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I'm looking into starting an army for the order grand alliance. I'm particularly interested in Duardin, Seraphon, Sylvaneth, High Elves and Wood Elves. Could there be a theme that all these factions could share in one army with their lore etc., preferrably something expressable via their paintjob or modelling?

Hmm it's a tough combination! Whatever theme I try to think of there is always a faction at odds with it. Maybe just a strong color like a deep green to tie them all together?

I'm not sure about the lore between all these guys but with the Duardin magmadroth and Dark Elf cold one riders, maybe some sort of Seraphon connection? If you don't like Dark Elves, I don't see why the riders can't be modelled as High Elves or Wood Elves.

Just a quick thought. Best of luck!

I'd probably go with a Norse mythology theme of Yggdrasil, the tree that connects the nine worlds.

The lore could be that a special tree, blessed by the goddess of life herself, is connected to the realm gates and as it grows it weakens the followers of the foul dark gods that travel by those gates.

It's her plan to cleanse the realms by making chaos's travel between the realms a deadly consequence as her tree purifies the portals. Your wood elves and Sylvaneths are the tree's first line of defense.

With the tree threatening chaos, disturbing the gnaw tunnels of the Skaven and reaching into other realm s and affecting the landscape and disturbing the natives, your army has alot to deal with.

I'd use green color theme and make the symbol of your army a mighty tree that either grows on top of a world or is surrounded by a gateway.

You can divide up the symbols for your forces as well:

Seraphon: make a star constellation in the shape of a tree to show that they aid your army from the beyond. They know the tree is a powerful tool to use against chaos.

High elves: heavenly light shining on the tree. They stand together with their forest kin to bring light back to the mortal realms.

Duardin: tree roots digging deep beneath the ground. When the tree's roots wandered into the realms where the Duardin lived, they saw a great opportunity to fight chaos but to also line their pockets as the roots speared into the earth and it's resources faster than their best machines could. Gold and vengeance was a tough offer to turn down...

If that's too fantastical for your army then you could center it around the Duardin and make them wealthy treasure hunters who travel the realms uncovering loot and artifacts that many allies and enemies are interested in.

I would definately wait until the book came out. Make sure the models and armies are even still there.

If you were including humans, then I would've said Dogs of War!
A mercenary army in Age of Sigmar is on my books, but I've always felt that the Human part of the mercenary armies in the past tie the other elements together. Mainly because with Dwarves distrusting Elves, you need some race to bridge the gap.

Overall though, I think that you could definitely get away with it by having them painted in similar schemes and with consistent basing. A strong colour to tie them all together and I don't think it'll look too far out of place.

The problem I think would likely be Seraphon though, which are predominantly skin compared to other races that wear a lot of armour/clothes. You'd have to be pretty careful when choosing colours for them so that they still have an interesting scheme, but don't overdo it on the colour tying all the models together.

Obviously this is a little broad to be perfectly unified but the best way to do it in my opinion is with very scenic bases and weathering effects.

They don't all have to share the same color scheme but if you create an interesting base and add on top of it weathering or blood or something else effect, it would tie them together.

Few examples:

Desert type base, mix of agrellan and sand brushed with sand tones and a few dried bushes branches here and there. And on all minis add light coloured dirt around the feet and bottom of the robes/armor.

Deadly swamp, bases half muddy and half with water effects. Then add mud on their clothes and blood on their weapons/armor.

Funbug No.1 wrote:I'm not sure about the lore between all these guys but with the Duardin magmadroth and Dark Elf cold one riders, maybe some sort of Seraphon connection? If you don't like Dark Elves, I don't see why the riders can't be modelled as High Elves or Wood Elves.

Just a quick thought. Best of luck!

Then I'll probably make them Wood Elves. I think the Dark Elves don't quite fit with the "order" theme.

Baron Klatz wrote:I'd probably go with a Norse mythology theme of Yggdrasil, the tree that connects the nine worlds.

The lore could be that a special tree, blessed by the goddess of life herself, is connected to the realm gates and as it grows it weakens the followers of the foul dark gods that travel by those gates.

It's her plan to cleanse the realms by making chaos's travel between the realms a deadly consequence as her tree purifies the portals. Your wood elves and Sylvaneths are the tree's first line of defense.

With the tree threatening chaos, disturbing the gnaw tunnels of the Skaven and reaching into other realm s and affecting the landscape and disturbing the natives, your army has alot to deal with.

I'd use green color theme and make the symbol of your army a mighty tree that either grows on top of a world or is surrounded by a gateway.

You can divide up the symbols for your forces as well:

Seraphon: make a star constellation in the shape of a tree to show that they aid your army from the beyond. They know the tree is a powerful tool to use against chaos.

High elves: heavenly light shining on the tree. They stand together with their forest kin to bring light back to the mortal realms.

Duardin: tree roots digging deep beneath the ground. When the tree's roots wandered into the realms where the Duardin lived, they saw a great opportunity to fight chaos but to also line their pockets as the roots speared into the earth and it's resources faster than their best machines could. Gold and vengeance was a tough offer to turn down...

If that's too fantastical for your army then you could center it around the Duardin and make them wealthy treasure hunters who travel the realms uncovering loot and artifacts that many allies and enemies are interested in.

THAT.
IS.
AWESOME.

someone2040 wrote:If you were including humans, then I would've said Dogs of War!
A mercenary army in Age of Sigmar is on my books, but I've always felt that the Human part of the mercenary armies in the past tie the other elements together. Mainly because with Dwarves distrusting Elves, you need some race to bridge the gap.

Overall though, I think that you could definitely get away with it by having them painted in similar schemes and with consistent basing. A strong colour to tie them all together and I don't think it'll look too far out of place.

The problem I think would likely be Seraphon though, which are predominantly skin compared to other races that wear a lot of armour/clothes. You'd have to be pretty careful when choosing colours for them so that they still have an interesting scheme, but don't overdo it on the colour tying all the models together.

I'm thinking of adding some Empire models into the mix too. For the Seraphon issue, maybe I could make the scales the common colour.

Haechi wrote:Obviously this is a little broad to be perfectly unified but the best way to do it in my opinion is with very scenic bases and weathering effects.

They don't all have to share the same color scheme but if you create an interesting base and add on top of it weathering or blood or something else effect, it would tie them together.

Few examples:

Desert type base, mix of agrellan and sand brushed with sand tones and a few dried bushes branches here and there. And on all minis add light coloured dirt around the feet and bottom of the robes/armor.

Deadly swamp, bases half muddy and half with water effects. Then add mud on their clothes and blood on their weapons/armor.

I'm gonna try to incorporate as many of these ideas as possible, since they're all pretty awesome.

thekingofkings wrote:I would definately wait until the book came out. Make sure the models and armies are even still there.

I'm waiting for sure. I'm pretty sure that with this "last chance to buy" they mean that they're discontinuing the tomb kings...

 jer155 wrote:
I'm looking into starting an army for the order grand alliance. I'm particularly interested in Duardin, Seraphon, Sylvaneth, High Elves and Wood Elves. Could there be a theme that all these factions could share in one army with their lore etc., preferrably something expressable via their paintjob or modelling?

High Elves don't exist yet, so I can't link them.

Fyreslayers are obsessed with ur-gold and will therefore partner with anyone. A small strike force lead by a magmalizard burrowing up from the ground matches an Order force. They should be separate.
Seraphon are space aliens and teleport in to assist and be a pain in Chaos' side whenever the narrative doth require it.
Sylvaneth and Elves are the ones you could unify via a colour scheme.

Actually, between them all the connecting colour could be green or orange - leaves, rune marks, scales, face paint.