After much deliberation and a fair bit of time spent in this site for the last couple of months ive decided to make elder my 3rd 40k army. (currently have DE & necrons)
i bought the codex 4 days ago found it a quite enjoyable read. ( Although the fact that exarchs get a +1 to initive while their supposidly quicker dark elder counterparts don't made me a little bit cross :angry: )
Now as ive never had the chance to use psyker's before ive decide to make my craftworld Ulthwe.
I plan to build this army properly (ie buy 1 unit at a time and paint it before getting the next) and when ive had a chance to sit down and work out a 1500 pt list ill post it and everyone here can then pick it to pieces and tell my why things will/wont work.
Im planning on having a fully themed army not necessarilly the most devistating.

I look forward to seeing your view of the Ulthwe'. Are you planning to fully blog your progress?

Sounds good,

If you really want to go for a themes Ulthwe' list try unearthing my 'Themed Craftworld Rules' on the House Rules board. wrote them a while ago, and though they aren't new or exciting rules, they help achieve properly themed lists for the origional Craftworlds.

Cal

thankl Cal will look at the themed craftworld rules soon.
and as i have no life at all (as you can tell by the amount of time spent here) ill keep eveyone updated with my progress.
i might even lash out and get myself a half decent camera so i can post pics

After perusing the new codex,the craftworld and every other piece of fluff i can find about craftworld Ulthwe' i have come to a decision reguarding army choices.
My army restrictions will be as follows.

HQ:___ Farseer's & Warlocks only, no other options allowed

Every guardian choice MUST be taken at least once.

If a unit is allowed a warlock upgrade this MUST be taken, unless a farseer is acompanying the unit

Only ONE aspect choice can be taken due to fact the Ulthwe' rely more on their warlocks, farseer's and guardians.

1 Wraithlord or unit of Wraithguard MUST be taken.
( couldn't find much fluff wise connecting these two units with Ulthwe' but it seems to fit with the amount of pyskers ill have.)

I think that wil be all restrictions ill be imposing on myself. now i just have to do up an army list

ok then here's the 1st draft of my Craftworl Ulthwe' list (1500pts)

HQ
Farseer: spirit stones, runes of warding, doom & guide

Farseer: jetbike, spirit stones, mind war & eldritch storm
Troops
10 guardians with a bright lance
warlock with conceal

10 storm guardians, fusion gun, flamer.
Warlock with enhance

6 pathfinders

4 guardian jet bikes, shuriken cannon, led by farseer.

Elites
10 howling banshees,
exarch with mirror swords.

Heavy support
guardian support weapon battery, 3 D-cannons
warlock with conceal

Fire prism

Wraithlord.


this leaves me with about 130 pts to spend.
now as to set up for the Wraithlord. i believe i have enough heavy weaponry as is but should i set him up for CC or give him a twin linked weapon.

I wouldf advise taking a Wave Serpent transport with Spirit Stones to fill that 130 point gap. But other than that this list looks alright.

the wave serpent for my howling banshees???
and that will leave me just enough pts for a wraithsword, cool

well i just recieve $250 worth of gift vouchers for my b'day so looks like ill be able to get the army started alot quicker than i thought. hope to have photos of the 1st painted unit posted by mid November

You said you could only take one aspect for the Craftworld. Thats not completely true (i do Ulthwe) its 1 for each guardian squad with the exception of Dark Reapers.

no that just my own personal restriction that im imposing on myself.

Wow, nice list! The only suggestions that i could make are to take vibrocannnons instead of D-Cannons, give the banshee exarch an executioner, and second Calaith's recommendation for a wave serpent.

This is just my personal preferance as i have found the longer range on the vibrocannons makes them much more useful, and the extra str on the exarch on a low str squad really helps their punch against T4/T5 opponents.

All in all a very fluffy and themed list! ~thumbs up~

Yes the vibro cannon is an option i was thinking about but the lack of AP was the biggest deterent. i tend to play a lot of smurfs, chaos smurfs and necrons so a good AP weapon usually wins out.

However I will not be gluing any of the guns on to the mount so i can chop and change each game. This will give me a chance to try out all tactics that people have been suggesting.

Also thinking of changing the howling banshee's to harlequins just because the models are so cool and im really looking foward to trying out my painting skills on them.

The cannon might be usefull against Monoliths. Just a hit and it has A Glancing.

ATM im in 2 minds as to what to take, vibro cannons or D-cannons.

Ill definately be giving both of them a good run before deciding.

Go with the Vibro:

Helps against the following:
-units which requires you to roll the dice to see how far you can shoot.
-Horde armies
-units hiding behind cover
and to some extend vehicles.

You can see this as a standard 36" S6 constant beam wich is also triple linked, if you understand what i'am pointing at.

yes i see what you mean with them being triple linked. makes a lot of difference have 3 cannons rather than 1.

well ive finally go of my ass and started painting my Elder. here is a few pics of my guardians. will add pics of the whole squad when i get them done.

Awesome! Love the colours, YAY, blue lines

Nice classical Ulthwe' colour scheme, haven't seen one of them in a while. By only criticism is that the grey highlights are a bit too thick. Try getting only a tiny bit of paint on the brush, then whiping nearly all of it off so the brush looks dry, and running it across the very edges. I'm of the opinion that grey highlights on black should barely be visible, lest the armour looks grey instead of pitch black. Just enough highlight to make the black seem less flat.

Cal

id love to be able to that Cal but even with my magnifying head set and fine brush im not that good. Having the DT's doesn't help either.

Perhaps try Black inking them instead to make the highlights less obvious? This may not achieve a desired look as it can completed cover the highlight, so try it on a test model first. You may also have to highlight and ink the model before moving on to other colours, so you don't dull the red, etc.

But its a nice alternative for people who find painting really fine detail difficult.

Cal

Else cheat abit. Get 0.1 art pen :D

my guardian squad finally finsished

Not too shabby.
From this picture, the detail looks pretty good.

Very nice, and a good picture too. Job well done on all accounts.

ohhh shiny, very nice :D

My ranger squad is now well on the way. will have to put on hold for a few weeks though as i have a few DE models to fix up before the whitsunday's tournament at the end of March.

Very nice and clean. It almost makes me want to redo mine.

When you do your weapons, do you just line-in the highlighting or did you ink-wash or something similar?

i start off with a base coat of khemri brown followed by flesh wash which i put on rather thickly. then 2-3 coats of bleached bone does the trick.

Ah, I see.
I've been experimenting with different ways to bring out detail on the weapons and that's a different technique that I might try.

Very nicely done, those Rangers are something to be proud of.

i had my first ever game with eldar on sunday a 400pt combat patrol game with all the models i have

10 guardians with a scatter laser and warlock with conceal
1 vibro cannon
3 warlocks, with various powers
5 pathfinders

1st turn my guardians took 3 wounds, failed thier moral check and run off the board.
my vibro cannon managed 3 turns of shooting before dying. rolling a 1 to hit on all 3 tries
my warlocks managed to destroy an orc vehicle before being overwhelmed
my pathfinders couldn't hit the broad side of a barn from 6 feet away causing no wounds at all before being chopped to pieces

all in all a very disapointing 1st outing

but with my b'day vouchers ive just picked up a box set of warp spiders (mainly because i like the models) so i should have some pics up in a few weeks.

What the hell? were you trying to roll 6s with a four-sided die?
First of all, where was your HQ? You can only take a Warlock squad if you have a Farseer.
You couldn't roll 3s and 4s to hit/wound with Pathfinders? I don't think I've ever had that problem. They don't get into trouble until they are charged. You're better off trying to run away before that happens.

no. using the combat patrol rules all you need is one troop choice and no model can have more than 2 wounds and no vehicles with a combined AV of 33 and no one can have a 2+ AS
you can igonore unit restrictions, hence the warlocks without a farseer.