[Kings of War] Mantic Fantasy News & Rumors

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**Shadow Walker**

kodos wrote:
I never understood what the problem with the base disc is

**kodos**

Playability, a casted base gives better stability for the model and the large surface make them stick better to the base

It is the main difference between Wargaming models and display models (and if there is no disc, the models are usually sculpted in a way to hold better, this is the reason why the old Space Marines all have the broad walking pose and stand with both feet flat on the ground)

**Shadow Walker**

kodos wrote:
Playability, a casted base gives better stability for the model and the large surface make them stick better to the base

It is the main difference between Wargaming models and display models (and if there is no disc, the models are usually sculpted in a way to hold better, this is the reason why the old Space Marines all have the broad walking pose and stand with both feet flat on the ground)

Fortunately Mantic is not including them in the latest minis. That, and the overall huge improvement with the quality of their sculpts, gives me hope for some proper medieval skellies in the (near) future.

**lord_blackfang**

Integrated discs were a pain when they came out, but now you can just print bases or unit tray with recesses. At least Mantic's are circles so it's easy, unlike dumb historical kidney bases.

**Shadow Walker**

lord_blackfang wrote:
unlike dumb historical kidney bases.

Yeah, I hate those with a passion.

**kodos**

Armada in 2020:

The next full fleet release for Armada will be the Salamanders. Since we first teased some artwork of these ships, there’s been a lot of anticipation for their launch. After all, apart from the elves, the Salamanders are some of the most experienced sea-faring folk in the whole of Pannithor.

The Salamanders possess a small but elite navy, with large, powerful ships. Their crews, often commanded by mysterious arkosaurs, are well-drilled – indeed, through some form of racial memory, many salamanders are spawned with knowledge of sailing and naval strategy in their fiery blood. The strange appearance of their battle ships has remained largely unchanged for millennia, and were themselves developed in response to their enemies in the East, foremost amongst them the ancient Xirkaali Empire.

If the imposing forms of their ships weren’t enough to deter most challengers at sea, the belching smoke from their batteries, and the dancing flames at their prows are sights to strike fear into the hearts of sailors everywhere. For the Salamanders are masters of firecraft, which they use to their advantage. The arkosaurs command fire elementals to do their bidding, while their own vessels are protected from flame by armour of drake-pelts and dragonscales.

and Dwarf flyers:

**lord_blackfang**

Well they are about as good as the rest of the line.

**Mr Morden**

I kinda like some of them them but not the oversized weapons and too many too low on the waterline for my taste.

**Shadow Walker**

That dwarfish baloon bomber kinda reminds me of 40k ships.

**BobtheInquisitor**

Those Salamander ships do “it” for “me”. Must buy.

The Dwarf flyers, if attractively priced, will find themselves as 28mm cybereagle and (with some detail scraping and bits) as BFG scale cargo vessel.

**Sarouan**

They're salamanders ships ? I don't know why, but I feel like they have a chinese inspiration.

They're very ornated as well. It's kinda different from the KoW design of their current miniatures, IMHO.

**kodos**

the elite KoW Minis are ornated too, but for the ship the design, as quoted above:

The strange appearance of their battle ships has remained largely unchanged for millennia, and were themselves developed in response to their enemies in the East, foremost amongst them the ancient Xirkaali Empire

so Chinese inspired but the question is if we see something from the Eastern Enemy as well

**stonehorse**

Sarouan wrote:
They're salamanders ships ? I don't know why, but I feel like they have a chinese inspiration.

They're very ornated as well. It's kinda different from the KoW design of their current miniatures, IMHO.

The sails are very 'Chinese' looking.

I am a bit puzzled that the flying models have bases with water features on them, but the boats have plain bases. Surely they could have put water features on them as well. I think that is what I don't like about Mantic's boats.

**Wha-Mu-077**

stonehorse wrote:
Sarouan wrote:
They're salamanders ships ? I don't know why, but I feel like they have a chinese inspiration.

They're very ornated as well. It's kinda different from the KoW design of their current miniatures, IMHO.

The sails are very 'Chinese' looking.

I am a bit puzzled that the flying models have bases with water features on them, but the boats have plain bases. Surely they could have put water features on them as well. I think that is what I don't like about Mantic's boats.

It makes them look kinda not-boaty, together with how far above the waterline they are.

**McDougall Designs**

BobtheInquisitor wrote:
NinthMusketeer wrote:
I'm apathetic to a lot of Mantic's sculpts these days; they are solid for the price but now they need to stand against 3d prints. Many companies can justify a higher price by delivering a better product, but Mantic... once one gets outside the blocks of rank & file it gets really difficult to see how they intend to stay competitive. Coupled with that, a not insignificant amount of their kits ARE simply bad, ridiculously overpriced, or both.

Edit: and buying 3D printed minis isn’t much cheaper than buying resin minis.

Thats because you are buying resin minis, the manufacturing process is just different.

**NinthMusketeer**

It was just miscommunication; I was meaning to say that people can buy 3d printed resins of significantly higher quality, not significantly less in price.

**lord_blackfang**

And it's both if you have your own printer. It's really not a good time to be half-assing physical models when new digital sculpts outnumber them by orders of maginitude every month and can be in my hand within hours of release, for a fraction of the cost.

**kodos**

https://www.manticgames.com/news/christmas-blogs-kings-of-war-in-2022/

First up for 2022, we’ve got some additional units for the Riftforged Orcs. Although the army and mega army launched in December, we’re following that up with individual releases of minis like the Stormcaller and Thunderseers, plus brand-new monsters like the menacing Stormslayer.

However, that’s just the start of the Riftforged releases. In March we’ll be releasing the Ambarox, Stormforged Shrine, Helstrikers, Riftforger and Stormbringer on Manticore to round out the range.

Spoiler:

Before we move onto more previews, we have some great news about our European Markets, which will be of great interest to our French and German Kings of War players. 2022 will see the full release of Kings of War translated into both French and German.
Firstly, we are pleased to announce that Mantic will be taking over from Victoria Games and handling the sale, distribution and marketing of all our games directly in the future. We are really looking forward to meeting up with the French gaming community, and we are pleased to announce that Denis Cossard will be helping us ensure the French community gets the love and attention that it deserves.
Similarly we are working with our German partners to get a fully translated version of Kings of War into circulation in early 2022. The full rulebook – including all the background and core army lists – will be on sale soon, so stay tuned for more info on both of these exciting launches.

and now the unexpected big one, hard plastic Empire of Dust:

Spoiler:

Ok, this is one of the big reveals: brand-new hard plastic Empire of Dust! This has always been one of our most popular armies but, although the miniatures were full of character, they were a little challenging to build, due to the mix of metal and plastic. That’s all set to change in 2022 with the release of a hard plastic set that will build Empire of Dust warriors, spearmen and archers.
It’s going to be a really versatile set, which will allow you to make a nice selection of different skeletons, including a unit champion to really give each regiment or horde a unique look.

But that’s not all for the hard plastic Empire of Dust, because we’ll also be releasing hard plastic Revenant Cavalry. The sprue will be split into undead horses that can be built with or without the armour and riders, which come on a separate sprue. It’s the first time we’ve done a dedicated kit for hard plastic cavalry and we’re extremely excited to add them to the Kings of War range.

With the hard plastics will come a whole slew of additional releases, like the new and improved Enslaved Guardians. These will be making the move from metal to resin – as part of our bigger ‘metal to resin’ project for 2022. When moved to resin, we’re also taking the opportunity to make them slightly bigger too (roughly snow troll height) so all those awesome details will really ‘pop’.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg for Kings of War in 2022. We’ll have two more hard plastic kits (let the speculation begin!), plus an online campaign during the summer, which will last for longer than a weekend this time.

**Sarouan**

I guess anvils are just drums now.

The skeletons are nice, though.

**Wha-Mu-077**

That's a giant wonky spear the bottom middle one has.

**kodos**

Sarouan wrote:
I guess anvils are just drums now.

they always haven been:

**Esmer**

It speaks volumes about how bad the current Empire of Dust range is when they are doing a complete re-vamp after, what, 3-4 years?

**scarletsquig**

It's an interesting choice, I didn't realize the EoD range sold so well.

Possibly down to Tomb Kings being completely eradicated from the GW store when AoS launched, if a company completely stops selling something, it's open season for competitors.

Really pleased to see the hard plastic cavalry as well, overall it's actually a better effort than GW put in with their initial TK release consisting of a single upgrade sprue thrown on the 1990's skeleton kits.

Optional barding on the horses is always good to see as well.

I'm tempted to pick some up, I collected Khemri in 6th edition and there's something quite theraputic about painting hordes of skeletons.

**sukura636**

Esmer wrote:
It speaks volumes about how bad the current Empire of Dust range is when they are doing a complete re-vamp after, what, 3-4 years?

First released in 2016, so 6 years. So far, only two existing kits have been announced to be 'revamped', so that's not the whole range. The Enslaved Guardians are being moved to resin, but I don't think that counts.

**lord_blackfang**

The Riftforged vocabulary seems to be about 4 different words in various combinations, it's like a 14 year old's homebrew Warhammer army.

EoD plastics... should be a welcome surprise, but the design seem to be firmly in the "commissioned on Fiverr" territory like most of what Mantic does these days

**Illumini**

Mantic seems to have a very particular look now, which is probably good for an interlinked range, but it is not a good one IMO.

TT combat has way better tomb king minis. Knowing mantics usual plastic quality, all those lines and symbols are going to be blended with soft edges, making them hell to paint well.

**kodos**

being less good to field Warhammer Tomb Kings compared to other Resin and STL ranges, but this is not the goal (and they cannot compete anyway with more direct copies of the old Warhammer ranges)
but having plastic core units in Empire of Dust style is big

Esmer wrote:
It speaks volumes about how bad the current Empire of Dust range is when they are doing a complete re-vamp after, what, 3-4 years?

6 years (in other games we have seen the 3rd version of plastic kits during that time) and as they are not planning to produce metal kits any more, not a suprise, yet I have expected a plastic-resin hybrid army rather than new plastic kits

sukura636 wrote:
So far, only two existing kits have been announced to be 'revamped', so that's not the whole range. The Enslaved Guardians are being moved to resin, but I don't think that counts.

2 kits, replacing 3 infantry and 2 cavalry units and horses on their own sprue could mean that we finally see chariots as well

**sukura636**

Illumini wrote:
Mantic seems to have a very particular look now, which is probably good for an interlinked range, but it is not a good one IMO.

TT combat has way better tomb king minis. Knowing mantics usual plastic quality, all those lines and symbols are going to be blended with soft edges, making them hell to paint well.

Having looked up the TTC ones...I can't say I agree. They look soft and sort of squashed in the store photos, with very wooden poses. Any pictures of unpainted models do not look like they bring out the detail well, although resin is hard to photograph.

Soft details is a placement thing. The Abyssal Dwarfs has very good details on the parts facing the sprue, but get soft towards the edges (where the tool closes). If we assume these are put together in the same way, then the details will come out well, since they aren't on the sides of the model. It's an educated guess, but I'm going off as much of an assumption as you are.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

kodos wrote:

sukura636 wrote:
So far, only two existing kits have been announced to be 'revamped', so that's not the whole range. The Enslaved Guardians are being moved to resin, but I don't think that counts.

2 kits, replacing 3 infantry and 2 cavalry units and horses on their own sprue could mean that we finally see chariots as well

Which cavalry kits are being replaced? Mantic doesn't make any Empire of Dust Cavalry. And there are only two infantry kits (which make three units).

**lord_blackfang**

Well we know right now that detail won't be visible since all the detail is 0.1mm wide recesses.

**sukura636**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Well we know right now that detail won't be visible since all the detail is 0.1mm wide recesses.

100% accurate measuring by eye. We don't 'know' that at all

.