Albion Warmaster Fantasy Paper Army

The mysterious, mist-bound isle of Albion is a dangerous place. On the one hand it is a land of endless opportunity, the battle-hungry eager to carve a niche for themselves into its hallowed ground. On the other it is a bleak expanse of moorland full of pitfalls for the unwary. The army of Albion is filled with barbarian warriors and mystical creatures. --"Albion Unofficial Warhammer Codex" by Mathias Eliasson

This set has taken me longer to complete than I had expected, mainly due to the holidays and a malaise from months upon months of lockdowns during the Coronavirus outbreak. While others used all that "down time" to crank our painted armies or binge game, my family felt the opposite. We found ourselves unable to focus much on gaming, especially since we all had to work from home every day. When we had free time, we wanted to get out of the house! In many respects, we feel like we have lost a year of our lives. I know many feel the same way. Anyway...

Finally, I present the finished set of counters for Albion. Aside from a few stand-alone Albion miniatures, this is an army that Games Workshop never made for Warhammer or Warmaster that I am aware of, making it more challenging to find good images to use.

A Bit About This Set
Albion has a Celtic/Briton feel to it, so I borrowed some counters from my Warmaster Ancients Celt-Briton set. However, I changed how I make Chariot counters. I like seeing the entire chariot instead of just the riders. While I recycled a unit of classic Warhammer Ogres from a previous set, I also created a new set of Ogres. My favorite counter is the Druid on a Giant Eagle, though I think it might be a giant hawk. Regardless, it looks cool, and I would love to push that real miniature around the table! I hope this Albion set fits the bill. Remember, you will also need to download the separate Giant Eagles for Warmaster Albion set!

The Future
I'm not sure what I'll work on next. I have bits of 10 other fantasy and historical sets I've been messing with the past few years. Republican Roman is closest to completion, which means I would have to do some enemies for them! Then there are the Beastmen and Chaos Dwarves fantasy armies. So many choices! Plus I want to get back into painting real miniatures instead of pushing digital cardboard around!

Printing the Counters
You can print the counter sheer at places like Staples, using 110lb card stock paper printed at actual size. You can also print on regular paper and then glue the counters to wooden bases. (Check the older posts on how I did this with my Empire army.) Do not print the pdf to "fit margins." Always print at 100%.  I like printing the counter sets on good copy paper, spray gluing the dull side of a 'Silver Age' comic backing board with Super 77, attaching a sheet to the board, and then cutting out the counters using a sharp Xacto knife with a steel ruler. Using the backing boards makes for cheap, sturdy counters. I like keeping the shiny side down to make moving them easier on a table. (Note: This set is designed to fit Silver Age and larger comic backing boards.)

Click on the counter set images below to download the the complete army counter set in PDF format.

New Giant Eagles for Warmaster Albion & High Elves

While finishing work on my Warmaster Revolution Albion army counter set, I was going to copy the old Giant Eagle counters from the High Elves set over to the Albion set but changed my mind after looking for some new images online. In the end, I found so many new images of the newer Games Workshop eagle miniatures, mostly from The Hobbit line, that I couldn't choose what to use!

So, I decided to use them all, allowing you all to choose which counters you want to use for your armies. You can also choose how you want to create your units. Want all three counters the same image? Okay, you got it. Want to mix and match? Okay, you got it! I like having many choices.

The finished product is a single, stand-alone sheet of Great Eagle counters. The counters with the dark green labels are for the upcoming Albion set. The light blue labels can replace the High Elves counters I posted a while ago. Also, the new labels just say "Eagles" for style reasons--I didn't want the labels eating up images. I think we all know these are really big eagles anyway.

Tonight, I realized that somewhere along the way I began using two different fonts for the counter labels! Most of my fantasy and historical sets use the Verdana font, while some newer sets use Tahoma. It's not really important, but I made sure these new eagle labels use the 'proper' font for that set. Tahoma is more compact than Verdana and will probably become my new default font, unless folks make a good case to keep Verdana. (I don't have the $$$ to use a fancy Adobe graphics program, relying on my trusty Paint Shop Pro instead, so tiny fonts are challenge.)

I hope you enjoy these counters and find them useful. Let me know in the comments below. (In this post, I almost said 'The eagles have landed!' but I fought the temptation!)

Printing the Counters
You can print the counter sheer at places like Staples, using 110lb card stock paper printed at actual size. You can also print on regular paper and then glue the counters to wooden bases. (Check the older posts on how I did this with my Empire army.) Do not print the pdf to "fit margins." Always print at 100%.  I like printing the counter sets on good copy paper, spray gluing the dull side of a 'Silver Age' comic backing board with Super 77, attaching a sheet to the board, and then cutting out the counters using a sharp Xacto knife with a steel ruler. Using the backing boards makes for cheap, sturdy counters. I like keeping the shiny side down to make moving them easier on a table. (Note: This set is designed to fit Silver Age and larger comic backing boards.)

Click on the counter set image below to download the sheet of Giant Eagle counters set in PDF format.

Cool "New" Warmaster YouTube Channel

I just want to give a quick shout out to iainmstanding, an excellent YouTube channel from the UK featuring current videos about the various Warmaster systems, including Revolution and Ancients. The video below is a "Warmaster Battle report for newer players describing how the rules work. 1000 pts of Daemons take on 1000 pts of Albion." Other videos feature tips and tactics. Lots of good stuff and hopefully more coming! Check them out. And don't forget I have free printable counters for many Warmaster fantasy and historical armies; a great inexpensive way to check out Warmaster.