"Warmaster without GW miniatures" Topic

With GW pulling the plug on the production of the Specialist Games there is certain demand on alternative 10mm fantasy miniatures. Ebay can help but prices are going up and it is hard to order exactly the blisters you might want to build your army. And certain lines are rarer than others.

But it is still quite feasible to compile a warmaster army from alternative providers of 10mm fantasy miniatures.

There is a lot more option if you look into historical miniatures to recreate Empire, Brettonians, Kislev and Araby armies by the way.

I have prepared detailed mappings for specific warmaster army lists:

High Elves
athens-fantasy.gr/2013/07/high-elf-warmaster-with-non-gw-miniatures

Araby
athens-fantasy.gr/2013/07/araby-warmaster-with-non-gw-miniatures

Undead Tomb Kings
athens-fantasy.gr/2013/07/undead-warmaster-with-non-gw-miniatures

I plan to expand those and maintain on my blog:

athens-fantasy.gr/?p=6665

I also started two Eureka 300 club requests for the following:

10mm Arab Flying carpets:
link

10mm Arab Jinn:
link

It would be really interesting if some of the 10mm miniature manufacturers would start filling the gap in the market by expanding their range.
Ideally they would split the races between them so as to minimise duplicate effort.
And certainly the community should support Kickstarter projects or Eureka's 300 club (where people can request custom miniatures to be produced as long as there is enough demand for them). I am hoping there are enough players out there that want to keep the game alive which would give those companies some meaningful business.

And 10mm fantasy miniatures are also quite cool for HoTT armies and other rulesets so it is not just the warmaster fans that would benefit.

There are some quickwins (e.g. human armies just require a few fantasy elements to be produced – the core regiments could easily be replaced by historical miniatures)

thoughts?

I have Kallistra orcs mixed in with my forces, which are quite good.

Also, don't forget Copplestone's exceptional (if limited) 10mm fantasy line. Buzz is Mark plans to expand it soon, too. (Cross fingers.)

As above kallistra and irregular both do 10mm fantasy. Lots of options in 6mm.

Yep between Kallistra and Irregular you are good to cover just about most everything and at better prices to boot. Another option is to go with 15mm and collect armies for Warmaster that way, but that would require new basing and perhaps tweaking some ranges and movement.

Pendraken has a very large fantasy range as well as an excellent late medieval range for the Empire.
Fantasy pendraken.co.uk/Fantasy-c21
Medieval link

Yeah, I have listed Kallistra, Pendraken, Copplestone's, Eureka, Magister Militum etc on the blog posts.

There are some specific troop types that aren't easy to replace so the idea is to document those so that one of the manufacturers can cover whatever gaps (hopefully).

Hope the lists I am preparing can help in that direction.

Would any of the manufacturers consider using kickstarter to fund such projects?

Kickstarter to me seems the logical path to create some of these ideas. Essentially that is what the Eureka 100/300 club always has been. I think Kickstarter is especially appropriate for an established merchant like Pendraken, Copplestone, etc., to float a trial balloon on a range to see if viable--these are guys who can be trusted to put out a product, but they aren't big enough to take a bath on a bad concept that doesn't sell.

I built mine in 15mm.The only actual GW models that I used were the steamtank and the dwarf gyrocopter.

It's going to be interesting to see how much demand there is now WM has gone. The busiest period we had on Fantasy sales was back when the rules were first launched, and it's steadily gone down from there.

As far as miniatures go, we've got nearly 500 items in the Fantasy ranges now, and we're planning on adding some new stuff in the next 6 months I think.

We also take requests on our Forum, and then collect the votes, so the more votes for a particular request, the more likely we'll put it into production.

We have looked at Kickstarters, but the problem is mainly that the smaller the scale, the lower the profit margins, so KS's at 15mm or smaller become very tricky. However, we are currently doing an experiment with a not-Kickstarter ( link ) and the response has been pretty good.

Just a quick note on your army lists, some of the Kallistra ranges are our figures on strips instead, so folks have got both options depending on whether they prefer strips/individual figures.

Thanks! I will be adding your options in my lists as well. It is in my todo list!

So I ll post on your forum when I have a good list of troop types that I could not find a match for and perhaps if there is demand you could put them in your road map.

cheers!

Good work on putting these together.

One thing I would suggest adding is some notes on compatibility.

I have a WM Araby army, that is a mix of GW, TB Line and Magister Militum. The infantry from all 3 mix well. But the MM cavalry is tiny in comparison to the GW and TB Line.

Similarly the Pendraken & Kallistra Fantasy ranges are generally quite big – so can look rather big alongside others.
But on the table it all looks OK – one of our group has a Kallistra Dwarf army – and if you stand some of his Dwarf's next to GW Empire figures they look rather huge. But as an Army they clearly look like Dwarves.

I have now compiled lists for the following armies:

Orcs & Goblins:
link

Lizardmen:
link

Vampire Counts:
link

comments are more than welcome and I will try to update those lists as and when new options become available.

Also a short update: the two 300 club requests at Eureka have now been consolidated into one so if you want to preorder and help fund the production of 10mm Fantasy elements for Arab-inspired armies you can go to:
link

this is about a set of Arab wizards, flying carpets and a Jinn.

Excellent work. Thanks for posting.

There is a poll running on specialist-arms forum to get a feeling of which army would benefit most from a new line of figures:

link

After some discussions at specialist-arms, a new more detailed survey has been launched. Cast your votes!!!

surveymonkey.com/s/XK7NT59