10mm or 6mm terrain for Warmaster?

[Gorrin]

Hi Stormwind.

Was afraid that may sound a little preachy! Just giving my opinion on how grand scale works. I'm of course as fallible as the next uber geek! I know from playing brigade level f&f at 6mm scale for years that it's best to concentrate on major terrain features is all!

It's whatever works for you at the end of the day.

I hope this doesn't mean I won't be welcome at madgamers at some point in the new year!? 

[Dranask1]

LOL Stormwind is unlikely to refuse a game of Warmaster, he has had to become very tolerant of people like me.

When we play with woods we have trees placed on green mats and move the trees out of the way, in BKC2 we do the same for BUAs.

A large enough wood/BUA will disrupt LOS and slow movement, but a single house is as much of a speed bump as a single tree, that is to say zero effect.

I've often suggested building scales at a smaller scale this allows you to place a few building rather than one so that it looks like a town, but you have to beware the Lilliputian effect.

However for skirmish games then same scale buildings are always appropriate, you need to be able to fit in the doorway.

[Stormwind]

Nah, no worries, you're absolutely right of course.  Everything in the Warmaster rulebook and written around it by the authors explicitly says that a single unit of Halberdiers / Spearmen is hundreds of people.  It is a grand scale game. 

=)

My hills / forests are pretty scale ambiguous.  I've not even played a game with buildings in yet.  I have walls painted and ready to go but no fields.  Planning on getting some Fat Frank roads though which will really change the game by adding paths through dense terrain.

I love the TBM complete town set:
http://www.forum.specialist-arms.com/index.php?topic=5196.0

That would be an amazing centre piece to a board.

[cjbennett22]

I do the ambiguous size as well.  but like Gorrin said, the only terrain worth putting on the table is REALLY worth noting in the battle.  He mentions the sunken road at Antietam and the wall at Fredericksburg etc etc.  not every rock wall is a real defense.  I made a castle (not pretty) but its also fairly large so I could actually put 2 stands facing each other on the walls, for combat. 

though towns are very very pretty I need terrain that helps the game move, not hinder it by making everyone try to find a place for their mini's or forcing warmaster bases to slide all over or fall over onto their sides.  the most gorgeous terrain is usually, to me, a game stopper.  for now on I am going to try and just stick to putting everything on 1/8" thick plywood from home depot.  I get mad at my hills as I cant seem to get the incline right, stands keep sliding off.  Stormwind, have you seen the town terrain piece that I made?  with the paper buildings?  I was trying to make all sorts of crazy rules for it but just found it all to be to technical and confusing so just went back to the basic dense terrain.

As for woods, I shared how I made mine and I still stand by them.  mine are not the most beautiful I know but they are extremely functional.  I actually remove the tree top canopy and use it as a swamp.  a better modeler or someone with more time could make them better for sure.

my terrain is a huge leap from the basic cardboard piece that you had to imagine was a hill or forests from when I first started about 15 years ago with my brother.  LOL

[Gorrin]

SW - one of the nest bits about the TBM town is that all the buildings are removable and movable and have a variety of standard footprints (3cm x 3cm, 6cm x 3cm) etc that fit in small depressions in the base. Mine is as yet unpainted but will post when it is.

The set is about £45 but you do get all the buildings and by just using two or three you can make small hamlets / villages etc.

Here is a Bruce Weigle tutorial on grand scale board building, like I said herioc and ros minis are tiny even for 6mm - but I'm sure the techniques could be scaled up for WM. There was a picture in one of the wargames magazines of his wife carrying the boards in their carry-case with one finger!

http://www.g-design.us/bruce/BrucesTerrainBuildingArticle.pdf

 

[Stormwind]

@Horrin:

Gosh, I feel a sudden bought of inadequacy looking at all his work.  =P

[mlkr]

Returning to the OP, and to give the two-cents'-worth of input from a (very) seasoned, middle-aged grand scale gamer (newbie to warmaster - but experienced in 2mm, 6mm and 10mm in other rulesets)...well here goes...

This was such an enjoyable read ^_^ I think the biggest problem that we are having is wrapping our heads around the abstraction of it all... It just kinda looks wrong with houses smaller than the individual figures, but at the same time I cant personally feel the epicness that I want when a house is a house... I did order some 10mm stuff and that will still come in handy on one of our tables - but it looks like I will have to order myself some 6mm also so that we can have 2 tables at the club to compare between.

Epic Warmaster - here we go! ^_^

[Rowlybot]

The other day I ordered a few of the JR Miniatures buildings, via Magister Militum. I got these:

http://www.magistermilitum.com/jr1711-forest-huts-x6-7187.html

And the round houses, which don't appear to be on their site now - perhaps I bought the last set? Which I also only received 2 and I think the listing was for 3 (and I've only just realised so I had best send them an email ha).

The huts were resin and the round houses were hydro-stone I think. I painted up 3 of the huts and both round houses, fairly roughly for the Tri-Wiz this weekend. After I might go back and add some highlights or whatever.

The sculpts aren't great and I think the castings are pretty dire too. As it is, cheap but not necessarily good. I would still buy more if only because of the cheap and frankly, table dressing doesn't need to be super-duper-fabulous in my opinion.

[David Wasilewski]

Gorrin - as a brother Adler ACW and Naps fan - where did you get the sticky up fluffy corn fields please?

Dave

[Gorrin]

The yellow wheatfield stuff? It's model railway scenery. comes on a sheet an you cut it out.

http://www.sceneryexpress.com/NATURE-PLUS-WHEAT-FIELD/productinfo/NH07421/

http://www.noch.com/en/product-categories/model-landscaping/grass-meadows-fields/grass-mats.html

Or did you mean the fields with the corduroy lines of crops? If so...I bloody well can't find the company now..but they were based in California. I'll have a look brother and let you know,

[David Wasilewski]

Thanks - that noch stuff is lovely!
The fields I'm covered for.

Dave

[Gorrin]

Dave - I'm sure other model railway manufacturers make similar products such as Woodland scenics and Busch etc. I'm not sure where in the world you are based but I get most of my wargaming scenery from model railway suppliers. Namely Model Junction in Slough.

The grass mats are great though. Teddy bear fur is far too thick for for grand scale gaming!

Can you remember where you got your ploughed fields from? I need some more and I can't for the life of me remember where I bought them!

[Gorrin]

Ok - apologies as I have not got painted versions (and TBM were not at Warfare last weekend the fools!) but here are some snaps of some warmaster dwarfs in front of some 6mm scale medieval(ish) buildings. If anything the buildings look smaller that they do in real-life because of the depth of field on my phone camera. You can see that the buildings do not look ridiculously out of scale with the models at the same time as not having too large a footprint.

There's a few pics here from a couple of heights as well as focus on the buildings and on the unit.

[Gorrin]

Here is a pic with the dwarfs against some generic(ish) painted 6mm farm buildings, and also some scratch built 6mm trees and a scratch built field.

[Stormwind]

Yes I must admit they do look good.