Warmaster Playtest

I have been looking for a ruleset to play mass battles in the Sengoku period for some time. I would like to play this in a small scale and after a lot of research, I have decided on 10mm. To prevent an over extravagant purchase and a lot of unnecessary work I have decided to go with the Wargames Atlantic hard plastic set. Followers on my blog will know that all my previous forays into small scales have failed spectacularly. I have bought or painted armies in 6 mm scale for Napoleonics (Blucher) and WWII (O Group and Rommel), they have ended up being sold or given away. I am hoping this will not be the case here.

Next up was the decision on what ruleset to try for these games. The ruleset Heiho that comes with the Wargames Atlantic has not had the best reviews. After a lot of research I felt I should check out Warmaster  Ancient Battles with their Medieval Armies source book. Unfortunately, neither rulebook is available as Games Workshop has completely abandoned all of their historical games. The plus for me here is that several members in the Historical Miniature Wargaming Club in Montreal seem to be well acquainted with this ruleset for fantasy battles. 

One of our members, Helge, set up a game for me last week in the fantasy genre with me playing High Elves against his Orcs. Although fantasy gaming does not really interest me, this was an excellent introduction to the actual ruleset. I actually quite enjoyed the game, it has very simple mechanics but a fairly complex command decision process. 

I am really appreciative of Helge setting this up for me and with his help as well as another club member, Antoine, I was able to get the historical lists for Japan and Korea in this period. It seems that the Warmaster Revolution ruleset which is supported by the fan base will work well with these 2 lists with minimal additions. 

I am also looking forward to the upcoming ruleset Daimyo from Osprey games which is being released at the end of July. But I think I will go ahead and by the Sengoku Army and start painting.

Kato Kiyomasa

 

1562-1611

My primary hero for my Midgard warband will be Kato Kiyomasa. If interested click on the link which will bring you to his Wikipedia entry. 

I googled his name looking for painted images of him and for an unclear reasons in at least 2 of the images he has an orange cloak. Even though a little bright, I decided to go with this colour. The rest of the colours picked are conjectural.

He is carrying a Katakana Yari.

The standard mon for Kiyomasa was an open circle, I have seen them in both blue and black. The parallel bars as seen above is a mon used by unit in Kiyomasa's army. I got bored of the open circle.

Uma-Jirushi of Kiyomasa

I will generate his specific stats when I have a better sense of the ruleset. He certainly had some interesting attributes from what history tells us.

Movement Trays for Midgard

 

The latest offering from the TFL stable of wargaming rulesets is Midgard. The ruleset covers gaming from the Classical Period to the Late Middle Ages in both a historical and fantasy setting. It looks like an interesting game and I believe it to be quite accessible. If you have the appropriate historical or fantasy figures you are all set to go aside from needing the rulebook and some playing aids. But you will need some movement trays, in most cases 120x60mm in dimension. 

The ruleset appears to be extremely well supported by both the author on a dedicated Website as well as a Facebook group. There is also a section for Midgard on the TFL Forum. I find generally that TFL rules are well put together and since I had the figures I thought I would have a good look. 

There is quite a lot about the movement trays on the above sites with actually instructions for a magnetic type on the author's web site. Since I have a FDM printer I thought I would design some trays in TinkerCad and print them.

I have a fairly large Dark Ages collection of figures as well as figures for the Crusades so I was all set with at least 2 historical forces. Additionally I have a large collection of LoTR figures which would fit into the Fantasy setting for Midgard. 

I do have some painted Sengoku Period figures sitting about doing nothing as well as several unpainted figures and although these are just outside of the Late Middle Ages Period I felt they would work for Midgard. There are no lists for this period in the book but there is already many fan made lists for Midgard in existence and I understand that the Warring States battles are on the radar of several players so I thought I would start there. It will certainly encourage me to paint some more Samurai!

The foot figures were bought painted 15 years ago, I painted the mounted figures.

Midgard forces require 3 heroes, here is my first.

A unit of Warriors, they will be classed as Heavy Infantry

Heavy Riders

Another unit of Heavy Infantry

Tray Design

I have made 4 basic designs; one for Warriors, one for Skirmishers as well as one for Cavalry. I also have made a tray for the Japanese Heroes as they are all associated with standard bearers. The tray above accommodates 7 warriors as well as a 12mm wound die. My Japanese figures are on metal bases so I put a recess for a 5x1mm magnet in each. As you can see they are slightly above the recess for the 25mm base. I did this as the metal bases are quite thin and I wanted them to be level with surface of the tray. I can use these same trays though as slots for standard 25mm bases without the magnet for non-metal bases. You can use the dice recess or not, if you dod not want to use it then it can be covered with terrain material. I do appreciate that there are only 7 figures on the base but the number of figures in this rule set is not important and 7 will give the same mass effect as 8. The Cavalry trays will be 3 or 4 figures, while the skirmishers will have 4 figures.

Time to start printing some more trays and prime some more figures.