Elves on Dragons, Angry, Angry Elves & Mutant, Scary Elves

So,

I suppose I'm a little bit like Sinsynn in that if I do play a Tabletop wargame, I am immediately attracted to play as an elven faction (In his case, he sometimes goes a tad overboard with his xenos love, but it is something I deeply respect him for). I often ignore the fact that the rules for them may be terrible, disregard the fluff that might dress them up as complete ponces, but I can't get enough of pointy eared freaks.

I don't even know where this 'love affair' began, but with my re-entering the hobby just under three years ago, I've developed into a humanophobe. Yes, that BA-counts-as-World-Eaters-army has been abandoned, as have my other human, or non-elvish ideas for armies, including:

Elysian Vets (From IA8, Raven Guard, Charachodons (From IA10), Tau, Night Lords (Counts-as Jumpers BA).... The list truly does go on for a long time - Yes I'm fickle. Sue me.

However, I am confidently sticking with my Space Elves to the bitter end (even if the 'collections' have to be scaled back as part of the new 'Width can't get a job, yes even at a petrol station, but has needs that include beer' initiative). As much as I hate to see parts of my collection go off to a new home, I've been tossing around a few spelf-related army ideas.

The newest idea comes, in part from my researching fandexes of all shapes and sizes as part of the 'Carcrash' article series as well as my continued watching and ogling of the 'Path of The Exodite' blog (link). I want to in midst of jobsearches, drunken rampages, ECP and Minecraft, to write and run an army off of an Eldar Exodite planet. Yeah, it'll count-as Craftworlders when I'm playing 'properly', but I am really enjoying writing these rules and would love to run an army off of something I've written myself which has no prior ruleset to play with. Also, what's not to like - these guys ride dinosaurs and dragons into battle whilst being very psychic themselves kind of like Dragonriders in other popular fiction...

After I've finished the first draft of the ECP, it'll be my first priority whilst I continue playtesting and the like. There are plenty of fandexes to draw inspiration from across the interwebs, many hanging about on Warseer, forgotten my the mists of time.

This is likely to be a long-term army project, so I can work on other things in the meanwhile....

At BWG, there is also a fairly active Warmahordes group, tinkering away behind the 40K masses, playing their quicker games whilst I wait for derp Tau and Ork players to finish deploying their hordes of Firewarriors...

If I'm honest, I went in biased against the system, fanboys on Bowls and other sites just tick me off regardless of company swing, so I went in and read the free quick start rules on Privateer Press' website. I was impressed. It's all a good deal simpler than 40k, although the whole 'I only throw dice in my turn' thing threw me to begin with.

I've played a couple of proxied tiny games and watched a few at BWG, and not really knowing much about the 'Iron Kingdoms' (an old D&D setting I believe), I decided to read up on the races for both Warmachine and Hordes.

Yep, you guessed it. I like the two elven factions Retribution of Scyrah (Pronounced SIGH Rarrr not SKY rarrr) and the Legion of Everblight, because of their background, models and the fact that they are Elves. For those people unaware of the story behind the Retribution, effectively, they are VERY angry elves from a fairly isolated kingdom called Ios trying to kill all human mages and to be left the hell alone. Armed mainly, with powerfists, magic and nasty crossbows, they will mess you up easily whilst looking damn stylish about it with their kick-ass infantry models.

This guy, if you hadn't guessed, means business.

The other Elven faction are, -less- elven than the Iosans, The Legion of Everlight lads and Ladies were once a proud elvish people called the Nyss, but along came a possessed Ogrun (Ogre for us non-warmahorders) called Thragosh and corrupted most of them in one fell swoop making them a bit ugly. These guys and gals have an interesting aesthetic going on, with the race's corruption coming through as some interesting body modifications (NOT Prince Alberts you dirty minded people....) - you need only look below:

Ewww....

However, the rules for both of these guys mark them as fairly well to do, so we'll have to see how my first few games go - for those interested, this is my Retribution of Scyrah 25pter:

Rayvn, Eternal Light
Manticore
Mage Hunter Strike Force
Mage Hunter Commander
Dawnguard Invictors
Dawnguard Invictors UA
Stormfall Archers
Narn

(am set on this one, the order arrives soon *am excite!*)

and my Mutant, Scary Elves at 35pts (for some odd reason, cheaper to buy than my 25pts of Ret.... lol):

Saeryn, Omen of Everblight
Seraph
Seraph
Angelius
Shredder
Blighted Nyss Striders
Blighted Nyss Striders UA
Anyssa Ryvaal


Next up.... Warlocks and Bonesingers.