Craftworld of the Elements - AdeptiCon 2014 Team Army

I've been to AdeptiCon going on my fifth year straight now, and have been teamed with Tony Kopach for the past 3. Tony and I have always done well at the event, and last year we added on Neil Gilstrap as something of a regular member (he's rejoined this year). Kurt Clauss rounds out our 2014 team and we're excited to participate in this awesome event again.

Last year we really screwed the pooch; we knew from the first 3 years if you didn't max all your battle points, and didn't have one of the best paint scores, you couldn't really win. So, going into the final round against the same team we played the year before (and split with), with Tony and Neil's significant others under the weather and looking for some quality attention, we dropped our last game - we'd dropped a single game and were thus at 7-1, and assumed based on past experience that meant we were out of the realistic running.

OH WERE WE WRONG. We had a favorable matchup on paper (though really top tier opponents from the Wrecking Crew), and if we'd pulled out a pair of decently solid wins would have taken Best Team Generalship behind the top team!

Well, needless to say that was a little frustrating to find out after the fact, so we recommitted to really giving it a full 5 round shot this time :)

In line with that and knowing how important team theme and appearance are, Tony and Neil decided to pitch in and get the army commissioned.

To do this, we contacted Redemption of the Fallen charity army artist Dan Withers from New Zealand, of Valhalla Games painting service. Dan's work and freehand are some of the very best out there, as you can see in his Redemption of the Fallen Pieces.

The theme for this army is the four elements - earth, fire, water, wind - each one reflected in one of the 1000 point forces that make up the Craftworld as a whole. The army and order were structured to allow both T and N to end up with up to 2000 points of Jetstar and/or Serpent Spam in the deal as well, inclusive of Swooping Hawks, so it gives them regularly playable armies in addition to the team army combined.

Dan's got his first bit of work going up on his blog / site:

http://digitalwelcomemat.com/vhg/index.php/component/content/article/8-blog/52-eldar-commission-the-craftworld-of-the-elements

Check him out! While Dan's individual model rates are decently high, they do NOT reflect the rate for an entire army - you'll want to contact him if you're the type that wants to commission a real piece of art to put down on the table top!

As part and parcel of both our excitement, and of thanking Dan for the great work he's done for charity, we'll keep you posted here and other places on the progress of the army as a whole over the next month.