More Warhamburger High Elves

This week I finished a unit of Ellyrian Reavers, these are Elven fast cavalry for Warhamster, armed with bows and spears and very fast- ideally hard to catch. Good for hunting lone mages, warmachines, redirecting charges, and generally getting in the opponents rear and being a pain in the arse:

The way things are going, they will die before achieving very much, but they'll look good doing it! We'll see, Mark of Brettonia brings his lucky dice back to my house this weekend.

A letter to Vaul

Dear Vaul,

After working so hard to put together this lovely army of Ulthuan's children, we now wonder why you have forsaken us. Tonight, my friend Mark of Brettonia, who knows not the rules of Warhammer, brought over a second hand - out of date - ragged assed - illegal listed - pile of crooked knights, and you allowed us to be smote. Some of the highlights included letting Mark roll double 1s on two consecutive no-hope break tests (WTF?!), seeing 16 swordmaster attacks fail to scratch a paladin charging the door of the watchtower, and the greatest insult, seeing my last two swordmasters holding the watchtower on the very last turn die from the attacks of the last two warhorses (the probability of this, incidentally, is 4/144, less then 3%).

Why have you forsaken us?

Two more Covenanter regiments done

Over the last 10 days I finished a box of Warlord ECW infantry which I managed to stretch into two Covenanter regiments using some leftover command and pike bits. I am planning to use a modest figure density and either Black Powder or Impetus to do some ECW- Scotland theatre this year. Here are the units- 9 pike and two sleeves of 6 shot representing each regiment:






I also managed to witness what looked like a High Elf inaugural victory on turn 2 fizzle away to defeat by turn 5 after the gods of dice abandoned me. Key failures? Two consecutive leadership 9 test failures, followed by an improbable 18" charge that crushed my Dragon Princes, topped off by the failure of Eltharion to dispatch a measly Herald of Khorne when I was buffed by Beast of Horros and had the charge. Mathhammer gives me the clear nod on that one, with 7 S9 attacks, re-rolling misses, and no armour save he shouldn't have lived to strike, but I only netted one- on the reposte he hits with 2 killing blow 6s and I'm dead. Sigh.

Next up? Elven reinforcements for the rematch, not sure if I need to call on Teclis or chalk this one up to some bad dice....

Bonus Pic: working out the Mathhammer with my lovely assistant, Charley:

High Elves ready to go!

This week finished off enough of my High Elves to field a decent army, I did a Lion Chariot, which is just a great model and can kick ass:



And a repeater bolt thrower, which is important for bringing down big things, but can also open rapid fire whup-ass on big groups of little things.

Another very purdy model:


I also did some more spearelves to fill out the core units, so here is what I have painted arrayed for battle (Scott ... look closely...)






Up next: I dunno. Really.

Some more 1/72 bits for Vimeiro

I added a new element to my blog- the for trade and sale pages on the bar at the left. Here I will periodically put up stuff that I want to turn into something else to play with. First up are my 28mm Naps (nice, but I prefer 1/72- HERESY!!!) and Empire WHFB gun line army (formidable, but not suited to my aggressive play style). More to come later, we'll see how it goes with this stuff first.

This week I put the finishing touches on my 1/72 armies for my MayDay game which will be the Command and Colours: Napoleonics Vimeiro scenario done in 1/72 using one base per block. It's quite a few figs, perhaps 250 per side.

The last units were a second unit regiment of French Chasseurs Cheval (Italeri) which are okay, but I find a little big, over-animated, and I had to use the standard bearer to make up the numbers after cutting the sabre off of an elite company trooper. French cavalry normally left their eagles at home, especially lights. But they'll do, at least the flag makes it clear that they are French!


I also did 5 bases of Italeri British 1815 infantry for my light infanty unit. These figs are supposed to represent the 28th (yellow facings) but I am using them to represent elements of the 43rd which were part of the Light Division in the Peninsula (white facings) and fought at Vimeiro. These are good figs:


Up next: Some more elves methinks, or maybe that Egyptian DBA army....

Dragon Princes of Caledor

This week I finished a unit of GW High Elf Dragon Princes. They are very detailed models and make up a very punchy unit, they have dragon armour (heavy armour with a 2+ ward save against fire) on a barded horse with lance and 2 attacks each. So they will hit hard, but with only 5 bodies likely not last long if they caught stuck in for too long. They will be useful for clearing out those pesky flamers and salamanders.




Next up: some miscellaneous reinforcements (more swordmasters and spear) plus a bolt thrower and lion chariot to round out my High Elf core army. I have also had an urge to go back to my ECW stuff and maybe flesh out the Covenanters, plus an Egyptian DBA army calls...Mark is coming by later on to give my Early Achaemenids a chance to roll some more 1s, so my motivation to paint those Egyptians depends on how the fortunes of DBA war favour us today.

Island of Blood Elves completed

This week I finished off the IoB High Elves, the remaining elements were the swordmasters:


The swordmasters are formidable (2 attacks with great weapons that always strike first) but fragile, T3 with heavy armour.

There is also a prince of griffon who I might run as Eltharion on Stormwing, a formidable heroic warrior with spellcasting to boot:



In other news, I managed to lose 4 games of DBA this week, 3 losses came after my general went down in an even fight (4:4) which can only happen if I roll a 1 to my oppenents 6. THREE TIMES it happened. I am a population geneticist, I do math and probability for a living, and I can tell you it's pretty goddam unlikely...the only scientific explanation must be that I need new dice.

Next up: Dragon Princes