Eighth Challenge Submission - Warmaster Stuff

Empire troops from GW's Warmaster game

My eighth submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge was connected in a way to the fantasy engineers in my last submission. I was rooting around my hobby pile to find them, and came across as exciting discovery of a long-lost "I'll get to this next week project" which has stretched into years and years - Warmaster!

Remember these fantastic rules?

Crossbow regiment in front, Halberdiers in the middle, and the Knights at the back (will counter-charge when these lads are run over...)

Yes, Warmaster, GW's ridiculously fantastic set of macro-level fantasy combat rules.  Remember Warmaster? The rules alone were fantastic, serving as the inspiration/basis for many subsequent sets of rules to follow.  But it was more than great rules. I also recall the figures - 10 to 12mm collections - that GW released to support these rules were also just tremendous. They had lots of character and variety. Warmaster was a lot of fun and there were many games played among our group back in its time.

I just loved the sculpts GW released to support this game...they captured the setting perfectly, with tons of variety and character - a (rare) example of GW getting something right

Great rules, and great figures...sounds like a recipe for success, right? Enter #lolGW. Warmaster was around for several years, but ultimately succumbed to GW's gold-into-coal black touch along with the rest of what were then called "specialist" games.  The prices for the models entered the stratosphere, so they didn't sell, so GW cancelled the game, because it wouldn't sell...

Really basic paint job on these Knights - hope to get more colourful and less grim with the subsequent units

When Warmaster first came out, I collected and painted a small Empire force. In 2010, I resolved to re-paint it up to a higher standard, and re-base some of the models. This effort lasted through some Knights and some characters and artillery pieces, but not much more - you can find the last blip in this effort in the dusty archives of this blog, back in February of 2010 - seven years ago!  Needless to say, other things distracted me, and the Warmaster efforts faded to the background, and these figures when back into storage.

Meanwhile, GW killed off the Specialist games.  So many Warmaster units I had hoped to collect - Kislev, or the super neat figures representing Araby! I settled for grabbing a few more units from Ebay, and have purchased a few more here and there since then, but in classic wargamer fashion, I have hardly touched the models. In the intervening years we moved to a new house, but these figures stayed in the box, gathering dust, or still in their blister packs, with the plastic turning yellow :)

My updated Empire forces, with these new units added...

Having encountered this little stash of models once again two weeks ago, I figured the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge would be a fine time to take another crack at this.  So I dove in, and have been sawing away with the brushes on figures that haven't seen sunlight, much less paint, since 2010. I painted a unit of halberdiers and a unit crossbowmen, a did a touch up on an old unit of Knights. I have also spent some time re-basing models I had already touched up, so I can have a sense of coherency among figures which have a seven-to-ten-year interval between painting!

The Knights take their place...and a wizard is on hand

That Crossbow regiment is a little lonely - will need at least one more for the basic Empire force requirements

Empire hero on a griffon - he'll finally have a force to command after almost 10 years!

Various heroes and officers, ready to lead the Empire army to battle!

This submission included 60 foot models and 12 mounted models in 10mm.  However, the Knights were a touch-up job, not a real paint job and didn't count. This submission counted for 60 points in the end.


Another five or six regiments and this will be a fine 2,000 point Empire force, fit for a good-sized game of Warmaster with the group at some point.  I think Dallas has Dwarves, and I have unpainted Orcs and Chaos figures...hopefully we can get a game in this year.

More Warmaster Progress

I'm still plugging away on my Warmaster reclamation project - an Empire army that I found in the basement. I've just finished a unit of Knights, the artillery and the characters. The pace is slower than I thought, as the "touching up" has turned into "re-painting" but it is still a lot of fun.
Knights - before...




and after...



Some artillery for the Empire battle line - a detachment of two cannons, and the always-fun Hellblaster volley gun.



The important bits for running any Warmaster army - the characters to boss the units around. Sorry - this picture is a bit lame because of the lighting, but hopefully the models show up OK. There is a the Count on his Griffon, a general (with his feet kicked up - I love that model), two hero bases and a wizard.



The character models and artillery were the "easy pickings" on this project - now I have to get back to the meat and potatoes core units, the Halberdiers and Crossbowmen (you need two of each as a minimum in the Empire contingent). I'm hoping this army can be ready for a fight by the end of February.

First (re)completed Warmaster Unit

I made a bit more progress on the Warmaster re-do project over the weekend, and have finished my first re-painted and re-based unit of Empire Halberdiers, along with their Elector Count (Count von Büze on his trusty Griffon "fluffy").



Stay tuned for knights, artillery, and of course, more Halberdiers...

Warmaster Rehabilitation Project

As chronicled earlier in the blog, I have been attacking the pile of junk in my basement. I have discovered a lot of great unpainted/unused stuff, but also uncovered a shoddily stored Warmaster Empire army. Seeing the state of them, I have resolved to update the figures, and hopefully use them in a game some time this year.

I started by popping the infantry stips off the bases, painting some black over them, and repainting. Here is a "before and after" progress shot. On the left is a command base of Empire Halberdiers from before, and on the right is a command base post-rehab.



I have re-done the colours with a bit more contrast in the hopes of making them stand out more, and also added groundwork. Hopefully the army will be ready for action in a few weeks!

I have to admit that working on this project (as well as the dusting off the Battlefleet Gothic models and re-basing my Epic figures) has me quite fired up about the specialist games. Too bad they are so friggin expensive now! But a Brettonian army for Warmaster would be pretty sweet....so would an Orc army. Maybe later in the year...

PS - surfing the GW Web site, I saw these guys. THAT would be a pretty sweet army too!

Another Bit of Junk from the Basement

From the annals of "How Not To Store Your Miniatures", I bring you this example, fresh from the hoard in my basement:



That's an Empire Army for Warmaster, stored rather inelegantly to say the least. I painted these about 10 years ago? I can't remember when Warmaster first came out, but whenever it was I promptly collected an Empire Army, and painted it using my process of that time (i.e. ASAP), which was to start with white primer (?!?), use a base coat of green or blue, and cover the whole thing in a brown ink wash that was then available from Citadel (unlike the excellent washes they have today, it was a very thick, heavy ink, and of course I was too lazy to thin it out) and then dab some silver on the metal bits. So these figures look like little blobs for the most part, with the exception of some character models, and have no groundwork on the bases even (who bothered with stuff like that back then when you could just paint the bases green?)

I stumbled across this box in the midst of a recent project. Consistent with a semi-official new years resolution to try and focus more on the pile in my basemnet, I am going to try and "reclaim" these, popping them off the bases, touching up the paint, and re-basing them with sound groundwork, static grass, etc. And with the prices for "Specialist Games" today, this is way cheaper than doing another army over again.

Plus, I might try and store them properly when I'm done...