Kings of War

If you've never heard of Kings of War or Mantic Games, that would be understandable, especially if you aren't into fantasy wargames. However, given the natural overlap between RPG players and wargamers, it's a situation you should correct!

Mantic Games' Kings of War is a game designed by Alessio Cavatore, formerly of Games Workshop. In some ways it is very reminiscent of Warhammer Fantasy Battles and of Lord of the Rings/War of the Ring SBG. The miniature line (which actually predates the game) includes the usual fantasy staples - Elves, dark elves, dwarves, undead, orcs, goblins, etc. Scale-wise they are the usual 28mm, but are less heroic scale than most minis made today.

Should you not care for fantasy wargames, they've also got a dungeon crawl game, a future wargame, and a future football game. Unlike GW minis, Mantic avoids grossly unrealistic weapons, and oversized hands and feet. Additionally the armor isn't ridiculously overdesigned, and there aren't skulls everywhere.

Also unlike GW minis, you can get them for a fair price. A box of 20 mantic skeletons will run you $25. The same 20 skeletons from GW costs $50. You can get 30 Mantic zombies for $35. For the same price you get 20 from GW.

20 Mantic Skeletons = $25

10 GW Skeletons = $25

So, like I mentioned on my post about Dropzone Games, I picked up a $25 set of skeletons and paints. It came with 6 colors, 10 skeletons (1 sprew) and a paint brush.

And as you can see I've already put together 5 of the skeletons.

And here's how they compare, scale-wise. From left to right we have an old GW/Milton Bradley HeroQuest skeleton, a Ral Partha wizard, Mantic Skeleton, and GW Lord of the Rings Eomer. As you can see from above, it's closest in scale to the LotR figures.

So the figures are cheaper, but that doesn't do any good if you need twice as many for a game. Well I ran some back of the envelope numbers, and while it seems like you might need a few more figures than you do for Warhammer Fantasy, you'll still end up spending less for a similarly sized (in points) army.

Mantic also offers a number of different army sets. I ran some numbers on them to see which are the best value. I saved the spreadsheet as a google doc. This is only for undead, and isn't an exhaustive comparison, but for the curious, it's here: Mantic Undead Cost Comparison Chart.

FLGS: Dropzone Games

Over the weekend I attended the grand opening of Dropzone Games. If you ever visited the GW BattleBunker in Glen Burnie, then you know exactly where Dropzone is! It is now an extremely well stocked game store, with more than ample tables to play on and painting stations to work at.

I got to meet Andy Chambers and Dave Taylor. Andy was demoing a new WWII fighter plane game that he's developed. I'd link to it, but he hasn't gotten that far in it's development. If you're interested, drop him an e-mail and he said he's share the rules.

Dave Taylor was working on painting his early/mid war German tanks for Flames of War, and we spent a while talking about the game, and the difference between painting 28mm minis and the smaller scale 15mm minis.

The staff were all very friendly and very up on the latest in miniature wargames, and the store's stock certainly reflected that. In addition to Flames of War and Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, they also had a full selection of Warmachine and Hordes, Dust Tactics, Mantic Games' Kings of War and Warpath, a selection of Warlord Games historical minis, some resin kits and conversion pieces from Scribor, Forge World, and a couple of other companies, and a bunch of terrain and paints and other items from companies like Gale Force 9.

As part of their grand opening they were hosting an open painting competition (any manufacturers minis), a Flames of War tournament, Kings of War tournament, Dust Tactics demos, special guests, and raffles. All in all it seemed well run, and I think I'll probably be going back there on a fairly regular basis... especially if they manage to rope me into playing Kings of War... but more on that tomorrow.

For more pictures, check out their facebook page!