Tale of three Armies

What with playing Ancients recently I really didn't see me getting back into playing Warhammer but we had a one off game using the ancinets figures and bits of a nearly forgotten Empire army at the back of the cupboard and were surprised how much we enjoyed it. I think playing without a magic phase really encourages you to focus on unit combat which is the real strength of the Warhammer game. Gives us a beak from playing too much Ancients and getting too jaded with it.

As a result we dusted off the old figures and set about working up three seperate 1000pt lists - trying to get a different theme for each one - having rummaged around the spares boxes we found just about enough figures to cover all three armies - I plumped for solid infantry with a bit of everything, Steve is working on a Nuln based gunline and Dunk's is more of a Crusader theme with lots of knights and archers.

So firstly a WIP on my 1000pts - The main part being two units of Swordsmen with militia detatchments and a Mortar, with two units of Handgunners for the flanks and a flanking force of Knights and Pistoliers:

One of the Swordsmen units - about 80% painted with the highlights and banners left to do.

Knights - managed to cobble together 10 from the bits box though i'll only have six in this list

Mortar with converted handgunners as crew - using up spare bits has made this a pretty cheap project with a lot of small individual touches.

More 40k - Col's Eldar

Sticking with the Desert theme I thought I'd post some pics of my rather less completed Eldar - not done any work on these for ages but they were the first Army i collected for 40k, I even have some of the original figs somewhere so this is probably the one i'll keep from ebay just in case we fancy a game for nostalgic reasons:

Group shot from a while back - very simple two stage brown wash used

Wraithlord conversion - one of my vavourites to do as the original model is very static looking - cutting into the knee joints meant i could get a more dynamic pose.

Group shot with the Vypers in the foreground - some of the nicest platstic kits produced by GW at the time.

Guardians in the foreground to show scale - have another Wraithlord to finish for these guys - one rainy day maybe...

Praetorian

Truth be told I just don't enjoy playing Warhammer 40k these days - it was the game we all grew up on, huge games on the living room floor with scenery improvised from anything you could find, half painted armies blu-tacked together, it never quite went away. But as an actual game it seems a bit simplistic even if we do have some nicely painted stuff these days...

With that in mind here are a few shots of the collections we've amassed over the years - god knows how much we've spent, to say nothing of the time invested in getting it all done. First up some pics of Steve's almost complete Preatorians - back in the day these were produced by as a limited run by GW for a "Rourke's Drift" themed display when we all worked for GW, even remember painting some for the event:

Group shot with his converted Highlanders front right

Some of the sergeant and extra casualty figures are very characterful

Some of his converted cavalry with the HQ in the background

Lascannon teams as support