Althran's Host

[Althran]

Hi all you honorable citizens of Ulthuan,

Welcome to my army blog!

Here I will be sharing the painting, planning and battles of my High Elves (and maybe some of their forest cousins).

A bit about me:

My first brush with warhammer was the release of MESBG and a box of numenoreans, and later the mines of moria set, whose remnants still lurk in my parents' attic.
I fell in love with high elves at age 11 (i think) right around the release of 7th edition (hence my profile pic)I swiftly acquired (via christmas gifts) some metal white lions, a white lion chariot, Korhil and a bolt thrower.

Reading the army book and the WE armybook religiously on long train rides, meticulously noting the units and comparing them to my own small collection is a core memory for me.
I am still on the hunt for those books.

I kept painting for a few years, but lost interest once I became (wrongly) convinced that girls would find my hobby a deciding factor in not talking to me, I am sure many here can relate.
After high school I had a shitty and stressful job, and spurned on by the recent release of total war warhammer 1, I went up to the attic and brought back my favorite pointy eared lads.
Painting up those models from my childhood was a an excellent decompression habit after work, and I have been hooked ever since.
Imagine my surprise when I realized that my childhoold army(ies) had all been canned in favor of AOS, so I scoured the internet and slowly grew a small force. My initial plan was to paint at least one unit of each, along with the character models, which I have largely kept.

I tried a few games of AOS proxying my Helves as lumineth which honestly felt a bit depressing as I wanted to experience the lore and storycrafting that comes from playing with an army rooted in the universe of the game. I also had one terrible game of 7th ed against dwarves where I got beaten soundly, if there is interest ill write a humorous account of that.

I have been lurking around here for over a year now, reading many of the excellent army blogs, painting guides and mostly strategy guides following TOWs release.
Special mention to the cavalry prince for some excellent discussions, that really taught me a lot about how to assess our units.

So now that I have long-windedly introduced myself to all of you, its time to get to the business of what models I have painted up, and which I am painting up currently:

I started by painting up some test models for my different units, and as I am frankly a quite slow painter I enjoy taking my time with them:
Swordmaster in the colors of saphery, currently making a unit of these:

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Silver helms:

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A small bolt thrower diorama I made after stripping my childhood paint job off the models:

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White lion champion and a Korhil mini I painted up for oldendemon, the difference between them is two years roughly:

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Regiment of 20 Saphery archers I recently finished:

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Sister of Avelorn test model:

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Whats on the workbench today ?:

I am preparing for a small 1000 pts intro game to TOW with a friend who plays empire, so I have been painting up my namesake.

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Tune in for next write up when I share some wood elves, and progress on Althran, and potentially even the results of my first TOW battle.

Thanks for reading this far !

[TyrrenAzureblade]

Phenomenal! Can't wait to see an army shot once you have enough elves painted up.

[Prince of Spires]

They look amazing. The blue-yellow-white works really well together. I love how it both feels traditional and fresh. So keep the pictures coming! Also, +1 for an army shot

As a side note, I think most people are slow painters. It takes a while to get all the little bits of an elf model painted. There's so much stuff on them. So don't worry about that. If you keep at it, you'll look back at some point and realize you suddenly own 10.000 pts of High Elves... Also, find a friend to play with who doesn't care if all models are painted or not, and who will let you proxie models. That way, you can try out stuff faster than if you need everything assembled and painted.

And I'd love to read the humorous account of your run in with the dwarves. I'd just call it a tactical retreat instead of a loss

[Althran]

Hi All you wonderful fans of all things pointy eared.

@TyrrenAzureBlade and @Prince of Spires thank you for your kind words about my models and the advice on starting to play! I plan to proxy a combo of spears and archers for sea guard for my first game.

I am mostly writing these entries to give a sort of journal to myself about the status of my backlog of high elf and wood elf figures (no dwindling population of elves here).
It is a pleasant surprise that my last entry got two more responses than I expected!

For this entry I have dug out all my painted high elves, since 100% of responders requested an army shot.

I haven’t yet played my intro game of TOW, but for your enjoyment here is a short account of my first and only foray into WHFB 7th ed, or why I learned to stop worrying and dislike dwarfs:

So I had played two intro games to AOS in my local GW store, both of which was me trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and promptly seeing my lovingly painted models get clobbered first by some goblins and then by some ironjawz. The highlight of the second game was watching my flames pyre phoenix get killed by an orc shaman in melee, I think at that point I decided that I did not understand this strange game.

Well the manager at the local GW was a nice guy and even though his intro-sportsmanship skills left something to be desired, he wrote me an email a few weeks later saying that someone had asked if they ever run any WHFB in store. He asked if he could forward my info, to which I agreed.
Now I consider myself someone who has perfectly passable social skills, and I think that this extends to group I regularly paint with. I had read that pick up intro games could be rough but I figured that it couldn’t be that bad….. right ?

So I met up with this guy who was going to run dwarfs 7th ed. He had insisted on 7th edition even though I had the 8th edition HE book, but not to worry he had the 7th ed one for my army as well. “Fine” I thought, “what do I know, its not like I have tried any of them”.
I asked if we could meet for a beer maybe and he could give a run-through of the gist of the game, to which he agreed, which ended up mostly being him rapidly riffling through the rulebook and reading “key parts” out loud. At this point I was fairly apprehensive, but “screw it !” I thought, “at least ill get to play my elves as actual elves!”.

Game day:
We met at the store and our 500 pt lists where a little something like this:
Me:
16 spears
2 eagles
8 white lions
Korhil

Him:
20 warriors

12 crossbows

1 lord

Now a small note of itemisation: I had decided against bringing any kind of wild stuff since I figured I would rather start out by just understanding the game, so no cloak of beards or magic etc. He however had decided that the “abridged” version of the game was plenty and had promptly decked out his lord with some anti magic item, a beefed up hammer that could be thrown (with killing blow I believe?).

Back to the game:
When I saw the layout of the battle I knew the game was rigged from the start. The store manager had decided to let me assault from the sea into a small dwarves village. This meant that my opponent deployed diagonally across from me inside a small fort with a narrow (5 x 20mm) wide entrance, with his missiles on a hill in the back of the walled section.

The game went something like this:

I moved my eagles behind the walls to hopefully fly over them and attack his missiles, while my infantry hurried through the entry. I spent an entire turn messing about that gate ( and getting shot in the process), because I was first advised to move through the gate, but since it was so narrow once I had done 50 % of the move I was told that I had to reform since one lion warrior was taking up exactly enough space such that the spear block couldn’t move through.

So after two turns of playing “Konga-line under fire” I finally got to the point of fighting which meant I charged my spearmen into him, the white lions to the flank, and the eagles to the crossbows hoping to stop them shooting into my units fighting his (a later google search told me that apparently this is not possible apparently). Korhil promptly got killed by his lord in a challenge, and then it was just me rolling a lot of dice which did nothing since all his units where impossibly well armoured, finally ending in my units routing and getting run down. During the slog fest my two eagles also got killed by a single line of crossbows.

So after spending several hours preparing, painting and playing I felt thoroughly demoralised and decided that:

Dont play randoms for intro games, play your friends instead
Research extensively
Adjust expectations I tried to do this by saying “hey man this is my first ever game could we just make it fun and casual ?”, apparently this needs further explaining….
I hate dwarfs

Phew, now that the dirty laundry is aired, here are some painting news:

I finished my namesake! This means that the next model on the bench is a wizard.

Thanks for reading all this way. Tune in next where I show some of our leafy cousins, and report from my first TOW battle.


See you next time !

Done Althran:

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Army pics:

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Next up:

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[Seredain]

Althran hail!

Dude if the amount of focus you’ve piled into these models is in anyway indicative of the stress levels you encounter at work then must be one stressed worker. They’re absolutely outstanding. Beautiful work - thanks for sharing!

I feel your pain with that dwarf game. Take solace from the fact that dwarfs are essentially unhappy people hiding their rage, disappointment and beer breath under those beards.

Let us raise a glass of fine wine to your hobby, and to honourable opponents!

[TyrrenAzureblade]

Sorry your experience was an un-fun one. That sounds like a bad time, and like your opponent definitely tailored their list away from the "casual and fun" end of the spectrum. I personally wouldn't play that person again. Regardless, your models are looking great! I hope you get some time to read and research your rule books so you'll be better prepared for next time. High Elves play very differently from edition to edition. If you haven't already read through the archives here, there's a lot of sound advice and strategy for High Elves through the history of the game system.

[Althran]

@Seredain
Lovely to see you here ! I have been reading your TOW tactics discussions with great interest. I am really keen on getting some TOW games in (first one the day after tomorrow, my friend and I are showing up to our FLGS with fully painted armies each.)
I definitely used to be stressed, now my job is more flexible but when I began it was all early mornings and getting yelled at.
Yeah I tried to make it an entertaining read, but the pain must have shone through haha. I agree with your assessment of dwarf players, the grumpy little gnomes!
I raise one back!

@Tyrren
Yeah it was a shitty time but you live and learn. Playing with randoms for intro games is not great haha. Thanks for the kind word on the models, it means a lot! Yes I have been devouring all tactica for TOW about HE that I could find. Currently I am thinking of a list for 1000 pt games that is :
Archmage lvl 4
noble on griffon

20 ish seaguard (mixed archers and spears proxied as sea guard)

bolt thrower

6-7 swordmasters or white lions

white lion chariot


The list is primarily formed by me only wanting to bring painted models and by being a slow painter !

[TyrrenAzureblade]

I just had my own less than enjoyable game against a player that had a very snippy and sharp attitude, and misused a lot of rules I was unfamiliar with. After the first turn, I just decided to throw the game to get out of there ASAP. It was a miserable waste of time.

Also, I have ~7 Island of Blood Lothern Sea Guard that are slightly damaged (all the quillons on the spearheads are broken off) I'd be willing to part with to a good home if you can cover shipping! I already have 30, and I don't think I'll be fielding more than that in TOW any time soon, unless maybe the Arcane Journal makes them overpowered...

[Althran]

@Tyrren
I am really sorry to hear that your game was shit, but seriously good on you for just calling it after the first turn. That person wasnt worth your time.

That is awfully kind of you, but full disclosure I already have 19 seaguard I just havent painted them and my friend and I have a rule to only bring painted models for the immersion.
I live in EU so it might be a bit too pricey if you are in the US.

And yes I am praying that the Arcane Journal will make the seaguard (and our infantry) in general more viable