Saturday 25 October 2014

A Shakey Start: Skitterleap Day 1

Day 1 of Skitterleap 2014 has come and gone and while it wasn't the best start i could have had it wasn't the worst start i have ever had, after the cryptic start lets get on with the report.

Game 1: Dawn Attack

Game one was against Neil Wiliamson and his Warriors of Chaos. Dawn Attack didnt do much damage with its random deployment ways and i took first turn. I opened with an attempt to claim the right flank of the table and began this endeavor by shooting away Neil's warhounds and moving my scouts into Neils right flank. My center remained steady and on the left flank i withered the Skullcrushers and shot some wounds off them. Neil began by genelly advancing on the left flank and center while on the right flank he turned his last unit on the right to face the oncoming tide of Elves.




Thursday 16 October 2014

The Lord And The Weaver: Wood Elf General tactics

After the tournament Call To Arms 2014 i decided against having a Mage general, in both my first and last game my mage general decided to get sucked down a hole which meant that the first game was a bigger lose than it would have been and it meant the last game was a lose rather than a win. For my Skitterleap list i decided upon a mobile Machine Gun/Bow Glade Lord, my reasoning behind this was that he would both more useful (he can shot chaff, hunt chaff, hunt warmachines and seek flanks) and he would be easier to keep alive (his primary role didn't have a built in chance to get him killed without my opponent lifting a finger). However he has only seen a single game so far so i decided to do a tactics post looking at the Pros and Cons both both viable generic lord level Wood Elf generals in order to help any other fellow Wood Elf players who may be having similar issues, there will be a post in the future on Wood Elf special characters which will cover them and the reason why the Treeman Ancient isn't in this post is because i no longer consider him a viable general choice for reasons i will come to later.

The Lord and the Weaver, who will you choose? (assuming you play Wood Elves)

Monday 13 October 2014

An Other Productive Weekend

This weekend it was time for a break from GW related models for paining, this time i planned to finish off my Firestorm Armada Fleet and continue my Flames of War Polish army, and i was able to achieve both goals. So here is my finished Firestorm Fleet:



Friday 3 October 2014

Core Blimey: Wood Elf Core Tactica


Having now played with all 4 of the core units in the Wood Elf book I feel that I can speak about them tactics wise while knowing what I am talking about. In the new book the core section got a few slight tweaks with many of the units still filling their old roles, Glade Guard still shot things, Dryads are still our best source of chaff, and Enteral Guard are still the best CC infantry unit we can bring to bear, only the Glade Riders were really impacted by the changes.

Glade Guard

The trusty Glade Guard are still trusty and worth consideration. Really all they gained was access to the new arrows (and lost the S4 at short range bow and the no penalties for moving and shooting). Aside from that they are still the same old 12 point squishy elves we all know and love.



Wednesday 1 October 2014

Quality Vs Cost


There has been an issue that has been bugging me for some time and it is GW related. The quality of their models is undeniable; they produce some of the best plastic models around (with the exception of a few of the Hobbit Models) however the quality must be viewed in the context of the cost of the models, even using the best example (50 NZD for 10 Enteral Guard/Wildwood Rangers) we can see the product is overpriced. I doubt that it took anywhere near 50 NZD to produce that kit and the actual value of the plastic that the models are made of isn’t worth 50 NZD.

Now if you buy GW’s models from sits like Ebay and Trade Me, or even online retailers you are likely to get a better deal. I just picked up a Brand New Riders of Rohan box for 31.50 NZD (including postage) from Trade me. This is about 20 NZD less than the retail prices and I think it more actually reflects the actual value of the model. Sure the models look great but for not 50 NZD (for only 6 models).

There is another part of this that I have yet to mention in all my posts about GWs price and that is the core of my issue with GWs pricing. I started this hobby in 2007 (ish) at the start of the Storm of Chaos Campaign. The standard box set (arcos all WHFB armies at least as well as some 40k armies) was 55 NZD for 20 models, some of the box sets that I can recall are 20 Imperial Guardsmen for 55 NZD as well as Zombies, Skeletons, Beastmen (12 Gors 18 Ungors), Orks (both 40k and Fantasy), Empire State Troops, Dark Elves, High Elves, Tomb kings. And it wasn’t just core troop box sets the metal “Blister Packs” were also reasonable prices. There were issues, certain units could only be bought by the Blister Pack (Savage Orcs and Grave Guard are two such examples) and other units had rules but not models . And the models produced during that time were as good (or at worst slightly worse) than models produced nowdays, and yet GW sold them for less and still were able to thrive as company. The core of my issue is that they sold similar products for less when I started and now the sell roughly the same products for so much more now days.