The Tri-Kingdom Elves

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ArcaneSnow
Posts: 237
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:58 pm
Location: Vancouver, Canada

The Tri-Kingdom Elves

#1 Post by ArcaneSnow »

Background.

I've always liked tracking my progress when it comes to the various hobbies I find myself jumping head first into... Having an army blog somehow just feels like the right thing to do now, since I caught myself browsing the streets of Ulthuan.net on a daily basis.. Good job everyone here..

So.. A little background about myself. I'm a Canadian nerd from a place we call Vancouver. I'm a crazy hobbyist at heart and tabletop gaming has slowly become one of my deepest passions. I find that standing around a gaming table with a beer in one hand and a fist full of dice in the other brings back a whole new layer of entertainment and connection that no other virtual game or sport can ever provide. Over the years I have expanded this passion for tabletop games from one level to another. I've used to be a long time Magic the Gathering player, but it really first started out by simply playing Risk with friends on a weekly basis. Shortly after it grew into a genre of various conquest games like Conquest of Nerath to Full expansions of Twilight Imperium. A few years after, boardgames took on a life of it's own and expanded into almost every genre imaginable and my boardgames stack turned into a boardgame shelf that took up the majority of my living room. As the years went by, time limitations and life changes affected weekly boardgame nights and those gaming sessions didn't serve to satisfy the dice rolling crave, so I moved on to Dungeons and Dragons to fulfill my urge to roll more dice. A couple years of that went by and tabletop RPGs took on a life of it's own. For 4 years I DM'd various groups of D&D players and another 3 after we transitioned to Pathfinder. My boardgame shelf continued to grow at a slower pace, but my RPG bookshelf grew faster. At that point I branched tabletop RPGs into something more. Lorecrafting became something I enjoyed doing, dungeon creation became a hobby of it's own, and more importantly, character creation became an art. With each NPC I created, I sought out a new miniature; a new model to represent what I wanted to show my players and help spark something creative with their imagination. At first, the game was only about having fun with friends; the map, the story, and the clean pewter Reaper mini's where only there to represent a imaginative gameboard that we created, but soon.. those flat pewter mini's just didn't do it for me... and so... I started painting. At that point I knew what I knew the direction I was heading towards.. I loved rolling dice, I enjoyed crafting tactics and putting together decklists, I absolutely love reading rulebooks, and most importantly.. I found out I also really enjoyed painting miniature models.. I have finally reached the final frontier of all tabletop games... Miniature Wargaming.. and so.. the only logical thing to do was find a friend who could introduce me to the game and what better game than Warhammer Fantasy!

This is where my new journey begins. I've been playing this game for about 5 months now. I've got four 1500 pt and one 2500 pt game under my belt and I'm hoping that over the course of this new hobby, I'll become a much better player. I picked high elves because I have a strong liking towards elves and Island of Blood was just way too good of a starting point. With this army blog, I'd like to aim it towards my journey as a tabletop gamer and my skills as a miniature painter. I'd like to point out that I don't consider myself talented in anyway. I'm not an artist by a long shot and I don't even think I'm good at all compared to all the great stuff I've seen produced by the members of Ulthuan, but I do have a love towards this hobby, and that's where my skills come from.

Just for the hell of it, this whole thing started with these ladies. They were the characters that I have once created for my Pathfinder campaigns, they are also the models that helped me find a love for painting. The oldest figure was done approximately 4 years ago, the newest should have been about a year back.
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TL;DR : Join me on my quest as a Warhammer player and help me track my painting skills cause an entire army of figures is a hell lot of stuff to paint...
Last edited by ArcaneSnow on Wed May 14, 2014 5:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
Check out my High Elves R3K Plog! It's super picture heavy though... You've been warned..
ArcaneSnow
Posts: 237
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:58 pm
Location: Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Tri-Kingdom Elves

#2 Post by ArcaneSnow »

Army

I chose High Elves because I really liked elves to begin with. Every rpg character I've created has been an Elf, so going with this army was only logical. Along with that, Island of Blood was just a perfect staring point to jump into Warhammer with. The core units it provided was good and the price got me everything I needed to get started with, but being a shopaholic, the figures inside the box quickly became not good enough for me. I've played my first demo game at GW and was introduced to the rules by the manager there, but before I got to play with my own models, I already knew the models inside the box wasn't enough, so I expanded to a couple more things. The first real game I've played looked like this.

Image

30 Archers
10 Seaguards
5 Reavers
10 Swordmasters
5 Dragon Princes
10 Phoenix Guards
Prince of Griffon
Archmage

Theme
When I started, I knew that I would be painting a lot of models, I also knew that the theme of the project in front of me is going to be a pretty important part of this hobby, but at the time I was feeling quite adventurous and inspired; so I settled on a story I enjoyed a lot, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. My friends thought I was crazy... I thought I was crazy.. but at the same time, Warhammer to me was a game that had no limitations to creativity, or that's what people told me. In the end, my color scheme became Red, Blue, and Green with lots of brown for leather along with silver and gold to simulate the metals used for that theme.

To further this, I broke down the army units into separate kingdoms.

The Wei Kingdom is themed Blue. I associated them to mainly Lothern and Shrine of Asuryan.
They became my Gatekeepers and Protectors of the throne, so the logical choice is:
-Seaguards
-Phoenix Guards
-Silver Helms

The Shu Kingdom is themed Red. I associated them to mainly Hoeth and Ellyrion.
They are my quick and agile attackers. Combat is ruthless for them, similar to the aggression that is shown in the 3 Kingdom Era.
-Swordmasters
-Reavers
-Spearmen

The Wu Kingdom is themed Green. I associated them to mainly Chrace and Caledor.
They are my wiser units and heavy hitters. Similar to the iconic Guan Yu, that hopefully some of you are familiar with.
-Dragon Prince
-White Lions.

That's how far I've gotten so far.. The core block I wanted to play consists of a lot of Archers, at the moment I have 10 archers of each color.
The entire army is supposed to come together by a few shared colors. Ulthuan White, brown, silver, and gold. I'm also hoping that basing the entire army the same way would help unify everything. Fingers crossed.
Check out my High Elves R3K Plog! It's super picture heavy though... You've been warned..
ArcaneSnow
Posts: 237
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:58 pm
Location: Vancouver, Canada

Re: The Tri-Kingdom Elves

#3 Post by ArcaneSnow »

Catching up to date

I mentioned earlier that I get into new hobbies fast, so I have expanded my army since getting into Warhammer in December. I knew I want a couple things. More cav, more core, more specials, bolt throwers, eagles, and a big monster.. which ended up to be Frostheart. With that... I spent a lot of time looking for a budget way to expand my army. At that time, I was playing only 1500, but I wanted to hit a grand army at some point during my collecting. Over the past couple months, I hit up most the sales around local hobby stores and camped out sale sites such as craigslist, ebay, etc for cheaper ways to expand what I had. Recently, I found a couple deals online and along with a couple of in store purchases, I believe I have everything I need.

With that, I present to you, my current collection of High Elves.
Image

I'm also sitting on another chunk of Elves that I got from a craigslist purchase... No idea what to do with these.. This will not be apart of the army collection I want to keep, so I'm hoping to swap it or sell it for cheap.
Image

That is 8k+ of High Elves I currently own...

As you can see, a 4,000ish Points I'm keeping will be the focus of this blog. I started painting a small portion of my army, I'll be posting close up pictures as this blog progresses.
For now, thank you for reading and I'll be happy to take any advice or comments from you guys!
This is the first time I've been active in a gaming forum that has everyone sharing a same passion.
Check out my High Elves R3K Plog! It's super picture heavy though... You've been warned..
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