I'd always wanted to do a High Elf army since I started WHFB in 6th ed, but the basic spearmen and archers were so absolutely terrible that I couldn't. I picked up some of the wonderful Isle of Blood models, but very strongly disliked the huge blocks of basic infantry that ruled 8th edition. Recently, Mantic Games released their Kings of War:Vanguard game, which gave me the excuse to paint up a Wood Elf warband from mixed GW and Runewars Latari figures. While waiting for the rest of the group to finish their warbands, I kept eyeballing some Eternal Guard I'd primed green years ago and always thought would make excellent High Elf Spearmen, so I painted one up in blue and silver and white and it snowballed into a whole army. Not just a Vanguard warband, it is that at the moment, but in the process it turned into the High Elf army I've wanted for 20 years. I plan to build and ideally paint it into a 7th ed army with the option of using the figs for Kings of War if I ever meet any other players. My old gaming buddy lives a couple hours drive and has his old dwarves, and that was the flimsiest excuse I needed to drop hundreds of dollars on hundreds of plastic toys I'd most likely never field

I've played one game of Vanguard with them now (GREAT game, very Mordheim inspired!) and also have a unit of slightly converted archers built, a chariot painted that just needs basing, and a unit of Dragon Princes half assembled. Beyond that, all unbuilt and on sprue I have 3 complete sets of Isle of Blood, 20 additional Seaguard, a Lion Chariot, a dragon mage, a few mounted and dismounted mages and princes, a unit of Silver Helms, 2 eagles, plus my old isle of blood set and 2 bolt throwers, and a unit of shadow warriors on order. Originally I was going to use Eternal Guard as Spearmen, but will instead likely use converted DE Dreadspears as the newer plastics look very high-elven if you give them sea guard spears, remove the shield emblems and leave the helmet crests off. I've got some coming in that I'll give it a try on and if it doesn't work, I'll just go with the original plan of Eternal Guard
First up is the completed Vanguard Warband. Phone images look a
little posterized, not sure if it's my phone settings or just how these colors appear with a slight blur

The warjack is my counts-as treeman, it makes more sense to me that High Elves would use an arcane construct than an ent, that would be uncivilised


The guys that started it all. In the full army they will get shields, in Vanguard they act as my citizen levies

Inaugural run of the warband in Vanguard, they lost, but they looked oh-so-pretty doing it

Hopefully more images to come, there need to break away to finish an Infinity army for a tournament in a couple weeks, and I've been sidelined by Vanguard terrain and objectives in the meantime