Seeing red

Toy Soldier tickets became available today and I signed up as quickly as I could ... only to get a shock afterwards when I read the WHFB rules pack.

If you've been following things I've been collecting and painting the elves since the end of last year with the hazy idea of getting back into WHFB and taking the army to a couple of tournaments. Well, it turns out that the army list I have been aiming towards falls foul of the event's comp restrictions - in short I'd have to lose two rare slots (eagles or bolt throwers) and the dragon. I could try and build an army which would work under those restrictions but it would mean buying and painting up a whole load more stuff which is a real blow when I thought I was so close to finishing.

With the release of the Blood Angels codex I have decided to jump ship and play 40k instead as I already have what I need bought and painted and I'll just need to do a few minor tweaks to get a nice list under the new rules. There's a remote chance that the events rules may be tweaked but with 40k filling up fast I didn't want to run the risk of not being able to go at all. TS is a fantastic event and its also a chance to a weekend away with friends, not being able to go at all was not an option I wanted to be left with.

Right now I'm quite sad about the whole thing, it feels like over the last few months I have been wasting my time on this project. As well as playing a few games with a more competative army than my Orcs I had hoped to be able to bring my shiny new army to the even and showcase the Mantic range to a whole host of people who might not have seen them up close before. I've also ducked out of another tournament that I was hoping to go to later in the year.

The shape (and colour) of things to come.

Yes I'm still plugging away with the high elves but I'm also getting excited by the forthcoming release of the new Blood Angels codex for Warhammer 40k. One of their fun new toys is a drop ship called the Storm Raven. GW haven't come up with a model for it yet bit I'm itching to try one out on the table so I bought a Corvus VTOL to use as a proxy.

Out of the box:-


WIP shot:-


Its probably a lot smaller than the official model will be but at £12.99 its also a lot cheaper than it will be too.

Oh and a quick thumbs up for Wargames Workshop whose service seems to be very quick with cheap postage too. Thanks chaps.

Workbench update

Some cavalry very much in progress.

Back to the slow lane

No major progress to report.

Everything I ordered for the army has now arrived and the cavalry bolt thrower + crew and mage are all assembled under coated and in some cased part painted.

For various reasons I have not managed to get in a proper painting session for a while so I have been trying to do some of the tasks which don't require much skill or attention which is why I have been doing the easy bits on new miniatures rather than finishing off ones I have already started.

One other point of note ... I seem to have also ended up buying 20 more High Elf spear men. Originally I got a box of 10 for conversions and possibly chariot crew and then I got a command box to go with it and now I don't know what to do. For Warhammer a second unit of spears doesn't make much sense right now but maybe this will change with 8th edition or maybe Mantic's rule set will materialise at some point and make them relevant. For now they sit in their boxes with their wrappers intact until I work out what to do.

Is it a bird?

Nope.



A plane?

Noooo.



Is it finished?

Not quite yet.