Specialist Arms Forum
Specialist Games General Discussion => Modeling & painting => Topic started by: Grimstonefire on January 24, 2015, 05:23:32 PM
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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
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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/
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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?
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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
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By warmachines do you mean units of cannon - or the elements like siege towers and battering rams?
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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.
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(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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Awesome! For the End Times / Storm of Chaos figures I intended to mount them on 40mm bases with little dioramas almost.
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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..
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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
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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).
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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.
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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
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I'm certainly going to bear those suggestions in mind.
The hard part is figuring out how to make stuff that can be cast using relatively little resin and in as few pieces as possible.
Generic castles were not what I had in mind. Very much imperial/ cathedral esque.
I love the idea of ruined things. I'm part way through making a section of an orc wall. It's 10cm long and would be about 8cm wide at the base and 8.5cm tall.
Watch this space. ;)
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I've been working like a maniac on a ruined mordheim type house. It's really fun actually doing this stuff, and I'm learning a lot I can use in future projects.
A little teaser, it's 15cm long, 8cm wide (so far), and I imagine will be about 10cm high. The roof will be separate for casting reasons.
The challenge has been thinking how to make it hollow whilst allowing for simple things like a staircase, and also keeping the walls relatively thin to try and keep the resin cost down. The upper floor the walls will be about 12mm thick, the basement nearer 8mm.
So it's like an inverse tardis in places, smaller on the inside. But when properly assembled it won't be that obvious. Lessons learned.
The other challenge, which I've yet to decide on, is that in mordheim/empire a lot of buildings have walls that aren't square. I'm avoiding doing that on this first one as it's a very fine line between looking quirky and looking badly made. The roof will be a bit more quirky, well what's left of it anyway.
Some pics at the weekend.
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Looking forward to pics :)
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Sounds great! I too am looking fwd. to it.
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This sounds pretty grand. =)
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A massive amount of work yet to do obviously.
The grey sections at the bottom will be brick, as will the bridge. I'm going to do a warrior priest type statue on the sides of the bridge.
Also got to figure out a suitable level of detail for the interior decorations. I'm thinking a broken table in the main room.
Where the walls are broken will be sand/ coarse stuff just to show it burned. Lots of broken timbers and tiles etc on the open floors.
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b226/GrimStonefire/Warmaster/P1050115_zpszhukssrr.jpg)
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b226/GrimStonefire/Warmaster/P1050116_zps2jvaei58.jpg)
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Dang, that's a hugely promising start.
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That's a really great house. How do you plan to use it in-game? Will it just be impassable, or is there a plan for showing the occupying forces?
You've inspired me enough that I'm now considering trying this.
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Impassable I think. If I had designed the inside better it might have been possible to occupy with a war machine (cannon etc). But it's a bit too small.
People elsewhere seem to think the hole in the roof on the top pic looks like a man has fallen through... It'll look different once there's some tiles on there.
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An update. This house is taking forever to do. The roof has been really hard work actually. Hundreds of tiles to cut.
I'm thinking my next project will be a terrace of 3 houses, though I do have some inspired ideas for kislev type buildings.
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b226/GrimStonefire/Warmaster/P1050128_zpsm1otkxrj.jpg)
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b226/GrimStonefire/Warmaster/P1050129_zpstnmcnwza.jpg)
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Wow- that's an amazing job. Great dedication on the tile cutting- I've only ever done that once for a Warhammer scale building, and ended up increasing the tile size to make it easier.
Where did you get the stone patterned card?
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Impressive work indeed!
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No stone patterned card, that's greenstuff. It would be a lot quicker with textured plasticard that detailed!
I was tempted to make the tiles bigger, but I decided it had to be kept in scale no matter what. :(
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*Steeples fingers*
This is looking grand. =)
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Have to admit I was sceptical at first but this is looking great!!
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Looking really good!
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I hope difficulties with this one won't discourage you from doing more - it would be wonderful to have a variety of buildings for scenario play.
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Well, I would say I certainly have the motivation for the following:
Terrace (3 houses)
Small house
Barracks
Blacksmiths or wizard tower
Church (Sigmar)
After this, it being mordheim, I would like to take a trip downtown to the daemon infested slums and really make something crazy, but it would depend on my motivation by then.
Hell, I could make an a ruined brothel or something! Lol.
I might also make some large quick complete ruins, like the old Epic plastics.
Real world time commitments and wanting to paint/collect other stuff means I'm aiming for one building a month (or thereabouts).
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Ha ha, wish I hadn't bought the Total Battle ones, now!
I shall be waiting, and later this year I'll be putting an order in I think.
If you wanted a smaller item as a break, please consider doing some kind of graveyard style mausoleum or statue pillar/plinth.
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Well, not a whole lot of progress on this house, but it's because I've had a cunning plan...
I'm going to assemble all the buildings first out of mount board (very thick card).
So I've made the barracks (pic soon, when I get my camera back). I'm currently building the wizards tower which is very empire looking (with observatory) but it's going to have a waterfall out of a skull and be floating!
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Ooh, be careful there, don't want it looking like Warhammer terrain from the past 3 years...
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j107/DanielBrouwer/SkullhouseAwesome.jpg
=-P
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lol Stormwind ;D
Really looking fwd. to the house Grim..
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As I mentioned before I have the card version of the buildings complete. To finish these I need to coat the models in plasticard and start the detailing.
First up is the Barracks.
I haven't decided on whether to create a ruined section of this or not? What are your thoughts?
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b226/GrimStonefire/Warmaster/P1050130_zpsiz51svyh.jpg)
Second is the wizards tower.
My initial plan here was to have it as shown, but I then thought it would be fun to have a waterfall coming out of the skull mouth that was then 'suspending' the whole thing above a base underneath. But that doesn't really work as well because of it having a staircase in mid air... So I'm going to stick with it as shown (but with a waterfall). It's going to be a hefty piece of resin though as it's entirely solid. Not easy at all to hollow it out.
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b226/GrimStonefire/Warmaster/c6c71578-7777-4ce5-9b8c-2b217b47ddff_zpspet92gqg.jpg)
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b226/GrimStonefire/Warmaster/P1050132_zps3p2jires.jpg)
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I prefer the barracks without ruins- it shows it as a more stable structure.
I really like your Wizard's Tower. I had plans to build one in Fantasy scale (based off Warhammer Online artwork), but never got around to it. Sadly I never even managed to pick up the official GW model that was clearly based on the artwork.
I may steal your idea later and make this in Warmaster scale ;)
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The tower is warmaster scale?
It's more or less lifesize to that photo.
If anyone is wondering, the half oval shape on the back is going to be done as bars. The idea being it's a pen for a griffon or something like that built into the cliff.
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Sorry, I wasn't clear- I know your tower is Warmaster scale. It's very similar to the Warhammer scale Wizard Tower (I don't remember its silly name), and both are clearly based on a design from Warhammer Online. I would like to copy your idea and make this in Warmaster scale.
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Sorry, yes I see the confusion here. I was wondering why you would need to copy it when I do hope eventually to get this cast and sell a few. ;)
But building it yourself would be very fun, as I'm finding out.
If anyone is curious the rock is a material called Hydrocal.
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Are you thinking in casting? what material?
Great work!
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I'll need to get some quotes and see, but I imagine resin.
Mulling over my options for what's next.
I'm thinking I might have a go at a bridge or a brothel!?
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both
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How big would you aim for for a bridge?
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Then we will need some minis to populate the brothel !
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The bridge I'm really not sure to be honest.
To be functional game wise I suppose about 14cm wide by 20cm long and maybe 9cm high?
If I went non-functional I think more like 6cm wide by 20cm long and say 5cm high.
@jchaos. Lol That would be a challenge! The appealing thing about that as a project is how to make it seem obvious what it is when (in my mind) there's not a typical look for a medieval building like that.
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Wait... What? The bridges in Warmaster are meant to only allow an infantry stand to go sideways down, so only 20mm wide.
With a bit of give for elaborately over-modelled stands, maybe 30mm wide (3cm) in terms of the travel area.
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Just want to say that building looks incredible! Well done :)
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How does that work in terms of actually moving a large unit of troops around the battlefield? I'd pictured it as being a block of at least 6 bases. They don't actually move single base file over a bridge?
I know exactly the sort of bridge I want to make, something like this:
http://fungus.org.uk/blog/fortified-bridge_b.jpg
Only a bit more warhammerish, and longer.
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Personally I'd say 40mm plus breathing space would be plenty wide, but hey, it's your bridge!!
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Any updates GSF? Was really enjoying this. =)