Wednesday, 27 March 2013

What Might A Summer Of Kings Of War Actually Mean?

So it seems that Mantic have a great deal planned for their fantasy war game line Kings Of War in the coming summer months (and if you reside in the UK you'll remember summer as being that season when the sun was in the sky around about 20 months ago...).

A troll, apparently...
The full list of releases includes the following:

- 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

It's good to see Mantic returning to this area after focusing on Dreadball and a few other projects. I like my Mantic undead even though I've not really been inspired to do anything with them yet. The prices look good - around £15 for 3 Trolls is hard to argue with. But I do wonder about the look of them, which seems to follow the Hordes aesthetic. I actually don't mind the look of the Trollbloods but I know plenty of other people aren't keen. I like the sound of werewolves so those will be the ones I look out for. 

The others... well, it's possible that this batch of releases could be a make-or-break for Kings of War. Do any of you actually play this rule set? I've never been tempted. 8th ed WFB and retro 3rd ed are far more my style of gaming. My only experience outside Mantic's own promotional material is seeing heavily discounted boxes of their stuff in indie game stores. I wonder if they hadn't played the slight of hand of getting loads of advance orders via Kickstarter whether they'd be on the way to going out of business? This might be a decisive few months for Mantic... 

2 comments:

  1. I haven't played Kings of War, but I did pay attention to the earlier drafts. I didn't like their focus on predictability. More chess like than I want from a fantasy game.

    I do like Mantic though. While I don't like all their models, I like companies thinking of ways to make cheap models. An army from Mantic is affordable. But then I've never been interested in my miniatures having an awful lot of sculpted detail - I enjoy painting, but that always seems like an obstacle to getting the model on the table.

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    1. They're even actually bringing out a chess-style game now. I cannot imagine anything further from the style of gameplay I like.

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