Motivation

So the recent announcement for the first TMAT tourney has me all in a flurry. I've volunteered my high elf force for the competition, but they aren´t finished! I figured this tourney would be a good motivator to make progress on the stack of unpainted miniatures I have. Typically I´m an evil player – desert loving Haradrim, the mighty fighting Uruk Hai, even my first love - the grossly underdeveloped Easterlings - all get far more attention and playtime. In fact it was only recently that I acquired a number of the light footed harrys to pull a decent army together. But a lucky score or two on ebay and I have all I need and more. At least until I feel compelled to convert it to GW's new “warband” scheme. I'm still not entirely sure what was wrong with LOME, but that's another issue for a different post.

In its full 1000pt glory, my Rivendell+ army is quite the handful. Sporting 18 elf bows, a caster, duelists, a significant D6 shield wall, and 15 (yes, that's 10+5) might points, even I am a bit unsure about going up against it.

These are the things that (nightmarish) dreams are made of
L-R: converted Boromir, high elf archer, Elrond, converted spear elf (pending shield), elf captain (Rumil stand-in), elf archer

Well, in theory anyway.

Being able to plunk down half-undercoated, battle lines of the same 4 boring poses may work for friendly games, but there is still plenty of work ahead of me before this can really be called a respectable force. And it remains to be seen whether the baby brother (500pt) version can hold its own.

For TMAT, I'm running with:

Vanguard of Rivendell

High Elf Captain with Heavy Armor and shield - 80pts

10 High Elf warriors with Heavy armor and shield - 100pts

10 High Elf warriors with Heavy armor, spear and shield - 110pts

10 High Elf warriors with Heavy armor and elf bow - 110pts

Ally: Legolas with armor - 95pts

TOTAL: 495pts - 32 units, 11 elf bows, 2 heroes

Now you may be thinking “but GW doesn't make high elves with shields...” Yeah. I know. Thus the long road ahead of me to convert my way to a competent army. Rivendell has a painfully hard time coming together as a decent looking army. First you have to buy tons of boxes of miniatures (because only half the troops in the ooooonly box they come in are elves) and once you have the necessary numbers, you still only have 3.5 poses to work with: “I'm drawing my bow!”, “I just my shot bow!”, “my finely crafted elven blade is about to come down upon thee, o filth of sauron!” and “MFCEBISATCDUTOFOS 2.0” which really just means “we patched a bug in the first version, and tweaked the angle by .0001 degrees.” 

"Oh, we are the chorus, we hope you like our show..."

*Yawn* that's not an army, that's a mob of hardshelled Orlando Blooms who don't want their swords to get wet.

So watch this space over the coming weeks while I try to find a way to bring a little variety to my elf force. Thusfar I've already majorly converted my elf captain (Rumil stand-in in the larger army) and have painted up most of my spears (stock GW model) and a few archers. But all the swords-elves need to be converted to hand-weapon toting shield bearers, and I'm going to try to bring a little more variety to my archers. I've also been working on a special Legolas conversion (hint: it involves major surgery), since the stock model is unarmored. 

Converted elf captain / Rúmil

You will not escape my blade! or my hobby saw!