Bilbo's Birthday Bash 2013: All In The Family

Once inspiration hit for my monster list for the evil force at this year's B3 tournament, I quickly knew what I would use to oppose them as my good force: Elves.  I wanted something small and with the Elves I figured I could spend the time painting the models rather than busting through lots of rank and file.

I had envisioned doing a White Council force since I have all of the models and it would be a great excuse to paint them up.  After some soul searching (and number crunching) I decided to make it all Elves and to try and make it a family affair of sorts.  Galadriel seems a given and Celeborn wouldn't be far behind (I think we know who wears the pants in that relationship).  I've always enjoyed the fact that, reading the Lord of the Rings appendices, you realize that Elrond is the son-in-law to Galadriel and thus Arwen is Galadriel's grandaughter.  So I had to add them in for that fact alone not to mention that Elrond (and Hugo Weaving) is one of my favorite characters in the movies.

The other two Elves I chose are Cirdan and Glorfindel.  Both are models I've wanted to paint and Cirdan has always been an intriguing character to me when reading the various books outside the direct Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Both are also tied to the House of Elrond either directly as in the case of Glorfindel or indirectly in Cirdan's case.

In keeping with the theme I had for the evil force, I decided to base these in the same way (rock bases with dead grass) but replace the snow with flowers.  The thought being that the power of the Elves (such as Galadriel in Lothlorien) is able to combat the corrupting effect of Sauron's evil.

This force is going to be feast or famine when it comes to games.  Since I don't care much about wins I'm ok with that, I only hope I can give my opponents a challenge before I get whopped.  These Elves have a lot of magic and some tough combat characters (Elrond, Celeborn and Glorfindel) so I think they may present a non-traditional challenge both to me and my opponents.

5 months until B3 and I'm already half way done with my good force.  I like building small armies!