A Battlemasters Remake

Battlemasters Box 1992, Milton Bradley (MB) & Games Workshop.
Maybe the biggest ever Wargame-in-a-box

Remember that I said I would go back to the early nineties if possible? Her I am, going back to "simpler times".

Not that I liked the Battlemasters game so much. I was never a friend of random troop activation and that game did unit activation with cards. I think what you do or plan in a game should not depend on randomness. To me it is stupid to make wargames a lottery. Complete randomness - the fights are of course also solved by dice and so all results are random - produces a complete unpredictable game and makes any planning and tactics obsolete. I am not a chess player, but I am sure that none of them would sit down to play a game over which they have no control. Always strange to me that wargamers tend to accept this. The question is: who plays with whom? Do you play the game or does the game play with you?

But what I liked was the simpleness. Moving troops from field to field without measurement, getting fighting results without looking at result tables. Fast gaming without too much effort and with a good pace. And of course the style, this 90s Citadel-Warhammer style.

While I was painting some of the minis that I bought 4 years ago it came to me that a rebuild/my own version of a hex-field-fantasy-boardgame, with new rules, expansion and a nice playmat with some terrain features could be made very easy. In fact I can produce this very quick and I get a very handy game that can be used occasionally and may also be used by non-wargamers who would never touch a complicated game. 

I looked around and it seems I am not the only or the first one with this idea. I found a lot of pictures of nicely painted Battlemasters minis, some people made new playmats, even 3D prints of the minis are on sale (!) and there are fans who created complete hex-field gaming tables with terrain that do not look different from other fantasy wargaming tables.

So, why not? I made a list. I always make lists.

ToDo / Thoughts

Miniatures

1. Paint all the minis I have
2. Add missing minis via Ebay (mostly the evil ones)
3. Look what else in my collection fits in size and style
1. Add an Elves faction (already present but are unpainted)
1. plus self casted 32mm High-Elves and Wood-Elf archers from Prince August moulds
1. Magicians
2. Champions & Heroes
3. Dragons / Monsters
4. War machines / Catapults / Guns
5. Chariots(?)

Basing

1. Mount the minis on single bases
1. They need less space, can show the size of a unit and can be used as single minis in other contexts.
2. Build unit bases on which the single bases can be placed (maybe magnetic)
1. But I don't know if I am going to use Unit-bases

Terrain

1. Playmat painted on awning fabric (sturdy and can easily be rolled)
2. Buildings
1. Tower/Castle keep (done)
1. Expansion-Elements to transform it into a bigger castle
2. Maybe one or more extra pieces, or another tower
2. Bridge
3. Palisades and/or walls
4. Houses / Farm (?)
5. Temple / Shrine (game ojective ?)
3. Hills (spanning 1 field, 2 fields, 3 fields)
4. Unpassable Terrain
1. River (tiles)
2. Swamp
3. Mountain(s)
4. Piles of rocks
5. Trees / Woods

Markers

1. Do I need them?
2. But if needed...
1. Damage (Minis are single, can be taken out...)
2. Explosion / hit by catapult or gun
3. Effects (fog, fire, poison, magic,...)
4. Ammunition (for guns, catapults?)

Rules

1. Forget the old rules
2. Write new rules
1. Reduce randomness to a minimum (fight)
1. I go <-> You go system (Is it OK for Chess? Then it's OK for you.)
2. Dice : 20-sided dice
3. Safe throws only with (very limited) magic support
2. No tables
1. Everything is resolved by dice
3. Add tiny set of magic rules (limited by ressources)
1. Surprise actions
2. Ressurection / Repair (see safe throw)
3. Attack / Special effects (fog, fire...)
4. Teleportation / Magic gates (...?)
4. Three Level System : Soldier - Champion - Hero
1. Bonus/malus system based on qualitty, weapons, support
5. Solve the Reinforcement problem
1. To prevent setting a player back for the rest of the campaign after the first lost battle there have to be rules for reinforcement at special places and/or a point-system.

Not complete of course, just a quick overview.

Reinforcement from the Battlemasters Boardgame

Apparently the Battle Masters game from 1992 game is only highly valued by board game collectors, who of course prefer the whole thing, complete and in a good condition. Loose and damaged figures on the other hand seem not to get much attention. And for many of today's wargamers, these old minis are rather uninteresting or they don't even know that this game ever existed. Great for me, because if you buy the figures loose, like I did, you get them amazingly cheap. The complete group of minis from that game came for only 25 euros. That's about 0,26 Euros per figure - also for the mounted ones - and that is a steal.

One of the previous owners was probably already on the way to detach these figures from their board game context and to move them into a 'real' wargame. There was a half-hearted attempt to paint one of the mounted knights and priming of the tower (ups, not on the photo...) had begun. Many of the holder bars from the minis have been cut off, probably because the figures were supposed to be mounted on (Warhammer?) plastic bases. And then it suddenly ended. Or the previous owner moved straight on to Warhammer Fantasy Battle, because attracting people to the Games Workshop Game was definitely one of the goals of this board game. Anyway, I'll pick up where the previous owner left off. 

But I have been very busy learning new development techniques for the past few weeks. I have created myself a massive 'tour de force' of books and educational videos to get back on track and examine new application and web development techniques and trends that I have neglected a bit over the years. That's the reason why it was very quiet here.

Since that took and still takes a lot of time and energy, I became a bit hobby-lazy during the past few weeks and so I only did the tower that was also included in the purchase. I always do the rough things like priming or assembling when concentration, motivation or energy is not really sufficient for anything else.

Since the thing is actually meant to be disassembled and stored in the board game box it had many open slots that I had to fill with Miliput after I glued the pieces together. Then I did the priming with 'Dark Stone' followed by drybrushing with 'Castle Grey', 'Uniform Grey' and finally with 'Ash Grey' (Army Painter Colors).

Lo and behold, the tower doesn't look bad. The nice part is that it has a lot of space on top so that you can put something on it and the whole thing is very robust.

And for the rest of the project I now have halberd-bearers that complement the Isenstein archers very well. And especially the 'dark' side of the game has grown considerably: orcs, goblins, wolf riders, chaos knights on foot and on horseback as well as beastmen and chaos archers. Around 60 minis plus for the baddies.