I recently bought a second hand copy of Battle Masters. There are only some spear tips broken, but present.
I ogled with this game since I got the Heroquest game on Christmas 1992. There was a Battle Masters flyer within the base game or one of the expansions. But I had a vague feeling, that this game wouldn't offer the replay-ability of Heroquest. Furthermore I couldn't believe I had really gotten Heroquest as a present, recently. So getting a further "combat game" of "weird miniatures" made out of "cheap plastic" in the near future was out of my imagination.
Two decades later, when I got reinterested in painting and collecting miniatures, I was thinking about buying the Ogre to bolster my Heroquest set, but I banished my thoughts, as the Battle Masters Ogre is almost double the size of a Heroquest Ogre.
Two years ago, when I met a nice group of wargamers in my local model shop, who played also DBA 3.0, I soon heard of Hordes of the Things (HOTT), which has almost the identical ruleset as DBA, but is adapted for fantasy settings. First I entertained the idea of using my old Demonworld miniatures to form two HOTT armies, but I already realized in the past, that I prefer 28 mm miniatures. The main reason is, that I need as much time for painting a 15 mm miniature than for a 28 mm miniature (I'm not a fan of speed painting(, yet?)). Furthermore 28 mm miniatures have more personality, in my opinion. 15 mm miniatures are more kind of game tokens to me.
But the real trigger for buying Battle Masters was a few weeks ago when my seven year old son, who has some experience with Heroquest, Space Crusade, Gaslands and Mouse and Mystics, asked about the games his father plays with his wargaming friends. He also wanted to know, what all the terrain pieces in the basement are used for. I told him about DBA, Warhammer and skirmish games. He said, that he wants to play a army sized game, with a 1 miniature = 1 soldier definition. I replied, that I don't want to play Warhammer (4th Ed.) because the rule system is too wordy and the setup time too long - there are better games today. So we played two games Song of Blades and Heroes, and he really enjoyed it. But afterwards he asked again about those army sized games. Having a small warband under his command was fine, but crushing his fathers troops with a BIG ARMY sounded even better for him!
So I remembered HOTT and considered what miniatures would be best for. Battle Masters are ideal. There are two complete 28 mm fantasy armies included and even almost mint sets are relatively cheap. I think the HOTT tactics are maybe slightly to complex for an almost eight year old, but we can play Battle Masters as it is and use the miniatures later for HOTT.
The Battle Masters rules aren't very strategic. Instead they are very random-driven. We are going to play the included campaign and look afterwards, what rules should be adjusted for increasing the fun and game balance. One thing I am thinking of is splitting the random shuffled card deck in a good and evil player deck, to prevent one player having multiple maneuvers in a row.
I am looking forward to paint all this classic miniatures. They are a little bit smaller than the Heroquest or Warhammer ones, but this is barely noticeable. The painted examples on the back of the box seems to be painted by Mike McVey, as the Chaos Knights have the same green pattern as the Heroquest ones.
The Ogre has almost the same shape like the Heroquest ones, but he is double the size and more detailed.
These Wolf Riders will be part of a future Song of Blades and Heroes warband, for sure.
I like the glossy black red armor and the Heroquest style Chaos pattern. Outstanding shield design, too!
Not the best Orc plastic sculpt, but I like the trashy old school checker trousers.
The Goblins are noticeable smaller than their Heroquest or Warhammer counterparts. The shield design reminds me on something. Marauder shields? Warhammer armies illustration?
I am still uncertain, if I go for this paint scheme of the box cover, or the colours of the shield and flag stickers, which were included in the box.
These knights will form an army leader or hero element in HOTT. I like combination of blue+gold/yellow and red+black.
These mercenaries can be mixed with Heroquest or Advanced Heroquest henchmen to get more variety.
The bowmen and crossbowmen will be a welcome addition to my Frostgrave warband, as I have only a few ranged combat miniatures in my collection. Until now there were only a handful of Warhammer Empire foot soldiers (with interchangeable weapons) in my ownership.
I have never painted a ... Empire cannon. Looking forward to this one.
I like the tattoos and rainbow Mohawk.
A somewhat stocky sculpt, but it will give a nice variety to my sons SBH warband, together with the Heroquest and Warhammer 4th edition Chaos Warrior plastics.
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