If you follow Phil Kelly on Twitter, you’ve likely seen his fantastic Lumineth Realm-lords army. If you haven’t… Well, you’re in for a treat! We tracked him down to convince him to share some thoughts about the project.
Phil: The sight of lots of units arrayed for battle, all painted and based consistently in the same colour scheme, is the apex of the Warhammer hobby for me. When I first saw the Vanari models, I envisaged a whole legion of them ranked up and ready, and I’m slowly but surely making that a reality. Ideally I’d like at least double the number of Lumineth I have here, maybe triple if I get really into it!
Still, this little force tops out around 1,000 points thus far, so I thought this would be a good place, while climbing the hobby mountain I'd set out before me, to stop and enjoy the view. My fellow word-botherers in the Warhammer Community team, having seen my slow-growing host taking shape on social media, are giving me a chance to talk through it.
The first port of call was three units of Vanari Auralan Wardens. I’ve combined these all into a huge super-unit on more than one occasion, and made sure the ranks all point their pikes (sarissas if you want to get technical) at certain angles so they can make a proper phalanx. However, on the tabletop I want to take advantage of the Auralan Legion battalion, so for the time being I’ll be fielding them as units of 10. Each of these will have a unit of Auralan Sentinels to back it up, or rather hide behind them – archers really aren’t great in combat when the chips are down, but oh boy can they deal out the mortal wounds in the meantime.
That’s where the Scinari Cathallar who leads the infantry units comes into her own. She has a very useful ability to slow the enemy with her signature spell Darkness of the Soul, thereby buying her pointier kindred lots of time to pincushion the foe.
Angst as a weapon is so very aelfy, and slight as she is, she could make a big difference if she stalls a unit for a turn or two. I love the idea of a towering Mega-Gargant, overcome with emotion, sitting down and crying literal buckets as the magnitude of the aelven race’s sadness overwhelms him – perhaps using a fallen battle standard as a handkerchief to blow his nose.
When my Lumineth are up against a killer unit of enemies, the Cathallar will turn the tables, making the enemy take the battleshock test modifiers that would otherwise ravage my lines. All I need to do is ensure the Vanari Wardens inflict at least one kill, and with moonfire flasks and a forest of pikes, that should be easily accomplished.
My idea of a ‘classic’ aelf army has spearmen, archers, and cavalry working in unison, so I saddled up and painted a couple of units of Vanari Dawnriders over the course of a fortnight. I have one more unit to go before I can put my Dawnrider Lance to use, and then, when the dice start to flow again in earnest, I’ll be applying some serious pressure on my opponent’s support units. I love the way these riders look when in base contact, all flowing pennants and horsehair helms (lovingly donated by the relevant stallion, of course).
I painted The Light of Eltharion in darker colours than is traditional, to tie him into my force and let the incredible sculpting of his ‘hollow armour’ shine through via his white interior. He’ll likely be the monster-slayer in my games, going up against all manner of horrors that I don’t want reaching my lines. He may even be up to the task of cutting them down on his own – especially if they’ve taken a few wounds from the Sentinels first.
One of the parts I’m most looking forward to is rolling the special cylinder-like Lumineth dice for casting spells. It will feel like some act of arcane soothsaying, I think, or like I’m taking part in some mystical game within a game that is very fitting for the army itself. With every unit in the army being a magic user of some kind, I’ll be getting a lot of use out of them. Even though my force is based around three basic types of unit, the spells will give me a massive toolbox of tricks to use in battle, so I’ll never get bored of it.
Next up, I intend to finish off my Auralan Legion. Then, when that’s done, I'll likely do a small contingent of Alarith to complete the set. They’ll be great at pushing the enemy off any mid-table objectives during my games, and I'm looking forward to seeing how my colour scheme translates across to their armour.
I have a special conversion in mind for my Spirit of the Mountain centrepiece, but I'm saving that for dessert, as it were – first I'll be painting another twenty Auralan Sentinels. I’m more excited about it than I thought I would be at this point. There’s just something very relaxing about batch painting once you’ve done the first set, and figured out the best way to go about it – almost meditative, I suppose.
Who knows, during those long summer evenings of the Age of Myth perhaps the Lumineth of old painted sculptures of their own for just the same reason, and then played out all the death and bloodshed of a tiny, detailed war on their own miniature battlefields. It seems like the sort of mental challenge they would enjoy.
And Teclis? Well, he will arrive not early, nor late, but precisely when he means to...
Thanks, Phil! Does this get your creative juices flowing? Pre-order almost everything in Phil’s list today! As if that’s not exciting enough, the rest of the Alarith units he mentioned will be up for pre-order starting tomorrow.