The Blood of Elves - From Warhammer Fantasy to the Age of Sigmar

About 4 years ago, I began my first Warhammer project after being absent from the hobby for around 12 years; it was an army of High Elves for Fantasy Battle. I had this grand vision of really taking my time over the models in a way I hadn't when I was still a kid and developing a really cool, somewhat unique army.

I'm not the biggest fan of "following procedure" when it comes to colour schemes, and opted against the standard blue/white/silver associated with High Elves. I was heavily inspired by the palette of the Blood Elves in World of Warcraft; lots of red and gold with green accents. I steadily built up my army using a couple of Island of Blood sets and some tactically eBayed units; it got to a decent size and I enjoyed a few games with it.

Left: Spearman / Right: Eternal Guard
(Both painted by random internet humans)

There were a number of kits in the range I was never that keen on though; in particular, the Spearmen and Archers felt particularly dated and as a result I never finished painting them properly. I thought a bit about what I could do about that.When the Wood Elves got their new release, the answers fell in to place. Ugly High Elf Spearmen begone, I shall replace you with shiny new Eternal Guard models! White Lions? Pah! You shall be represented by much cooler Wildwood Rangers!

Then I started wondering if I could build a single Army that could reliably count-as any of the 3 Elven factions.... Eternal Guard could represent spearmen in both High Elf and Dark Elf armies, Sisters of Avelorn could make passable Waywatchers for the Wood Elves, Wildwood Rangers could be White Lions or Har Ganeth Executioners. With a bit of creativity, Witch Elves could pass as Wardancers. Of course, a few units are genuinely unique enough not to have analogues across factions, but my vision of a unified Elven army was coming together!

The End Times: Khaine

I started on the path by selling off my unwanted models, but the distraction of 40k and my primary army, the Minotaurs kept me from revisiting Fantasy until the End Times began. I was genuinely excited about that; a series of apocalyptic books actually pushing the story forward. I followed the narrative with interest and then as if preordained, what I had envisioned arrived! With Book 3, the
Elves were thrown together in to a single faction. I now had rules to support my idea! I did feel it was a missed opportunity in terms of new kits, given that the major players in ALL the other End Times books received such big support in terms of models. Regardless; I was still deeply entrenched with my 40k stuff and had no cash to spare on new models anyway, so I simply plotted.

Then, as we know, something major happened. The Warhammer setting was nuked in to oblivion by Games Workshop, and subsequently re-animated as a different game set in a different world; Age of Sigmar. In the grand scheme of things, I thought, it was a good job I hadn't invested the time and money to flesh out my unified Elven army. Now the Elves were being re-styled as Aelfs. I'd wait and see what the future would bring.

Fast forward to today, we're on the cusp of the release of the Grand Alliance: Order book for Age of Sigmar, and we finally know what has become of the Aelfs. The three old factions seem to have survived with their individuality intact, broken down further in to a number of distinct subfactions with their own themes (Phoenix Temple, Witch Cult and so on). This seems to be the method of Age of Sigmar; the entire Fyreslayers faction was essentially born out of a single unit type from the Fantasy Dwarfs range.

A number of model kits seem to be being retired, although it's primarily named characters who don't exist in the new setting and old metal/resin models. The main thing is though, I now know what I can safely buy for inclusion in my army! With the shattering of the Old World, it's actually become a lot more viable from a narrative point of view to fit all these disparate models together in a coherent way.  So, over time, my grand army of Elves will slowly come together.

The First Post

Yay! Here is the first post of my blog. It's basically here so I have something to use while fiddling around with themes and so on.

So the point of this blog will mainly be for me to talk crap to an audience of none, for my own amusement. Topics will variously include wargaming hobby things (specifically Games Workshop stuff i.e. Warhammer 40,000, Horus Heresy and Age of Sigmar) and video gamingy stuff (most likely to be Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and World of Warcraft at the moment, although I have an absolute boatload of games to get through in my Steam library!)


So just so I can have a picture in the post, here's a model I'm quite pleased with from my primary Warhammer 40k Army, Space Marines of the Minotaurs chapter:

Converted from the Forgeworld Eidolon miniature, with the addition of a Grav Pistol from the Tactical Marine kit, a helmet crest from the Sternguard box and a few pieces of Minotaurs Brass Etch. The smashed in helmet on the base belonged to a Marine of the Mantis Warriors chapter, one of the secessionist forces taking part in the Badab War.