Warmaster – A fortified Manor
A while ago, I fixed a mistake I did even a longer time ago - I treated myself to the Fortified Manor. This came out around the late 2000's, in June 2007 to be exactly (shown in White Dwarf #330). I wasn't even a student when it was released and the price was 40 GBP / 59,95 EUR, and stumbled across it a few years later in our local wargaming store when I think it was around 70-80-ish euros and for that money you got a whole Battle Force back then. Besides, I didn't had the room for a gaming table so stocking up on terrain wasn't my priority.
Yet, the item got discontiniued and what made this set special, was that it was not just a combination of the chapel and tower, but had an exclusive sprue with parts to connect the two buildings, and that would create quite the price surge in the years. So seeing the manor on ebay for 200 to 300 Euros wasn't uncommon, and they sold for that price, which made it worse. I was not going to pay that amount of money and would simple sit it out - and I was proven right, as I had the chance to pick up two copies from their re-release in January at 75 EURs each.
But why did you get greedy and bought two? Well, the tower and the chapel are more than 90 EURs if you just buy them, making it cheaper to go for the manor and you even get the fences and exclusive sprue free on top as well.
So, yeah, we got it, Dennis, you made a bargain, but there is Warmaster in the headline. So what does this mean? I get to that directly. As written above, the 2nd hand market pricing, showed there was a demand for that kit, and while there were some alternatives, somebody went very close - as close possible and made a crowdfunding campaign for a digital copy.
Warmaster – Small Settlements to fight over
We are talking about Warmaster again and after printing a whole week of tiny skeletons, I wanted to add some terrain to the table. While I have generic terrain like hills and trees, I thought about a small town or settlement, that could be used as a point of interest or scenario objective.
Not everything, but a lot of terrain can be scaled down to 40% to fit Warmaster, and as I wanted to have a small settlement, that could be used with Bretonnians as well as Undeads, I searched for some more rugged, run-down buildings, that could house either rather poor peasants or corrupted minions of the undead. And the Slum huts by Infinite Dimenions Games would be perfect for that!
Initially I intended to print the shacks A, B, C and the Slum Tenement A, but the last one would take 5 (!) print plates on my printer, so I decided to just go for the three shacks, and as you can see above, these already provide a bit of a foot print.
Warmaster – Tomb Kings of Khemri
What is a perfect way to motivate yourself beside deadlines? Having somebody else join your project / play the same games. So I managed to fire up Florian / Celebration Parallax about Warmaster and he chose the Tomb Kings of Khemri.
Not a bad fit, as that would create the Bretonnia vs. Khemri setup from the Old World Release, we could do a bit of crusading and it would certainly not feel like a mirror match.
Beside that, due to their design, painting them in 10mm shouldn't be the hardest thing, as you could probably easily do a lot already with a coloured primer, midtone wash and a bit of dry-brushing. For those of you, who don't know the Tomg Kings of Khemri, they are egyptian themed undead within the Warhammer World, using a lot of elements of the era, like Sphinxes or Chariots.
Warmaster – Dukedom of Gisoreux Pt 3
With all the talk about the Old World, I feel the need to pick up my old-world themed Warmaster project of the Bretonnian Dukedom of Gisoreux.
The 10 plates were printed and cured in the mean time, costing me less than litre of resin and about a week of printing (the printing time will be less for people who use larger printers and/or newer once, with faster printing time). This would be 23 units, 10 heroes and two artillery pieces, so quite the stunning 3,000 points army.
Warmaster – Dukedom of Gisoreux Pt 2
We talked about the framework of this project, the Dukedom of Gisoreux, Bretonnians for Warmaster and now have to move on to the next steps, and that would be 3d printing at home.
How to approach this? I've talked about my start into 3d printing last year, and to be fair, you have to be honest about the costs as there is a lot of eye washing happening online. As mentioned earlier we have 115 EUR costs already for bases and STL files. What did the hardware and "consumable" cost for a start?
My resin printer is an Anycubic Photon Mono 4K (RRP of 260 EUR, but mostly on sale for 200 EUR). There are larger and newer generations available, but these cost quite a bit more. I think this is a reasonable choice to dip your toe into 3d printing. I got myself a bundle with the Wash & Cure 2.0 and a litre of resin for a total of 350 EUR. The litre would be sufficient to print the list of miniatures I wrote up earlier. But that is not all you need to start printing, as you will have some consumable items, like IPA, some safety gear etc. to clean up and further process your prints. Yes, you can do without the cure and wash, some sealable containers and you can re-purpose the IPA by filtering, to increase the mileage on these things, but I suggest getting a 5 to 10 litre container of IPA, which will set you back around 30 to 50 EURs depending on your source. Along with another 30 to 50 EURs for disposable gloves, containers, safety glasses, replacement FEP sheets, PTFE spray, kitchen tissue etc.
This adds another 450 EURs for the hardware to our initial 115 EUR buy-in for bases and STLS. Intermediate project costs: 565 EUR.
Warmaster – Dukedom of Gisoreux Pt 1
After we have decided for a conflict, the Dark Conspiracy, with the Lizardmen retreaving stolen artefacts by the Bretonnians, it is start to build an army.
Our aim for the armies is 3,000 Points per side, beginning with the Dukedom of Gisoreux.
Dark Conspiracy – The Battle for Antoch Plains
We talked about Warmaster earlier this week, and one of the settings that really spoke to me, was the conflict of Lizardmen vs Bretonnians from the 5th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles starter set. It would be something different than the End Times or Storm of Chaos, and for that reason I want to give you an overview.
To validate my ideas of those armies, I grabbed the two army books and gave them a proper browse, if there is something that either would increase my interest or pop up some red flag for it. So far, only a strong breath of nostalgia leading me further down the rabbit hole.
And to support the release, there were campaigns that were played in the stores all over the world and partially in clubs or at home. And those had some interesting backstories, which are going to be the core of this project.
Warmaster – Not for THE, just Warmaster
With the teaser for an epic, small scale system coming to the Horus Heresy, I put my own epic 30k project on hold until we know more. Especially as I like get a feel for what's coming, base sizes etc., I will pick up another system from my backlog and move it forward in the schedule - Warmaster.
Why Warmaster?
I simply don't have the ressources in terms of available time and space to cover one of these amazing 4-6.000 point lists from Warhammer. I don't see myself painting 200 state troops in 28mm and having barely a chance to put them to use, nor store them properly as I can use that room for multiple other projects. And with the possibilities of a 3d printer and the availability of different whole armies as STLs and printing at home, this is a very valid and approachable project. Especially as going for the original miniatures is not really an option. First of all, they are quite scarce and in the rare times they are available 2nd hand, the prices are through the roof. And as they are post-Middlehammer era, I don't really have a connection to that miniature range, so there are no nostalgic feelings or motivation, to go for the classic range.