The Goblin Handler and Maw-beast is one of our favorite all time Mantic figures and we couldn’t resist making a whole unit of them.
These guys are nasty with ten Crushing Strength (2) attacks at a Melee of 3+ – with Speed 6 and nimble!
The Mawbeast Pack is now available to pre-order and will be released in January.
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.
Goblins are a force to be reckoned with in the world of Kings of War – just ask Guy Haley…
Goblins can be found in every corner of Mantica. They are a persistent nuisance, and sometimes a genuine threat, to all other creatures. Goblins are even more numerous than their Orcish cousins. For the most part, they are subservient to the larger Orcs, employed in every role in society that Orcs are too lazy to fill themselves (meaning most of them). They are deployed in war by their masters to wear down an enemy with sheer weight of numbers before the Orcs move in for the kill. Where they are not enslaved by Orcs, they form their own petty kingdoms and tribes. These are of a bewildering variety – Goblins dwell in swamps, jungle, deserts, forests, mountains, hills, caverns and even sewers. Thousands roam the mammoth steppe in huge federations of clans, riding a variety of fierce and malodorous beasts. Here they fight with savage humans and hunt the shaggy behemoths that live there.
That Goblins are related to Orcs is obvious. They share the same colour of skin, similar physiological quirks and an underlying sense of malice. A Goblin’s idea of heaven is finding something smaller and weaker than itself and tormenting it to death, although in reality they are so jumpy the source of their attentions has to be half-dead already. But whereas the creation of the Orcs is relatively well-understood, not one scholar has a clear idea how the goblins came about, and it has been opined that they are a kind of cosmic mistake, something cobbled together by lesser Abyssals while the dark gods were looking the other way. They are not entirely evil. Goblins can be traded with. As one finds the occasional truly evil man, it is possible to find the occasional truly good goblin, but such individuals are rarer than hen’s teeth, and are usually murdered by their compatriots. Goblins are certainly nowhere near as brave as Orcs, exhibiting a degree cowardice that verges on the comical. The only thing that Goblins have in great abundance, apart from each other, is self-preservation.
Most Goblins are far too weaselly for proper fighting, generally taking to the field in a large, poorly armed rabble that has to be kicked toward the enemy. Whereas Orcs are badly disciplined but bold, Goblins are just badly disciplined. Given the chance, they will flee from a fight at the slightest opportunity, and must be tightly controlled by their betters if they are to function as a useful force.
The greater strategists among Orc-kind recognise this and give allow their smaller cousins bows, provided the Goblins stand in front of the Orcs and point the weapons away from them. The bow is the preferred weapon of the Goblin in any case, as they generally feel safer when they can inflict harm on their enemies from a distance, and, should the opportunity arise, and they can get up the courage, it also affords them the opportunity for revenge on their oppressors…
Not all Goblins are quite so timid, and the larger ones will form into fighting units with some value. These Goblins commonly call themselves ‘Gutrenders’, although that is not how the Orcs tend to refer to them, instead derisively calling them ‘Sharpsticks’. For all their bragging, Sharpstick’s still exhibit some degree of Goblin fearfulness, and carry spears, the better to keep the enemy at arm’s length. Shields too are favoured, the larger the better. Naturally, these items are of little use in the caverns and close tunnels of overrun Dwarf citadels where many Goblins make their home, and a close second favourite is a curved knife, preferably wielded behind the backs of their enemies.
Goblins are more ingenious than Orcs and do most of the building and smithying in their lands. They are especially cunning when it comes to devising new weapons, although it has to be said that most of them are also laughably incompetent when it comes to building them. Nevertheless, some Goblin inventions become firm favourites on the battlefield, and it is common for warriors bearing nets, lassos, spring-powered harpoons, beehive-flingers and large, iron-toothed traps to fight alongside their spear-armed brethren.
Away from the Orcs, the goblin mind can shine. They have an affinity for wicked creatures, forming alliances with all kinds of sharp-toothed, stinking beasts and possess them in great multitudes. Many are employed as draft animals or mounts. Not only do the Goblins relish the ability to escape quickly, the animal they sit upon is usually the better fighter. Another favourite asset of Goblin ‘Biggits’ (their generals) are the ferocious but dumb Tolls and Giants. Shambling monsters many times the size of Goblins, they follow their little masters around, either in the hope of a free meal provided by the Goblins, or in the hope of a free meal provided by a Goblin.
Among the ‘free’ Goblins are those Goblins who exhibit true genius. There are the Goblin wizards, or ‘Wiz’, who are bright enough to remember spells and the ingredients to go with them provided they are not too complicated, and Goblin Engineers, brightest of all the greenskins. How these small and stupid creatures can produce inventors intelligent enough to dabble successfully in steam power and black powder weaponry is the source of much debate, among those who care about such things. There are even rumours of an entire ramshackle city of Goblins full of bizarre machines. This mythical place is said to be the home of the Engineer’s Guild, and they rule it with a (literally) iron fist. Supposedly it lies somewhere in the marshes beyond the northern border of Basilea, but few folk give this outlandish rumour much credence.
Goblins are now available to order from the Mantic Games website and all good hobby retailers. Pre-order the Mawbeast Pack and War-Trombone here – released in January. Grab the Goblin Spitters Horde as part of Santa’s Spring Clean at up to 50% here.
The Spitter frame has arrived and oh boy do we have a tonne of Goblins in our warehouse right now. Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve got coming:
Spitters – Available in Spitters Regiment and Spitters Horde flavours
And that’s not all – grab an army deal through the webstore and pick up our Mawbeast Pack and War-trombone – two kits that won’t be released until later in the year!
And we can’t leave with our showing something new off:
It’s been a while since we’ve shown any greens off so let’s kickstart the afternoon (see what we did there?) with some Goblin sculpts!
Mawbeast Pack and Handler
Goblin War-Trombone
Bob popped in yesterday to show these off and we couldn’t resist asking John-luc to do a quick photograph job on them for the blog before they went off for casting, painting and being photographed for the packaging.
Both of these are included in our Elite Goblin Army Set on Kickstarter and also feature in our brand new Goblin army deals alongside the Spitters, Rabble and Sharpsticks – please leave us your comments below!
So there’s been some debate about our new plastic Goblin Bowmen – are they hard plastic on a sprue, or our they our premium Resin Plastic material.
Well folks, hopefully this picture will uncover the mystery:
They’re hard plastic on a sprue!
I think they’re great models and very useful in the game – I had two units of 40 in my tournament army that spent their days peppering units of dwarfs and elves with missile fire (armies normally under the command of a general called Chris).
Check back tomorrow for the first look at the new Halfbreed cavalry!
Another tantalising teaser!
New plastic Goblin Archers – called Spitters in the new edition, that will feature in the new two-player battle set released in July.
Right, back to video-making for a new top secret project…
After many requests from Orcy to stop tormenting him, we thought we’d best show off his cousins before he started throwing Dice around.
No, not him… we’re talking ahout Goblins!
We’ll have more on the Twilight Kin tomorrow!
I think Ronnie has kick-started our Kings of War week off with a great foundation – the game isn’t going anywhere and is only going to get bigger!
We’ve teased through some of the concept art for the Goblins and Twilight Kin in our new releases section, which has been updated with all of February’s advance orders (and look out for more on March’s Corporation releases coming very soon, like next week soon!).
So, in that vein, we have a feasts of concept art for you, starting with the Goblins…
These are concepts for the new metal Goblin Spearmen unit… Of course, these aren’t the first Goblins we’ve done – the Goblin Sneek in the Krudger’s Gang and the Goblin and Mawbeast blister released this week are both excellent we think.
Goblin and Mawbeast
We’ve just received some new Goblin shots in fact so we’ll be posting these up this week. Check back tomorrow where we will have more on the Twilight Kin Assassin and a new Twilight Kin video!
This week focuses on Kings of War and I wanted to discuss one of the current threads running on the Mantic forum, and one I thought raised some really great points – ones I thought I should address…
I put up a few notes over the Christmas break, so I hope you will know that KoW is far from dead – in fact it is our major game system release for 2012, and this year it become our first ‘finished’ mass-battle system (and I will explain what I mean by that below) but I was vague on the detail and our reasons behind the developments – so I hope to rectify those points here.
The thread talked about how KoW felt like a poor relation in the last few months. To be honest, I also feel we have neglected KoW for at the end of last year and I know how frustrating that will feel after you have committed to our gaming system. I am sorry for that.
As it was we were just not able to support KoW while we released Warpath. However, now that is done we will rotate releases for each major system in alternate months – with a few surprises and new games thrown in for good measure 
Let’s outline our plans for KoW this year:
Miniatures:
In February we have the Twilight Kin release – a whole new army for KoW. It looks fantastic and offers a great hobby project to get a brilliant (and very lethal) army on to the battle field.
Twilight Kin Spearmen and Crossbows – new for the Twilight Kin… more images and pics coming this week!
We will also release the first goblin unit. This is the metal spearman regiment – while the plastic bowman unit is away getting tooled.
Goblin Spearmen unit champion – these guys just have so much character…
We have an elite unit of Undead just around the corner too (a surprise new unit – soon to be announced by Alessio) – which will offer a powerful mini unit to add to the Undead Horde.
A few months after that we have a major release for the Abyssal Dwarfs – including resin plastic Half Breeds! These models look stunning and add the cavalry choice to the (Abyssal) Dwarf army (Don’t worry – we will still do Dwarfs on Badgers too at some point!). This release will be supported with other kits to fill out the Abyssal Dwarf range too…
Check back tomorrow for Part 2 of Ronnie’s bumper mega-post!
