Army of Modryn - 2500

[Elbereth]

With the imminent release of 9th, I have decided to make a throw at a return to Warhammer. Not knowing how the new Elves army rules and book will play out, it will be interesting to see how the below army would fit in. I've been a long time player and love the WE fluff. There's just something about playing the game with lightly armoured, hard hitting fairies that draws me in. I expect that the same philosophy will be present in the new rendition of WHFB. The previous WE army I had, will be shelved and I wanted to start from the ground up. Reading the armies book, I like the idea of Modryn and building an army which borders on the malice side of the elves. I tried to keep the army as fluffy as possible and also reach a high comp score (v16), and as such have included elements of Loec and the use of shadow magic. The army list is listed here.

Army list
Main body
With army composition I wanted to have a base of units which would be re-rollable steadfast/stubborn. In 7th Ed, I used treeman, eternal guard and a BSB to great effect as anvils. As such, I would like to apply the same approach to this army whereby I have a couple of Treeman anvils, which will be in a staggered formation with respect to dryads and eternal guard. I am mulling over whether I want to split up the dryads unit to provide two flanking units and place Lothlann in the unit of Eternal guard, but for now I think this will be ok. Having a shadowdancer in the unit of eternal guard will greatly increase their combat effectiveness, not only due to the increase in killing power but also due to Woven Mist.

Advance force
The two units of glade riders and waywatchers will be in charge of warmachines and taking out chaff. The new rendition of glade riders provides some uncertainty in battle plans, but think that overall: having them fail to turn up when you want them will ensure for some laughs as well. The new waywatchers with their multiple shots or armour negating rules look pretty good, so I am eager to see how they perform. While it is not the intent that they tackle heavy cav, loosing a couple of armour negating attacks for a turn or two won't hurt too much.

Support
The wild riders will be the last unit I deploy. Their duty is to wreak as much havoc on the enemy as possible. For horde armies, I think they will work really well, same as for hitting small elite units. Their new rules make them so powerful... The sister bus will house Lord Arlas at first. I want to give him some protection such that he can survive to obliterate the enemy. Aside from that they will provide equally good protection for Lady Morlanna.

Characters
Reading the fluff of Modryn, it begged for Arlas to take the spirit sword and trickster shard combination. This in and of itself provides some interesting features: Arlas can serve to take out a unit of heavy cavalry (chaos knights, blood knights etc), but also to take out enemy super characters and monsters. Yet he also has some downsides: absolutely no protection, lack of mobility and a severe lack of strength when facing tougher opponents. By placing him in the unit of Sisters, he will protected somewhat due to Curse of Anraheir and Lichebone Pennant. By mounting him on a stag he gains great mobility (though negates fast cav rules for sisters) and some extra hitting power. Yet he will still have trouble against tougher opponents, which is where Morlanna comes in.

Making Morlanna a level 4 shadowweaver is not only fluffy, it provides some interesting opportunities. Her preferred spellset would be: Miasma, Withering, Pit of Shades and Mindrazor, but really any combination of spells works well for the army (though Mindrazor is a must-have). Guided by Loec, I plan on having her charge a heavy cav unit or super character during the movement phase and subsequently cast Miasma to lower the opponent's WS. This does two things: lower the enemy's potential to hit in CC, but also allows me to swap places with Arlas. If Morlanna has Mindrazor, I will not hesitate to cast it with fury on Arlas. Alternatively, if I don't have Mindrazor I could target a different unit with Miasma to lower Initiative and still swap in Arlas and then subsequently hit the target unit with Pit of Shades.

Modelling and colour
The colour theme of the army will be dark and grey and I plan on making some proxies for the main characters, which I am quite excited about.

For Lord Arlas, I am thinking of using the body of a farseer with a wild rider head. His stag will be a thunderwolf. I would like for Arlas to be standing in front of his mount, sword in hand with the wolf circling behind him.

Lady Morlanna on the unicorn, I am thinking of using the spellweaver and adding some pegasus wings. In terms of fluff, I think I will change the unicorn to something like the blessing of Anath Raema which gives her the same rules as a unicorn. A bit of a workaround but hopefully will provide a nice model.

Wychwethyl, I would like to convert the shadowseer model. By getting rid of the jetpack, sword and replacing the head, I think you can really make a fluffy shadowdancer.

Lothlann, will be converted from the waywatcher with the raised dagger.

[Yuri]

I wouldn't call them proxies. Those are converted models because you used something and with your own skills made (will make) into something else. Proxy would be a space marine riding a thunderwolf instead of great stag rider, or an empire knight instead of steed rider, exemplis gratis.

Also, I sincerely hope this words you shared will be accompanied with lots of pictures in the future, and this quest will be fulfilled. I really hope so, 'cause I'm also a Modryn fan even before I knew it exists inside our forest. Although, I don't agree on the color scheme, but that's my taste, and talking about taste is wasting time. I cant wait to see any progress, and good luck!

[Hyarion]

Great ideas, Elbereth, I'll be looking forward to see how they come out.

Are you planning on making Wychwethyl a mage as well? If so, how do you plan to balance out having two mages using the lore of shadow?

[Elbereth]

Yuri, out of curiosity: what is your colour scheme for Modryn? I'm always open to ideas. Though I consider myself a decent enough painter, it might be a while before I have the whole army assembled and painted. So I trust you have some patience .

Hey Hyarion, that's a tough one. There's a couple of choices that I made along the way to get to the army list as now:

• Keeping Wychwthel a fighting character is mainly due to points and the relative high cost of lore of shadow for low levels. I guess the only reason to take him as a level 1 would be to free up an additional spell for Morlanna, but at 60 points I find it a steep investment. I could drop the unicorn and stag to get the points.
• But I'm a sucker for centre pieces... . Plus the stag offers 4-6 S5 hits on the charge, which is a freight train compared to an elven steed. So by going for the stag, it implies that I need Morlanna to be on a great eagle or unicorn in order to swap her around.
• Other considerations that I have are the lack of glade guard in the army for shooting. With enfeebling foe on Morlanna, you can greatly increase the effectiveness of taking out high toughness units with our bows. With an average D3 roll of 2 you can bring T4-T5 down to T2-T3 which is pretty huge in my mind. Yet the only way in which I can get some more shooting is to drop a glade rider unit and treeman, or dropping the dryads.

[Yuri]

It depends how you'd like them: artistic or real. I was imaging Modryn in dark tones of cold colors, with details in some vibrant colors. For example, dark blue (like night sky) and purple, dark brown like earth and dark green like pine trees. Details would be in light (or pale) skin, bone, silver or bronze (both are good) and some light like ice blue, orange or red. Maybe not red. Yellow? No. You know what I mean.

For example: my... plan , because I'm planning this for like >5 years but laziness hit me big time, for my wild riders was to paint them in dark tone. When they were riding horses in past edition of our book I wanted to paint their skin in green- or blue-ish pale tones like some kind of apparition (like the wild hunt itself). But then, I didn't know about Modryn so it doesn't count, besides I wanted them to ride wolves. To be honest, I got the idea from the Witcher 1 when it got out. Now when they are riding steed of kurnous this became even better suited, plus GW color scheme looks like something I had in mind. Their armor/legs in dark green tones, details in icy blue (gems, for example, and steeds' eyes). Their capes in dark blue tones, leaves in purple. Weapons and helmets in silver or bronze, haven't decided, and horns/antlers in bone colors.
What do you think about that plan?

I think thats not how authors imagined Modryn to look like, but everyone can make their own imagination of how things should look like. At least that is not forbidden. Yet.

[Cosmos]

Bit of a plug here, but my own plog "legion of the stars" attempts to utilize a lot of the colors you mention.
Take a gander to see how these colors look, and even which tones are useful.
While doin my own army, i have to say i got a little bored of the blues, so some of my later units actually became majority green again. Plus the green obviously give you a more WElfy feel.
My intention is similar to yours in the sense of using dark blues and greys, with some purple and greens to add some pop to the models.
One last note, i felt like yellows actually look better than reds in a lot of cases, as a sort of accent. I know yellow is a pain to paint, but consider trying some out.