Gryphon and bird army

[Raoiley]

Hey all, I don't play a lot of order but I'm interested in a mixed order "bird" list. I'd love to feature an empire general on griffon, some demigryphs, could branch out and look at a Phoenix or some of the stormcast vanguard riders etc.

If I build it, it would be more of a thematic army, but I'd like to make it as effective as possible. A lot of the warscrolls seem pretty underwhelming. Any combos I should consider?

[Overread]

Right now a lot of the old Empire and HighElf models are sitting with a big question mark over their head as to what is going to happen to them. Empire one hopes will be done with a Freeguild army whilst Aelves no one has any clue what GW is going to do with them. A combined battletome; rolled into another army or even retired (they've recently retired greenskins so that's sent some worried wobbles through people as to what GW might do to other models and forces). 

 

I would say base it around Stormcast to start out with. That gives you a solid core with gryph hounds, Vanguard-Palladors, as well as lords such as the Lord-Castellant and Lord-Veritant that come with gryph hounds and the epic Lord-Arcanum on Tauralon and Aventis Firestrike and Lord-Aquilor riding a land griffin. After that there's Desolators on land dragons (and several other forms) as well as Stardrakes and Stormcast Eternals Evocators on Celestial Dracolines (dragon cats). 

You can also bring Vanguard-Raptors With Hurricane Crossbows & Aetherwings - archers with birdies!

 

Then you can ally in things like pheonix and demigryphs. The bonus here is that the core of the army is "safe" because its stormcast and already has their Battletome out. The downside is that many of the units you like are fairly expensive so you wont' get many for allies (assuming 2K army you'd get only 400 points of allies). You can, however, use the SC as the core for a while and then if/when GW releases new battletomes bulk up the other forces and then swap over; forming, say, a freeguild army and then allying in stormcast as you want. And if GW retires models or such you're not left too far out of things because you started with a safe Stormcast core. 

 

 

Note GW is pushing AoS this year it seems, they've already released 3 battletomes this year (Gloomspite Gitz, Flesh Eater Courts and Skaven) and have another coming very soon (Khorne) so its very likely that you will see updates to many armies iwth new Tomes this year. 

[chord]

And the Knight Venator has a bird as part of the model.