Intorduction to a saga...

With the advent of the 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles (yes, this is slightly belayed, but we wanted the miniature rulebook fromt he Island of Blood box set before we started), three of my companions and myself have elected to start a Tale of 4 Gamers program (replete with blog, in case you hadn't noticed).

Our first step was to determine our armies, since we wanted to each create an entirely new army that was designed speifically for 8th edition, rather than retrofitted or squished into an appropriate form from an existing force of ours. With that in mind, we each considered what to take - Sousunou decided that he wanted to play Skaven (largely due to not having started them in 7th and wanting to do so since he got the warpfire thrower - the Island of Blood box gave him a boot up the backside in his endeavours though!), Stormsoul wanted to go with Wood Elves (she hasn't yet played Warhammer Fantasy, but they're the models that she loves without shadow of a doubt - always going on about them. Likely to see some faerie-style fantasy here!), Skyjacker will be going for High Elves *cough, pansies, cough* (again, the advent of the Island of Blood box should be giving him a fairly good base from which to work and the new Phoenix Guard look pretty awesome. In fact, I hope he gets some, despite the price - however, as with everything arrogant{I mean High}Elfy, expect them to slowly end up covered in red blood!) and, lastly, I (Hashut's Blessing) was originally planning to do Ogre Kingdoms (because I saw their awesome strengths - then I realised how I really felt about them, which is overpowered, but uninspiring and bland. Not as an opponent, but nothing interesting came to mind for me to do with them!), but chose to settle on Vampire Counts (which I found in my test games to be quite poor now - however, I plan to finally build the Undead army with a twist that I've been wanting to do for quite some time!)...

So, with the armies chosen and a vague scene set, we set down our preliminary rules: we would have to set and complete a challenge each month, with our opening month's challenge (this month) being to create a legal 750pt army list (that will be expanded in later months and so is essentially the core of our army, featuring in all future lists, even if additional models/upgrades are added to units/models), name each unit and character, plan a colour scheme, write at least one paragraph of fluff (likely to have expansions in the coming months) and, finally, to have an objective marker relevant to our army completed.

We've not yet discussed scoring and the like, probably because we don't see this as a competition, so much as a joint project. However, to keep things interesting, I feel we likely will add some point system, for example, this month may be: +1 point for the completed and legal list (0 points if incomplete OR illegal, -1 if incomplete AND illegal OR unstarted), a complicated score for named units/models (something like the % of named units divided by 10, rounded to the nearest integer [whole number]), either a poll on a forum (or two) or simple marks out of 10 from each other, then divide by 10 (likely the latter to give a score out of 30, reduced to points between 1 and 3, rounded again), +1-3pts for colour scheme (+1pt for base colours, +1pt for shades, +1pt for highlights, -1pt for anything less than base colours), +1-3pts for the objective marker (+1pt for designing/conceptualising it, +1pt for building it, +1pt for painting it, -1pt for anything less than a plan), lastly maybe a bonus of +5pts for having completed all 5 sections.

I'll update here and try to get battle reports (with pictures!) up when possible - possibility of a video report too. Work has gone underway with the army lists already, with mine completed (we started this project last week!). I'll record everything here and update whenever possible. If anyone has any thoughts, tips, comments, please don't hesitate to provide them ;)

Well, here's my Vampire Counts list:

Wight King - Walach's Bloody Hauberk
                  - Potion of Speed
                  - 125pts

Necromancer - Invocation of Nehek
                      - 55pts

Skeleton Warriors - 32
                             - Spears
                             - Champion
                             - Musician
                             - Standard Bearer
                             - 308pts

Zombie Horde - 21
                       - 84pts

Cairn Wraiths - 3
                      - Tomb Banshee
                      - 175pts

Totals: 747pts, 58 models, 0% Lords, 24% Heroes, 52.2% Core, 0% Special, 23.3333% Rare