10mm Fantasy

SO seeing all the warmaster armies that day, I did my best to entice the KoW players amongst those there to play 10mm KoW.

The prompted me to review bases and set ups using what i had calc’d and published previously a few years ago, and I had some fresh thoughts.

10mm sized bases should be 2.5 times smaller than the standard game, so a troop base – arguably the building block of all units is technically 40mm x 15mm – so, while i have been basing all my units on washers as individuals, this means that for me a troop is 3 minis given just what fits on the bases.

However, I was accidently sent a unit of dwarves kept as strips, rather than as individuals – annoying but gave me a chance to experiment. two strips will fit on a 40x15mm base – a bit snug, but they do fit. This means that I could go for the easy option of keeping units as such, basing them on the smaller bases as std, and then putting those blocks on 40x20mm thanks to mag sheets or something to make them warmaster sized.  They’d look more “impressive” and immersive – a regiment would look like a regiment rather than a couple of dudes – something i always disliked about warhammer fantasy anyway.

With Cav its a little trickier as you need to have your warmaster cav facing the “wrong way” towards the narrow edge. Now using some vampire knights as an experiment they will fit on 20x20mm so I could create the warmaster sizes easily enough – I might have to experiment to make sure the lances allow them to rank correctly, but otherwise we’re all set. For KoW, I can only really fit 2 minis per troop due to the enlarged washer sizes, 3 if I balance a middle mini on the bases of its fellows. Using the 20×20 bases I increase this to 4, and if I use some 10x20mm bases I can even fit this on a 50mmx20mm as if a proper KoW troop.

Now, I am not going to throw away everything I already have, but for future additions I don’t know which to choose. The main benefits of the current scheme is that it means that a warmaster reg is somewhere between 9 and 16 minis so 1 std 3D print gives me 2 really – even if I max it means when I inventively break some of the little prints I can shrug and not care as much (well I can tell myself i can shrug and not care as I’m not currently prepping any!).

There is something “nice” though of the ranked units – they look more impressive, capturing the essence that you are commanding armies. I am making the assumption that non of the strips have any overhang so they can be ranked that closely.

Attached are some pics of the unit examples to show the logic. Again work in progress, but curious to hear peoples thoughts. I possibly wont change anything –  I have too many minis already as singles either metals or 3D prints to rank them up, but I keep eyeing up ratmen…

So with my first 1000 pts arrayed a group of us met at a near by FLGS for a day of warmaster.

In prep I had re-read the rules and loved the interesting fact that my Slann general has a command of 0 yay me!

So there were a few of us playing and we were met by another chap who had been playing Warmaster since the first ed and he acted as a kind of guru for our initial games.

In the first game my friends faced off Wood Elves v Tomb Kings. The game was fairly tight in the main before the wood elves were brought down.

I plays second and I started off playing someone who hadn’t brought his army as he had only been given a short time, but as he is another tomb kings player he borrowed the tomb kings force. When his time was up he was replaced by someone we had enticed during the day (came for a card game, stayed for the tiny toy soldiers I believe).

Thanks to some questionable general decisions, bad dice rolls, and a lot of coaching  by William, I was pretty much wiped which was a shame, but still a good days gaming had by all.

SO first impressions, I liked it on the main, loved the chance to play with some toys that don’t get to come out that often. The rules are ok, some interesting quirks and flavour points, something that shows why it has been around for so long.

As usual, trying to meander my way through it wasn’t a great approach, but most of us were all in a similar level of experience so it shouldn’t have been that much of a disadvantage. I should have made more use of William, rather than just trying to go my own way. While he was a great help and good company,  it did feel at time William was playing both sides himself  and we were just rolling the dice, so I wonder how the games would have gone if left to our own devices.

I am not sure how I feel about some things – the game did seem to favour Horde armies   – the disadvantages of crappy units like skeleton didn’t seem enough of a handicap when up against the more elite forces or elves and Lizardmen. Its also… unfortunate that as such an established game there are staples or “std” lists that appeared to be taken. For example when I mentioned I had temple guard at home i was advised that for the additional points they weren’t worth it so no one takes them. I was told similar things about chaos knights (might have been warriors, its been a week or two). These are one of the toughest units in the game but no one takes them as for the points you can spawn several units of marauders that ultimately do more damage. How true these things are up for debate, and I haven’t tested it myself but seemed to make sense, just a shame that the lack of balance is that stark – it is a GW game however! I am aware that i can do and field whatever i like, and lets face it for readers of my other poorly updated projects will know that my win rate is pretty shite anyway!

I look forwards to getting it back on the table top, prob need a few other games under my belt before I can draw a better view, but at least I am happy to give it a go

So here is my 1000pts for warmaster. its obviously a work in progress but then thats most of my armies!

So I wasn’t planning on picking up the lizards so soon… I was toying with a couple of ideas, and some chaps at the local club mentioned they were going to be trying warmaster revolution… so here we are.

I stuck with the Lizards rather than the rest as I know where they all were and was hoping some of these would be relatively quick to crash out.

Now a sensible person would maybe complete what they had started and try and “finish” whole units at a time… but where’s the fun in that! I started on my Kroxigors… and then I had to put them to the side due to life and then spent some time getting my skinks and saurus warriors based – keeping to the c10mm washers as a base as I have with others, (more on that later).

On basing, I made a “design” choice to use a pot of premixed plaster I had knocking about.

Now dear reader I don’t know if you have ever spent a Saturday night trying to get a small “ring” of plaster to stick to c30 tiny models on washers.. its not fun… but that’s the choice I have made for this army and by Jove that’s what I’m sticking with 🙁

Well, where does the time go!

To think the last time I updated this, I only had 1 child, Covid hadn’t hit, we were still in our old house, I was probably 30kgs lighter, etc etc

Anyway, last year (yeah, all over the continuum with this), I accidently bought a starter lizardmen army… increasing the number of unpainted armies again.

I started painting some of the cold ones, and got relatively far until some genius decided to add a shelf to “my” hobby space. As a community announcement ALWAYS check where plug sockets are before drilling, as you may think that cables would have been taken from the floor upwards (on a ground floor room), its not always the case. So the minis and the rest o the room got packed down until the wires could be repaid and the room subsequently repainted…

TMy last bit of procrastination is a look at Oathmark…

I picked this up as part of my desire to own as many rulebooks as possible. Looks interesting and gave me an added incentive to look at my 28mm Kow Dwarves…

Ok, so lets group these together as the concept is the same. The origin of the Dwarf and gobbo models was to play KoW in 10mm.

The first thought was to simply half the base areas and go for that. This would require bases 50x40mm for regiments. For large Inf or Cav this would be 65x25mm for troops.

However, I happened to own quite a few 40x30m bases which is 40% of the “regulation” sizes (ok the depth should be 32mm but aint nobody got time for that!). This makes Large inf/Cav being a 50x20mm which is lucky as I happened to have a few spare.

What I will state is that these will not be true model counts. The reason for this is often the models are not designed to be ranked up in the same “regimented” fashion. I think alot of these ranges will have been orignially aimed at the Hordes and Heroes rulesets where people were a littly free-er – I mean in KoW you are allowed to be fairly relaxed about it anyway if you choose to but I felt it was worth to mention.

So since I bought the models I have not done alot with the idea. I blue tacked some units on the bases using the 50mm frontage idea for a couple of games and it worked fine.

So looking at Oathmark, the Frontages for the “recommended” scale would be 125mm, which gives a c60mm fromtage at half sizes. It just so happened that the infantry washers I have been using are 12mm in diameter and as we all know 5 (being the width of Oathmark units in models) x 12mm = 60mm, so models I do for this (provided they are either human, dwarf, green skin or elf will do!

The fly in the ointment is Cav. I can only fit 3 models to a base with these guys so either I source some steel rectangle bases, or I use tiny dice on the base to so the 4th and 5th lads. Not ideal but does save mixing base types up.

so I have cut up some magnet paper into the required sizes, and from somewhere found some thicker mount board or something similar for support. I would be more specific but it is a random piece I squirrelled away for such an opportunity.

And so finally some pics. I have used some of the undead as stand ins for the time being but the principal is the same.

Right… no more dilydallying… time to go back to painting… tomorrow, I promise…

WoE Knights

Mounted Lord Knight with lances (128 + 3) 131 pts

Court Wizard with 2nd spell (55+10) 65 pts

Knights on warhorses with lances (96+3) 99 pts

Archers with longbows and swords (67+5+10) 82 pts

Foot Retainers with 4 additional (72+48) pts

Total 497 pts

I am not going to compile a Saga Army at this juncture as I have a lack of “interesting” units to add in – as in I can easily do levy, fighters and elites, but lack suitable creatures to bring in some flavour.

This should also allow me to get the WoE army “done” with what is already part painted and then go back to Dwarves as either way I need to do some preparation work… time will tell.

So, as I said earlier my Dwarf lists were ready, they are my fantasy army of choice so nothing could get in my way…

Then on having a look in our storage unit for a cot I found these

They are some Kallistra medieval bits I bought years ago (Uni era I believe) as I was going to make generic armies focused on particular colours either for easier civil war stuff (reds v blues v greens etc) or group them together for something larger than DBA.

As you can see (apologies for any colour blind amongst you) these are my red forces.

They also by chance, happen to come to about 500 pts of WoE! I need to find a suitable 10mm Wizzard which the current struggle but one thing at a time!

Given this find, me unfortunately it’s good bye Dwarves and hello Good Sir Robin! I for the time being can sub in my Dwarves wiz to fill the gap unless a lil chap turns up who is better suited.

Army lists are still being finalised but should be up soon.