I have played a lot of Warmaster in the past and enjoy the fun of the game but the mechanic can be a bit painful especially with regard to extended combat, they are easy enough to master if you play a few games, but quickly forgotten if you don't play it often enough.
Various people have also complained over the years about how over powerful Cavalry is and whilst I know there is a live fan based rewrite of the rules and continuing improvements, there is an element of me that thinks rather than repair and patch why not start fresh.
Well of course the answer is do you know how much work is involved in writing a rules set? I do I've written a few short rules for participation games and wargames shows and whilst I did win best participation game for one and received request for the rules etc from as far a field as Canada and New Zealand, writing a whole rules set is far too much to take on.
One of my favorite games is Hail Caesar!, from Warlord games and written by Rick Priestly who is of course the same Rick Priestly who wrote Warmaster many years ago. In many ways Hail Caesar! is a third generation development of the original Warmaster Fantasy, Rick Priestly wrote Warmaster Ancients and I understand put in place a lot of things that were missing from or not dealt with satisfactorily in Warmaster and planned to go back and re-write Warmaster.
Of course that may all be hearsay......
The command and control element of Hail Ceasar! is clearly from the same stable and these elements in Warmaster that people have complained about have been ironed out.
So after a game of HC! the other day my opponent talked about playing his WM armies with the HC! rules, it would almost be as easy as just laying the magic over the top.
And magically he is right, however as we may want to play a Roman army against an Orc horde we need to rebuild/cost the Warmaster units for HC!. We also need to look at changing the spell wording.
That my friends is where I am currently.
I have resourced some information and ideas from a rules set called Shadow Storm that whilst excellent doesn't do what I want. It is a wonderful merge of WHF and HC!, but it's written from the 28mm level rather than my favored scale of 6 mm or 10 mm, there is also for my taste too much magic. I want the same gentle touch of magic and the humorous rules. Like the Giant Rules.
So I've started my own merge of Warmaster and HC!.
So far so good.
We've always played our HC! in 6mm and have reduced the movement and range by 2/3rds so that 18" range became 12". Funninly enough when I looked at range in WM for the same weapon it was 30cm which is as close to 12" as you can get. Again and again, I found convenient coincidence so I'm hopeful of producing an effective HC supplement in due course.
I decided to call it Post Velamentum, latin for behind the veil. in this case the veil of darkness, night or mystery.
I have a provisional supplemental rules set.
I have created an excel spreadsheet that will cost units for me
I have started on the armies doing each in turn, and doing their units, special army rules and spells.
As I complete each army it impacts on previous units, spells and abilities as well as the rules themselves as I seek balance.
Continued ... Hail Caesar Fantasy (PV) 2
Initial impacts will of course be on basing. Whether you choose to use a sabot or rebase as per the right hand unit the choice will be yours.
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