We are loosely following these steps:

1. First, we are planning and designing the army. In this step we write and discuss the list, and possibly test it on the table until you get something you are happy with.
2. After that, we look at the hobby aspect of it, selecting models and possibly experimenting with a few paint schemes, basing and so on.
3. Once you are happy with your army list, list of models and paint scheme, just go and build it!

I am currently at step number 1. I have so far played two test games with two list variants. My thoughts on that will come on another post.

This is a very exciting project that fills me with hobby energy and it reminds me of the times when I started the skaven project back in 2015! I just hope that this time around it does not take me almost 3 years to finish the army!