Wood Elf Hobby Progress

The lead-up to Bendigo Besieged was a bit of a hurry for me. It probably shouldn't have been, but it turns out I was fighting some health issues that were affecting my energy levels, and it made a relatively small job feel like a major undertaking. I had decided to take Wood Elves into the tournament because I never really got a chance to use the 8th edition Wood Elf book. This is all well and good, but for all that I've had a Wood Elf army for nearly 30 years, it's generally not been my go-to force for most of that time. The army has suffered a fair bit of neglect, and it needed work.

I decided I wanted to use a Lord on Stag, as it was a comp bonus and worked OK with my silly Moonstone of the Hidden Ways plans. I had a model that I picked up second-hand at some point, but it wasn't painted - I had never used it before. I also decided to include Waywatchers. I had never used them before either, so they were obviously not painted either. And I wanted to use Wardancers, which I hadn't used since 5th edition... And their paint jobs reflected this.

I did hatch these plans weeks in advance, so there should have been time to deal with all of these issues, as well as sundry extra things like an extra Warhawk Rider. I dragged my feet a while, but eventually knuckled down and got most of what I needed done. There were some other things I might have added like a new BSB and even a more suitable Spellweaver, but I was running out of time and I got distracted near the end by doing some extra stuff for a friend's army at the last minute.

Anyway, these models have already appeared in my report of the tournament, but here are some better shots of them.

Yeah, his spear is bent. Not sure when that happened, but I'm worried the paint will immediately fall off if I bend it back. I'm not a big fan of this model. Wood Elves from this era in general seem to be covered in layers of nick-knacks and details, and if you're trying to use a relatively limited colour palette, you end up looking for endless variations of the same colours to try and pick things out. I prefer the older models. This guy in particular is not really posed well for a general - leaning forward, his face half-covered in a mask and leaning into his own shoulder.

Bendigo Besieged Aftermath - Part 5

This is the final part of my tournament report. You can find the previous part here, or go back to the start here.

Game 5 - Battleline
Tim Jarman - Empire

• Marius Leitdorf, Elector Count of Averland with Full Plate Armour, Barded Steed, The Averland Runefang
• Battle Wizard (Level 2, Lore of Fire) with Dispel Scroll
• Warrior Priest with Additional Hand Weapon, Light Armour
• 20 Free Company Militia with Additional Hand Weapons, Champion
• 10 Handgunners
• 8 Inner Circle Knights with Full Plate Armour, Barding, Lance, Shield, Full Command
• 28 Spearmen with Light Armour, Spears, Shields, Full Command
• 3 Demigryph Knights with Full Plate Armour, Barding, Shields, Halberds
• 25 Flagellants with Flails, Champion
• Great Cannon
• 24 Greatswords with Great Weapons, Full Plate Armour, Full Command
• Mortar
• Helblaster Volley Gun
• Steam Tank

My final game would be against an Empire army that had managed a comp score of 10, so it should suggest a relatively even fight. Much of the threat from the list came from the Steam Tank and artillery, but I was sure it would be just fine...

Marius Leitdorf! He must be one of my favourite characters in Warhammer. A lunatic with a deadly blade who can receive tactical instructions from his horse...

Bendigo Besieged Aftermath - Part 4

This is part 4 of my report of a recent tournament. You can find the previous part here, or go back to the start here.

Game 4 - Dawn Attack
Lachlan Hutchinson - High Elves

• Prince with Light Armour, Lion Cloak, Shield, Great Weapon, Blade of Leaping Gold, Talisman of Endurance
• Handmaiden of the Everqueen with Light Armour, Spear, Bow of Avelorn, Sword of Striking
• Mage (Level 2, Lore of Beasts)
• Mage (Level 2, High Magic)
• 30 Spearmen with Spears, Shields, Light Armour, Full Command
• 30 Spearmen with Spears, Shields, Light Armour, Full Command
• 20 Archers with Longbows, Musician
• 20 Archers with Longbows, Musician
• 25 White Lions of Chrace with Great Weapons, Heavy Armour, Lion Cloaks, Full Command
• 20 Sisters of Avelorn with Light Armour, Bows of Avelorn
• Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower
• Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower

Right, so first off, this is the strangest High Elf list I've ever seen. It must have been about a 7 for comp, but frankly it deserved more. The list put out a lot of shooting, but that was probably its main redeeming feature. It had none of the elements you'd normally expect to find, toughening up the combat potential of the army. The Prince lacked punch, the Mages had no items at all. The army had no BSB, cavalry, or monsters. It did feel like a proper citizen levy-based High Elf army. But it also felt under-powered, even against my 11 comp Wood Elves.

At this point I had lost 2 of my 3 games, although my battle points were not looking too bad because I'd managed to avoid big losses. I believe the match-ups were being done simply on wins and losses, so presumably Lachlan was also on a single win up until this point. 

Lachlan's army was an interesting mix of Citadel models and 3D prints that he had actually designed himself. The Spearmen and Archers (by far the bulk of his army) were all his doing. I was very impressed.

These Spearmen could do with some shields and paint, but they do look the part.

These ones look a bit more complete. The Bolt Thrower crew were also his digital handiwork.

The Archers were his doing too, although the Mage is a digital kitbash based on a Last Sword model.

It was Dawn Attack again, so we were rolling to see where our units went. Nothing too dramatic happened there. Lachlan ended up with a Spearmen unit by itself on the flank, and my Dryads were across from them (the Waywatchers appeared there later, when I couldn't find a good place to deploy them near the High Elf lines).

Bendigo Besieged Aftermath - Part 3

This is part 3 of my report of a recent tournament. You can find the previous part here, or go back to the start here.

Game 3 - Blood and Glory
Chad Smith - Beastmen

• Beastlord with Great Weapon, Armour of Destiny
• Great Bray-Shaman (Level 4, Lore of Death) with Talisman of Preservation
• Wargor with Battle Standard, Heavy Armour, Shield, Gnarled Hide, Beast Banner
• Bray Shaman (Level 1, Lore of Shadow) with Herdstone Shard
• Bray Shaman (Level 1, Lore of Beasts) with Dispel Scroll
• 39 Gor Herd with 2 Hand Weapons, Full Command
• 20 Gor Herd with 2 Hand Weapons, Full Command
• 33 Bestigor Herd with Heavy Armour, Great Weapons, Full Command, Standard of Discipline
• 10 Ungor Raiders
• 10 Ungor Raiders
• 10 Ungor Raiders
• Tuskgor Chariot
• Tuskgor Chariot
• Razorgor
• Razorgor
• 5 Harpies with Scout

Apparently Chad's comp score was -1, which I think was the worst I faced in the event. Beastmen unfortunately tend to be faced with the choice of either going hard with their list, or getting smashed. Chad had opted for the former approach. As it was being laid out opposite me, I wasn't feeling great about the chances of my squishy Wood Elf list...

The scenario was a variant of Blood and Glory, where breaking the enemy army didn't end the game - it just granted 600 bonus victory points. It still meant the deployment zones were closer together than normal, with dead zones on the flanks.

 

Chad had pretty much complete control of the deployment phase, with piles of low value units to place before he put down anything important. I put the Glade Guard on the hill, the Treekin and Lord behind a forest they could teleport from (if they got the chance), and did my best with the rest of the stuff without knowing exactly where the key enemy stuff was going to be.

Bendigo Besieged Aftermath - Part 2

This is part 2 of my report of a recent tournament. You can find the previous part here.

Game 2 - Dawn Attack
Harry Pearse - Dwarfs

• Lord on Shieldbearers with Gromril Armour, Great Weapon*, Shield, 2 Runes of Striking, Rune of Might, Rune of Iron, Rune of Preservation, Rune of Stone
• Runesmith with Gromril Armour, Shield, 2 Runes of Spellbreaking
• Thane with Battle Standard, Gromril Armour, Shield, Master Rune of Grugni
• Thane with Gromril Armour, Shield, Dwarf Pistol, Rune of Stone
• 50 Dwarf Warriors with Heavy Armour, Shields, Full Command
• 10 Thunderers 
• Cannon 
• Grudge Thrower with Rune of Accuracy, Rune of Penetrating
• Gyrocopter with Brimstone Gun
• 35 Hammerers with Heavy Armour, Shields, Great Weapons, Full Command
• 10 Miners with Heavy Armour, Great Weapons, Champion
• Organ Gun with Rune of Accuracy

*When I first read through Harry's list, I assumed he'd decided that Strength 4 on his Lord was enough, provided that it would double against Toughness 5 or more. It turns out he'd missed the rule saying the great weapon counts as a hand weapon anyway because of the runes. In Harry's defence, it took several of us waaay too long to find the rule in the book that we all knew was there somewhere. I had actually given up and decided they must have dropped the rule in the latest book when someone finally spotted it right where we had all been looking. 

Honestly, against my list the great weapon probably didn't matter much anyway. The Lord was sitting happily in a unit of 35 Hammerers, along with every other character in the army. I guess it's what you would call a "traditionalist" Dwarf approach. Take every egg you can find, and stuff it in the Hammerer basket. Not the way I do things, but I'm a weirdo and not really a proper Dwarf player. When we went to KFC immediately before, Harry put his name is as Grombrindal up on the screen. I should really just defer to his superior Dwarf cred...

The scenario was Dawn Attack, which means you do have to nominate units for your characters before rolling to see where they all end up. I've been cruelled by this a couple of times, but this time the dice were merciful and my deployment more or less made sense.

That is certainly a unit. 

Bendigo Besieged Aftermath - Part 1

It's been a while since my last post. In actual fact, the last time I posted on the blog, I was recounting my experience at a 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy tournament. Well I'm back again, ready to talk about another tournament I have attended - but this time it's for 8th edition! If this is confusing for you, rest assured that it confuses me too. I had to double-check so many rules to confirm whether I was in the right edition or not. Anyway...

Bendigo Besieged is into its 3rd year, having kicked off back when we were in the middle of COVID lockdowns and the general chaos around that. I wasn't able to make it as a result, and the next year it proved impossible as well. But this time I finally made it, and it was great to see people keen to play some games of 8th edition. There were 18 players, which is apparently a new record for them. But it was also the first 8th edition tournament I've actually played since the End Times blew everything up all those years ago, and also probably the first multi-day Warhammer tournament of any edition I've played since then, apart from Cancon (which barely counts, as it's part of a larger convention that gives it the pull it needs). Very frequently nowadays, it seems that people are unable or unwilling to commit to a 2 day event. They are very few and far between. It amazes me that this is actually my 4th Warhammer tournament this year. Before this year, I don't think I had played one of any edition since End Times, contenting myself with Kings of War as the old Fantasy community was scattered to the winds. 

When I committed to this tournament, I decided I wanted to use Wood Elves. I never really got to use the 8th edition Wood Elf book when it came out, because its arrival prompted every man and his dog to suddenly pull out their dust-covered army and bring them to events. I am not really keen on being part of the "problem", when it comes to one army being a craze that results in far too many of one army flooding a tournament. So I decided to sit back, wait out the storm, and use them when people had calmed down and moved on. Except then the Warhammer world ended and I never got the chance. So now, some 9 years later, this was finally my chance.

I had a few ground rules for myself, based on my reading of the army book and what I saw at events back in the day. I would not use Trueflight Arrows. They were a no-brainer choice that was absolutely everywhere in people's tournament lists. I wouldn't hate them so much if it wasn't for True Line of Sight, which basically ends up meaning nearly everything can see everything all the time. You can't hide from the, and they don't miss much. And they're relatively cheap. Very balanced. My other thing to avoid was Wild Riders, because they were also one of the key go-to options. They're not as broken as Trueflight Arrows, but they're the ultimate glass cannons and hit unreasonably hard. I wouldn't mind taking one unit of them, but they were indeed everywhere - so I decided to avoid them. 

Previous years of Bendigo Besieged had avoided a comp pack, but apparently that had seen some pretty tough stuff appearing. So instead they went the complete opposite approach, and brought in a vast swathe of criteria known as Highlander comp. This rewarded taking no duplicates in a list ("there can be only one", hence the Highlander reference), and tried to make known problems down whilst encouraging things perceived as softer, like a big unit of Empire Spearmen, not taking a proper mage, a dispel scroll, or a BSB. In fact I've never seen so many 8th ed armies without BSBs. An army's comp score could be as low as you liked, but it maxed out at +10 for a soft list. Naturally I promised myself I would get maximum comp by taking a compromised list. In the end, my score was actually an 11, in true Spinal Tap fashion. What's softer than soft? I am! I still only got 10 points, of course...

• Glade Lord on Great Stag with Moonstone of the Hidden Ways, Armour of Destiny, Shield, Spear
• Spellweaver (Level 4, High Magic) with Talisman of Preservation
• Glade Captain with Battle Standard, Hail of Doom Arrow, Great Weapon, Light Armour
• Branchwraith
• 20 Glade Guard with Standard, Musician, Swiftshiver Shafts (multi-shot arrows)
• 23 Dryads with Champion
• 4 Warhawks with Champion
• 8 Wardancers with Champion
• 6 Treekin with Champion
• Treeman
• 6 Waywatchers
• Great Eagle