Warmaster Chaos Warriors

Here are some pictures of Warmaster miniatures I painted a long time ago. I started making a Chaos Warrior army for Warmaster, but didn't get too far. I never ending up playing a game of Warmaster because I didn't finish painting an army, and nobody else I know painted pretty much any Warmaster stuff. It seems like a fun game, so hopefully I'll get a chance to play it someday. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the Chaos Warrior miniatures I have painted so far.

Chaos Warriors



Marauders



Chaos Hounds



Everything



In Warmaster, if I remember correctly, you could make brigades of up to four units that would be issued orders together and move around together. I decided to create a brigade of two Chaos Warrior units, and two Marauder units. I have no idea if that would actually be good in the game, but it seemed reasonable. And I figured I would differentiate different brigades by their predominate colors, including the color of their flags. So these pictures show the "Red" brigade. Another brigade of four infantry units would have all their flags, tassels, etc., painted some other color. It's not really neccessary, since it's easy to tell who is brigaded together as they would be in base to base contact. But I thought it would look good, and maybe be a good way to represent the army being composed of different tribes or families, or brigades devoted to different Chaos gods.

Union Major General Winfield Scott Hancock

Here are some pictures of a Union army command stand I made for use in the game Field of Battle, by Piquet. Again, the miniatures are from GHQ. The commander miniature is actually specifically meant to be Winfield Scott Hancock. The rest are various extra command figures I had.

Warhammer Historical: The Great War

I recently bought The Great War by Warhammer Historical and read through it, so I thought I'd post a review. The book itself is very nice looking. There's not much in the way or artwork, but it is full of many pictures of very nicely painted miniatures on tables full of great looking terrain. All the photos of miniatures are impressive and inspiring, and many of them are used as diagrams to illustrate particular rules. There are even a few photos meant to demonstrate step by step how to paint miniatures from the different armies that the book covers. So in terms of the photos and the presentation of the miniatures, it is very much like the production quality you'd see in a Games Workshop rulebook.

The text of the book, on the other hand, is not anywhere near the same level of quality. It is full of typos, grammatical errors, and poorly worded sentences. For example, in a section about painting miniatures, they have this gem: "For all the models the following techniques were used as standard with all of the models." It seems minor on its own, but there are sentences like that or worse everywhere in this book. It's almost as if nobody actually proofread this thing at all before it went to the printers. It's mostly just annoying, but in some cases the rules are worded in a very confusing way, or details are mentioned in the examples but not actually explained in the rules.

The rules themselves are based on the Warhammer 40,000 rules, and seem to be a mix of 4th edition and 5th edition rules, but with some of its own unique rules. Because of the poor wording, someone who has never played Warhammer 40,000 might have a very hard time understanding how some of the rules work. If you have played Warhammer 40,000, it should be pretty easy to understand what they are trying to say, but I think when playing the game it might be easy forget which rules are like 4th edition, which like 5th edition, and which completely different. So if you end up playing Great War and Warhammer 40,000, you may end up looking in the book a lot to double check things when you get confused about which rules go with which game.

Speaking of rules, I'm not sure the Warhammer 40,000 rules are the best set of rules to base a real world wargame on. The Warhammer 40,000 rules make use of huge ranges of strength and toughness to be able to represent anything from normal humans, to massive alien monstrosities that can rip apart tanks. In the Great War, there are no alien monstrosities, everyone is a normal human, so there is really no need for having strength and toughness characteristics. They could have left those out completely and just given all the weapons a "to wound" roll. And even the weapons don't vary much in strength, since regardless of what kind of bullet you get shot by, it's going to be pretty deadly. So there are thing that really could have been dropped entirely, like the to-wound chart, without changing the game much. But if you're already familiar with Warhammer 40,000, then you already know the chart, so it won't slow you down anyway. But people who have never played Warhammer 40,000 might wonder why they bothered with the needless complexity of having a chart for that. Then again, people who are more used to playing historical games are used to having lots of charts for everything.

Aside from that, I like the rules. They seem really fun, and I like a lot of the new stuff they've come up with, such as their rules for how heavy machine guns work. The way the armies are organized, into companies of several platoons with support choices based on the size and type of the army, seems like it will add a lot of flavor to the game, though it does make the process of selecting an army to a certain number of points somewhat laborious. I also really like the missions that are included in the book. They seem fun, and are very flavorful and objective based, so that should keep the games from just being about wiping out the enemy. Also, between the few different missions and few different deployment possibilites, plus options for reserves and wave attacks, there are a lot of different ways to play. So that should make each game play out very differently and keep it from getting predictable or boring, even after playing many times, and even if the armies don't vary greatly.

The armies that the book covers are the French, English, and Germans. They say they will cover other armies in future supplements. Each of these armies has several army lists, covering different types of battalions. For example, there are cavalry battalions, tank battalions, stormtrooper battalions, and others. Which army list you use determines which kind of company counts as core for your army. You must take a certain number of minimum core companies for a game, and the number of them you take total determines how many support choices you can take. The army list you choose also determines which support choices you have available, and how many of each you can take per core choice. Many support choices also have a limit on how many you can take in total in your army, which could vary from list to list. So there are many options, and much to consider when deciding what list you want to use.

The Great War book covers only the Western front during two years of the war, 1914 and 1918. Again, it says in the book that they intend to release supplements covering other fronts and the middle part of the war. For now, the French, English, and Germans each have six army lists in the book, three for 1914 and three for 1918. So there are a total of 18 different army lists to choose from, giving much greater variety than you might expect it to have with its limited scope. So it should be plenty to keep you going until they eventually released the promised supplements.

As far as historical background information, the book has very little. There is a section in the beginning that goes through year by year, showing a timeline of a few major events, and a few other mentions of battles used to illustrate a point or explain the inspiration for one of the missions. That's about it. It seems pretty normal for historical games to not include any background information in their rulebooks. Presumably people who bought the book already have some interest in and knowledge of the period, since that is likely what makes someone want to game in a particular period. But for people used to Games Workshop games that have a great deal of background information, it is a significant difference. So, like most historical games, you'll have to do some of your own research to find background information and historical inspiration for your battles.

Another thing I should note is that it takes a lot of miniatures to play a game. At a minimum for each army list, you need at least one command unit and two core companies, each of which consist of a company command unit usually a minimum of 2 (though sometimes the minimum is higher) platoons, each with some number of models. So even if you just want to play the bare minimum playable army with none of the fun support choices, and you pick the lists with the lowest minimums, it comes out to needing about 40 models just to play. For some of the lists you'd need many more just to fulfil the minimum requirements. Also, they state in the rule book that each 28mm figure you use represents about 3-4 actual soldiers. I plan to use 10mm figures instead, and put 3 of them on the same 25mm round base they say to use for each 28mm figure. That way nothing about the rules will be affected, but I'll have one model for each soldier the rules are intending to represent. I think that will look a lot better, but of course requires even more figures just to play the bare minimum sized game.

Overall, I really like the Great War rules. It seems like they will make for a very fun game in an interesting period of warfare. I haven't played a game yet with these rules, but when I do I will be sure to post an update with my reactions to how the game actually plays. Based on just reading through the book, I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in playing small scale battles in World War One, or anyone who plays Warhammer 40,000 and wants to try something new or have lots of new options for army types. The rules should be very easy to learn for anyone familiar with Warhammer 40,000 and the army lists offer new challenges and opportunities for those sick of playing the same 40K armies and missions over and over again.

Union Heavy Artillery Battery

Here is my first attempt at painting artillery, a Union heavy artillery battery, plus an artillery officer command stand. They are supposed to be 20 pound parrot rifles, but I found out after painting them that rifled artillery was made of iron (and often painted black, I believe), while smoothbore artillery was made of bronze and was not painted. The reason for this is that rifling would get worn out in the softer bronze barrels, so rifled artillery had to be made of cast iron or wrought iron, which is much harder. The Civil War Artillery Page is, not surprisingly, a really good resource for information about Civil War artillery.

Irish Brigade

I've finished my first full brigade of American Civil War union infantry. It represents the famed Irish Brigade, consisting of the 69th, 63rd, and 88th New York, the 116th Pennsylvania, and the 28th Massachusetts Infantry regiments. In the middle, on horseback, is a brigade command base with their commanding officer, Brigadier General Thomas Francis Meagher, and their chaplain, Father William Corby.

69th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment

Here are some pictures of my very first historical miniatures, a regiment of Civil War Federal infantry. The miniatures are 10mm and from a company called GHQ. This particular unit represents the 69th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment (led by Colonel Robert Nugent), the first regiment of the famed Irish Brigade. I even included their distinctive green regimental flag, which depicts the sun peeking out from the clouds above a golden harp.

My Introduction To Historical Wargaming: Part 3

Step 5: Choose Miniatures
Now that you've figured out a scale for your miniatures, it's time to find a manufacturer that makes the miniatures you need. You'll probably find several, and will have to choose which to go with, or possibly just mix miniatures from different manufacturers in your armies. You'll have to be careful with this, though, since even miniatures that are listed as being the same scale can sometimes vary in actual size from company to company. And, especially in the smaller scales, they can vary greatly in how thick and stocky they are and how they are porportioned. So 10mm miniatures from two different companies might look a little strange next to each other, if some are very thin and others very bulky.

I had decided that my choice was between 6mm and 10mm figures. After some online searching I found one company, Baccus, that makes 6mm American Civil War miniatures. Thankfully, their website has many great pictures of their miniatures, which is not the case with a lot of other miniatures manufacturers. The American Civil War section can be found here. They look great in the pictures, all ranked up in big units with skirmishers out front and terrain on the bases. But up close they seem to be very squat and disproportioned. Plus, they aren't that much less wide than 10mm miniatures, so it seemed like I could have just about as many figures in the same amount of space with 10mm as with 6mm, but the individual models would look better and be more realistically proportioned.

I was able to find many manufacturers that make 10mm American Civil War miniatures. Some of them have a decent number of photographs of their miniatures on the websites. Most of them do not. It seems pretty ridiculous to me that they'd expect people to buy their miniatures without seeing what they look like, but I guess it didn't stop me. Luckily, I found this great site called 10mm World that has lots of pictures of 10mm miniatures. Many of them taken with the miniatures in front of rulers or grids so you can see exactly how big they are. And the pictures are grouped by manufacturer and by historical period.

The pictures on that site convinced me that by far the best, most detailed, most realistically proportioned 10mm miniatures are made by GHQ. Especially convincing is the scale comparision picture shown in the Napoleonic GHQ section. So I found the webpage for the GHQ 10mm American Civil War figures. They have pictures on their website of some, but not many, of their Civil War miniatures. But what I had seen already had convinced me that they would look great. They are definitely more expensive than many of the other 10mm miniatures ranges I looked into, but I thought it was well worth it for the quality of the sculpting detail and the more realistic proportions of the figures. So I ordered a few packs of Union infantry to get started.

Step 6: Decide on Basing
At some point you'll have to figure out what size bases you are going to use, how many figures to put on each base, where to put command figures, and other things like that. This might already be figured out for you by the rules you are using or the miniature scale. If you are playing a skirmish game, then you'll just base each miniature individually on whatever size base is appropriate for what size miniatures you are using. If the rules call for a specific base size, and you can only fit one or two figures of your chosen scale on that sized base, then there won't be much to decide on in this step. But as I mentioned, many rules sets seem to be fairly lenient when it comes to base size and number of scales. This is so that once you have your figures based for one game, you are still likely to be able to use the same figures based the same way for a different game in the future. Nobody wants to have to completely rebase their figure collection if they decide to try out some new rules.

The rules I had gotten, called Field of Battle, did not require any specific basing. It suggusted that an infantry unit in line should be 4"-8" long, with 6" being idea. If the unit was closer to 3" long, all the movement distances and ranges in the game could be halved to make up for it. Depth of the unit isn't particularly important. Figure scale and number of figures per base is not relevant to the rules. Each unit does need to have multiple bases so that they can be re-arranged to represent being in line, being in march column, or being in attack column. Another point about the rules that affected my decision was that there is a mechanic called Unit Integrity, which tracks the morale of a unit as it takes casualties. Infantry units start with 4UI, cavalry 3UI, and artillery 2UI. So it would be convenient for each unit to consists of one command stand plus one stand for each point of UI. In the future I intend to make up casualty stands with some models wounded or running away on them. Then when a unit loses UI, I can replace one of the normal stands with a casualty stand, but the command stand will always remain, and I can label the bottom of it with what regiment it represents. With infantry units of 5 bases to a regiment (which contains ten companies), this also means that each company takes of half a base. This could be useful for any regiments where some of the companies were uniformed differently than others.

I wanted my infantry regiments to look as much like a real line of battle as possible, so I wanted to pack the figures closely together, have a lot of them, and put them in two ranks. Two ranks just looks a lot better. Even in one rank the formation is much deeper than it should be, but the depth of the unit doesn't effect the rules much, so having them in two ranks should be fine. I decided two ranks of four per base would be good, because then in a one column wide march formation, they would be four figures wide, which would look good. Four of the figures side by side, with minimal space in between, took up about 3/4" or 20mm. I wanted them spaced evenly front to back so that when in march column all the rows would be about the same distance apart, and I didn't want any parts of the figures hanging over the edges of the bases, which could make it difficult to place the bases touching each other. So to accomodate all of that, I decided on 3/4" square bases for my infantry. I purchased very thin square steel bases from WarWeb.com, which can be found here.

With 8 figures per base and 5 bases to a regiment, that gives a ratio of 1 figure to about 10 or 15 men, which isn't bad. Next was determining where to place the command models, which involved a little research into where they would have been in reality. By design, I had an odd number of stands so I could make the center one a command stand with all of the command figures. I decided to place an officer figure in the center front of the base with a drummer to his left and one or two flags to his right. If two, I move the officer to the left a bit to fit them both. Union regiments normally carried two flags, a national and a regimental. So it looks good with two figures. But each figure represents at least 10 men, and the color guard would have been 9 men with two of them holding flags, so one figure can certainly represent both flags. The whole process of determining how to base figures is really a balancing act between aesthetics, trying to maintain the ground scale of the rules, and historical accuracy of where people were positioned and how much space they took up. I went back and forth many times with different basing ideas trying to balance these considerations. There is not one right answer, you just have to decide on something and go with it. You can always rebase them later if you change your mind or manage to come up with the perfect basing scheme sometime in the future. So what I came up with isn't perfect, but that's what I decided to go with. If you have other ideas or suggestions about determining how to base your figures, let me know.

Step 7: Paint/Base Miniatures
Now you're finally ready to paint your toy soldiers! You could do this before you figure out how you're going to base them, but it's nice to know how many you need for a single unit, so you can paint a whole unit at a time. Come to think of it, you might want to determine how you're basing things before you order the miniatures, so you can order then in the right amounts for the number or units you want to start out with. But I didn't do that, because it's much easier to figure out how you want to base things when you have the actual figures in hand and can arrange them and measure how much space they take up and see how they look in different configurations.

They way I decided to base my infantry, I would need 36 infantry figures and 3-4 command figures for each regiment. The GHQ American Civil War infantry come in packs of 24 infantry plus one officer, one standard bearer, and one drummer. So every three packs would give me enough for two regiments, plus some extra command figures left over to make brigade command stands. I won't get more into painting or basing here, since those are huge subjects and I plan to have plenty of posts covering those topics in the future.

Step 8: Play Game
Once you've got a few units painted up, it's time to play the game! I haven't actually gotten to this step yet, so I can't comment on it. I'll be sure to post my thoughts about it when I finally get to play Field of Battle. I'm looking forward to it, but I still have a lot of painting to finish before I get to this step.

Step 9: Repeat
As much as I'd like to deny it, I suspect this step is unavoidable. At some point you will become fascinated with some new historical period or set of rules and have to repeat many or all of the above steps all over again. But everyone needs a hobby, right?

Well, I hope you've enjoyed my walk down memory lane, and perhaps found some useful information in it. This is only the beginning, and I will be posting much more about my progress with this American Civil War gaming project in the future.