[WM] Grimstonefire terrain blog

[Grimstonefire]

So I figure I'll combine saying hello with what will hopefully be a very interesting blog for people to follow.

A bit about me, I've been into warhammer for probably 17 years now.  Mostly Dwarfs, Chaos Dwarfs, High Elves, Warriors of Chaos and Skaven.

I have a sizeable collection of warmaster high elves which I hope to be selling half of soon.   I have no intention of ever playing a game of warmaster, but I think the warhammer world is so epic that I would love to try and recreate parts of it in warmaster scale.

Also, I intend to let all of you share in my fun by eventually getting things cast once I have a lot ready.  Seeing as there seems to be a  massive gap in the market for decent fantasy terrain.

I've got a lot of questions though that I'm hoping you'll be able to answer:

I presume there are rules for sieges in warmaster, typically how big would a castle be for an 'average' game?  I'm guessing around 50cm?  Or bigger?

Castle walls, how many bases deep do they need to be?  Warmaster are 20mm right (for infantry)? 

I'm guessing warmachines are stuck on bases roughly 25mm round?

Are there siege towers already made for Warmaster?  If so, how tall are they to where the flap drops down?  I don't want to go making massive walls so a siege tower looks tiny!

That's it for now, but I will have many more questions in the months to come.

Thanks

[Draccan]

My Warmaster Castle thread may interest you...
http://www.forum.specialist-arms.com/index.php?topic=6530.msg56658#msg56658

Also Kallistra Miniatures have a great castle and siege towers (those from my thread):
http://www.kallistra.co.uk/

[Grimstonefire]

Thanks for that link.

What I have in mind is far more fantasy than a generic castle.  But that website is useful for dimensions and prices.

How deep are the walls?  It looks like one base deep?

I'm going to upscale my guess of a 'typical' castle to 70cm now?

[Time of Madness]

Welcome aboard Grim! Glad you found your way over here!

One of these days I'm going to buy the Kallistra castle!

Time of Madness

[Stormwind]

By warmachines do you mean units of cannon - or the elements like siege towers and battering rams?

[Grimstonefire]

Well, I'm thinking if I build towers I'd want people to be able to put in a catapult/ cannon etc.  So need to know the dimensions.

Siege towers and the like I don't know if you guys are all using a fairly standard size.  Hence needing to know how tall to make the walls.

[Stormwind]

(Almost) All artillery is based on 20mm by 40mm bases, facing longways.

Some are in units of 2 like cannon and bolt throwers. Others like stone throwers and skull chuckas are single.

Trebuchet are based on a 60mm by 40mm base.

[Geep]

Hi Grimstonefire, welcome to our corner.

There's no standard wall height, as far as I know. GW did make siege towers, which I'd estimate as being 7-8cm high from base to ramp, and FW made a generic human castle, but the scales didn't match between the two (the castle walls were much higher). If you can find some photos of Warmaster magazine front covers they'll give you an idea- they always have the siege towers approaching the wall, but never close enough to make the height difference immediately clear and silly.

[Stormwind]

The thing about warmaster is everything is figurative.  Ostensibly, a castle should be tiny on a battlefield, dwarfed by even a handful of units.

So having a siege tower not quite the right height shouldn't really matter. I mean, we're playing a game that hasn't had support for 8 years so I think we do the best we can. =D

[Grimstonefire]

I'm going to do a little more work on my Dwarf shrine to heroes and then I'll take a pic.  It's quite small though, a 6cm footprint.

Next up will be an Elf or Orc wall I think.

[Stormwind]

Awesome! For the End Times / Storm of Chaos figures I intended to mount them on 40mm bases with little dioramas almost.

[Draccan]

Just to add some more perspective.

Forge World originally released some Irish castles for WM and they were very small. I have a few of the towery ruins and they are okay, but kinda small for me.

I really like the idea of a castle to be built around base sizes and unit sizes. I think smaller towers really should fit 3 bases and keeps 6 or more to make it easier for gameplay.
And the ONE thing that upset me about the Kallistra system was that the siege towers are smaller than the walls so the plank couldn't be rolled out on the wall to create an epic scene where a base is placed to attack the castle. We are talking about a centimeter, but it annoys me to no end.
I mean - I love the castle, but that is one small detail that sticks out..

[David Wasilewski]

A castle would be cool but I would question how many you are going to sell, particularly as there was the Forgeworld Castle (many old timer collectors still have one or more of these), there's the kallistra castle (someone in our group has this) and there are people on e bay making nice castle towers for 10mm.

Bel already makes a nice eastern steppe goblin village.

I would suggest making smaller, warhammer flavoured pieces of terrain that can be used as objectives. Iconic fantasy architecture like a dwarven brewery, a graveyard, a temple, a chaos shrine etc. If you look at old Warhammer codex's and old white dwarfs, you'll see really cool stuff that was made in 28mm scale - replicate that in 10mm scale! I always thought that a series of 'ruined town' buildings with Imperial architectural style would be very versatile and might sell a lot of. Think Mordheim or the burned out ruins of a village/townthat has been sacked.

Dave

[Draccan]

Dave got a really good point. I should have caught on to that. There are several castle makers incl. mdf stuff.

One thing I find missing is an Empire village sort of like the old Warhammer style buildings. These days there are many who makes historial buildings, but we need the crooked fantasy variants. And especially a whole set incl. all the trappings for it.

And of course more warmaster miniatures (not sure about your miniature making skill level).

[Stormwind]

I simply CANNOT reinforce David's post enough.

I have just blown a paycheck on Warmaster scenery but almost everything I got was a compromise of one kind or another.  I spent £50 on Total Battle Miniatures buildings and £20 on various bits of rubble and ruin for Egyptian/Undead stuff from Fenris.  No single range of terrain screams EMPIRE or KISLEV.  Going through both 6mm and 10mm only Leven and Total Battle, with a pinch of Timecast really come close.

EDG productions proposed to start making some things in this regard but the only things they actually finished were:

Tower
Tower Base
Wizard Tower Base (For the discontinued Forge World one)
Hobbiton Mill
Elven Obelisks (By request only)
Village Well
Giant Windmill (Absolutely beautiful but £50 a shot)

So that was great but they moved on to doing an Epic Sci Fi kickstarter.

===

I would blow £100 if there was a range of stuff that really captured that rickety fantasy feel in terms of:

Dwarven: Ruins / Breweries
Vampire Counts: Gravestones / Mausoleums / Tombs
Elves: Watchtowers / Waystones
Empire & Kislev & Brets & other human nations: Anything

Misc: Treasure Piles / Urns / Crates / Sacks / Barrels / Wagon Wheels / Gibbets / Signposts