Unboxing - Kings of War: Abyssal Starter Army

Today I'm going to have a look at my latest purchase, the Abyssal Starter Army for Kings of War by Mantic Games.

It all comes together in a medium sized box with printed pictures front and back, nothing wrong with it, but nothing exciting either.  It's also not the type of box that's much use for storing constructed and painted minis.  The back does have four Mantic points on however which are of course welcome.

I'm going to start with the Mollochs, these are large infantry and come in metal, unlike everything else in the set which comes in hard plastic.  They come with three spare heads and a couple of spare arms which is good for variety if you wanted to buy a second set and create a bigger unit.  I will be combining these with my Dungeon Saga Mollochs to create a horde.

The core of the set is the 50 plastic Flamebearers/Lower Abyssals.  There are five figures per sprue which can be assembled as Flamebearers or Lower Abyssals, each sprue also contains command options, which are not necessary in Kings of War but nice to see as they give the regiment a bit of character. Each sprue also has 2 little Imps. There's nothing really to fault here, except possibly the difficultly in making the minis rank up ranking due to tails and weapons.  I've made 40/10 lower Abyssals/Flamebearers not 30/20 like it shows on the box, but it really is upto each buyer.

Moving on to the Succubi, which are also in plastic also five per sprue and also have command options and a couple of Imps.  The set contains 20 of these fearsome fighters.  There are 5 lots of paired weapons per sprue and an open hand, there are less spare parts than you get with the Lower Abyssals, but the interchangeable torsos/legs help the variety of the minis you can make.

And finally you get these Imps scattered around the sprues of the main regiments.  You are only provided with two 40mm bases, but there are plenty of Imps to make a third base.  To be fair it's only advertised as two bases, but a unit is 3 bases.  Mantic should have added an extra base and called it a real unit.

The whole set (movement trays not included, but made my life easier for photography!)

Overall I rate this as an excellent set.  You get 6 units here for a retail price of £50, which I feel is a bargin, I actually got mine from Wayland Games at £40 ( 20% off) which makes it an even better deal.  This starter actually gives you a 750pts army, and it feels like an army, you could happily play a good game with this set alone.  The quality is pretty good too, Mantic's plastics have improved no end.  Superb value for money, Recommended.

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.

Review - Kings of War: Uncharted Empires

I've been eagerly awaiting this book, Kings of War has been very well received in my gaming group and we've been having a lot of fun experimenting with new army lists.  This book of new lists by Mantic is a very clever move, they don't make minis for any of them, but quite a few bear a striking resemblance to armies from the now defunct Warhammer Fantasy Battles.  This will ultimately encourage even more people to give KoW a try and allows those of us who already have extensive Warhammer collections to use a lot more of our minis in our games, and ultimately for our group pretty much signals our complete conversion from Warhammer Fantasy to KoW.  It sounds like a giant win-win, lets take a closer look.

The book is just over 70 pages, softback and in full colour, plenty of art and photos, some new some reused.  The footprint is the same as the gamers edition of the main rulebook and the interior is done in the same style.  This is all for the good, I like things to match, it makes it feel like there's a bit of thought gone into the range.  There are nine new lists for some of Mantica's minor factions, and whilst a lot of them are shall we say 'Inspired' by Warhammer fantasy armies the included background section for each list grounds them firmly within the Kings of War world.

Lets take a brief overview of the Lists one by one.

Name: The Brotherhood
Alignment: Good
Warhammer Equivalent: Bretonnians

This knightly Brotherhood guard the southern realms from the depravations of the abyss.  These are classic good guy knights and peasents, very closely following the Bretonnian mould, except with added water elementals.  There are different flavours of knights, including the long lost and much asked for foot knights and some cool flying knights.  And there is even a Robin Hood style unit which will allow me to use my 'Bowmen of Bergerac' minis again.  It's not the most inspired list, but then neither was the Bretonnia one, but it is solid and I definitely plan on giving it a go.

Name: Salamanders
Alignment: Good
Warhammer Equivalent: Lizardmen

This one like the Brotherhood is very inspired by the Warhammer equivalent, in this case the Lizardmen.  The Saurus have been renamed Salamanders, the skinks Ghekkotah and the Kroxigor Tyrants.  No sign of any Slann though.  There are also added fire elementals to fit in with the Salamander background.

Name: The Herd
Alignment: Neutral
Warhammer Equivalent: Beastmen

Fauns, Stayrs, Beastmen, Centaurs, Minotaurs etc.  This is my favourite list in this book, I love the fact that they made them neutral which puts a totally different stance on them.  I think this makes a great companion list to my favoured Forces of Nature army.  Nice to see Harpies and especially Lycans in the list as I have some being painted.  Adding some units from this list to my collection is definitely going to happen.

Name: League of Rhordia
Alignment: Neutral
Warhammer Equivalent: None

I've said 'none' for the equivalent army here, but it's sort of old school Empire.  This is a mix of fairly standard human troops, lots of Hobbits Halflings and some cool war machines.  The ability to field Halfling armies is welcome and it's cleverly done with the humans to create a balanced list, whilst leaving the pure Halfling army open.  Not on the immediate horizon for me though.

Name: The Trident Realm of Neritica
Alignment: Neutral
Warhammer Equivalent: None

This one was unexpected, finally the much joked about Fishmen list appears!  Most of the troops are a variety of Naiad, which is handy as Mantic will be releasing plastic Naiads in the new year, this list is the converting opportunity list.  Just how far can you push that one sprue? As well as the Naiads you get various water elementals and sea monsters.  I also think calling the armoured Naiads Placoderms was inspired!

Name: The Empire of Dust
Alignment: Evil
Warhammer Equivalent: Tomb Kings

The ancient desert undead, mummies, pharaohs, chariots, scorpions and plenty of long dead skeletons.  Another pretty straight 'inspired' list here, nothing really exciting or radical, but of course welcome if you have a tomb kings army, or just really like undead chariots.

Name: Night-Stalkers
Alignment: Evil
Warhammer Equivalent: None

This one is interesting.  The night-stalkers are the embodiment of the fears, horrors, nightmares and dreams of mortals.  A whole army of trans-dimensional Nightmares.  Rules wise they are fascinating they have no inspiring of their own, but steal their opponents, they also have a unit that can use all their opponents fighting characteristics in combat.  I'm not quite sure what to make of it all yet, but it certainly is interesting.  I'm also not sure which models to use, Mike (my regular opponent and irregular contributor on this blog) has a plan to use some of his Tyranid minis to play this list.  I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with and I'll see if I can persuade him to share it here.

Name: Ratkin
Alignment: Evil
Warhammer Equivalent: Skaven

Another pretty straight copy here, but nonetheless a welcome one.  In the Mantica background they are a former slave race who have broken free.  You have the various infantry you'd expect with a mix of crazy war machines.  In a change from Warhammer you can also have Ratkin cavalry and you can give the Vermin Lord equivalent wings!  I have small Skaven Ratkin army, with some more to paint up at some point, and one of my main opponents has a large collection so we're really pleased to see this one included.

Name: The Varangur
Alignment: Evil
Warhammer Equivalent: Warriors of Chaos

These are the barbarian tribes from the north with attendant monsters.  You have heavy and light infantry and cavalry a few specialist infantries (including some bowmen!), trolls and wolves.  Pretty much what was expected (except the bowmen).  The background is a bit different than I expected though and I like it.  The Varangur don't worship the Abyssals as I was expecting, but a different older god of the north 'Korgaan' he is a many faced god and there is a limited 'mark' system here as well.  As I have quite a big Warriors of Chaos force I'll be looking to try out this list at some point.


In conclusion I think this is a fantastic and imaginative product, and I have absolutely no qualms in heartily recommending this.  In fact I would even go so far as to say it's an essential purchase if you're a KoW player.  I also hope Mantic do eventually make some minis to support this, a single plastic kit for each of the lists would be a great start.  Things continue to look very bright for Kings of War.

Reaper Bones for Kings of War

Kings of War has been set aside now for a few months whilst we play dungeon saga over the cold winter nights.  This doesn't mean that I'm not working on my armies in the mean time.   Today I have a few recent editions that are all from the 'Bones' range by reaper minis.  These are cheap flexible plastic figures designed mainly for roleplaying, but I found a way to add these ones to my KoW collection.

First off is this Ogre chieftain, who I'm planning on using as a Warlord for my small, but growing Ogre force.

This is a unicorn for my Forces of Nature army.  I already have an old citadel unicorn, but couldn't resist getting this one as well.

Keeping with the forces of nature here we have a dryad, a beastman and a hunter of some sort, these will all be used as 'hunters of the wild' in my army.

These quirky figures are 'mushroom men' the small ones will also be used as 'hunters of the wild' whereas the big one will make an expert forest shamble.

And finally this demon figure which will make an excellent succubi champion for my embryonic Abyssal army.

Using Dungeon Saga For Kings of War

A few days ago I posted an unboxing of my Dungeon Saga kickstarter package, with this giant pile of minis from the world of Mantica I couldn't help wonder if I could get some Kings of War units out of all this.

One of the defining features of KoW as opposed to Warhammer is that unit sizes are fixed, usually 10, 20 or 40 for standard infantry, or 3 or 6 for large infantry.  This makes putting together units out of the set slightly trickier than it was when I used my Warhammer Quest minis in my Warhammer armies back in the day, however here are my solutions...

The easiest place to start is with the heroes and bosses, most of which happily serve as characters  for their respective armies.

The four heroes out of the starter set can be used as Kingdoms of Men, wizard, a Kingdoms of men hero, an Elf Master Hunter and a Dwarf King.

 

These three make excellent heroes for the forces of nature army, as a Salamander Veteran, Naiad Stalker and a Druid.

 

 

And these two obviously fit nicely into the Basilean army as a High Paladin and an Abbess.

 

 

 These two Bosses from the base game will make an excellent Revenant King and Necromancer.

 

And finally for the characters we have an Orc Krudger, an Abyssal Champion and an Efreet (who is a minion in dungeon saga, but a character in KoW).

If you got a 'carton B' like me you got three Molochs, which is enough for a regiment, they even come on the right sized (50mm) bases.

You also get three each of zombie trolls and trolls, enough for a regiment of each.  One slight issue here is they also come on 50mm bases whereas in Kings of War they should have 40mm bases.  After much deliberation, including considering rebasing them we've decided just not to worry about it and just let them be used as is.  That wouldn't be OK in a tournament obviously, but for friendly games we don't think it will have enough of effect to be worth worrying about unduly and I'm not the only player in our group who wants to be able to add dungeon saga zombie trolls to their kings of war Undead army.

I've also been able to put together a lower abyssal troop.  The bases on these are also the wrong size for KoW, being 25mm rather than 20mm.  The solution here is a bit different, I'm using a frontage of four instead of five (still 100mm) and keep the depth of two, which does mean a depth of 50mm instead of 40mm, but that's not a real issue for friendly games.  You can pull off the same trick with the skeletons, but it's not worth it for me as I already have loads of skeletons on the right size bases.

This is where things get slightly dodgy, in my package I got three tortured souls, on 25mm bases.  In the KoW list they are large infantry on 40mm bases and come as three for a regiment.  My solution is just to put those three figures on a large base of the right footprint.  Ideally at some point I'd make a scenic base with three holes which I could pop the figs in when I wanted to use them in KoW

This little lot of Abyssals comes to 710pts, which if you add 40pts of magic items it becomes a legal 750pt Abyssal army.  Then consider that you can spend 25% of your points on allies, those two troll units come to 240pts, which added to the Abyssals creates a legal 1000pt army.  It may not be the best army ever but you could definitely have a fun battle with it.  If you have a carton B (base pledge plus the three expansions) you also have a Kings of War army!

Kings of War Reinforcements

We've been enjoying Kings of War of late, and our gaming group is in the process of repurposing old fantasy minis, and buying new ones, to give ourselves more list building options, I can't remember the last time everyone got this galvanised into painting like this.  I'm no exception and I've a few bits and pieces that I've finished in the last week or so;

Lets start with some actual Kings of War minis, these Forest Shamblers for my Forces of Nature army.  I've got three of these coming with my FoN starter army from Kickstarter later in the year, but experience has taught us that 'large infantry' hordes (units of six) are formidable so I couldn't resist getting another three now. 

These three Merfolk are from Foundry and I am planning to use them as water elementals in my FoN army.  I've had to do a different base style for these figs, as merfolk on nice grassy pastures made no sense, so I've gone with what I hope signifies a sort of swampy ground that follows the merfolk around.  It still looks like they're floating about the water somewhat, but they are being used to represent magical nature spirits....

I've also been working on bringing my Hunters of the Wild upto a full regiment of twenty, partly for tactical reasons, but also because I really love the freedom to paint a few individual minis and yet put them together in this most flexible of unit modelling opportunities.  Here we have an ancient Greek piper, three GW Ungors and another Wood Elf sprite.

These five figures are wood nymphs from Foundry's Greek mythology range and will double up in my collection as Hunters of the Wild.

Here we have the whole formidable regiment of the Hunters of The Wild

This is Ronaldo the bard, one of the Kickstarter exclusives, Mantic haven't released his rules yet, so for now I will use him as an alternative army standard.

And finally here are the first five of ten Basilean sisterhood panther riders I got with the Mantic crazy xmas box last year.

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.