40K Friday - On Friday! - Iyanden Update

Amidst all of the other miniatures stuff the 40K painting effort continues. I don't have any new battles to report (though I am working on an old one)  I have made some progress on the army itself:

Aside from the photobombing Heldrake that's the painted force so far.

• Farseer (and a potential Autarch)
• 15 Dire Avengers
• 10 Striking Scorpions
• 5 Rangers
• 5 Fire Dragons
• 1 Falcon
• 15 Wraithguard
• 2 Wraithlords

I recently finished the wraithguard and one of the wraithlords. The newer DA's arrived already painted as did the scorpions but they could use some touch-up and I need to finish snow-coating the bases. Sixteen mini's from bare plastic to finished in about 6 weeks though is pretty good for me based on the last couple of years. 

That said, the ultimate goal with this army is 3000-5000 points of finished, painted, Iyanden Eldar.:

• The core of it will be a Wraith Host formation which is a spiritseer, a wraithknight, a wraithlord, and 3 units of wraithguard. The bulk of that is now done. The spiritseer is in progress and the wraithknight is under construction.
• The other core will be a combined arms detachment of two farseers leading some combination of aspect warriors, a pair of ranger squads, some vypers, a falcon, and some war walkers.
• One for-sure aspect host formation will be 3 squads of dark reapers. I took this as an experiment in a previous battle and found it to be very useful against bikes & jetbikes. They've been marine-killers for years but that no-jink rule makes them nasty against bikes too. Given the prevalence of other Eldar armies, White Scars, and Ravenwing it just makes too much sense not to take them.

After those 3 elements it gets a little less certain. The avengers could make for another shrine as I am intrigued by the idea of 30 BS5 dire avengers stepping off of 3 wave serpents and blowing something off of the board. I also have fire dragons, scorpions, and two squads of swooping hawks that could all fit into either the CAD or another shrine. They will all be a part of the force, I'm just not sure how and it could change from fight to fight. Then I need to find a way to work a squad of warp spiders in there too.

Long term I also plan to build a guardian host too, hence the vypers and war walkers mentioned above. I have all of the units, it's just painting another 40-odd figures that pushes this to "later". The plan for now is to spend 2016 focusing completely on this one army - acquiring the units (that's pretty much done), building them, painting them, and playing the army exclusively. So far it is working fairly well and I am happy with the result.

Right now I do not plan to make it a jetbike army. For one, Apprentice Blaster is doing a pretty good job of doing that with his Saim-Hann force. Second, that's never struck me as an Iyanden kind of thing. Theme is more important to me than this year's trendy netlists.  Third - I'm perfectly happy with a wraith-heavy force. It's one of those eldar-only things. I've wanted to build one for years and now I'm finally doing it. I may build a jetbike army someday but it won't be this army.

And yes, I know it would have to be a ridiculously huge fight to take all of those things at once but part of the fun of having a "mature" army (notice I don't say "finished" - they're never finished) is having options available to you and not having to take everything you have just to make the points. 

That's all for now!