Escalation League (week 2) recap & Week 3 preview

Here's a few random thoughts: I like 8th edition*, I like the store I found, and blocks of Saurus Warriors are best ignored or evaded. You most likely won't seal the deal without devoting a -lot- of resources to the melee.





Week 2 was another good time and this time I managed a win. My opponent was a really cool father that had his kid in the league too. (He was distracted a bit but I didn't mind. I'm sure his kid was having a blast.) This game was vs. Lizardmen again in a cool Fantasy-esque mission where our forces vied for the possession of warpstone tokens, which were worth a random number of victory points at the end of the game.

For next week, I bought another unit of Glade Riders, some Waywatchers, and two of the new generic pieces of wargear (from the back of the rulebook) for my Noble.

130 Wood Elf Noble w/HoDA
Elven Steed, Light Armour, Charmed Shield, Luckstone, Spear

129 Glade Riders (x5) w/Musician

129 Glade Riders (x5) w/Musician

126 Glade Guard (x10) w/Musician
THIS UNIT GAINED -Quick to Fire- AT THE CONCLUSION OF GAME2

126 Glade Guard (x10) w/Musician

144 Dryads (x12)

096 Dryads (X8)

120 Waywatchers (x5)

1000

* = so far

Wood Elf List for Escalation League (week 2)

Last week was fun, but I lost. Apparently comets aren't good for anyone's health... who knew? This week I get to add 250 pts to my army which is cool. Noble gets to ride a horse now and I get more trees and bows. My strat? Shoot em and stick em lol

I'm gonna try to take pictures this week. Good times are distracting and all. Here's the list. Any advice on going to 1k from my readers?

123 Wood Elf Noble w/HoDA
Elven Steed, Light Armour, Shield, Spear

129 Glade Riders (x5) w/Musician

126 Glade Guard (x10) w/Musician
THIS UNIT GAINED -Quick to Fire- AT THE CONCLUSION OF GAME2

126 Glade Guard (x10) w/Musician

144 Dryads (x12)

096 Dryads (x8)

744

Wood Elf List for Escalation League (week 1)

I'll be playing my first game with the new edition today and it'll be for a league at our local store, so it should be a blast. Below you can see the list I'm using. It's an escalation league so it starts out small and the game size increases over the course of the following weeks. I'd post more thoughts but 500 pts doesn't allow for a lot of that.. and I don't know what I'll be playing against. Hope this does well for me.

103 Wood Elf Noble w/HoDA

126 Glade Guard (x10) w/Musician

126 Glade Guard (x10) w/Musician

144 Dryads (x12)

499

Wardancer Pictures

Now that I've painted this unit of Wardancers I can field a 2,250 pt army. This is my 'tabletop' standard. I don't really care for these sculpts and if I continue to play Fantasy after the new edition comes out I'll probably be starting a new army with an '8th Ed' Army Book.

Treeman

I traded for a Treeman and some other WE stuff over on Santa Cruz Warhammer's Barter Bucket. He's apparently missing a leg bit, (which I didn't notice in the pics and wasn't told about), but other than that I'm happy with how he came out. I threw together the base today and everything else came pretty easily.

'counts-as' Waywatchers Pics

Well, this is the only 'free' unit I've ever been able to squeeze out plastic kits so I'm thinking this idea might take off a little bit for a few of you. I really like all the the little forest-spirits that come extra with the WE plastics, and decided I'd try to use them as some sort of unit.

The Wood Elf army book describes and portrays many different guardians of the forest and obviously doesn't really encompass all of them so I decided to take the 'roots attack!' theme from the Treeman and apply it over to some little sniper-esque spirit guys. Lucky for me, GW even included the roots on the sprue. I added a Forest Dragon tusk to one of the bases to suggest that perhaps the spirits are defending the sacred ground where an Elder Dragon took his final breath and left his body behind for the fertility of Athel Loren.

Picture courtesy Timothy Smith Photo

Glade Rider Pictures

I'm pretty pleased with myself. I finally got around to making a decent little light-tent. My good friend and partner in bass Tim Smith helped me. (helps that he's a professional photographer lol) Anyways we snapped a few pics of my Glade Riders as well as my counts-as Waywatchers on his camera and he even touched them up for me before I left. Make sure to click over to Tim's blog for a minute, he's got some amazing stuff.

Battle for the New Year! (1800 WE vs LM)

Check out these pics from our game last night! It was pretty fun with a little craziness abounding. Larry pulled off a well-deserved win with multiple devastating comet spells; one of them popped @ the bottom of the first turn.. (it incinerated 7/10 glade guard and made the other 3 run!)

My forest dragon did pretty well but I think I'm going to invest in Oaken Armour so my Highborn stops dying so much. I can't complain though, Larry skillfully rolled 11(!) impact hits on a flank charge and my High Noble took quite a few of them and died before combat that round. Guess I'll watch out for that from now on..

Overrall I was pretty happy with how much I did manage to kill despite a few devastating magic phases from Larry. His war of attrition approach to the game ended up working out for him. With so many bodies it was hard for me to really dent his force. Cold-blooded worked to his advantage quite a few times.

You might see a few units pictured that I haven't featured in their own posts yet. I decided to make a cheap DIY lightbox and haven't gotten around to it yet. Expect higher quality pics soon!

WE and DE face-off

Not a whole ton to say, except that everything died. The Cauldron allowed a stupid amount of saves on the hydra, who, with the help of the chariot, saw off my Highborn and Dragon. (I got revenge on the hydra, dealing the last few wounds with my mounted Noble). I shot the manticore up right before he finally made it to me, but the guy riding it scared a whole unit of Glade Guard off the board, and followed them because he was so pissed.

We both had inbetween 650 and 700 left after 6 turns. It was one of the most enjoyable and hard fought games of Fantasy I've played. Here's the list I used, followed by end-game pics. Hopefully Larry will post his for everyone to check out. Hope you guys/gals enjoy this mini-report! (more pics next time - I get distracted by playing lol)

Note: We are aware that Lords are used at 2k and above, but allow them now because I am still working towards owning the models I need.

571 Highborn riding a Forest Dragon
Light Armour, Enchanted Shield, Stone of the Crystal Mere
Spear, Bow of Loren & Arcane Bodkins

145 Wood Elf Noble w/HoDA
Elven Steed, Light Armour, Shield, Great Weapon, Helm of the Hunt

187 Lvl 2 Spellsinger
Elven Steed, 2x Dispel Scroll

240 Waywatchers (x10)

126 Glade Guard (x10) w/Musician

126 Glade Guard (x10) w/Musician

129 Glade Riders (x5) w/Musician

129 Glade Riders (x5) w/Musician

144 Dryads (x12)

1798

WE Army Pictures

Here's what I have so far. (shown in the shoddy picture above) My plans right now are to paint my glade riders and waywatchers, and then to acquire another box of dryads (so I can go 3x8) and a treewoman to finish my 2k list. (I'll be dropping a unit of glade riders to make everything fit.)

High Noble on Forest Dragon Pictures

Finally got around to gettin this guy to a nice standard, though I may go back at some point and work on him a little bit more. On this piece I further developed my style of colored source-lighting and I'm pretty happy with how it worked. Check out his load-out, followed by some pictures.

571 Highborn riding a Forest Dragon
Light Armour, Enchanted Shield, Stone of the Crystal Mere
Spear, Bow of Loren & Arcane Bodkins

(I'm thinking the Bow of Loren / Arcane Bodkins combo should help me deal with heavy calvary on turn one.)

New Dryad Pictures

I'll be picking up some more shortly so I can have 3 units of 8.

Glade Guard (now w/Movement Tray!)

WIP High Noble on Dragon

Took a few pics of the mounted Noble I finished today..

568 Highborn riding a Forest Dragon
Shield, Oaken Armour, SoCM, Sword of Might

Spellsinger & Glade Guard Pics

Lvl 2 Spellsinger w/2xDispel Scroll






a few finished Glade Guard (the muted theme doesn't translate too well in pictures). I'll have pics of the unit with it's movement tray when the tray is done.

Paint scheme for my Wood Elves

Thought I'd share my color pallet for this project with our readers. I'd also like to mention how much I enjoy using GW's new washes. Devlan Mud does about everything and all of them seem to have a just about perfect pigment to water ratio.

Pictures of my Dryads