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.