Eternal Guard Musings

o as we get closer to the end of 2012, or the end of the World depending on your point of view, I haven't been doing much hobbying. In fact, I don't think that I have even touched one of my models to either paint or play in over two weeks. Life has gotten in the way as I am sure it has for many of you as the holidays are upon us. Luckily for me, work has decided I get two four-day weekends in a row so I expect to accomplish much hobbying over the next few weekends as I have lots of things that must be finished before WaaghPaca! including:

1. Submit a 2000 pt army list for WaaghPaca! by December 31, 2012.
2. Paint 31 more Dryads (the list I am tinkering with has four units of 8 right now and only 1 is painted)
3. Put together and paint movement trays for the Dryad units.
4. Put together and paint movement trays for archer units (depending on how many I have).
5. Paint one character (either my mage, bsb, noble, or eagle noble).

When it comes to submitting a 2000 pt list I was originally at a loss. The fast cavalry list I have been playing with and tinkering with for the last year doesn't really work at 2000 pts as it loses some of its best units (including the Altered Highborn). So I went back to the drawing board and came across a MSU archer/dryad heavy list. But, the more I played with it, the more I realized that a turn of bad shooting allowed a close combat unit to get into combat on turns 5 or 6 and cost me a lot of points at the end of the game. As I began to figure a way around this problem, I had an interesting thought! Thus, the topic for today's post, Eternal Guard musings.

Right now, I am thinking of taking a small unit (no more than 20 models, but more likely 15 or 16) of Eternal Guard to WaaghPaca! this January. The reasoning, its a stubborn unit (which will be on leadership 10 with a re-roll - hopeful!) that can hold up a combat block for two or three rounds of combat.

My plan is simple, I will take a small unit (so that it is not the most expensive unit) and add my Highborn into the unit. He will most likely have annoyance of nettlings (still playing with points and items) to accept challenges and will shoot at units as they get close to my lines. Then, before my opponent's units get into combat, I reform the unit to be two (yes, two) wide leaving only the musician and unit standard in the front. This reduces my frontage to 20mm units to only 4 models (thus reducing models attacking to at most 12) and to 25 mm units to only 3 models (thus reducing models attacking to at most 9). I may even drop to a single file depending on how many Eternal Guard are left at that point.

This will give me a stubborn unit that is (with the high weapon skill) likely to only lose 4-5 models a combat round. Thus, I expect to be able to stay in the combat for a least a full turn, maybe more, and prevent the combat unit from taking out my other units, while keeping this units points intact.

I need to play with this more to figure out the best number of models, and proper use (and to see if it is even worth giving up another unit of archers), but I see this as an easy way to tie up a secondary combat block that wasn't getting shot and to provide an anvil unit that can hold for a turn and allow my dryads to counter-charge.

Any thoughts?