Mantic December Painting Oath Progress

Over on the Mantic Madness Facebook page there is a month challenge. At the start of each month members of the group pledge to paint any number of models they choose. As long as the models are going to be used in a Mantic game they can be anything. At the end of the month they must have posted photos of the painted models. If they have they are declared an Oathkeeper, if not they are declared an Oathbreaker.

This month I've been painting 9 Mantic Ogres. As with previous months I was careful to not bite off more than I could manage, but I was quite amazed to get these done as quickly as I have. There seemed to be so much detail. But as usual once I've broken the back of a paint job the remainder flows very quickly to completion.

The Ogres will be used in my Kings of Men army for Kings of War.

Here are a few photos:

Kings of War Game from a couple of weeks ago

A couple of weeks ago I played a game of Kings of War using my Dark Ages Kings of Men army against my son's Undead horde. Finally I get around to loading the images...

As you can see it's still early days with the painting of his army but what he has got done looks great. I of course helped quite a bit. :)

The game was just a simple "Kill" game without any objectives. In the end we got a draw.

In the first turn my army advances. My knights and Griffon on the left flank counter his Revenant Cavalry and two Spear Phalanx. On the other flank the house produces a bottleneck with the zombie horde proceeding very slowly forward.

Kings of War Army Storage

A few people have asked me how I base and store my Kings of War armies.

The concept of basing my armies up on large display bases ready for use in Kings of War is often touted to me as the best way to go and I get a fair few comments as to why don't I do it.

I've been a wargamer for many, many years, more than I care to count, and in that time I have tried more systems than I can remember. Every system seems to want to have a different basing scheme and so you can end up re-basing your models for each system. Many systems also say that "you don't have to re-base your miniatures to play". This is a lie. Sure you can play, but you won't be playing as the author intended. Usually you end up re-basing anyway.

Although I know right now I won't be using my KoW armies for many other games I also know that 5 years down the line I have no idea what I will want to use them for. Having them singly based to a fairly generic system means a lot less pain if I do decide to change system. I get more use out of my models.

There are other reasons to my mind for not multi-basing... One good one is flexibility. If I decide to change the size or formation of a unit then it's an easy job of switching models over. If I decide a unit needs a standard for this game then it's just a case of switching a model over.

However I guess one of the really good reasons is I like the look of ranked up models in a unit. It's one of those things that first drew me to Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition in the late 1980s. I can't escape liking the look of ranked up soldiers... This is also the reason you won't find any of the very popular unit-fillers in my armies. They disrupt the flow of the troops.

Anyway, enough of all that and on to how I do my basing. I've tried a few approaches so far including double-sided sticky-taping miniatures to plasticard, but I've settled on a method I prefer.

Kings of War Siege Game

At some time in the new year we intend to try out a Kings of War campaign. Using the rules in the back of the rulebook this means we'll almost certainly need to have a few siege battles. With that in mind we thought it was a good idea to try out the siege rules. Steve had a look and decided they needed a bit of tweaking so he did exactly that and came up with a few minor changes.

With those in hand we set up a game. I would attack with 2000 points of Dwarves against his 1000 points of Twilight Kin (Dark Elves). He was holed up in my Warhammer Fortress which I've had for around 10 years and never used before. I really ought to get it painted. Other siege items we used were 2 siege towers, one a Sally 4th MDF one and the other a GW plastic one (I think); ladders (from Lord of the Rings); battering rams and mantlets.

We gave the siege towers vanguard as we worked out otherwise the dwarves would never get them in contact with the castle walls before the game ended.

Dwarf Army arrayed ready for battle.

Twilight Kin in the fortress.

Battlemasters 2014

Yesterday I was at Battlemasters 2014. A Kings of War tournament run by Loughborough Dice Devils. 

Despite many drop outs, the guys that managed to get there had an excellent day of wargaming. I managed to get 3rd place, not so impressive when you consider there was only 4 of us. But the top three of us were only separable by attrition points.

One thing I've learned today is that Abyssal Dwarves artillery is horrific! It really, really needs to be nerfed. The Abyssal Dwarf player, Anthony admitted he felt a little dirty killing three of my units in the first turn of one of our games.

Alessio Cavatore was in attendance and play-tested the 2nd Edition rules with Sharad, the organiser, whilst we played the first couple of games. There looks to be some really good stuff in there and yes, the artillery is being reduced in power.

The placings were:

• 1st Anthony Evans - Abyssal Dwarves
• 2nd Jonathan Faulkes - Orcs
• 3rd Richard Heath - Force of Nature
• 4th Justin Bermingham - Undead

I took my Force of Nature army and since we had to supply a theme put together this little comic strip. However it wasn't quite enough to sway the judges and Jonathan won best themed with his wonderful Orc army with flying chariot and huge winged slasher.

I only managed to remember to snap a single photo of my first game against Justin's Undead.

Flames of War City Game

Tonight I had a Flames of War game booked against Andy at COGS. Because he'd not tried urban Flames of War before and because I'd not had it out for over a year I suggested that we have a go with my city board.

Overview of the city

My Kings of War Armies so far

So I decided it was about time I saw what all the Kings of War models I've been collecting and painting this year looked like altogether.

To that end I got them all out on the table and took photos.

Note that I have painted most of these this year, except some of the Dwarves, the druids and the cockatrice that were painted in the 90s, some of the Normans that were painted last year, the treeman who is a model used for Lord of the Rings and the Vikings that were painted by my friend Tony Barnes who passed away early this year.

But I've not finished! On my work bench right now are more Norman Infantry. And sitting in boxes dying to painted are even more Normans, Anglo-Saxons, orcs, centaurs, a giant and a griffin. Coming for Christmas are a load of Mantic elves and several boxes of Perry War of the Roses.

Anyway, enough of that... on to the photos!