Kings of War: Oger und Goblins

Mantic Games zeigen neue Previews für Oger und Goblins.

Hi everyone,

If you’ve been following the blog this week, you’ll know that we’ve been recapping some of our Virtual Adepticon announcements… and revealing a few extra things too. We’ve already covered Deadzone (and the awesome Spectra), plus Kings of War (and the wonderful goblins).

In today’s blog we’ll be covering Vanguard – our hugely popular fantasy skirmish game.

ACCESS ALL AREAS

Since launch, we’ve aimed to improve the accessibility of Vanguard. Whether that’s making all the warband stats free to download or ensuring the core rules are free, we want to make sure we’re knocking down the potential barriers to entry.

One thing we keep hearing from the community and our retail partners, is that they’d love a two-player starter set. After all, it’s much easier to get new players into the game if you can pop into a store and pick up a couple of warbands and all the tokens, dice and other stuff you need to play. As a result, we’ll be making a two-player starter set for Vanguard. The set will feature the hideous Nightstalkers going up against the courageous Basileans. A little like this artwork…

OGRES

Did you know we’ve now released 10 full warbands for Vanguard? They include:

• Abyssal Dwarfs
• Basileans
• Dwarfs
• Forces of the Abyss
• Forces of Nature
• Goblins
• Nightstalkers
• Northern Alliance
• Trident Realm
• Undead

A full warband release means we go back to the starter warband list in the rulebook and review it. We also look at results from tournaments to see which warbands might need a little boost. When reviewing a warband, we look at what else they might need to make them effective or if any units need tweaking to make them more useful.

The next warband to get the full warband treatment are the ogres. These mercenaries for hire are pretty loose with their morals, as long as they’re getting paid. This means they make the perfect Vanguard warband because it’s likely small groups of ogres would be roaming Pannithor looking for work.

MATRIARCH

When it comes to the ogres, you’ve got a few options when it comes to your commander. One of those options is the Matriarch. She’s very good at outsmarting the enemy, so has special moves that allow you to redeploy models and even snatch the first turn away from your opponent.

BERSERKER BULLY

Another option is the Berserker Bully. This is actually a unit option in Kings of War, but we’ll be launching the miniature as part of the Vanguard range. That’s something we’ll continue to do in Vanguard, as it’s a great way to release hero miniatures for its bigger brother.

PAYMASTER

We mentioned this unit on the initial video but didn’t actually show it. Well, let’s make up for that! The Paymaster is a support option for the ogres. He can put a bounty on enemies, which gives your warband +1 dice in melee when attacking that enemy. Get a couple of Paymasters in your warband and you can dish out multiple bounties.

SIEGEBREAKERS

Talking of ogres, alongside the Vanguard release, we’ll also (finally) be launching Siegebreakers! Although primarily a Kings of War release, there’s also a unit entry for these in Vanguard too.

RATKIN!

Ok, this is a biiiiig one! Well, actually they’re not that big but they are very sneaky. Although you’ve seen the Ratkin as part of the Abyssal Dwarf list, we’re now planning to give them their own warband.

We’ll keep the details slim, but we will unveil one of the models currently being worked on: a Ratkin warlock…

Weiter geht es mit den Gobbos:

Hi everyone!

We’re back for another recap of our Virtual Adepticon announcements. Over the weekend we released a number of videos covering all the exciting stuff coming up for Deadzone, Kings of War, Vanguard and The Walking Dead. However, just in case you missed those videos, we’re recapping everything on the blog… and clarifying a few bits and bobs 😊

Today’s in the turn of Kings of War and there’s a LOT coming up.

ONLINE CAMPAIGN

First up, let’s talk about the summer campaign. We’re hopeful that, assuming the world returns to relative normality, we’ll be running a massive online campaign this year. The exact date is, of course, rather fluid but we’re going to make sure everything is in place ready to launch whenever we can.

The theme of the campaign is magic! You see, those pesky Abyssal Dwarfs have been tunnelling too far under the Halpi mountains and have tapped into a sort of magical ley line that runs across Pannithor. This has, understandably, caused a right old nuisance for everyone. Plus, all the various factions are pretty keen to get their hands on this magical energy and immediately converge on the Halpi mountains.

Luckily this story is explained much better in a new short story by the exceptionally talented Mark Latham.  Here’s a quick extract to whet your appetite…

From Basilea, a great force of Paladins marched east towards the light in the sky, guided by their priests who had sensed a great evil amassing in the Halpi Mountains. But the Paladins had barely left the Samarites behind when they were beset by a strange and violent storm. The sky roiled with crimson clouds; frogs fell from the sky like hailstorms, and an unearthly mist enveloped them, until it seemed the world itself had vanished, so eerily silent were they, enveloped in an endless sea of silver clouds.

And they were not far wrong in their assumption, for when the mists at last thinned, they looked not towards the Low Sea of Suan as they should have, but instead across a blasted wasteland of black ash, with a sky of indigo and violet. The air was freezing, the warriors’ breath misting icily on a bracing wind. If their priests had not quickly discerned that the army had left the material realm, they would have known it from the movement on the horizon, a tide of black forms, gangrel and scuttling, surging with great speed towards the new arrivals – these invaders into their realm of darkness. The Basileans had somehow entered the Etheric plane, and here, the Nightstalkers were masters…

Exciting stuff, eh?

GOBLINS! GOBLINS! GOBLINS!

Alongside unleashing a load of ancient magic, the actions of the Abyssal Dwarfs have also disturbed a LOT of goblins that were sheltering in the hidden tunnels and passages of the Halpi tunnels. And that can only mean one thing… NEW GOBLINS.

Although we’ve had goblins in the Kings of War range, the hard plastics didn’t quite match the standards of the latest KoW releases, like the Northern Alliance or Nightstalkers. So, we thought this was a fantastic opportunity to release a brand-new hard plastic sprue.

The 10-goblin sprue comes with the parts to build Rabble, Spitters or Sharpsticks. As you can see below.

If you’re interested in how these paint up, Rob has been busy painting some resin versions of the Rabble. They’re resin, so we can get them painted by an expert (not Rob) for the packaging and somehow he sneaked some out of the building before lockdown.

NEW MOUNTED HEROES

But that’s not all. With the new hard plastics, we’re also using the opportunity to release some new resin mounted heroes. Theoretically you could have an entirely mounted goblin army now! It’s worth noting that we aren’t redoing the Fleabag Riders – the Mawbeasts shown here are designed for the heroes.

• Flaggit!
• Biggit – about to fall off
• Wiz and a Mawbeast with its mouthed closed. How is this even possible?!

LUGGITS!

We always like to reveal something new in these recap blogs, so today we’re happy to announce we will be making resin Luggits! Taking our cue from the Vanguard Luggits, these are slightly bigger goblins armed with mildly ridiculous oversized weapons.

NEW NAMED HERO!

As part of the online campaign, a number of armies will be getting a new named character. For the goblins, that character will be Grupp Longnail. This trainee Wiz accidentally stumbles across some old dwarf gauntlets that end up playing an important part in the backstory of the campaign.

Here’s an extract from her back story…

Darting her eyes around the room, she stopped on a pair of silver gauntlets partially hidden under some papers. Cautiously Grupp cleared the papers and licked her lips with eager anticipation. She could feel magical energy emanating from the gauntlets and a tingling sensation crept up her claws as she reached out towards them. Grupp had never seen anything like them. They were clearly dwarf engineering, but she also recognised elvish lettering etched into each metal glove. Her face screwed up in confusion as she tried to decipher the text.

“D-A-N-G-E,“ she mouthed silently, before rolling her eyes and quickly thrusting her hands into the gauntlets. A mad glint entered her eyes as she held the gauntlets aloft. Considering their size and the material, they were bizarrely light. Experimentally she wiggled her fingers and cackled to herself.

Suddenly small traces of lightning started arcing between the gauntlets and up her arms. The air around Grupp became heavy with magical energy and blue lightning crawled out towards other metallic objects in the room.

Panicking, Grupp tried to pull her claws from the gauntlets. She struggled pointlessly for a few moments before realising she was trapped inside the infernal things. Spinning round, she tried banging the metallic contraptions against a nearby desk. It collapsed into a heap and Grupp screeched in frustration. Stupid grogging dwarfs and their stupid grogging magic.

So, plenty going on in the world of Kings of War. As you can imagine, exact release dates are a little fluid at the moment, but we’ll keep you updated over the coming weeks and months.

Plus, stay tuned next week for a whole blog week dedicated to everyone’s favourite mass battle fantasy wargame, Kings of War.

Mantic Games ist unter anderem bei unserem Partner Fantasywelt erhältlich.

Quelle: Mantic Games