Okay, the weather’s still a bit grim (in Nottingham, anyway) but we’re already preparing to kick off our Summer of Kings of War!
With a massive range of releases for Kings of War over June, July and August, it’s never been a better time to get involved with the fastest, easiest-to-learn Fantasy Battle Game there is. Following a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign last year, we’re now starting to receive painted models at Mantic HQ, and we’re going to spend the next seven days providing you with photos of as many Kings of War miniatures as we can!
We’re starting today, with a first good look at the Trolls…
Trolls are large, feral humanoids of dim wits and insatiable appetite – perfect allies for the armies of Goblins, which use them as shock troops. Trolls can regenerate almost any wound and only fire can truly destroy them, while their crude war-clubs smash through armour and crush bones with terrifying ease.
Trolls are released in June 2013, and will be $25 for a set of 3, making a 120-point Troop in an Orc or Goblin army. Also, don’t forget that as long as you also take a solid unit of Orcs or Goblins, you can take them as allies for any other Evil army!
What do you think of the trolls? Will you be getting a box or two? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Update from the frontlines! Thanks for Pathfinder Neil for this info:
The Mantic Pathfinders are running a series of Kings of War tournaments across the UK to raise money for charity. Entry is easy – your army doesn’t need to be painted and doesn’t even need to be Mantic models, which means almost anyone can play!
Each event lasts a day and you’ll play 4 timed games of 1600 points (allies are permitted). The ticket price includes lunch and, as well as a winner’s trophy, Mantic have provided some great prize support:
1st place – Winner’s trophy, signed copy of the Kings of War: Kings and Legends supplement and choice of an Ogre or Basilean army box when they’re released. The overall winner of the also chooses which charity receives the day’s proceeds!
2nd place – Signed copy of the Kings of War: Kings and Legends supplement, plus an Ogre unit, when they’re released.
3rd place – Copy of the Kings of War: Kings and Legends supplement when it’s released.
There are two regional Pathfinder Tournaments left (the first one, at Firestorm Games in Cardiff, was won by Chris Morris – well done, Chris!) followed by a national final later in the year. The remaining events are at:
There we have it! The Kings of War rules are ideally suited to tournament play, and they’re easy enough to master that even if you haven’t played many games yet, you could still learn them in time for either of these events! Whether you’re a serious Kings of War tournament fiend, a casual gamer who wants to raise some money for a good cause or someone with an existing fantasy army who wants to try a new set of rules, why not get involved?
I posted about Salute earlier in the week, and a lot’s happened since, but Mantic was in more than one place last weekend!
Yes, Ronnie and the gang made their usual appearance at Adepticon in Chicago. As well as giving away lots of subtle hints about Deadzone (I’m sure subtle’s the right word), they also had a chance to show of a host of Mantic games (mostly DreadBall, judging by the photos!) and meet a swathe of our fans face-to-face. If you want to see what was going on at our booth, why not check out the gallery I just posted on our Facebook page?
It was great to see lots of Mantic models turning up elsewhere at the ‘con. There were several Warhammer tournaments going on, and lots of players decided to use our miniatures (especially Mantic Zombies!) rather than Games Workshop’s own models. This isn’t something you’d see at Throne of Skulls (GW’s official tournaments), so it’s great to see Adepticon taking an approach that lets players use the models they want! I posted several photos of our models over at the Mantic In The Community album on Facebook – have a look!
How have you used Mantic models in other games? Have you used our heroes to represent your roleplay characters? Bought a few boxes of our monsters to fill the corridors of your favourite dungeonbash board game? Drop us a comment and let us know, or send some photos to james.hewitt@manticgames.com!
DreadBall Season 2 is heralding a summer of Kings of War – and Ronnie was keen to tell you all about it!
Firstly, thank you for your patience. Kings of War and the plastic range behind it has taken a back seat for too long – but reinforcements are on the horizon. And when this vast horde arrives surely the world will tremble!
Mantic set out to make fantasy and sci-fi war gaming affordable and fun. We wanted to bring innovation in, and enjoy huge battles fought between epic armies – and that means the sets need to be affordable, and easy enough to assemble and onto the battlefield. We always intended to have a rule set – but were quite aware that people might want to use or affordable models in many other gaming systems – and one in particular
Last year we released our first hardback rulebook, after two years of beta testing. It contained all the army list and rules needed to play a complete game of Kings of War. The game is designed to be played between armies filled with numerous regiments and lots of models, but it still ends with a clear result in just a couple of hours (with lots of death along the way!). Just before the book released we put it on Kickstarter and asked people to help us add more units to each of the main armies, such as werewolves, Orc chariots and even Dwarf cavalry!
At the beginning of the campaign we thought we would get backing to make a few units for each army and possibly bring a few regiments forward from future years. We also hoped to get a new book with a range of heroes in it. We were very surprised at the staggering response. 28 days and no sleep later, we had raised financing for 22 new plastic units, and funding for the complete human army – plus a few exclusive models and many heroes – an unthinkable achievement at the beginning of the campaign.
We had to then get on with sculpting and tooling them all – no easy task – especially because we wanted to keep our standards as high as they had always been.
This June sees the new sets ship to our backers, and then the range will roll out to retailers’ and on to the gaming tables around the world. We will be presenting the range as the figures and kits for Kings of War. However, we expect many sets will get picked up for other gaming systems – both RPGs and Wargames. The funding has allowed us to release these kits at fantastic prices – so while the kickstarters benefited, we can also release these sets into the trade market at very keen prices. For example a pack of three trolls will be retailing for just £14.99 $24.99 – and they are going to look something like this…
To show just how many sets are now available as new releases here is a list of the kits we will be releasing through retailers in June, July and August (NOTE that this is NOT to be confused with the package Kickstarter Backers will get – there will be an update on the kickstarter detailing the KOW Shipment 2 contents next week.)
- Trolls
- Orc Gore Chariot
- Orc Fight Wagon
- Undead Mummies
- Undead Werewolves
- Undead Vampiress Lady Ilona
- Undead Lord Malak
- The Basilean Legacy
- Basilean Men at Arms
- Basilean Paladins
- Basilean Crossbowmen
- Basilean Elohi
- Basilean Sisterhood
- Basilean Sisterhood Lancers
- Basilean Paladin Knights
- Basilean Chariot
- Basilean High Priest
- Kings and Legends
- Ogre Warriors
- Ogre Shooters
- Ogre Grokagamok
These will all be at great Mantic prices, and supported with 2 complete books. One book ‘Kings and Legends’ will be focused on the heroes that live in Mantica, and their forces.
The second book ‘The Basilean Legacy’ looks in detail at one of the powerful human armies that battle all comers as they defend their realms. This expansion also has some basic army lists for two new factions and more rules for magic and magic items.
Here is a video of the work-in-progress Men-at-Arms sculpts (our first foray into using 3D sculpting for hard plastics!) and some shots of the sculpts – we expect this human army will be massive!
Work In Progress Men-At-Arms
Basilean Paladins
Basilean Sisterhood
All summer we will be running Kings of War events, and treating this as a launch for the system and the kits. We will be running tournaments through the summer, and nationals in the autumn in the UK and USA and trying to get more in central and Western Europe and Australasia (please get in touch if you are interested). Overall we will be having a massive support program to help build the system, and on the back of the popularity of Dreadball we hope many new people will be looking again at Mantic and what we have to offer.
So, please accept my apologies for not getting you more product sooner, I hope the coming month’s releases will make up for it.
And thank you, for sticking with us and support us while we charged off with Dreadball and other projects. We will never leave it so long between big, exciting releases again!
Note – These are just a handful of the photos we took from the event – you can check them all out on the Mantic Facebook page!
What a blast!
Over the weekend Ronnie, Alessio and the Mantic team headed over to Marauder Games in Stockport for our Clash of Kings tournament. Despite the snow, players from across the UK (and even some from Spain) joined us to pit their Kings of War armies against each other for an incredible £1000 prize! The results were decided by six tough games over the two days…
None of the guys let the pressure show
The atmosphere was fantastic – everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves with banter and laughs exchanged across the tables all day. Almost everyone stuck around for the evening for a Q&A session with Ronnie and Alessio followed by a great evening of casual gaming.
There was a good mix of races, with all but one represented in the tournament, a testament to the balance of the game. The unit choices were also very balanced, with a lot of variation in the armies – there were no two the same. Right up to the last game the winner was still undecided – it all became very tense around the top few tables. However, there was one player who was consistent throughout, a player who truly earned his prize. Without further ado, the results:
1st place £1000 Daniel King – Undead
2nd place £350 Chris Tamplin – Undead
3rd place £150 Chris Nicholls – Goblins
Congratulations to all of you!
Of course, the winners were not our only consistent players. One player was consistently rather awful, so a special mention must go to the gracious winner of the wooden spoon .
Last place Jonathan Peace – Undead
Jonathan was given a Warpath Forge Father Army as a prize – not that we’re suggesting he should try another game…
Having painted four of the armies at the tournament, Matt’s own Elf Army took best painted and will be featured in the next edition of the rulebook.
As our first major tournament we’ve learnt a lot about what works and what doesn’t so we’ll be taking these lessons on board as we prepare to do it all again in the states in April (if you haven’t already, book your tickets here!) and we’ll be bringing Clash of Kings back to the UK again next year – and of course, the Trolls, Ogres, Humans, Angels and Werewolves will be out be then as well!
What better way to get us all in the mood for some Clash of Kings news later today than with some Kings of War hobby!
Hybrid Alpha’s Undead Skeleton Horde really caught our eye last week and on further investigating his painting log on the Mantic Forum is simply mindblowing!
Not only do these figures look incredible, Hybrid Alpha has also produced a number of great tutorials on how he both painted the models and based them, in depth with illustrative photos. Definitely worth a read!
It’s been a long time coming but the Clash of Kings UK Tournament is finally here!
Players will battle it out over two days to decide the champion of champion – and claim the coveted prize of £1000 cash.
We’ll have previews of some of the new Kings of War miniatures coming out in the summer.
Entry to the public is free on the Saturday 9th if you want to come and see what’s happening, play some games or meet the Mantic Team. Please feel free to come along and join in the evening’s entertainment too!
And, if you want to participate in the event – you can still grab tickets here!
The Goblins are getting reinforcements with the addition of the Mawbeast Pack and the War-Trombone to the range! These kits got swamped slightly by the Christmas DreadBall Craziness and deserve a night in the spotlight so we’re releasing them in January!
First up is the War-Trombone – a nasty bit of kit that is essentially a wacky flame-thrower. Check it out:
If you’re playing Kings of War, the War-Trombone is going to need a solid unit for you to take one and we’ve added the Goblin Spitters Horde – that’s 40 Hard Plastic Bowmen – for just £13.99 to our Santa’s Spring Clean-out!
The Goblin War-Trombone is now available to pre-order and will be released in January.
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