Warmaster Pastebin for wfg

Warmaster Info and Materials for wfg
updated thru 2024-08

What Is This Game?
Warmaster is a fantasy mass battle game set in the Warhammer universe. It uses smaller 10mm miniatures, mounted several to a base to play battles an order of magnitude larger than those typical in Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WHFB). Army stats and special rules are simplified compared to warhammer, with the focus of the strategy placed more on maneuver and command. Rather than the I-go-You-go system more common in GW games, it uses variable length turns dictated by the commanders' abilities to pass consecutive command rolls, with the difficulty of rolls depending on the capabilities of the troops and battlefield conditions.
Warmaster was written by Rick Priestley and originally published in 2000 by Games Workshop. GW produced armies for it in metal covering the majority of the WHFB factions. A LOTR-aligned spinoff, Battle Of Five Armies, and the historical versions Warmaster Ancients and Warmaster Medieval were also printed. It remained in print until 2008 when its parent Specialist Games was shuttered.

Around the time of its discontinuation, GW put the rules free online as a Living Rulebook PDF with all errata to that point incorporated. This is now known as the LRB version. Since then, several community led efforts have worked to further refine the balance and keep the game alive. The most active and popular of these as of 2024 is Warmaster Revolution (WMR), and is the version you're most likely to encounter in the wild. WMR remains very close to the LRB mechanically, while expanding upon it with more army lists and balance tweaks to existing armies. The game maintains an avid following more than 20 years after its release, and numerous manufacturers continue making miniatures compatible with it even today.


Why Play Warmaster Now?
Mainly because it offers a very different feel to WHFB while supporting the same armies and background. It is a high-level, tactical game with few special rules to remember. Armies each have a distinct feel on the table despite mostly using all the same rules. The rules change glacially slowly, allowing you to build at your own pace without having to worry about rules revisions or army legality. Played alongside Warhammer in a campaign, warmaster can handle very large battles while WHFB zooms in on the action and characters. And the small scale minis mean armies are quick to build and paint up, and much easier to transport and store than their 28mm parallels.
The game also supports a large number of playable armies, including some that have only rarely been in the spotlight in Warhammer like Albion, Dogs of War, Araby and Cathay.


====== Rule and Links ======
Latest Warmaster Revolution rules can be downloaded from their site:
>>https://www.wm-revolution.com/articles/download.html
An automated army builder supporting most versions:
>>https://wm-selector.github.io/#/
Youtube playlist with how-to-play videos
>>https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsHhQn7iT5y65Jrk9PerunBIvlHkijAsE
Youtube playlist with faction overviews
>>https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsHhQn7iT5y5zGyq36nzjDAlZXhKeajhj
Printable Paper Proxy Armies
>>https://ordinarygaming.blogspot.com/p/warmaster-counters.html


====== Where to Get Miniatures ======
There are a lot of options for minis, but depending on what army you're interested in you may need to do a little hunting to find the best options. The original armies from GW are now long out of print. Those that were introduced first and made in large quantities can still sometimes be found for sale used. These include Empire, High Elves, Orcs & Goblins, Undead (TK), Chaos Mortals and Dwarfs. The armies launched later in the game's life were made in smaller numbers and tend to be rarer on the secondary market. These include Skaven, Dark Elves, Daemons and Vampire Counts.
Most warmaster units are comprised of 3 stands, each with multiple miniatures on it. A single stand will usually be either 3 to 5 cavalry, 10 to 12 infantry, or a single monster or artillery piece. for infantry and cavalry, it's common for the minis to be mounted in strips, with 2 strips fitting on a single stand to create a ranked effect.

3rd party manufacturers have stepped in over the years to fill the gaps though. More recently, 3D printing has also become a viable option, and is very well suited to making these kinds of armies inexpensively. Companies that sell 10mm fantasy and/or historical miniatures suitable for warmaster cast in metal or resin include:
>Pendraken (and Kallistra) - big range of different fantasy armies, and historicals suited for brets, empire and DOW
>Cromarty Forge - wood elves, pirate VC, lizardmen, skaven, dwarfs
>Eureka - beastmen, lizardmen, wood elves, chaos dwarfs, elves, cathay, tribal humans
>Magister Militum - undead, beastmen, orcs, elves
>Copplestone - (originally for LOTR) humans, elves, dwarfs, and orcs
>Polar Fox - tomb kings, orcs and goblins, brets
>Spellcrow - chaos marauders, beastmen, lizardmen
>Irregular - orcs, dwarfs, high elves, undead, lizardmen
>Chaostemple - chaos mortals and albion
>Warmonger - empire and dogs of war
>makers with only small lines include Black Gate and Onslaught
>Microworld has a huge line of fantasy minis at 6mm scale, for those wanting battles that look even larger
>in fantasy, minis for adjacent scales can be useful in some cases, eg 6mm orcs as snotlings, or 15mm orcs as ogres

3D Printing:
with the advent of cheap resin printers allowing for very high detail, printing a warmaster army is a great option. the fact that 10mm minis are mostly small volume and small height means they are quick to print, don't consume a lot of resin, and have minimal concerns about material durability. There are a ton of sources for STLs, with a few of the most popular sculptors being Forest Dragon, Cromarty Forge, Excellent Miniatures, Greenskin Miniatures, MiniRat Studio, Teremki, Red Nebular, Wakes Emporium, Ankylo Miniatures, Onmioji, and Varus. some of these like Excellent will also sell physical prints.


====== FAQs and Other Shit ======
"I can not paint such tiny shit!"
Yeah, you can, and in fact it's easier than you might think. A lot of vets consider it much easier to paint up a warmaster army than an equivalent warhammer one. This is because even though the little dudes are smaller, the size of the details you need to pick out with your brush is about the same as at 28mm. and there's less surface area, and few flat surfaces that need careful blending.

How Big Is An Army / How Many Minis?
Varies of course, but a typical army at 2000 points might be 4 characters, 15 infantry units, 5 cavalry units, a couple artillery and a monster. characters and monster units are a single stand, and artillery units are normally 2. infantry and cavalry units are normally 3 stands each, with 10-12 infantry or 4 cavalry models per stand. so all told you're looking at about 500-600 infantrymen and 50-60 cavalry individually modeled. per the original Warmaster rulebook these were meant to be a representative number with many unmodeled troops actually on the field, but opinions vary on that.

What About Bases and Base Sizes?
Nearly every unit in warmaster uses a 40mm x 20mm rectangular base. Most infantry are mounted with the wide edge as the front, while cavalry and other units face the small edge. Characters (General, Wizard, Heroes) have less strict basing requirements because their movement is abstracted compared to ranked units. A lot of players put them on 20mm or 25mm rounds to make it easy to spot them at a glance, but other sizes and shapes are common. Some players will occasionally put big centerpiece monsters or artillery on larger bases, like 40mm x 40mm. This isn't strictly within the rules but since it's an almost pure disadvantage and generally done just to look cool, objections are rare.
For sourcing bases, most players prefer thinner alternatives because the minis themselves are not very tall. laser cut acrylic (such as that from litko), MDF or steel bases are all common picks. some players will even cut their own bases from styrene or other plastics.

How Many Skeletons Do I Need For Raise Dead?
usually an extra unit or two (3-6 stands) is plenty. TK and VC require you to take a lot of skeletons as a minimum choice, and these units will be dying off during the battle, so its very rare to not have enough skeleton models on hand to cast Raise Dead.

Why Isn't Unit X In The Game?
There are a number of reasons an army list might not include a familiar unit from WHFB. In some cases it's because the unit in question was introduced long after warmaster's publication. Army lists, including in WMR, are updated conservatively and only as needed, with priority placed on the game's long term balance and stability. In other cases, specialized units were not considered distinct enough at the scale being represented to get a separate stat block. A common approach for elite units like dwarf hammerers, empire greatswords, or high elf phoenix guard, is to those models to distinguish units of infantry equipped with magic banners or weapons. WMR also recently introduced a mercenary list which can be useful for proxying unusual units.