The Sons of Caledor’s Final Recruit

I decided not to buy any more Warhammer Fantasy models. My High Elf army has reached 2500 points, and that, I feel… is that. Sure, it’s not the best group of models out there and I can’t even use everything in a 2500 list (which was my initial goal but I overshot by buying 1 extra unit box). So with a surplus of 2 Heroes/Lords on Griffons, 2 Mages and the Loremaster of Hoeth, this is the final list I came up with to at least look cool on the table:

(psst… it has dragons!)

Prince General, riding a Star Dragon, wearing Dragon Armour and Enchanted Shield, wielding a Biting Blade: 565 points.

Noble Battle Standard Bearer, wearing Dragon Armour and Shield of the Merwyrm, wielding a longbow and Luckstone: 130 points.

Dragon Mage of Caledor, riding a Sun Dragon and carrying a Dispel Scroll: 375 points.

35 Lothern Sea Guards with added shields, full command complement: 450

10 Ellyrian Reavers, with added bows, full command complement: 220

20 Swordmasters of Hoeth, with full command complement: 290

10 Dragon Princes of Caledor, with full command complement: 320

10 Sisters of Avelorn with High Sister: 150

Total: 2500 on the dot.

I have to be honest with you, the General is not the best equipped as he should’ve been. In fact, why his total equipment only comes up to 35 points is because he’s just the delivery system to get the Star Dragon down right and nasty with an infantry block. Same deal with the Dragon Mage. The magic is just bonus, really.

I’m putting the Reavers as a single block instead of traditionally splitting them up into 2 smaller harassment units for 3 reasons:

1. In Blood and Glory, I know there’s a mobile unit with a standard still running around and denying points to the enemy.

2. A 10 man spear charge can be delightful.

3. They don’t panic when 2 of them die for whatever reason.

Same deal with the Dragon Princes. Thanks to the addition of the standard bearer and musician, they can dish out a lot more hurt on the charge then they would have in smaller units of 5.

The BSB is also better protected for fewer points compared to my previous versions of the list. Granted, it doesn’t protect against everything well, but it’s enough.

I played this list once and it has the trouble of covering ground due to the shrinking number of units. I spread it out a bit too much last time but I couldn’t help but wonder if a more compact and dedicated formation would be better for the army.

The only parts that can switch around between lists is the Lords and Heroes category. It’s impossible to add in more to the core army numbers because that would involve buying more models. As it is, it looks pretty decent and neat. Enough to hold my ground at least till 9th Ed shows up.

How to make practically free army movement trays for WHFB

If you have bought a Warhammer product before, chances are they’ll be in plastic and it’ll comes in a box. Movement trays are integral to a game of Warhammer Fantasy as it speeds things up as you move your regiment over the battlefield. The only problem is procuring a set of GW army trays can get expensive to cover a 2,500 point army.

What I did was cut up the boxes in squares that I want my regiment to fill in, setting aside an extra 1 cm horizontally and 5mm vertically. Then I cut up the frames of the sprues, clean them and glue them on 3 edges of the cut out cardboard. All it needs now is some paint and a bit of flocking on the plastic edges. I use white glue to attach the plastic sprue onto the cardboard.

And there you go. It’ll take you about 5 minutes to finish one tray of any size. I used up the sprue frames and boxes from 1 Dragon Prince unit box and 1 Dragon box to do mine, and I still have half a Dragon box left over for future trays if I need them.

So is 10 quid worth 5 minutes of your time (per tray)? You decide.

Quartering Points (A Warhammer army guide)

Not really much of a guide, but it’s kinda what I’m basing through to plan for my current army. Normally around my parts it’s a 2.5k game. Quartering that would give me 625 points. This number is significant for this point range because it is exactly the threshold of the entire army composition in WFB (which is 25%).

For a hero-tastic(but squishy) list, you can opt for this:

25% Lord
25% Heroes
25% Core
25% Special/Rare

But I always fancy a High Elf army with lots of boots on the ground, so I’m going to turn it around slightly, like so:

25% Lord/Hero
25% Core
25% Special
25% Rare

How would quartering help? Well, for a fresh army, it would help you with your purchases if you can manage micro purchases within that quarter. For example, my Lord/Hero quarter would give me:

Prince on Moon Dragon, Dragon armour, Enchanted Shield, Crown of Altrazar & Biting Blade = 505
Level 2 Mage OR BSB Noble with barded steed, heavy armour, shield, lion cloak = 120

Instead of scratching my head to fit in double dragons in my army, only 1 would suffice to bring the entire army together in a coherent-ish fashion. Not only that, but if you bought one of each model of your faction, this method will promote mix, match and rotate your models in your lists to tailor for different configuration.

Sounds cool? Kinda. While this method does give you an avenue to save a bit of money by optimizing your expenditures in small bite size, you can go overboard and over buy stuff as well. But perhaps the best bit is that you can maintain your core throughout any of your list permutations and they’ll still come out okay. Also be warned that you might or might not be able to fit in your necessary habitual choices, like always having a mage and bsb, etc. So most of the time you will tend to cycle out your selection.

In any case, here’s what I came up with:

2,500 points, High Elf:

Lord/Hero:
Prince on Star Dragon, Charmed Shield, Ironcurse Icon = 540 (survive the first couple of cannon balls and fly in close for a terrifying charge. The Prince is a ticket to get the Star Dragon into the army anyway)
Level 1 High Magic Mage = 85 (passable. he’ll be really good if he rolls a Walk Between Worlds)

Core:
Lothern Sea Guard x35, shields, full command = 450
Ellyrian Reavers x5 = 80
Ellyrian Reavers x5, spears and bows = 95

Special:
Dragon Princes of Caledor x5 = 145
Dragon Princes of Caledor x5 = 145
Swordmasters of Hoeth x15 = 195
Shadow Warriors x10 = 140

Rare:
Sisters of Avelorn x10 = 140
Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower x3 = 210
Great Eagle = 50
Flamespyre Phoenix = 225 (easily worth other things but it’s more fun seeing a flaming bird in the middle of the battlefield)

It’s faster to build armies this way and you won’t have too many headaches.

Before I forget this new list….

The best toy for a miniatures wargamer is a calculator. Tonight, I mistakenly punched some numbers and came up with something AWESOME! It’s like I suddenly punched a magic number and everything clicked. Here’s my new and updated 2500 points list for my Caledor themed army:

(General) Prince on Star Dragon, heavy armour, Enchanted Shield, Crown of Altrazar, Star Lance and The Other Trickster’s Shard = 596

(Battle Standard Bearer) Noble on barded steed, heavy armour, lion cloak, shield, Khaine’s Ring of Fury = 145

Dragon Mage of Caledor, Charmed Shield = 355

Lothern Sea Guards x35, shields, full command = 450

Ellyrian Reavers x5, bows = 85

Ellyrian Reavers x5, spears and bows = 95

Dragon Princes of Caledor x16, full command (or split 9/7, with the 9 being the BSB bunker, it depends)= 494

Sisters of Avelorn x10 = 140

Eagle Claw Repeater Bolt Throwers x2 = 140

2 angry dragons with 1 equally angry rider, range control, heavy hitters, big block of awesome, BSB that doesn’t die too easily. Yup. I guess I didn’t miss anything.

Caledor revisited

After a few games of actually playing Warhammer Fantasy (which is more than I can say of Warmachine back then), I’m starting to appreciate the virtue of a mixed arms army more and more. In Warmachine, I find myself tailoring a list to fit a specific game plan. In Warhammer, this usually leads to my defeat. The best list I’ve fielded so far has a mix of melee, ranged and heavy hitters, which is pretty much text book composition and may look boring on paper, but it’s super fun to play on the table.

That said, there’ll be a 2,400 points Warhammer tourney in Penang early next year and I intend to bring my Sons of Caledor list. As it is, it’s not only impossible to complete by then due to the complexity of the Dragon Prince models, it’ll also get eaten alive. So here’s my current list that I intend to bring:

General: Prince on Star Dragon, wearing heavy armour, Charmed Shield, Crown of Altrazar, wielding lance, Ironcurse Icon.
= 563 points.
Since Dragons are prone to get shot off by cannons in the first turn, I’ve tooled it for survivability and keeping it cheap. Admittedly, I’m only using the Prince as a means to get a dragon in my army. With S7, T7, and 7 wounds, the dragon can cause major damage by flanking any regiment. Hopefully the Terror that it brings will make things easier for me to route regiments and chasing them down.

Battle Standard Bearer: Noble on barded elven steed, wearing Dragon armour, shield, Ruby Ring of Khaine, wielding lance.
= 153 points.
He’ll be joining one of the Dragon Prince detachments. I want my heavy hitters to really tough it out psychologically wise so making him join their ranks sounds like a no brainer to me. The Ruby Ring will give them a slight edge in making their ward saves if needed.

Level 2 Dragon Mage, wearing Dragon armour, Enchanted shield
= 400 points.
He gets a Sun Dragon for free, so really, he’s only there to give me a S5, T5 dragon on the board. He makes it possible for me to field 2 dragons in one army, which is awesome. As a mage, he’s also more survivable than most because he has the option to wear the Dragon armour, which opens up the possibility to equip magical armour on him as well. In combat, he’s more survivable than the General by having a 2+ armour save as opposed to 3+ (which will drop to 4+ as it breaks).

Core:

Lothern Sea Guards x30, wearing shields, full command
= 390 points.
My “horde” for the army. An anvil unit that can shoot as well as having a massive 4 rank attack on the defense. With shields, they have a 5+ armour save which is handy when facing S4 crossbows and whatnot. Granted, a 6+ save is flaky but it’s better than having no save at all. Lined up in ranks of 10, all 30 of them can shoot in a massive hail of arrows, which is nice. Though they’ll only cause 2-5 wounds at best, but it goes a long way in thinning down other hordes. The bonus is that they can declare a Stand and Shoot reaction which will deter high damage but lowly armoured troops from wiping them off.

Ellyrian Reavers x5, wielding spears and bows, musician (2 units)
= 210 points.
Fast cavalry, perfect harrasser units as well as warmachine hunters. They also divert big blocks of infantry away from my heavy hitters which is really cool. Though they reform for free and all that, the musician is there for the +1 bonus while rallying after a feigned flight. The biggest plus about this unit is that they can march for 18″ and can still shoot. Using S3 bows, they might not do much but whittling down 1-2 per turn can be huge as it goes down to turn 5+.

Special:

Dragon Princes of Caledor x6, full command
= 204 points.

Dragon Princes of Caledor x5, full command
= 175 points. Battle Standard Bearer goes in here.

Dragon Princes of Caledor x5, champion
= 155 points.

The titular heroes of my army. Initially I had 20 of them but it cuts off my other options to deal with other threats, so no. 4 Dragon Princes had to be cut out so I’ll have a nice divided by 5 number to make it easier to composite my extra points and stuff later. These guys stat wise are as average as any other elf, which is a bit disappointing. BUT, they have 2 attacks and a 2+ armour save and 6+ ward save to boot. Oh and a 2+ save against flame attacks. Nice. The champion has 3. We are looking at a huge amount of S5 attacks on the charge and they still retain their Always Strikes First rule.

They are designed to be flank/rear chargers because taking a horde head on would be suicide. I don’t think I’ll be spacing them out too far from each other as I intend for them to hit a single big regiment from all sides, cause a route and chase it down. A broken regiment will waste a turn for not being able to charge, which is cool by me. I have a feeling that using them would be tough on both my opponents and myself, since it’s very easy to screw up while playing this way. But I’ll be damn to call my army the Sons of Caledor if I don’t have at least 15 of them.

Rare:

Sisters of Avelorn x10, champion
= 150 points.
My specialised missile unit. While the Sea Guards have 30 bows, they’re still S3, which can’t really cause a big enough threat. Especially against heavy cavalry units. They not only have WS/BS of 5, but they also carry these magical bows that deal S4 magical and flaming attacks. Against the forces of destruction, they also induce a -1 armour save as well. It would be swell if I have the extra points to plunk in the Handmaiden armed with the Reaver Bow with these girls, but as they are, they’re good enough. They also present themselves to be a juicy target, which hopefully will drive the opposing army away from my Dragon Princes. The biggest disadvantage of this unit, is that they don’t have a musician so they can’t swift reform to answer a looming flank threat. But I’ll think of a way to get around that when the time comes.

And that’s it! 2400 points, on the dot. If I need to play a 2500 game, I’ll just add either a couple of Great Eagles or a unit of 10 archers and that’ll be that. I’ll most likely go with the archers wince they’re cheaper, cash wise. My goal now is to complete this army before January starts because not only will the Penang tourney be held then, but the Warhammer Fantasy campaign will be commencing as well.

I didn’t tool up my Lords and Heroes to be as killy nor as impressive as they could’ve been, but I’m paying more attention to the troops as they will be the deciding factor whether I’ll win or not. 8th edition of Warhammer pays a lot of emphasis on the troops, rather than the Herohammer days of 7th ed, where a dude on a dragon will decimate a horde of small guys with no fear of being wounded in return. In 8th ed, a lowly goblin regiment can kill your general if you foolishly charge then head on since rolls of 6+ will definitely wound this time.

I’m still missing 2 boxes of Dragon Princes, 2 boxes of dragons and a box of Sisters of Avelorn to complete this army (assembled and painted as well). I just hope I can make it in time.

Painting a LOT of minis

It’s been a while since I wrote anything related to miniature hobby. This time, a simple painting tip when you’re faced with a lot of similar dudes called, a regiment. Instead of churning out 1 fine and complete mini every couple of hours (or even 30 minutes for a speed painted one), this is not only slow, but at the end of the day, you’ll have a complete regiment of anywhere between 5-40 dudes.

1. Simple scheme: Choose a simple colour scheme. Discounting the skin and small trinkets that adorn your miniature, in a regiment, it’s more important to have a unified look so there’ll look pretty together. Choose a scheme that’s primarily 2 colours if possible. 3 is okay but each added colour just adds more time to your painting plate. Also important is for you to decide where those colours will go to

2. A colour a day: Now choose a colour and paint every mini in the regiment with the same colour on the appropriate parts. Say you choose red today. Paint every mini with red in it, no matter how small/big the area is. Then rest and forget about it. Repeat with another colour the next day and so forth.

3. Colour the details in one go: It’s hard to run away from cool details in a miniature, so after your main colours are down, 1 day will be detailing your minis using the same colour as much as you possibly can. there will be colour  switches at this stage but it’ll be less time consuming.

4. Wash everyone: Or dip, to your preference I suppose. Wash works just fine. The strong tone from Army Painter works wonders.

5. Touch up the skin: The skin will lose a lot of their colour after a wash. So touch them up by painting ONLY on the raised areas with the original skin colour that you’ve chosen. This will pop up the mini more and it’ll look really cool en masse.

Add the usual matte varnish and you’re done. Total time taken? Maybe 4 days of short spurts of painting of about an hour or two. The result? 40 painted minis. I kid you not. After washing and basing, your army will suddenly come to life all at once. It’s truly magical.

Plus it’s less depressive than finishing one guy and then look back to see 39 unpainted dudes waiting for their turn next.

The other advantage to this method is that you’ll conserve paint. Paint will dry on your pallet, this is a given fact. Especially so when you’re shifting colours to paint different parts of the miniature. With this method, the same amount of paint will cover maybe 5 minis as opposed to the 1 that you’re used to do solo.

You also save time and allow yourself to do other things, like playing with your kid or doing the laundry or even play some ps3. An hour a day is not so bad, as opposed to spending 5 hours and finishing only 5-10 guys. I did this and went through my High Elf IoB set within a week per regiment. But next time, I’ll do it for everyone in a regiment so I’ll halve my painting time (hopefully)

2 IoB base armies for High Elf and Skaven

This is probably gonna be my last Warhammer post for a few months, while I actually concentrate on painting the dudes. Through immense boredom and itchy fingers, I figured out 2 decent armies that you can make with 2 Island of Blood starters. They both need 2 more purchases each to complete them to 2000 points,which are itacalized in the lists.

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High Elf: Probably done to death about now, but the previous list has the base line at an even 1850 points, with 150 points to figure out gears and magical items.

Army concept: Iron Man. Gold armour, red cloth, blue gem stones. Yup.

General: High Elf on Griffon (with Swiftsense)

Heroes: 2x Level 1 Mage, Noble on Griffon (with Swiftsense)

Core: 2x FC Lothern Sea Guards (10) with shields, 2x Ellyrian Reavers (5) and bows with musician

Special: 2x FC Swordmasters of Hoeth (10), 2x Dragon Princes of Caledor(5)

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Skaven: This is new. It came up to 1847 points with 153 points for customizing some gears and magical items (you’ll most likely use only 120 in any case)

Army concept: Pinky and the Brain. White rats, pink inner ears. Probably dirty pink clothes too.

General: Warlord on Bonebreaker Rat Ogre

Supporting Lord: Grey Seer

Heroes: Chieftain BSB, 3x Level 2 Warlock Engineer

Core: 2x FC Clan Rats (20) with shields and Warpfire Thrower Weapon Team, 2x FC Clan Rats (20) with shields and Plaguewind Mortar Weapon Team

Special: 3x Rat Ogres led by a Master Moulder with Things Catcher

Rare: 2x DOOMWHEEL!!! (so awesome in needs to be in bolded caps)

Starting a 2k High Elf army from 2 starter boxes

I decided to hold off my Sons of Caledor concept army and just concentrate on getting a full fledged 2k army done for quick play. The list is not that good but it still looks impressive, with 2 griffons running around the battlefield getting shot by cannons and trying the Thunderstomp units. It uses ALL the High Elf models from the starters and is completed by 2 boxes of Dragon Princes of Caledor.

So with 40 quid, you can have this funny army that’s questionable in its performance, but will look good nonetheless .

Angry Blood Islanders

General:

Prince on griffon (with Swiftsense), wearing heavy armor, Shield of Mermyrm, Lion Cloak, wielding Ogre Blade and lance = 389 points

Heroes:

BSB Noble on griffon (with Swiftsense), wearing heavy armour, Lion Cloak, shield, wielding Star Lance = 285 points

Mage (Level 2) = 120

Mage (Level 1) = 85

Core:

2 x 10 Lothern Sea Guard with champion, standard bearer and musician = 300

2 x 5 Ellyrian Reavers with additional bow, with musician = 210

Special:

2 x 10 Swordmasters of Hoeth with champion, standard bearer and musician = 320

2 x 5 Dragon Princes of Caledor = 290

Total: 1999 points. Dang! Still short 1 point. Actually, that Star Lance on the BSB Hero is kinda wash. Probably need to change it for something more tangible (or survivable)

Less awesome version of Sons of Caledor

Came up with a new 2k list that is more easier on the wallet, but visually less stunning. In my previous post, it was a glorious show of arms with 5 units of Dragon Princes of Caledor. But that also equals to 100 pound sterling total. So this list, will be a bit cavalry short, but it finally can include a Battle Standard Bearer and magical items.

General (Lord): 

This now has two flavours. Each one totaling up to a whopping 500 points. Both choices still has dragons, since this is a Caledor list anyway, but they’ll have the minimum augmentation to make them okay.

Option 1:

Level 4 Archmage on Sun Dragon, with Talisman of Preservation.

– Just enough to make him not so squishy, yet a powerhouse by his own. Haven’t decided on a Lore yet, probably Shadow. MAYBE Fire as well to go tag team with the Dragon Mage.

Option 2:

Prince on Moon Dragon, with Ogre Blade and Dragon Armour.

– A constant S5 melee attacker and a better dragon than the previous version.

Again, either one of these would be okay. Though the Archmage is a bit more awesome, the dragon on the Prince is more powerful.

Heroes:

Level 2 Dragon Mage with Dragon Armor (comes with a complementary Sun Dragon).

– Still has issues, but he HAS to be in this list.

Battle Standard Bearer: Noble wearing Dragon Armor with Reaver Bow.

– Most likely will be plugged into the Sea Guard regiment. It shall be glorious.

Core:

For the most part unchanged, though the ranks for the unit containing the BSB will be a bit weird. Not sure how I’m going to sort it out yet.

2x Lothern Sea Guard (10) with musician, standard bearer and champion.

2x Ellyrian Reavers (5) with bow and musician.

– Changed the champions to  musicians here. I assume they have musical swords instead of the weapons they’re brandishing so gallantly. Or I could just mod them. Always an option.

Special:

With a heavy heart, I had to cut out 2 units of Dragon Princes of Caledor 😦 Yet it had to be done to save me 40 quid. One day, I’ll have enough to field a full glory of 6 of these babies.  One day.

Dragon Princes of Caledor (5) with standard bearer

Dragon Princes of Caledor (5) with standard bearer, wielding the Banner of Eternal Flame

Dragon Princes of Caledor (5) with standard bearer, wielding the Lichebone Pennant / Banner of Swiftness

– I’m torn between these two banners. They’re evenly costed, cheap yet do different things. Might just toss a coin and play the one lady luck favours.

 

Final thoughts:

Though I miss the loss of 2 more units of Dragon Princes, the changes make the list more solid. I probably could if I ditched one dragon but that’ll be not as cool. While this list might not fare better than my previous one, the General have better option at the end of the day I think. Also the magic standards on the Dragon Princes give them some edge, but not sure how significant it’ll be.

Truth to be told, if one of the Reavers were to change to bows instead and if I kept the Dragon Princes vanilla, I’ll be able to plunk in this additional Special unit:

Swordmasters of Hoeth (5)

I’ll have some use out of the model I suppose instead of storing them around looking pretty.  Maybe.

Theoretically, in a 2k army I can fit in 6 minimum 5 man units of Dragon Princes of Caledor, but definitely at a cost of 1 dragon. We’ll see how this pans out. Should be interesting.

Bug

Got bit by the Warhammer Fantasy bug.  Damn random. Cooked up a theme list for the Sons of Caledor, which is a High Elf family that deals with dragons. Yeaaahhh….

This list is designed to be built from the starter and buy as little stuff as possible.

2000 pts:

General: Prince on Sun Dragon, wearing Dragon Armor, wielding shield, hand weapon and lance.

Dragon Mage on Sun Dragon, wearing Dragon Armor.

2 units of 10 Lothern Sea Guards, with shields, musician, banner bearer and champion each. (have to do it this way to maximize the points to fill in the core quota)

2 units of 5 Ellyrian Reavers, with additional bows and champion each. (ditto above)

5 units of 5 Dragon Princes of Caledor. No champions since they’re badass by themselves.

The dragons will lose to their more standard cousins in other armies, the infantry baseline is kinda toolboxy and lacks focus, and the Reavers are really just harrassers and can’t really hit anything worth a damn., but they’re nice looking models and are already there from the starter set. Also, do notice there’s no points whatsoever for ANY magical items. Yup, this army is screwed. But it’ll look FABULOUS.

The only change I would do is to have a fully spec’ed out Spearmen unit of 30 man strong instead of the Sea Guards and 2 units of Silver Helm Cavalry without champions or anything instead of the Reavers . But that would equate to buying 4 more fresh box sets and totally disregarding the starter box. So nahhhh….

Besides… the Reavers and the Sea Guards look better and can pew pew as well as having spears.

Now that exactly leaves me with these extra models:

2 Prince/Noble on griffon

2 Mage/Archmage

2 units of full spec Swordmasters of Hoeth (10 each)

That’s enough for another army already, though they’re less awesome than dragons.