Dave's Cold-As-Ice Executioners (160pts)

What a shock to think the challenge is nearly over! It's still cold here in Naggaroth, I mean Ontario!, but the last snows of the season seem to have come and gone. I spent February and March on my penultimate submission and the last full regiment in the army. Vakath's Executioners served under the Dark Elf commander when he was still a prized son of Har Ganeth. While he will never see the baleful walls of the revered City of Executioners again, Vakath retains some satisfaction in his black heart that he can still carry out his depraved murders with these hardened slayers forming the core of his Shock Cadre.

The Executioner team is small but elite. With their heavy armour, they can survive some missile fire as they advance without being slowed down. Because they have a small footprint and an impressive 5" movement, they can easily maneuver into a good position for striking at the enemy's flanks, which will also reduce the damage they will take from quicker enemies in melee. With Weapon Skill 5 and Strength 4, the Executioners will be sure to do some damage once their heavy double-handed axes start to fall upon their enemies. Executioners are best used as monster and character hunters, due to their attacks causing D3 wounds each (meaning it might only take a single Executioner landing a successful hit to kill most characters). Their secondary use is attacking single-rank heavy cavalry regiments from the flank, where their high Strength attacks can be put to best use piercing the heavily armoured targets while only a single enemy model would be able to strike back.

10 Executioners ~ 160 points

No upgrades

As you can see, we are a little short of the usual 200+ points this month! The reason for that is that I submitted more than 200 points in the preceding monthly submissions, so there is only so many points left in the army now. In fact, there is actually only one model left in the army to paint—Commander Vakath himself, who will be coming in the final month of April. Otherwise, there are simply no models left to paint! Looking back, I probably could have realized that this would have happened, but I am sure others will be in the same boat so hopefully the judges will overlook our poor planning.

These were a lot of fun to paint. As you can tell, I stuck much more closely with my theme in comparison to the rag-tag Scouts I did previously. I was trying for an eerie and ruinous look on their executioner axes, while keeping with the theme of bright green and blue. Other odd colours were leather brown, purples, dark green and red. These are somewhat rare models. Like the Hydra I started the competition with, they were technically "unreleased". I'm not sure what the story is there... perhaps they were too similar to the halberd-wielding Black Guard models. Their tabs say they were designed in 1995 (the same year the 4th Edition Dark Elves army book was released). They were available for direct sale during the 1999 US Games Day and were never sold again, as far as I know. Hopefully, this adds to the mere handful of photos available online of these nice old models!