Tell Me A Tale, Great Or Small...: The House of the Rising Sun...

6 weeks with no posts. Mea culpa. Since the tournament life has kinda taken over – I'm 3 weeks from finishing my M.A. and that crunch has seriously cut into my hobby time. But it has not been completely silent on the crafting front.

As you've probably seen from Tiberius' prior posts, the effort I put into my elves paid off. Despite having the smallest army in the tournament, the Vanguard of Rivendell was able to pull off two major victories and a draw – just enough to squeeze out a tournament win. From this I learned a couple very important lessons:

having a F5 shield wall rocks - to the point of being borderline unfair. Despite being heavily outnumbered in every scenario, my converted elves (see here) were able to spread out plug gaps – often taking on 2-3 troops at a time, and were able to hold entire flanks at bay so the spears could focus on meting out the damage elsewhere.
Elf bows are evil. Yeah, I've heard this plenty, but seeing as most of my armies are D4/D6, I'm rarely on the brunt end of this – and don't flinch at facing off against Tiberius' wood elves. But I faced a lot of D5 in the tournament, and the quality of elf archers really showed
I am done painting elves. Done. No more. Can't take it. It was great to get through 60%ish in time for the tournament, but I need to work on something else for a while.

So what is next on the agenda? Well, I recently acquired the fallen realms sourcebook, and as I turned the pages I yawned my way through Isenguard, cringed at the manner GW has castrated Harad and then I saw it: GW has finally decided to give the Eastern Realms a fighting chance! No more overpriced pikes, no more gondorians in golden armor, and no more stupid “swordbound”-ness. The Easterlings have arrived!

Easterlings have always been “my first love.” They were the first army I started, and I have always wanted to muster them into a decent fighting force. And with the inclusion of the Dragon Guard upgrade, I think they may have turned into just that – the elite forces of evil that they were always meant to be. For the moment, we'll put aside the rant about Dol Amroth getting the same stat line and a special rule for a smaller price, and the fact that Amdur and the Khandish King's banner rules don't cross-apply when they are considered the same list, or the killing off of the Khandish mercs. We will pretend we are not bitter about the favoritism that Good receives, because someone at GW finally noticed us!

Look look! It's time for the closeup!

So watch this space over the coming months for further updates from the East. I have already acquired another box of warriors (the old 20 packs, not the new box-ette) to add to my old ebay-acquired, prepainted army (some of which will get a repaint), and a dragon knight on horseback (my first, and probably last failcast purchase) and have started converting up a storm.

And just to hint at what is to come, my plans for this army include: