Warmaster 2! Warmasteryier...

Last night I played my first game of Warmaster!  My order from Pendraken had arrived and had been painted and this (with some borrowed bears and a few magical toys ) brought my army up to near 1500 points.
My Force consisted of:
General with Orb of Majesty
Hero with sword of might
Hero with Bear
Wizard with dispel scroll
3 units of Lancers (1 with a magic banner)
3 units of Horse Archers
2 units of Archers
2 units of Axemen
1 Warwagon
1 unit of Borrowed Bears

These faced Geoffs High Elves!
2 Units of Silver Helms
2 units of Reavers
2 units of Chariots
4 units of Spearmen
3 units of Archers
1 battery of bolt throwers
General, hero and wizard

The General and the Kislevite centre

The Elf centre.  

The Elven Right .

The Kislevite left,

The Lancers 

The Kislevite Light Cavalry Brigade mix it up with the Reavers and Silver Helms. They destroyed the Reavers, but only bagged one stand of silver helms before the brigade was lost. Still, their charge caused Chaos in the elven lines...

In response the rest of the Elven wing went and stood on a hill for a bit.

Last stand of the Horse Archers

The Lancers try out a lance formation. They'd lost three stands when they got
charged by the chariots, but they destroyed the chariots in turn. Pity they spent
most of the game just standing there.

My left flank- at this point with a briagde gone, and still outnumbered I
moved the lancers closer to my centre for mutual support

Meanwhile in the centre- the Kislevites have taken their time over laagering,
luckily the elvish brigades here were taking orders from an wizard, and spent
most of the time just faffing about.  The Bears are sent in to cause more chaos.

The Elvish archery eventually deals with the bears and they steady their lines only
for the Lancers to arrive, coming down the hillside (and presumably with Sabaton
providing the soundtrack...), and were driven back, despite the Kislevites only being
armed with rubber lances....

The game didn't quite end there - The silver helms managed to catch my two under strength lancer units unawares and destroyed them. This should have ended the game but I miscounted and didn't realise I'd reached half strength! Pressing on, my remaining lancers charged the two spearmen units that had survived their previous charge, and wiped them out , breaking the Elf army as well...whoops!


So whats the verdict? It was a great game, though I need more units: I was a bit out numbered, and even just 4 units less in such a small game meant I was somewhat stretched. Need to get my General to where the action is as well, the first half of the game was all about the cavalry engagement on my left, but the general was miles away, and the two heroes commanding Brigades there were out of their depth!  And wizards are no substitute for a proper commander.  Never got to see what the Infantry could do, once they'd laargered they were rather static! They shot up any elves that came near quite well, but we never got to test Geoff's assertion that they were unassailable once formed up. But the fact he was reluctant to engage them suggests more warwagons might be worth it. 

Most of the rules of the game I very much like, but  I was a little dissatisfied with the melee mechanic were you keep fighting round after round till one side is defeated. Theres something funny about it, but I can't quite decide what it is. More testing required.

Anyway, heres some random shots of the whole force.  Think it needs more Horse.  A lot more Horse...

Warmaster!

This post should have probably been the Gauntlet18 report...a rundown of the huge and epic and massively overly complicated game of Frostgrave... and I'll get round to it one day, but this hobby butterfly has seen something shiny...

The other week at the club, whilst my Orks were giving Phils Imperial Guard a good going over, I espied in the corner of the room, a game using tiddly little figures- Warmaster!  I'd long coveted this game that has been described as one of the best wargames ever written, and I already loved its cousins (Hail Ceaser, Black Powder and Pike and Shotte), and golly, did it look fun. So I decided I was in, and that I would collect Kislevites!  With the only slight hitch that they didnt make 'em anymore, I headed for ebay, took one look at the prices and headed for Pendraken Miniatures to buy a bunch of their Renaissance Polish!  And Whilst I was awaiting their arrival I started work on terrain!

Pretty much my entire terrain collection is for 28mm scale so I'd be starting from scratch and needing everything.  Firstly I went looking for buildings. Attempts to scratchbuild were unsatisfactory, so I turned to the internet and looked for the free stuff that could be downloaded.
 I found this castle : http://www.toshachminiatures.com/castles.htm  which is very nice, and an easy build, and this model village  https://www.grundschule-pretzschendorf.de/Werken/Weihnachtsberg/weihnachtsberg.html.   The buildings in the latter are a bit modern looking but I copied them into MS paint and modified them a bit before I printed them out.
A visit to the Works turned up 50 small fir trees for a mere £10 and all they needed was quick brush with green paint. I also remembered I had already bought one piece of terrain, many years ago with 10mm gaming in mind, and it was gather dust on a shelf. It was a model of an ancient ruined temple, bought whilst visiting the Parthenon on my honeymoon, for a mere 2 euros. This was given a scenic base and a coat of paint. A cardboard tube became a wizards tower, some foam board became some hills, and then the figures arrived, a small packet to see how things went, and enough to make a unit of Winged Hussars, 3 of Horse Archers, and 2 of Axemen. A Bear was found in the spares pile to provide a lancer with a mount. And thus in a mere 2 weeks I've produced a pile of terrain, and 600points or thereabouts of Kislevites, ready for battle. Reinforcements are already on their way...

PS:
After writing this I was looking for something to do with my day when I realised I didnt have a wizard!  Well there was only one thing for it...I would have to make one!