Mantic Newsletter

Kings of War absolutely rocks as a game system if you want all the fun of using big 'Fantasy' armies without 90% of the tedium that a game of Warhammer Fantasy usually results in ;-)

The Ogres Plunder On! Following on from the overwhelming response to the new Goblins and Ogres, we’ve got some excellent Veteran Conversion kits to continue this summer’s Kings of War mayhem!   One of the key ingredients to our hobby is modeling and these kits will require a little bit of cutting and gluing - definitely worth the effort when you get stunning results like these kits, converted up by our very own Curis Webb! Ogre Chariots 3 Ogres and 3 Gore Chariots makes for one very tasty conversion! Chris has cut the chain from the Orc hand and attached it to an Ogre arm. Red Goblin Blaster An eclectic mix of the Gore Chariot, Goblin Handler and Renedra Barrels, these explosive warmachines are fun and very characterful additions to your force! Both of these kits are now available to pre-order from the website as either individual kits or as part of our Grogakamok Army Deals (which contain a mountain of Ogre plastic!) We've also got the Ogre Captain/Battle Standard Bearer on Chariot kit available too! Brutale Fouls und schnelle Action DreadBall is now available in German! Die deutsche Version von DreadBall KickOff ist ab sofort erhältlich. Bezugsquelle für Händler in Deutschland ist der Heidelberger Spieleverlag.   Nähere Infos zum Produkt finden Sie hier! Check out the full press release here.

Mantic Podcast Episode 9 is now live! Featuring a mind-boggling amount of cool stuff, Ben Curry sits down with Ronnie Renton, Alessio Cavatore and James M. Hewitt to discuss all things Mantic. Listen to episode 9 of the Mantic Podcast on the Mantic Blog or on iTunes now! Last chance to get your application in! Mantic Games is looking for a talented painter to join our team in Nottingham. Think you've got what it takes? Details are on our Careers page. Wanted: Intern We're looking for a talented undergraduate to come and join us on placement here at Mantic Games.   This is an excellent opportunity to gain real experience within an innovative company!   Details are on our Careers page.   July 7th - Kings of War Tournament, Ross on Wye 20th - Gert Bowl, Bristol 20/21st - Toy Soldier, Northwest Gaming Centre, Stockport 21st - Scottish DB Heat, Dundee, Highlander Games. 27th - DreadBall National Heat - Tabletop Nation, Essex 27th - DreadBall One Day Tournament, Sutton Coldfield 27th - TTN DreadBall Nation Tournament, Tabletop Nation, Hockley, Essex Want to get your event on this list?Get in touch and we'll add it to next week's newsletter!   Ironwatch Issue 11 now out! Issue 11 of the Mantic Fanzine isnow available to download!   The Mag features the new Iron Forge painting segment and the virtual Kings of War gamng club!

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Kings of War - Undead - Part 1

I never thought I'd be messing around with mass assembly, movement trays and worrying about whether I need banners and/or musicians in units ever again. This was primarily due to the fact that the most recent incarnation of Warhammer Fantasy cured me of any desire to play such a system...ever again...

...Or so I thought....

Then some of the locals introduced me to Mantic's Kings of War system. It had the features I liked and not the ones I didn't which by any set of standards is a good thing (I'll go into more detail about the system in later articles) so I bought some of their undead models and was pleasantly surprised in two areas. Firstly they were very reasonably priced and secondly the models were far better quality than I could have expected for the aforementioned low cost.

As Kings of War doesn't require you to remove individual models but treats the unit as a single entity it leaves far more scope for creating more interesting looking units with more of a 'diorama' feel. Of course your also free to rank them up in nice neat lines if you wish. Other than a 'leader' model front and centre (for some Line of Sight' purposes) you can (within reason) do whatever you wish.

I have therefore decided to theme my undead army as if it's sweeping through a graveyard summoning 'new' recruits as it goes. The following units are glued down but are yet to be based with sand or under-coated but you should be able to get an idea of the look I'm going for.

This is an 'Endless Horde' of zombies (10 wide in 6 ranks). I've tried to make it look like it's arriving in several waves with more corpses rising as they pass...

The rats are there for a bit of character and also to tie these units into some others that will have bits 'borrowed' from my Skaven army (again I'll go into more depth on this later).

The Ghoul units are smaller (5 wide x 4 deep). Each base has a larger grave (more like a crypt actually) on it as in my head at least that's the sort of place that Ghouls hang out...

I'll be working on this army a fair bit over the weekend and I'll do a few more posts on my progress as I go.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Weekly House of Paincakes Article (10)

This weeks Malifaux article for House of Paincakes is on the subject of the Arcanist faction and can be found here.

As one of those Masters is too all intents and purposes a ice witch I though some nice pictures of goth girls in the snow might be in order...some of these are a bit 'arty' so if you came here for porn you might be a tiny bit disappointed, lol.

and for my one? maybe two? female readers...here's a picture of Chris Hemsworth...there was some snow in the film so it kind of keeps the theme.....

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome...they can even be on the article if you like...

Crew a Week Project - Update

Like all hobbyists I have bright ideas for projects...and then get distracted...by other bright ideas for new projects...

The point of the 'Crew a Week' challenge was to motivate me to paint the many unfinished (or not even started) Malifaux projects that I had on my shelf. This realistically should have taken me four or five weeks...if I hadn't bought a load more stuff in the meantime. When I started this I had five painted crews and now I have seventeen which is (imo) a great achievement and just goes to show that I work better when I set myself goals of some kind.....

"So just to confirm....How grateful are you going to be if I rescue you from the cage again?"

In order to have one of every crew painted I'd need to do another fourteen (sixteen come M2E) which would take the best part of the rest of this year so I need to decide now whether I'm going to continue till I've done them all (not my original intention) or just call the project done (I have an empty shelf now...well...empty of crew boxes at least). Unfortunately this shelf isn't going to be empty for much longer as I have just ordered a Hoffman crew via my FLGS (Titan Games) and have spent my Henchman rewards on the rest of the Neverborn crew boxes, their Master specific Totems and a few other Neverborn bits and pieces so by next week I'll be back in the position I was in when I started this thing, lol.

Another issue is that the upcoming release of M2E will coincide with the release of the original book one Masters in plastic and realistically that's going to severely impact on my motivation to paint and assemble an older metal version.

As I'm a completest at heart I'm going to want them all done and my OCD is likely to kick in if there's two versions of a crew and I only have one of them I suppose I should take this to it's logical conclusion and paint one of every Masters crew. Obviously I'll need to start with any crew that's in imminent danger of getting a new plastic version which will probably (I'm just guessing based on rumour, beta test characters and teaser artwork) include the following Masters,

Arcanist.
Marcus, Ramos, Rasputina.
Guild.
Lady Justice, Perdita, Sonnia.
Neverborn.
Lilith, Pandora, Zoraida.
Outcasts.
Leveticus, Ophelia, Somer Teeth, Viktorias, Von Schill.
Resurrectionist.
McMourning, Nicodem, Seamus.

The ones in italics are already done which leaves me with eight Crews to paint before the new plastics start appearing which should be just enough time.

I have however decided to have a week off while I'm waiting for the stuff I've ordered to arrive which I'll spend assembling my Kings of War Undead and Warmachine Cryx army.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Hasslefree Miniatures Newsletter.

Some nice new miniatures some of which have their nipples out (though they have little censorship starts over them in this newsletter) and a request for some feedback on a potential Kickstarter.....

TABLE OF CONTENTS • Starry, Starry Night • The Return of Kalee! • Mack, The Boss & Falcon • Five More Resin Masters • More Etched Brass • And Finally... Starry, Starry Night Fair warning, today's newsletters will involve some more censorship stars. Nothing we can do about that I'm afraid, we have to cater to the rules of our newsletter provider 'and' the sensitivities of parents etc. (As always, uncensored photographs can be found via the links to our website) This week we have the return of our much-loved 40mm Kalee. Basically the existing moulds were coming to an end so we had the perfect opportunity for a bit of..fiddling. You'll see the results below. We also have even more Resin Masters from our growing collection of master moulds, some new Etched Brass and some newZombocalypse Survivors from the Studio range. Without further ado, Kevgasms© ahoy! (Totally copyrighting that word, mainly because Kev think's I'm mental for using it :) ) The Return of Kalee! 40mm Kalee has drifted out of stock recently as we came to the end of our current round of moulds. As we were going to need to have new moulds made anyway, Kev decided now would be the perfect time to make some changes and additions to the highlight of our 40mm range. The first change is that the head is now a separate piece from the body, the main reason for this is that Kev has always wanted to make a helmeted head option. The second change is she is also now available sans breastplate. This means with the arm options kalee is now available in a total of 16 different variations! We've allowed her to be purchased in a variety of different ways as outlined below... Full Multipack Kit - One each of every component allowing 2 full Kalees to be built with no spare pieces leftover and at a significant saving over 2 full Kalees. Armoured Kalee Set - Armoured body with all head and weapon combinations. Unarmoured kalee Set - Topless body with all head and weapon combinations. Individual Components - You can make your own kalee for a slight saving or buy individual parts to make up a new Kalee from any parts leftoever from previous purchases or even just buy a Kalee part for a different 40mm mini for some conversion! Mack, The Boss & Falcon 3 new Survivors to add to our Studio Zombocalypse range. The Boss is a leader figure with a ruthless streak and eyepatch. Mack is an all-weather survivor with a flamethrower Falcon is a cousin to Hawk and Cobra, rugged good looks seem to run in the family there! We also had a big restock in so most items should be in stock (all items were in stock but someone made a big order and ran us out of 2 items before I got a chance to finish this newsletter! :) They'll be back soon) Five More Resin Masters Joining our Resin Master portfolio this week are... Giant - The not-yet-released newest addition to our Spec Ops Squad (led by Deano), armed with twin P90s Oakley - Our ever-popular Zombocalypse survivor avialble for the first time in resin. Complete with full sprue of weapon options. Summer (b) - Mac-10 wielding Zombocalypse cheerleader variant Gina - Modern or Sci-Fi sexy female agent Grymn Spec Ops - So new he's not even named yet, the first of a planned squad of 5 Grymn Spec Ops troopers. (Also totally useable as a very short modern day trooper, roughly 5'1" in HF scale) More Etched Brass 3 new codes in the Etched Brass section this week. Ever since we released the Roman Numerals we had a lot of requests for the standard Latin Alphabet/Numerals so here we go, plenty of them on a single sheet there! Also up are Name Plates 1 and Name Plates 2, both large sheets of individal nameplates. The first slightly more fancy than the second. Useable not just as nameplates of course, the solidity of etched brass allows them to be used as furniture decoration or even stand alone mirrors. And Finally... We have a Kickstarter dilemma. We have 2 small KS ideas that cannot both be fitted in and fulfilled before our main KS idea planned for November. A small foray into plastics and a non-mini related project that unfortunately cannot be combined. We've started a discussion thread HERE that we'd like some feedback on please... Once again we've been heavy on the WIP shots over on our Facebook Page. This past week we've seen stage one,  stage two and stage three of building up an armature and the final WIP of 'Widow' our third Spec Ops member. Next week should see new metal releases including the new Concubine, Gareth our banana-suited survivor and the long-awaited return of our Mystic Warrior Family with a brand new patriarch! There'll be more Resin Masters and, hopefully, the start of a serious expansion for Hasslefree. Exciting times ahead! 'til next time, Arty.