Zombie Week: Day Zero

Day Zero... The dead are rising from their resting place, deep in the darkest corners of my hobby cabinet. I need a quick fix that can only be gained from a completed project (too many slow burners at the moment). Zombies will be the first to give me that pleasure of completeness.

If zombies are raised from the field of battle, then shouldn't there be some non-humans in the mix? Thanks to Titan Forge, there are zomblins and undead trolls!

I've had these undead knocking around for a while and it was by chance that I remembered the plan I had to give them a very simple but effective paint job: quick undercoat, shade, highlight, shade, highlight, bang in a couple of signature touches... done. 

I've always like the idea of doing undead as if they are glowing with necromantic energies, which is the only thing giving them any coherency. The rules support this, so why not the paint job? Let's see if I can achieve a necrotic-bile green glow across the whole army.

That Was The Week That Was #11

This week's round up highlights some fun looking miniatures that are due to be released in the next couple of months. They all rate highly on my want-o-meter. 

1. Titan Forge have added to their demonic range with some rotten beasts. The highlight is this princely lord character model that would grace any fantasy battlefield:

2. Mantic are fulfilling on their promise of a summer of Kings of War with a batch of new budget friendly minis. I'm quite taken by these werewolves:

3. Finally, Maxmini has released these rather nifty looking Necrohounds, which could be proxies for a range of 40k type...

thingies.

Mantic Trolls And Plotting A Chaos Troll Army

Mantic are spending the next week showing us examples of the tons of Kings Of War miniatures that are on the way in the summer; here are some trolls:

What do you think? There's a Hordes influence here I'd say, but they look reasonable. I mean, what does a troll actually look like anyway?! The possibility of an all troll chaos army led by this guy takes a step closer...

I'm Not Interested In Mantic's Deadzone, But I'd Like To Catch The Plague

Mantic's pre-order service (i.e. Kickstarter) is in full swing again with their latest offering, Deadzone. While I'm not interested in the game or backing the initiative at the moment, I am very excited about the faction called The Plague, simply because of how cool the miniatures look:

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... 

Mantic Nurgle Misstep, OR, The Continuing Mystery Of Mantic Games

I admire Mantic Games but sometimes they confuse me. By which I mean I don't know what they're trying to do. Are they a truly independent gaming company? Or do they intend to continuously ride on the tail coats of Games Workshop?

Of course, GW is such a behemoth that any company looking to survive in this niche market of ours needs to appeal heavily to GW gamers (Privateer Press being the one exception in science fantasy gaming). Take Mantic's latest promotion of 'zombie marines' for example. This is clearly a result of the recent Chaos Space Marines codex and the special abilities of our friend Typhus to conjure up cohorts of the undead. Mantic have even gone so far as to release this 'hero' figure, called 'Mortis', and here he is:

All fine I suppose. Yet this model looks to be pretty low quality and it's hardly inspiring, is it? And at £10 it's not exactly competitively priced, given that it's obviously modelled as a Typhus substitute. 

So really this just deepens the mystery of Mantic Games. Cut price and reasonable quality in some areas (ghouls and zombies, for example), baffling in others (the Veer-Myn), and opportunist in still others (Dreadball cashing in on GW's delay in updating Blood Bowl - now a must if they've got any commercial sense).

Still, they're a young company and I wish them well. I'll skip adding Mortis to my Nurgle army though.

Climbing Sprue Mountain #2 - Vampire Counts

It's the second day of the ascent of sprue mountain and it's time to take a look at my Vampire Counts. As you can see from the photo, I'm using models from several ranges and I've assembled maybe a quarter of everything in the box - a box that, sharp eyed punters will notice, initially housed the Mantic undead army deal.

The foulest stench is in the air, the funk of forty thousand years. And grizzly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom (maniacal laugh...)

The Mantic rank and file undead are great value and pretty good minis too. Given that a Vampire Counts army can't escape being formed as a shambling horde, Mantic provide a cost effective way of achieving this. I've added Lords and Heroes from the GW range of plastics and finecast, along with some of the Mantic undead characters. In addition I have a few more GW figures to add to the mix, including some grave guard and a few of the excellent LotR miniatures. The Titan Forge Flesh Reapers will stand in for crypt horrors, while I'll be using a range of minis (including the female ogre from Foundry pictured on the left of the sheet of paper) as spirit hosts.

Although I've started to paint a few of the grave guard I'm currently giving the whole paint scheme a rethink. I want to do something different for each of my armies so that I get the maximum challenge, interest and enjoyment from the hobby. For the undead I'm thinking of how I can get them looking as if they've swathed in the glow of foul necromantic sorcery. A mixture of that effect alongside a good dose of rot and decay should fit the bill nicely. Overall I'm going for something quick that will look striking on the tabletop - should make for a good few winter evenings of work! 

Mantic Undead Army - Out of the Box

A rather big 'out of the box' this time, as the forces of the undead march relentlessly onto my desk. This is the Kings of War Undead Army from Mantic, a set of 110 miniatures that I'd been coveting for some time and which were bought for me as part-present-part-model exchange by my brother. 

These will form the backbone of my soon-to-be Vampire Counts army. I say soon, but of course, it will take me quite a while to work my way through this lot! In fact, this box arrived with the parts to make an extra 10 zombies (I had to count them several times to make sure) so this won't all be finished until at least the middle of next year - it all rather depends on when the next VCs army book comes out and whether that gets my creative juices flowing in that direction.

I took a quick look over the slim rule-set that was included with the miniatures. Kings of War is a very simple game from the look of things, but I'm not going to be rushing to give it a try over 8th edition Warhammer any time soon. On the whole it's too simple [and available for free download here, so judge for yourself]. However, I'm all in favour of other companies developing rule sets for fantasy battles - it wouldn't be a good thing is GW were the only developers in town. Of course, Mantic are a young company, so there's plenty of time for things to evolve in interesting directions.

One area where Mantic have developed rather well in a short time is in the quality of their miniatures. In fact it's rather common for people to suggest that the undead from Mantic are far superior to the current offerings from GW. There's some milage in this, particularly the zombies: the Mantic offerings are right on trend - wonderfully posed, shambling and lurching, while dropping to pieces - whereas the GW models are rather funny looking (to say the least - look at their massive meat-puppet hands).     

Here's my son having an extreme close-up look at the zombies - he's really started to get involved in various hobby activities, even though he's only two and a half (although I've only let him loose on my crappy 1980s plastic orks!). Overall this is a fantastic set and really worth the money - £50 from Mantic, about £45 from other suppliers. I've spent a great amount of time looking over miniatures from non-GW manufactures over the last 18 months or so, and I have to say that these are by far the best alternative in terms of the sculpts and the price. Oddly enough, the only miniatures in this set that I'm not that fussed about are the elite 'revenant' skeletons - grave guard style wights - these don't work so well with the additional armour on the models, leaving looking rather flat and two dimensional. This is only a slight downside, however, because these are the smallest troop type in the box, so it doesn't really change what is an amazing deal. 

Caution... Undead stink!

Yesterday I acquired the first characters for my gathering Vampire Counts army. Some of these were GW models, but in this post I want to focus on the miniatures that I got from Mantic Games, specifically the Death Kings Cabal. These are the first I've bought from Mantic, after spending the last month or so looking at their website and a few models that are on display in my local hoppy shop, the excellent and highly recommended Firestorm Games.

The packaging

The models in their box with foam, bubble wrap, 

some stickers and a 'mantic point'

This is worth a mention in its own right because the box has been designed with storage in mind. On opening I was very pleased to see the two reasonably substantial sheets of form that can be used to protect the figures once glued and painted, and not just hold them in place in the shop. I really like this way of supplying miniatures and I hope (somewhat pointlessly) that a certain other company takes up the idea. I also like the humour on the box, which includes the following warning: "Assemble your models in well ventilated area - decomposing undead are unknown to stink" :-)

The miniatures

In their pre-assembly state the miniatures were all a little bent and I was worried that they might not withstand straightening - however, all the parts that required a little tweak went into the desired positioned easily. The detail isn't knock-out stunning, probably being on a par with early 90s Citadel, which is no bad thing on the whole. The trouble is that I was comparing them directly with the Finecast models that I'd just opened (more of which in another post); not really a fair comparison.  

Standard bearer, wight king, male necromancer, and
female necromancer (apologies for poor photo quality,
autumn has finally arrived in Wales!)

I would say that my favourite at this stage is the standard bearer, whose ghoulish banner will certainly be fun to paint and field. I like the concept behind the male necromancer but having inspected the model closely I think the intentions rather outpace the realisation - it just doesn't look as good as it should. Once painted of course, it may be a different matter, and I plan to dedicate some time to getting the swirl of magical energy beneath him just right. The revenant/wight king is fine, while the female necromancer actually reminds me of 40k Dark Eldar. There's quite a bit of cleaning up required on these miniatures, although this won't trouble an experienced modeller.

Overall I'm cautiously optimistic and I'm looking forward to getting these undercoated and then applying a light wash to see how the detail will take shape.

Mantic Men

I really like the undead models from Mantic - I'll be using them to gather an undead war host during October. I've just heard that they're planning to release a human army too. This has been much anticipated on Empire forums and I'm very much looking forward to seeing the early releases. I just hope they're up to the standard of the skeletons and dwarf models rather than the oddly spindly elves they do. Fingers crossed.