Kings Of War Kickstarter Wave 2 - The Forces of Nature

My second package from the Kings of War Kickstarter has now arrived which means I have a lot more minis to paint.  I didn't go overboard on this and the bulk of this package is the $50 Forces of Nature starter army.

Lets start with the undoubted highlight on the set which is the massive Greater Earth Elemental in resin.  This is one of those WOW figures when you open it up.  Much bigger than I was expecting and I love the style.  It shares the same body as the greater obsidian golem for the Abyssal Dwarves but comes with different arms and head.  It's not quite perfect, there are a few air bubbles, but nothing a little bit of liquid green stuff won't fix, and nothing in a key place, so I'm still happy with this.

The leader of this little force is the Druid.  She comes with an alternative head and staff arm, allowing for four different combinations.  This is the one mini here that I'm not convinced by, lets hope a lick of paint will improve her look.

The starter set also includes three regiments, the first of which are the new hard plastic Salamanders.  I got 20, although I've only assembled 10 so far.  These are a proper hard plastic multi-part kit with options for hand weapons and shields or double-handed weapons.  I've armed mine with double-handed weapons as I have a unit f old GW Saurus with hand weapons and shields already which I've been using as Salamanders.  There are also command group options and little bits of flame you can decorate the bases with.  Very pleased with these, one small gripe is that getting them to rank up properly isn't easy, but overall they get a thumbs up from me, I prefer them to GW's current Saurus kit as well.

The second regiment is another hard plastic kit, this time the watery Naiads.  Again I got 20, but have only assembled half so far.  These have also been given the whole multi-part kit treatment with full command options and this time the weapon options are for 'shooty' harpooners or 'fighty' with nets and spears/tridents.  I'm creating a regiment of the harpooners, but am assembling a few as fighty types, just because I want to really.  These look much better in person than in the official photos and I'm also rather pleased with these.  Each sprue also comes with a frog and an otter, the otter in particular is I think rather inspired.

The third regiment was three Tree Shamblers, I'd already jumped the gun and bought another three of these and have them ready painted so have at look at these ones rather than the three in plain metal.

last minute on the campaign Mantic also offered a Centaur hero for the FoN that wasn't included in the starter army, obviously I had to get him as well, and I think he looks pretty good, although I do wish he was facing forward....

Finally I got the campaign book, 'Destiny of Kings' which has rules for map and narrative campaigns, an example campaign and rules for using some of the Dungeon Saga heroes as living legends in KoW.  I'll do a proper review of this at some point soon when I've read it thoroughly.

So in conclusion, I'm very happy with this and am very much looking forward to the summer KoW season we have planned, I think there's a good chance we'll actually try the narrative campaign from the book.

Dungeon Saga Kickstarter Package Unboxing

It's here finally, a massive box from Mantic which is the new Dungeon Crawling game Dungeon Saga.  I meant to do a proper unboxing showing you how it all arrived and what exactly each bit contained, but I got a bit excited and had to open it all up!

My package essentially contained the Dwarf Kings Quest boxed game, the five expansions (Return of Valandor, Infernal Crypts, Warlord of Galahir, Tyrant of Halpi and the Adventurers Companion) and a few Kickstarter exclusives.  I'm going to give a quick overview of everything and at times it might sound a bit nit picky, but overall this is an overwhelmingly positive buy for me, the game is great fun and I've got an amazing amount of stuff for my money.

The game comes in these brilliant book boxes, with additional sleaves, we only get two with Kickstarter rather than one per expansion like at retail, but that's the price of getting such a good deal.  All the cards, tiles, tokens and books from the base game and expansions all fit in the two boxes, although I will have to find another home for the minis, could have done with a third box really.

The base game, which initially comes in one of the book boxes, is very well done, you get four classic heroes, some undead minions, four fantastic undead bosses, plus tiles, counters, furniture, dice etc.... It comes across as a good quality product.  We've had a few games and it's a lot of fun as well.  I think Mantic have achieved their aim of getting a new Heroquest on the market.  I hope it goes well for them.  I'm certainly very pleased with it.

lets see what we've got them, starting with the minis of course.  I'm impressed with the quality of the sculpting on these, another step forward for Mantic.  A lot of them came bent, but the hot water/cold water technique worked a treat.  A couple have been stuck onto bases at funny angles, but again it's something I'm confident I can fix.  Finally a lot of the minions are only attached to their bases at one point and work better with a dab of glue at the other foot.  For boardgame figures I'm impressed with these.

These are the four heroes from the base game, riffing off of Heroquest we have a barbarian, a wizard an elf and a dwarf.

The heroes from the expansions, Paladin, Cleric, Gladewalker Druid, Niad Deamonhunter, Salamander and a Halfling thief. 

The bosses from the base game, the Necromancer, a Zombie Troll Shaman (how cool is that), a Banshee and an undead Dwarf King.

This is Valandor and B'eal, plus the Orc and Abyssal boss.

 I also got this awesome Dragon!

The Undead set, I got three of these.

The Abyssal set, which I also got three of.  In one of my packs a lower abyssal was missing a base, which I'll have to ask for a replacement for.

The Orc set, which again I got three of.  I also had a problem with one of my orc packs which was missing a goblin archer.

Here we have the base rulebook and five campaign books, there's a lot of missions here, and this is the meat of the game, five whole different campaigns with different baddies.  These are in full colour, if a little flimsy.

Hero cards overlord panels essential for in game reference.

Lots of card decks too, I've not opened all these up yet, but they seem fine.  I'm going to need to get a whole bunch of card sleeves.

Here are half of all the door and furniture in the package.  These are really well done and with nice touches like the removable book for the lectern.  They really help give the dungeon that essential Heroquest feel.

 

Between the base game and all the expansions I got a lot of tiles, enough to fill two thirds of one of the boxes, much thicker card than the old dwarf kings hold games and a good selection of different styles for battling different enemies.

 

 

The expansions are more of the same with different minis, different missions, and new cards etc.  These are also good quality products and look polished and put together properly, the return of valandor follows directly on from the dwarf kings quest and the other three form totally separate campaigns set against either abyssals, orcs or a dragon.

So far so good, but the adventurers companion is where it goes wrong.  This is where all the advanced rules live.  I hate to say it but this is a bad product, the intention was good, essentially trying to replicate the warhammer quest roleplay book, and it does some of that, with basic levelling, random dungeons, solo/fully co-op play and a small bestiary.  All of this stuff looks pretty basic and undeveloped though.  One think that does look good is the character creation, with lots of races and classes.  It's a lot thinner than was I was expecting given the kickstarter graphic, and it's poorly produced with many errors, see the errata sheet next to it in the picture above, and those are only the errors they've noticed!  Having said all that there is some useful stuff in here and it's not unusable, it's just frustrating, if they had gotten this bit right it would have turned this good game into an excellent one.

These last bits are the kickstarter exclusives.  The dungeon journal, with three attendant grey plastic heroes.  This is a smaller A5 book and not combined with the adventurers compainion as origanlly advertised.  It contains a number of new missions for the exclusive characters and all the old dwarf kings hold missions, what is there looks fine but its missing a lot of promised missions.  I'm not going to go through it all as this chap has done that here much better than I could do.  Some (but by no means all) of the missing missions have been promised later as digital downloads, which whilst not as nice as being in an actual book at least means we'll get them.

 

Finally we have these absolutely fantastic resin mins; Ravenna the witch, Gunn the dwarf engineer and Keldan the elf fighter.  So so pleased with these as minis, however the witch and engineer were promised as classes in the adventurers companion, but alas seem to have been forgotten.  Still minis this good are never a waste to have.  I'm regretting not ordering the resin legendary heroes now.

In conclusion I've got a mountain of excellent stuff here and a lot of adventuring and painting time ahead of me.  Mantic haven't quite delivered on everything, I eagerly await the additional digital content.  The adventurers companion is a disappointment, but ultimately it's not unusable and is one expansion out of five, and I'm not going to let it ruin my enjoyment of the base game and other four expansions.  Very glad I backed this Kickstarter.

Kings Of War Kickstarter Package

 

The first wave stuff from my Kings Of War kickstarter from Mantic games has arrived, I've been looking forward to this ever since I pledged and with the untimely death of Warhammer fantasy the quality of the package suddenly seemed more vital.  Lets see what we've got then....

Hardback Rulebook

The most important item is of course the second edition hardback rulebook, containing background, rules and army lists.  The book clocks in at around 200 pages and is in full colour throughout, with lots of art and photos (some of the art is recycled, but this is the first KoW book I own so I'm not bothered), the first 50 pages are background to the world of Mantica, then you get the rules, and then finally 11 complete army lists, all of which contain more background for the different armies.

It's all well done, the background was nice to read, all pretty general stuff, but after reading it all I'm starting to see Mantica as it's own place, which before I didn't.  Inevitably it does share the usual influences that all fantasy worlds do, but this isn't all a bad thing, afterall we all want Dwarves, Elves, Orcs etc.  It's also designed so that there is plenty of space to do your own thing, with lots of different kingdoms per race and no intention of describing them all.  It's nice to be in a world near it's genesis as well, I'm curious to see how Mantic are going to grow it in the coming years.

The rules themselves are quite short and relatively simple.  Lots of nice diagrams as well, we found them intuitive enough that even in our first game we hardly had to refer to them at all.

Softback Rulebook, bigger than GW's

 

The pledge also came with the softback 'gamers' edition, a stripped down cheaper version with none of the background material, just the rules and army lists.  It's bigger that expected, I was very much expecting a book like the GW mini-rulebooks, but as you can see it's bigger than that.  I wasn't sure at first if having both books was going to be of any use, but actually I really like having this condensed version for use during the actual gaming, as well as having the nice fancy hardback book for the shelf.

 

Onto the miniatures, I didn't go overboard with this kickstarter and this initial package contains a mere six miniatures!  However, they're all rather good.  First off is that exclusive Blaine miniature that mantic always do with each kickstarter, this time he's found himself a pet dinosaur.  Initially I was ecstatic when I got this mini, it's really good, I love the styling and general pose, the resin holds the detail really well and I was looking forward to getting him painted.  However............

 

After taking the pics for this post I undercoated Blaine and then left him on the shelf for a few days before coming back to find him like this.  The single ankle joint can't hold the weight of the mini and mine has slowly bent down until the hands are touching the base.  I tried using the hot water method to return him to the original pose, which worked briefly, but then he nose-dived again.  I'm a bit gutted to be honest.  Hopefully it's just mine and not something that will affect all of them and I can get a new one.

 

 

The second exclusive mini was this 'Ronaldo the Bard'.  Nothing wrong with this chap, just a characterful little mini to add to the collection.

The one add-on I bought that came with the first wave are these Ogre minis, a Warlock and a regiment of three Berserker Braves.  The Warlock is OK, if nothing special, the Braves on the other hand are some of the best minis that I've yet seen from Mantic, I'm really pleased with these and will be looking to expand my Ogre collection further.

The pack of nerve counters is quite cleverly done giving you the option of using a dice holder or stacking 'hits'.  The hard plastic nature of the kit allows you to paint them up to match your army as well.

And finally we have a pack of game counters.  These are simple, but do the job fine, except that I'm not entirely sure what all the symbols are meant to mean, a little sheet explaining which is which would have been of massive help, but no doubt we'll be able to come up with a system that works.

 The vital question though...  is the game any good?

Well I've got three games in so far, and I can report that both I and my opponents thoroughly enjoyed all three.  They were all quite close as well, with the game still in the balance up to at least the end of turn five and in one case coming down to the last dice roll!  My current KoW record stands at one win, one loss and one draw how's that for balance.

 

Whilst playing it really felt like our manoeuvring was the key to winning or loosing the game, not some dirty little army building trick, flank and rear charges are deadly in this game, but can often leave you exposed yourself.  It's early days, but the lists seem very balanced as well, everything in it has a use and even the big monsters aren't dominating the way they are in some games.  Magic, which can be my pet hate in many fantasy games, seems to be at the right level for me, it has an influence and is useful, but it's not overpowering.

 

The lists are really rather flexible as well and with each one there are many different ways you could use it and have a successful force.  The Kingdoms of men lists deserves a special mention here, as well as being useful for representing any human fantasy force you can think of it also opens up a huge range of historical games you could play straight from this book, and with only the slightest bit of modification you can basically fight any battle from Ancient Egypt up to the late 19th century.

 

It looks like Kings of War is going to be my large scale game of choice for some time to come.

Painted Ogres

That's it for now, I can't wait for my Forces of Nature starter army and the campaign book which are due some point later in the year to arrive.  In the meantime, I can see a Kingdom of Men project on the horizon that wants me to start moving toward it.

Deadzone Wave 3

Well we got there, a year and a half after the funding target was met I've finally received the final part of my Deadzone Kickstarter package from Mantic Games.

There's not a huge amount in this package compared to the previous two, 42 minis, for the Enforcers and Forge Father factions.  What makes it interesting is that they're all hard plastic, which begs the important question; have Mantic finally managed to conquer hard plastic?

A bit of background for those not familiar with Mantic's hard plastic history, it all started many years ago with Mantics very first releases of hard plastic elves and skeletons, these were good quality and the sprues had lots of options, the sculpting was good (although the style of the elves wasn't to everyones taste), the future looked good.  Then for the next lot of releases, the fantasy dwarves & orcs and sci-fi forge fathers & marauders Mantic kept the same quality, but made the sprues much smaller and with far less options for customisation.  This was disappointing, but not the end of the world.  Then it got worse Mantic started to make their plastics in China instead of the UK, and whilst I'm sure it saved them money the quality of the Basilean Men at Arms was poor, really poor.  Since then Mantic have hardly used hard plastic, until now that is, lets see what we've got.....

Starting with the Enforcers we've finally got the basic troops sprue, each sprue contains five minis which can be made up with rifles or pistols and combat blades.  There are also optional pieces which allow you to make a sergeant and either a flame thrower or a heavy burst laser.

The plastics also form the base of these Enforcer Defenders, equipped with shotguns and blast shields.

These are the big boys, Enforcer Peacekeepers; the kit comes with a lot of options, you can have either gun and gauntlet or gun and blast shield, plus there are options for a sergeant, a heavy burst laser and a flamer.

Finally we have the Forge Fathers, these were harder to get unique poses out of and the leader was compulsory and not an option, they also come with heavy weapon options (three this time) and have six minis per sprue whereas the other two sprues had five each.

I've only built half of my package so far, but it's enough to answer the question; They're not perfect, there's still some mould lines (down the legs in particular) and all the legs have to be attached to specific bodies, which is a shame, but these plastics are a huge leap forward for Mantic and I think the future once again looks bright.  I'll be interested to see what the retail price ends up being for these and I now have high hopes for the plastics coming from the Kings of War Kickstarter later in the year.

Mars Attacks - More Painted Minis & Kickstarter Package

My current gaming is centered around Mantic's new Mars Attacks game and I'm furiously trying to get all the minis from the base game painted as I hate playing with unpainted figures.  It actually feels like I'm getting there as well with the US Marines, Troy, Brandi & Buddy now complete.

 

 

A day after I'd finished painting these guys and was getting that feeling that finishing the Mars Attacks boxed set was in sight my neighbour arrived with Kickstarter package 2.  Considering that I only put a small pledge on the Mars Attacks Kickstarter I've got a lot of stuff for my money and I'm a very happy customer.  Some pics of my new stuff below....

Freebie translucent science division guy

hard plastic Martian saucer and US army truck.  The saucer comes with heat ray and freeze ray options that I intend to magnetize.

The Tiger Corps, which includes a selection of great alien models and are my favourite minis from the range.

The Science Division

Novas Vira Militia

Martian Heroes

Human Heroes

and finally the Martian Dreadball team..