Warmonger Miniatures - 10mm

You may recall my previous post about the Warmaster Army selector, writen by Dave Susco.

Well, today I discovered that he has a company called Warmonger Miniatures which sells 10mm figures designed for, wait for it, Warmaster.

Specifically he has Landsknechte Pikemen and Great swordmen, which of course would be very useful as either Dogs of War, or Empire troops in a Warmaster army (and of course as Landsknechte in a historical army)

Sculpted by Bob Naismith

These figures were created as part of a kickstarter campaign, which I honestly never even heard of. In any case, the campaign was partly successful, and now these two units are available from Warmonger Miniatures at the nice cost of $10 a unit.  Once I finish off my warmaster army [so, 2020?] then I will be interested in adding more units, and these fit the bill nicely.

Warmaster Army Selector

Whilst browsing the Rick's Warmaster site today, I saw in the "what is new" section, that there was a link to a handy automatic army selector for Warmaster.

Created by Dave Susco, the army selector actually helps to build armies for Warmaster, Warmaster Trial Armies, Warmaster Ancients, and a few of the Warmaster Ancients Army book armies.

Not only does it have the rules for army building, and the upgrades, and various alerts about having 1 of x per 1000 points, it also has the ability to save and print lists, and when you print out a list, it has options to include all the stats, special rules or just the ones used, rules for magic items used, and spells (provided you are playing Warmaster Fantasy!).

It does not appear to have the additional special units added to Warmaster Fantasty, such as elite handgunners, or the Swordmasters of Hoeth, but considering those are both rare and OOP, it is to be understood.

Anyway, this Warmaster Army Selector is pretty handy if you are into any of the official Warmaster variants, or just like to play around with list making.

Warmaster Empire

If you have not noticed yet, Ebay has a redesigned front page for logged in members.  Previously this page was a bit spare, and had the last few items you looked at, and a few "deals" and other advertisements.  Now, it has that, and it also has a Pinterest style "feed" which has pictures of items for you to scroll through.  These items are based on interests that you enter, and have a certain level of sorting and filtering built in, so that you see them as you would like.  It is an interesting way to explore Ebay, and could lead you to see something that you really must have, although it is still new and a little buggy.

Which leads me to Warmaster.  One of the interests suggested by Ebay based on past searches and purchases was Warmaster, and in refining that interest to exclude satanic black metal bands, I began looking at auctions for Warmaster miniatures, when then led me to conduct a survey of my existing blisters and boxes.

Currently I have about 1200 points without any heroes, upgrades, or magic. [Naturally all unpainted]  Adding in the heroes and magic brings me to around 1600, at which point I now need a compulsory pair of crossbow regiments.  I also apparently lack a Helblaster, and could probably do with another flagellant regiment and 1-2 more pistolier regiments.  Adding those things brings me nicely to around 2000 points, and seems as if it would give a rather nice game as well.

Here are a few useful Warmaster links:
Games Workshop page
Rules part 1
Rules part 2
Warmaster Armies (rule book for 15 armies)
Rick's Warmaster (being the author)
Brumbaer's Warmaster (many useful articles, and figure comparisons)
Living Rules

Temptation

My wife has a program on her smart phone that will monitor Craigslist for you, and then let you know when certain keywords have been posted.  She uses this to watch out for items we want for our house (brick, plants etc.).  On a lark, I added "warmaster" as one of the keywords, because I had once seen a posting about warmaster there.

Just the other day she said that the program never gets any returns for "warmaster".  This morning she emailed me the link to a post for something over 120 blisters, spanning eight armies. The guy wants $300.  Retail price for that would be over $1,800, and Warmaster blisters go for pretty close to retail on ebay...

That is some serious temptation.

Middle Earth Musings

As you might have guessed by reading this blog (someone does read this, right?), I flit from one project to another, based on the weather, or what I have read online, or pretty pictures I have seen. I have been in a Middle Earth sort of mood lately, partly due to reading the Lord of the Rings to my wife and offspring at bedtime, and partly due to a cousin naming his new daughter after someone in the Silmarillion. (yes, seriously) Both activities led to reading about the world on Wikipediea, which has a good deal of information from the books and the histories of Middle Earth, published by Christopher Tolkien.

Thinking about Middle Earth always makes me think about the grand battles, and playing them on the tabletop. Battles such as Pelennor Feilds, the Five Armies, Osgiliath, and the Hornburg are huge cinematic struggles, even without there being a movie made. With grand battles, it makes sense to go small scale for figures, and with LotR it makes sense to look at 10mm because of the Battle of Five Armies box, which has a huge number of regiments perfect for use in other battles as well. Once you are talking 10mm, then Warmaster or some variant comes into play as well, which is excellent, since I have three versions of those rules, and like them enough for a game.

The difficulty with doing battles from the Lord of the Rings is of course that most of them are not even matches, there are either huge massive numbers of baddies, or a moral break on the part of the enemy that causes them to flee, or good guys riding up to save the day, or all of those. Several battles are essentially sieges, or battles around the relief of a siege. "Bathtubing" [a most excellent term which comes from naval gamers] the major battles is necessary, and in most cases I think one regiment for 1000 men is probably sufficient. That is a figure ratio around 1:30, which is not too bad, and well suited I think to Warmaster. However, even this leads to around 55 evil regiments at Pelennor Feilds, two of those comprised of mûmikil (as well as Grond and siege equipment). Careful scenario building will be necessary though, to make sure that each battle is not a repeat of the book, and that the "good" side has a chance of achieving objectives. Point based "even" meeting battles might be a way to go, but that is a lot more work than just setting up a scenario based on the books.

Figurewise I am actually pretty well situated for once, since I have the Battle of Five Armies box, and it has eight regiments of Orcs alone, and a total of 16 "evil" regiments. I have a small Rohan force made up of Copplestone "Horse tribe" figures and the good and evil hero packs as well. Of course that leaves only 42 more regiments to go for Pelennor Fields... most of those are Haradrim and Rhûn Easterlings. The humans, both good and evil, will be sourced from historical armies, which should be easy enough. Great Hall Miniatures will be of help here, since they sell both Magister Militum and Old Glory figures, both of which should be excellent for this purpose (and cost effective!)

So anyway, that is the distraction de jure, the reoccurring dream of massive 10mm Middle Earth. I just have to stave off dreams of refighting the War of Wrath, and Balrogs riding on Dragons...