"Tufts recommendation for Battle Masters game trays?" Topic

Hi Guys,

I'm starting a painting project of the old Battle Masters game units, and was looking for some recommendations on fantasy-style tufts that would look good on these figure trays -

Wanting something 'whimsical' or dramatic, that would fit the fantasy theme, and which would be easy to apply on the 25 game trays I'll be needing to complete (could even involve some scatter like toadstools, stumps, but easy-to-apply, out of the package stuff if possible).

The project here will take awhile, as I'm just taking my time with it, so I can order these tufts if they're more specialty/limited edition oriented.

Thanks for any/all suggestions!

Dave

For starters, more if you poke around.

link

link

In the late 1990's, I bought a few sets of Battle Masters games, off of e-Bay, for the miniatures. I used them for my 2e BattleSystem armies, with them seeing multiple tabletop battles. That boxed game was a great resource for inexpensive miniatures! Attractive sculptures which paint up very nicely, as yours demonstrate.

Those Goblins were the very first figures I painted myself. I had been paying a friend to paint my armies for me, for a couple of years. I finally took the plunge, learning to paint my miniatures, myself, using these figures, and more from the Battle Masters games I bought. I had plenty of these figures in my armies, for years. Then, I sold them off for a charity project that fell apart after the sale… I had to replace a few armies with new miniatures, other than Battle Masters, as they were no longer available at affordable prices.

Thanks for bringing back some very fond memories for me. You took me back to the late 1990's, and the trip was a good one. ;-) Cheers!

Check out Acheson Creations. They are in Rochester, NY. They have a lot of fantasy terrain.

Good links Jim, thanks!

Sgt Slag – great story about those fond, early years of your fantasy fig collecting.

Beng a hard-core historical gamer at the time, I missed out on a lot of the fantasy battle gaming scene.

This current Battle Masters project (which actually started as a 3mm 're-Mastered' conversion), has me enjoying things I should have done when I was a lot younger…..so makin' up for lost time now. :)

A pic of my little 3mm "Baby Battle Masters" conversion -

Got the 2nd Goblin unit completed now (they'll look good with some tufts) -

Not sure GW would taken off without this game. I had 4 sets myself.

JMcC, and Sgt Slag,

With your purchases of multiple Battle Masters sets, was this mostly a cheap way to build up your fantasy armies for playing Warhammer with (or minis for other systems), or were you fighting bigger games of Battle Masters – maybe with multiple game mats put together?

As I'm starting to paint up these old units here, I thought that instead of aiming to paint up a complete game set of units, that I'd first aim at painting up a Green Skin force from the 2+ game sets I have (so basically doubling the Golbin and Orc units). Then paint up the Imperial opposition force (doubling-up some of those units too).

These initial contingents would be the first forces for me to present the game with at the local group events. There's unit points cost listed over on Board Game Geek for the game, as I recall, so players could option to do some minor force-building also, before each scenario. Still, games would just be played out using the easy Battle Masters rules.

I was thinking this might be a hoot, and also a great way for Dad and Son gamers to get involved at our mostly, historical miniatures events here (and I'll enjoy the change of pace too from all the usual historical game crafting).

Any comments would be welcomed on how others have waged fantasy gaming with these old Battle Masters units, and maybe be fun to hear about (like Sgt Slags's early collecting that he wrote about above).

I never played the Battle Masters rules/game. I just mined the game for fantasy figures for my 2e BattleSystem games.

I primed them using gray, automotive spray primer, from Wal-Mart -- cheapest spray primer I could find. Worked great.

I started with a watered-down, black acrylic paint wash. I was paying my friend to do them up as rank & file quality troops as that was his lowest rate for painting them.

He had, at that time, painted 10,000+ figures, of diverse scales, and genres, and types, professionally. He was genuinely surprised by my initial painting attempts: I matched his rank & file quality, straight out of the gate! I was only able to do this because a simple black wash covered a multitude of beginner mistakes and low quality efforts…

I switched, a short time later, to using The Dip Technique, using Royal Walnut urethane stain, as I had a hard time finding Tudor (only available at hardware stores, back then). I got hooked on the Royal Walnut color: dark, dirty brown.

I had read an old article, in Dragon Magazine, on how to do assembly line painting: organize figures by casting/pose type, apply the same brush stroke and color, to each in the group; wash/rinse/repeat, until done. I did a simple block painting, followed by The Dip (brushed on -- dunking the mini's into the can was too much work to remove the uber-excess urethane stain…). After that dried, I applied a matte clear coat, textured the bases with PVA Glue and a mixture of colored sand (just green paint, initially, but later the sand mixture became my go-to method).

I have painted 1,000+ mini's using my simple block painting, followed by The Dip, over the past 25 years. My armies look consistent, on the tabletop, unless I mix in mini's from friends. Still, at arm's length, they look good enough. I view them at arm's length, or further, 98% of the time, so I have always painted for the 98%, ignoring the 2%.

Here are some examples of what I've done: metal 28mm Gnomes (around 23mm tall); Knights from Battle Masters, as Paladin Ultra-Heavy Cavalry; Cyclops (freshly Dip'ed and just simple block painting, pre-Dip, as well as a line-up after matte clear coating.

I average 10 minutes total, for painting time, Dip'ing, and matte clear coating, by using assembly line techniques, per figure. That is 10 minutes, per figure, to complete them for the tabletop! As Mandalorian would say, "This is the way." Assembly line painting is my friend!

Using Speed Paints, I could reduce that to two minutes, per figure (5x faster…), and the results would be far superior. Too bad I only have around 200 mini's left to paint, or I would invest in a set of Speed Paints! "This is the new way…" Cheers!

Played Battle Masters straight, as is, with my wife and son when he was younger. (My wife is a terror at it, but she's not a wargamer at all.)

I also developed some rules for increasing the tactical decision making. Instead of just flipping the cards, the game starts with 7 cards dealt to each player. On your turn you can either discard as many cards as you like to draw an equal number of replacements and then immediately reshuffle the deck (including all discarded cards), OR play a card for you own forces, moving and fighting as normal, OR play an enemy card to force one (not all) of his depicted units to "retreat" one space to an open hex directly away from your own closest unit. You must either use all the cards in your hand OR discard them as above before you can draw a new hand of seven. (This prevents any player from indefinitely hoarding particularly powerful enemy cards.)
So what you get is a game a bit more like the C&C/Battle Cry structure, with some tactical thinking required and a little less luck.

Sgt Slag, you're getting great results – and thanks for your tutorial!

Parzival, nice Battle Masters tweaks! One reason I like the simple games – it's always easy to add/change things. :)

I've been busy painting units in the meantime, and have 4 Goblin stands completed, and 2 Wolf Riders stands nearly done.

I'll start another thread when I feel there's enough to show some more pics (really enjoying doing these).