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.

10mm Pendraken Great War

As it seems to be the season for it, I have been interested in putting together a small Great War collection of 10mm figures, aiming at a company for each of the major combatants in the West, some regimental or divisional support weapons, and a few "fun" bits like tanks and trucks and what not that give a good period flavor. 

I have had a surprising amount of trouble finding online breakdowns of the composition of battalions during this period, with most of it being for 1914, and therefore not accounting for all the technological and structural developments that occurred as the war went on.  When I was doing similar research for WWII I found tons of information.  I guess since most of the battles were such large scale, that people must be ignoring the company/platoon level combat?  To me anyway, the tactical aspects of running a company or battalion seems far more interesting than the more meat grinder aspects of clashing divisions together.

I priced out a couple of companies (at roughly 1:1) from Pendraken directly, and the Warstore as an importer.  Interestingly, the Warstore comes out significantly cheaper, partly due to shipping (£19 from the UK, or $7 from NY), but each pack is cheaper as well.

The general idea is to "upsize" skirmish rules and have a 28mm figure replaced by a half squad/section base of 10mm figures.  Obviously this will need some modifications, particularly with regard to "wounds" or movement ranges, but I think it will generally work well, and with some trench terrain, will look quite nice as well.

Over on TMP I saw a thread about WWI using Rapid Fire, and found this interesting basing system, where infantry figures are mounted in strips 15mm deep, and special weapons are mounted on 25mm rounds, which seems like it would work out pretty nicely.

Copplestone 10mm Dwarfs

Copplestone has some new 10mm Fantasy, which is certainly surprising, as there have not been any releases for 10mm for some time.  Three new packs at £5.75 a pack, which works out to about $9.70 with today's exchange rate.

Two handed axes

Spears are pretty unique

I like that some swords are mixed in

The information for these figures says they are 9mm, which looking at comparison pictures of the Copplestone 11mm humans probably means to the eyes.  At that size they are going to be larger than the plastic Bo5A figures (~7.5mm to the eyes), but in line with the sizes of Eureka 10mm dwarfs, and the metal dwarf archers from the very short lived Bo5A blister line. (Occasionally on ebay for ~$30 a blister)

Regardless of their size, they are lovely, I think I will have to get some. Pity there are no archers though...

Birthday 2014

This weekend we celebrated my birthday, and I got some loot that you may find interesting.

First is the TIE Defender for the X-wing Miniatures game.  The Defender was always my favorite in the old TIE fighter computer game, and it should be pretty powerful in the table top game too.

Second is Justice League: Axis of Villains, which is a strategy game about defending the Justice League tower from an onslaught of villains. 

Third is the King's Quest collection, which collects together the King's Quest games 1-7.  I have heard that there are some problems with playing these games on newer computers, but I loved them as a kid, so I will jump through some hoops in order to play them.

Finally, we have The Landmark edition of the Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, which I am very excited to read... sometime.  However, there should be plenty of gaming ideas in that book, which I look forward to. 

Scratch Built Dropship

Sadly, not mine, but one I saw on Iron Mitten.

I really love the idea of taking "junk" and making something practical out of it, and since I have one of these same bottles at home, I was staring at it for a while in the shower this morning, thinking about how to make it into something useful for Inq28 or other WH40k/Generic Scifi sort of games.

Unfortunately I always start to get carried away, and I was thinking about blue foam shapes for the nose and tail, a chimera turret, vector engines, windows using disposable contact packets, and adding a layered styrene skin to have panels and exposed wiring... at a certain point I need to stop thinking and just make something.

(also see this post from the Marienburg Gazette)

6/28/14

A few days late for this, but 100 years ago Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were shot to death in Sarajevo by Princip, a member of the Black Hand. This was of course the immediate cause of the Great War, which started a month later on 7/28/1914.  While that war may seem remote to some, it is obviously hugely important to making the contemporary world, with global effects rippling out from a few pistol shots in a far away city.

As it happened I visited the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna a couple of years ago, where they have a whole room full of artifacts from the shooting, including the car, Archduke Franz's coat, and the pistols of the Black Hand agents captured following the attack.

Perry Brothers Liberated

We are aware that there are rumours flying around that we have left Games Workshop! Thought we should set the record straight and let you all know that…we have! After 36 years, man and boy, working on Warhammer, 40K and of course, for the l...ast 15 years LotR and the Hobbit we are now able to focus our energy on our historical ranges.This means more time to dedicate to Perry Miniatures, and of course Mr Jackson who we continue to make 54mm WW1 figures for. We had an excellent evening on Friday at The Trip to Jerusalem with GW, and ex-GW, colleagues and friends who got us very, very drunk - cheers!

 

Above taken from the Perry Miniatures Facebook page.

 

With the move away from metal and now from individual figures, as well as the end of the LotR/Hobbit run... it only makes sense I suppose. 36 years at GW is more than enough for anyone, although with this departure, it means that there are even fewer "names" left at GW, as they leave for greener pastures. 

 

Celebrate by hurrying to the Perry Miniatures website and buying some figures!

023 Sells Army

ZeroTwentyThree is selling his WHFB Marienburg (Empire) army. While this is undoubtedly a great tragedy for him, it should be a great opportunity for someone else [or rather two chances, since he is selling humans in one lot, and weirdos in another].

Inquisitor d1000 Part 9 - Demeanor

Here is a d100 table of Demeanor as part of the d1000 inquisitor attributes project. Go back and read that post if you want to know what this is about.

Just Psyker and Stats left to go for this project, and then I will have the grand summation post, and create a page to help people find all of this "content".

Roll	Demeanor
1	Absent Minded
2	Amoral
3	Arch
4	Assertive
5	Bad Tempered
6	Barbarous
7	Brusque
8	Calm
9	Careless
10	Catty
11	Cautious
12	Charming
13	Cheeky
14	Cold
15	Composed
16	Conceited
17	Conscientious
18	Contemptuous
19	Coquettish
20	Courtly
21	Coy
22	Crotchety
23	Curious
24	Debonair
25	Deceitful
26	Depraved
27	Docile
28	Dogmatic
29	Domineering
30	Enthusiastic
31	Excitable
32	Extroverted
33	Faithful
34	Fawning
35	Ferocious
36	Fickle
37	Flaky
38	Full Of Him/Herself
39	Fussy
40	Good Natured
41	Haughty
42	Hedonistic
43	Heroic
44	Immoral
45	Imperturbable
46	Impulsive
47	Inconsiderate
48	Introverted
49	Inventive
50	Irritating
51	Jolly
52	Jovial
53	Languid
54	Lordly
55	Lout
56	Loyal
57	Majestic
58	Manic
59	Manipulative
60	Moody
61	Nervous
62	Noble
63	Old Fashioned
64	Opinionated
65	Passive
66	Patronizing
67	Perfectionist
68	Persuasive
69	Picky
70	Playful
71	Pleasant
72	Polite
73	Pompous
74	Pragmatic
75	Punctilious
76	Puritanical
77	Quick Tempered
78	Reserved
79	Rude
80	Sage
81	Sanctified
82	Savage
83	Serious
84	Slimy
85	Slovenly
86	Sly
87	Somber
88	Spiteful
89	Staid
90	Stately
91	Surly
92	Taciturn
93	Thoughtful
94	Torpid
95	Trustworthy
96	Undiscriminating
97	Unswerving
98	Urbane
99	Volatile
100	Witty

As always, please let me know what you think.

Forgotten Glorious Sample Figure

Way back at the end of 2013, I saw a notice on Wargame News and Terrain, which indicated that a company I had never heard of was offering a sample figure.  Never one to pass up a free miniature, I hurried over to their website, and sent them a request for a French figure, with the idea that if it was not a range that appealed to me, I might be able to use the figure somewhere else, maybe as a pulp figure, or in 40k (with some additions).

As the company is located in France, I did not expect the package to come quickly, and yet I was still surprised to get the packet nearly a month later.  I guess not every company can be GZG (plus, again, it was free, so why complain?).

While it took me quite a while to get to it, here are some comparison pictures of the figure I got (a French infantry officer)

Left to right: Perry, Pulp, FG, Copplestone, Foundry

FG, Games Workshop, you can see how narrow the FG figure is

Narrow, and tall too

Painted picture of the figure from their blog

You can sort of tell from the pictures, but the figure has a separate head (here glued on), and is fairly tall and slender.  It does not really match up with any of the figures I compared it to, but that would not be a problem if you were to use only FG figures.  Unfortunately, FG only makes a few French figures currently, but more are in the works.



 The Great War references that I have are predominantly for the air war (although I did have a single plate of a French soldier in a uniform book), so as usual one must turn to the Internet. Fortunately for the French infantry painter there is Sidney Roundwood's very detailed Late War French painting guide.