KoW What KOW army would you start?

Well, you can start with the human part, and then add halfling little by little as you get the appropriate models.

There have been a few halfling kickstarter recently, so nice models should become available soon

 

I've seen them. But I don't have money to buy anything else. Or time to paint them. And room in the man cave for them.

 

Both are good armies. It's going to come down to two things, probably. Which models do you prefer? And, do you prefer Headstrong or Iron Resolve?

 

There is always these guys:
https://www.games-workshop.com/en-CA/Hobbits-of-the-Shire

 

After finishing Salamanders, the only other army I'd like to try is Basileans. The models look good and I'd like to have the panther cavalry to paint.

 

id go basileans. iron resolve is a cool special rule and they are something different after years of warhammer (which had dwarves)

 

A word of warning about the basileans, they were financed by a previous Kickstarter with the goblins (during KoW 1st edition), and it was the first time that Mantic switched from Renedra (very good UK company, the same guys that the Perry brothers use among others) to a chinese manufacturer, because (according to the story) Renedra was not able to fulfill the needs of the kickstarter (they are very in demand and it can tale months to get a slot, to say nothing of the price).

Long story short, Mantic got a bad result from their new chinese manufacturer, a contact that didn't get them any recourse, and they were late and discovvered the flaws when the containers started arriving from China.

They have since found a better manufacter and signed better contracts resulting in a good level of quality (started with Deadzone, and continued now with the salamanders, naïads and abyssals plastic units), but some units from this era have well known flaws.

The worst offenders are :
- the goblins tends to have soft details, and I have read stories of bad miscasts (for hard plastic !), but I have seen one box of them and it didn't look so bad, so it's possible that they found a way to fix the worst problems.
- the sisters on foot for the basilea have been slightly deformed, their arms with long sleave tends to look slightly unnatural. This can be fixed with some good positionning or by some convertion, but it make building them harder than it should be.
- the worst offenders however are the men at arms, not only do they have soft details, they are not the correct scale, they are so big that it look like they must have a height of more than 2m. Well, as long as you don't put them too close to other units it can pass, and I have seem some interesting convertion (some of them cutting their belt to make them smaller, or kitbashing with other kits for a better look), but once againt it can take some work to make them look good.

The Elohis (angels), paladins (both on foot and the knights) and I think the panther riders are restic and have a decent quality (but mold lines can sometimes take some effort to clean), and most other heroes are metal and probably cast in house.

Of course, you're free to mix with models from other manufacturers, especially for the men at arms, but if you want to try the mantic official models, I strongly advise that you look at close unpainted pictures of each of them to make your own opinion.

Still, the army looks fun on paper, even without the angels it looks to be a nice variant on the classic Kingdoms of Man human army, and it's an army that I will probably starts in the future too (I already have humans, I will probably start with the sisters of every tyme, even those on foot)

 

The dwarf plastics where from their 1st generation of models, back when they worked with Renedra, so technically the plastic sprues are very good, and you get lot of options on the sprues (including the dogs)

You can easily find pictures of the sprues :
https://www.google.fr/search?q=mant...ved=0ahUKEwj8qIGvwqnMAhXrKJoKHT5eBkYQ_AUIBigB

The only question is if you like their design or not, myself I found them simple but good.

To my knowledge, the following units are available as hard plastic :

- Ironclads (normal dwarves with hand weapon and shield)
- Ironwatch (dwarfw shooters, the sprue has option for both crossbow or rifle)
- Shieldbreaker (warriors with two handed hammers)
- Rangers (in fact, it's a mix of shieldbreakers and ironwatch sprues to get models with greath weapons and crossbows)
- Ironbelcher canon/Organ gun (the kit can be assembled both ways)

I think that the following kits use the basic plastic sprues from the previous one with metal components to upgrade them :
- Flame canon (Ironbelcher kit with metal components upgrade)
- Jarrun bombarb (Ironbelcher kit with metal components upgrade)
- Bulwarkers (dwarf spearmen, plastic dwarves with metal shields and spears arms, warning can be tricky to assemble)

The brock riders (berserker cavalry) are restic, and the berserkers on foot, as well as most (all ?) heroes are metal.

A note about the berserkers on foot : they look slightly small compared to the armored dwarves (they ave more realistic proportions and look more like normal 28mm rather than heroic 28mm), so depending on your tastes you might prefer using an alternative like the Avatar of War berserkers for exemple.

And of course dwarves being a fairly standard race in Fantasy worlds, you have lots of alternate manufacturers

For starting a dwarf army with Mantic, you have the excellent offers :

Dwarf army at £49.99 : http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/getting-started/product/dwarf-army.html
Dwarf mega army at £99.99 : http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/dwarfs/product/dwarf-mega-army.html

A very good start might be to buy the mega army or a pair of normal armies.
The mega army give you more with a bombard, a warsmith and an unit of bulwarkers, but with two normal armies you get 20 brock riders so can field two regiments.

Of course there is also the option of starting with the mega army and then adding a normal army (or the reverse), the only potential problem is that this will leave you with one bombar and 5 ironbelcher/organ gun kits, probably more that you might want, but this will leave you option for having 2/3 organ guns (they are rather popular) as well as a pair or normal canons, and it should probably be rather easy to convert one or two of them into flame canons, so having the kit 5 times might even not be enough if you want all options.

Then add or convert a few heroes and you're set.

From other manufacturers, if you want a king on beast, many people use the very nice dwarf king on bear by Scibor, and reaper also has a few options (includinbg a dwarven heroine on bear, or a berserker mounted hero that can serve as a berserker hero on brock)

 

If needed don't hesitate to go to Bugman's brewery forums, they have also created a Kings of War subforum where all things dwarven are discussed :
http://www.bugmansbrewery.com/forum/90-kings-of-war/

(plus of course the offician Mantic forums, they also have one subforum for each faction)

 

Myself, I found the plastic dwarves look very good as a ranked unit, and the metal characters are brilliant-a lack of excessive ornamentation makes them very dynamic models that really look ready to lead an army into battle. I also really like the metal berserkers, although being metal they're a bit expensive for a whole regiment. The lack of 'heroic proportions' throughout the entire range is, for me, a big plus. The one weakness in the range is the lack of earth elementals except for a greater elemental model that doesn't fit the correct base size.

I've also personally found v2 dwarves to be a very different army to Warhammer Dwarves, mostly due to not being held back by the absurd 'nothing except slow-moving infantry and artillery' design decision which would have been a crippling tactical limitation in a historical force, let alone a fantasy one. They're still one of the slower armies, but between differences in the games and their own units they are able to be competetive without being dependant on static artillery.

One thing to be aware of is that the Abyssal dwarf list is still, in many ways, the dwarf list with extras such as slave orcs, flying monsters, and gargoyles, so you probably should look carefully at both before making a decision.

 

Well, Basilea can still be a good choice, even if you ignore the men at arms (and maybe the sisters on foot), the rest of the range is not too bad, and you can also simply go the historical way and use the Perries for the units where the official option would be lacking or not to your tastes.

As a bonus, this will also give your the base for potential Kingdoms of Man and/or League of Rhordia armies later.

Also, not a good army but neutral, the Forces of Nature might be a good option too :
- you already have Salamanders to use in both armies
- Same with the dwarves for the earth elementals
- In turn the FoN might give you the start for potential future armies (naïads for the trident ? water elementals for the brotherhood ? forest shambliers for elves)

@Tecuani about the abyssal dwarves remark, having an AD army in construction, I would like to differ from your point of view.
Sure the AD get things that the normal dwarves dont, but the reverse is also true.

Among other things :
- The brock riders are very good and different form the halfbreeds. (look at the nerve value of a brock regiment, it's insane for a cavalry unit !)
- AD get gargoyles as a very fast but light unit, but dwarves get rangers with vanguard
- AD get very good indirect long range artillerye as well as good short range (breath attacks), but normal dwarves get medium range shooting (rifles, crossbows, organ gun)
- the dwarven steel behemot, while slow, is like a greater obsidian golem ++, including a decent breath attack so light units don't like to come too close.
- normal dwarves get def6+ dwarven height 1 infantry, the AD don't (and must rely on the very good but even slower obsidian golems if you want def6).

 

Oh one additionnal information, in case you were not aware we already know since a long time about a coming supplement with new major factions, one for each alignement :

- Good : the Northen alliance, Elves with ice magic, ogre mercenaries, northen humans, snow trolls, ice elementals, ...
- Neutral : living humans, undead servitors, djinns or other bound spirits, and *maybe* serpent men as their secret masters (this last point is pure theory from a small line in the rulebook background and the RC giving hints during the betas)
- Evil : Twilight Kin (dark elves), they already have a list availalble as PDF (and fully tested during the beta), but they are not happy about the current army design (ie : "chaos/abyssal elves") and are trying to make them somewhat more unique, that's why their current list has not been printed in a supplement, it's a stop gap while waiting for their final version.

We are probably at minimum several month before they even start working activelly on this supplement, so don't expect it before at best late 2016, or maybe 2017, but still, if you are planning of starting other armies over the long terme, then it's good to have an idea of what is coming (at worst you might for exemple start a winter themed elven or human army and convert it later into a northen alliance force)