It Was The Week Before Christmas…

December 16, 2013 by neathleanan 2 Comments

And nothing stirred, not even a mouse; probably because the giant Tatzylwurm ate it. But this is getting ahead of ourselves.

The first and most obvious item on today’s update is the new logo. This is one of those things I’ve been meaning to do for a very long time and hopeful it will help the branding for the blog (sorry, that sounded an awful lot like marketing). I have some small plans that will include more than dice bags with this logo which should be fun, but more on that another time.

The Painting Journal

After my little hobby rant last time, I have somehow found enough time to finish a Griffon and Dahlia Hallyr. This brings my total to 81 points and 37 individual painted models for the year. Not so bad. With a lot of assembled and undercoated bits on my table, in theory I should be able to add to the tally over the festive break. Of course, this almost certainly will not happen.

Of course, this almost certainly will not happen.

In addition to these models, I have also just converted a second House Shyeel Magister. This was a fairly simple head swap with a AFG crew member, but I have also sculpted a new hood from scratch.

And finally, whilst on the subject of painting, Meg Maples has posted up a rather good article about paint brushes on her blog here. Anyone really serious about improving their painting skills (so, obviously not including me) should check it out.

Although they are tricky to pickup here, I should have some Windor & Newton Series 7 after the break so expect a (very brief) review at some point. However I am sold on the benefits of brush soap since I managed to finally find some in Lund a few weeks ago.

A Few Good Elves

In the last month I have only managed to squeeze in two games, which was a bit poor. In the first one of those Ossyan managed to put MacBain down with the help of a few Stormfall archers. This was probably just as well because the shiny new Galleon had just trashed my Colossal.

In the second game, Epic Feora did very unpleasant things to Kaelyssa, or at least she would have done if a lucky shot from a Reckoner hadn’t finished the job first.

I have learnt three important things from these games:

1. It is really good to set unkillable super tough Trollbloods on fire.
2. The Fury mechanic is super nice and a ten inch spray from a large Tatzylwurm is very useful.
3. And finally, I probably shouldn’t take a list thrown together in five minutes against our very good Menoth player. Getting Eiryss killed early didn’t help either.

So time to return to the drawing board, or at least the iPad and War Room.

With my second Griffon finally finished, my Epic Vyros list is finally ready for the field so he is the first warcaster for me to try out. This list is designed to be a bit of an infantry brick to take advantage of the excellent Deflection spell, but there are also enough myrmidons to make use of Synergy and turn Discordia into a bit of a monster.

This is really different from my usual playstyle, so I thought it would be good to try something else very different.

Looking at the models I want to play, Dahila and Skarath are quite high on the list because they add another heavy to the field, and better still, it is a heavy that requires no focus from my caster (the elves seems to be a bit focus greedy at the best of times). And in the absence of Stormfall archers, Skarath’s spray is a great answer to high armour single wound infantry and Stealth.

I also want to start using my Houseguard Halberdiers as a jamming unit (this is a new concept, at least to me), and with their new Thane, there are some interesting possibilities to get them up the field faster, and to keep them there longer.

With these two units in mind, I looked at the various Retribution warcasters and decided to take a second look at Rahn. Much like Ossyan, the Adeptus and I have had a troubled past; but Polarity Shield on the Halberdiers, and Telekinesis for setting up juicy targets for Skarath both have a lot of merit.

Although Battle Mages always seemed a little ‘meh’, Magisters are great and get a lot of mileage from Rahn’s feat, which is why I have built a second one. To replace the Battle Mages, I have a unit of my trusty Stormfall Archers, so my list looks something like this…

Adeptis Rahn
Slyls Wyshnalyrr, The Seeker
Banshee
Phoenix

Dahlia Hallyr
Skarath

Houseguard Halberdiers (Leader & 9 Grunts)
Halberdier Officer & Standard
Stormfall Archers (Leader & 3 Grunts)

House Shyeel Magister
House Shyeel Magister
Arcanist
Houseguard Thane
Mage Hunter Assassin
Mage Hunter Assassin

Like all Rahn lists, it will struggle against anything preventing magical attacks or movement effects, but Epic Vyros or Ossyan can cover those matchups. Although the Houseguard Thane isn’t released until the end of January, I am hopeful to test this lot early in the new year.

Other Madness

And finally, for anyone that pays attention to this sort of thing, the guys over at the Removed from Play podcast have been posting up some rather fun quizzes in association with Broken Egg Games (the latest one was particularly good). One of the hosts, Emanuel Class (aka Bloodrath), is also starting Retribution, so I suspect there maybe some elf related insight on the podcast as well over the coming weeks.

Anyway, that’s enough from me, time to finish the Christmas shopping methinks!