KoW in 2025

KoW news and rumours
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Plastic sprues are essential for an armies core. PVC is such a pain in the arse and resin safety limits a lot of buikding time.

Elves are in desperate need of a redo. Maybe expanding the plastic baselians into other human factions. Even if its releasing 3d printable parts like the new unit commands some units got. I see that becoming a common thing. Buy a box of baselian men at arms and print these new heads and arms to make the 3 merc units in the league. Its about as much work as making a command and sells more boxes to boot

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Thanks for the list @kodos!

There was a nightstalker refresh too. All the PVC models got plastic or resin versions and a few new models.

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43

I think availability, uniqueness, and cross-compatibility are at least as important as just age and material. And of course, the ultimate goal is sales.

They haven’t replaced everything PVC or even metal. Even in factions that got a refresh. Gargoyles and Abyssal Horsemen remain as PVC, Tortured Souls and Hellhounds are metal, and the characters are still a hodge podge of materials.

If I am not mistaken, the Butcher Fleshripper came over from Dungeon Saga Origins, and is thus a new PVC.

The market for some common ranges is already well served, perhaps even saturated, elves, orcs, dwarves…

Personally, I would love some fresh hard plastic Basilean sisters to kitbash into a nurse cadre for my Space Army. But I don’t think I am in any way representative of the Mantic custormer base.

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44

the most important models that should be focused on next is plastic cavalry for most/all factions

Cavalry is the essential part for R&F next to infantry and it must fit the theme for the armies (throw out the idea to use horses for everyone)
heroes are less important, one can always build some from the plastic kits, also Monsters can be converted up to a point

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45

Yeah, this. Excluding EoD & Halflings (which is a half & half kit) all the other non-hero cavalry models are pvc.

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Some thoughts on refreshes and faction design…

On the one hand, there was clearly good reason for earlier Mantic faction design to be more generic. With a few exceptions where particular units bucked a stereotype, Mantic’s elves, orcs, goblins, abyssal dwarves, forces of the abyss and dwarves were suitable for play in various game settings, and various models could be proxied around for use in KOW as well. I would say the same in terms of ratkin, in general terms.

If your goal was to continue to allow for extensive use of proxy models, or you genuinely believe that people want is continued use of generic epic fantasy tropes, then you’d continue on with faction refreshes informed by this…

The Forces of the Abyss’ refresh took this approach. You can argue that in lore terms the Abyssals are sort of Dante-esque in a way that GW’s Chaos Daemons are not, but frankly they’re not that dissimilar to years of GW Khorne models and various demon models from third party providers. Admittedly, demons in any setting could be hard to make unique or interesting… There are only so many archetypes to play out. I think GW covered things pretty well with the four Chaos powers, and Chaos undivided, like it or not.

The Twilight Kin refresh was a different approach, because the lore and the faction design changed quite a bit from the generic Dark Elf trope, to the point that people’s legacy Dark Elf armies with crossbowmen, double-handed axe-men, Cold One riders, Dragon Lords etc are better played as a different elf faction. While the Twilight Kin corsair / void pirate design is not totally unique, it’s different enough. And armies with Impalers, various Nighstalker units, skiffs and void-touched mutants do seem to feel more like it’s Mantic propietary product. From a business point of view, this seems like a conscious design with some merit behind it.

I feel like you could say the same of the Trident Realms refresh. The units released aren’t something that’s as easy to proxy from third parties.

Halfings, same? They seem pretty unique.

So, to return to Forces of the Abyss, I think it’s interesting that they went more generic here. Because Berserkers, in particular, could just be Bloodletters from any GW edition, or vast amounts of models out there. Even the Lord of Lies could easily be subbed with a Reaper Mini, GW mini or whatever.

Is Mantic deliberately alternating? Leave some windows for those who wish to proxy heavily, and then some ranges, go heavily into developing their own IP and designs?

End pt 1…

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47

And… Pt 2…

Some thoughts on other factions “due” a refresh.

If the choice is between staying quite generic, versus doing a more unique IP…

EOD are almost a direct copy of Tomb Kings at the moment, serviced by Mantic models, Max Mini models, GW and various 3rd party ranges. I’m not sure what the future looks like here, if they decided to try to “do something different” with EOD. At the end of the day, the lexicon and design library for Ancient Egypt themed undead is pretty finite. They’ve already got a wide range of models, definitely one of the better and more complete ranges, in my book. Particularly if you’ll buy third party models from the likes of Max Mini, who do this faction quite well.

Undead? Personally, I like the existing, fairly generic aesthetic for undead…But I think Mantic could continue to explore werewolves as more proprietary designs.

Abyssal Dwarves… I’d be frustrated to have to work with metal and more PVC, so this is a faction I would like to see refined in terms of more resin and hard plastic availability. But I think that even if they are more or less a direct port of the original GW Chaos Dwarves… They’re still a kind of unique and funky faction that doesn’t really need much updating. Magic, slaves, soot, steam, tall hats, flying bulls, beards in dramatic ringlets… I’m in.

Kingdoms of Men… I think leave open-ended and generic, there would be no advantage to trying to narrow the faction down to a re-designed KOM that would probably have to become more tied to a particular culture/time period for inspiration.

Dwarves are in a funny place. In model terms, highly generic, bar unusual things like Brock Riders. But in lore terms, they’ve successfully created some drama with the ‘imperial dwarves’ storyline. I really like that. But I think the dwarf models should remain pretty generic and easily proxied, while the lore continues to evolve.

I’d say the same for orcs, goblins and ratkin.

Varangur I think could get a Twilight Kin style unique faction design, maybe making them more than just Vikings / evil Northern Alliance. Ronnie has mentioned something that bears this out in an older interview, he spoke of doing Varangur in such a way that people’s existing armies might not be in line with Mantic’s vision for them.

That leaves Elves and Sylvan kin.

If Mantic went kept the lore as is, and went for a generic faction design for them, you’d have affordable hard plastic kits that would be cheaper than GW, but which would be in competition with Oathmark’s sets, that seem pretty decent.

How to make Elves more unique, in a Mantic setting?

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48

Pt 3

Elf re-design ideas

Although we’ve already got the TK as a slave-using faction, they use nightstalkers, not other factions in battle. What if Elves were redesigned as a society where their immortality and learnedness is a basis for apartheid. Human line infantry (Indentured servants or mercenaries) blended with quite elite elven units, leaning heavily into ranged weapons and magics. I think a problem with this is that it’s quite close to Imperial dwarves as well as TK in lore terms, even if the army on the table, as described, would not look like either faction.

Another angle would be to introduce something like a blight or an affliction that’s taken the elves’ immortality away in 4th edition? Maybe they’re a necrotic, rotting species cut down to a mortal lifespan, desperately searching for a cure? Still fielding armies, but now it’s faded grandeur and scabrous almost undead-like elves wearing what was previously parade-ground finery. An advantage of this is that they could remain a “good” faction, despite their appearance. You could imagine that other factions might adopt an aggressive approach against them, out of fear of infection…

I actually think Sylvan Kin could be continued on as generic elves of the forest, and the bonus is that some of their units could also be used in a Forces of Nature refresh, potentially.

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49

I remember when Ronnie himself (or somebody else close to Mantic production) was asked in an interview “new cavalry, when?” and the answer was about how expensive cavalry is to produce. Each individual cav requires double the sculpting, double the molds, double the print runs,* yet you can’t actually charge double the price, as the consumer sees it as one miniature and the game treats it as one unit member.

So when you only have so much money to spend on production, cav require a larger investment than infantry or big things, but have a smaller return. Makes sense to me why they would have put off the many cav refreshes the game woefully needs.

*and double the painting time, m’right? This is why I have next to no true cavalry for any army :stuck_out_tongue:

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There is a reason why other companies use the same base models for multiple armies
And making regular horses and add armour and accessories with the sprue for the riders is possible to cover different armies

Also using different types for different armies, like horses being heavy cavalry and panthers light cavalry for Basilea but the other way around for Elves (so you can get away with 2 frames for different armies)

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The EOD cavalry are great models. Appreciate them more as time goes on.

Not a bad idea, having a generic armored horse sprue and an undead horse sprue. Potentially you could just focus on making the rider for each faction distinct, on a seperate sprue.

I mean… an armored horse is an armored horse. With a distinct rider and different paint jobs, immersion would not be broken.

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52

I mean GW did the generic horse with head variants for a couple of editions!

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53

I hope so.
There’s enough space in KoW to cast a wide net by leaving the door open to different “types” of wargamers.

The old undead plastic kits are still nice.
I happen to be building a bunch at the moment.
Could do without the integrated bases though.

The rest of the undead range hasn’t aged as well, though.
The heroes especially.

I agree. Basilea is already a Mantic IP human faction.
Leaving KoM as a “gateway army” is a good call IMO.

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Really think that just a very generic human list should exist. The old KoWH rules gave a good basis for how you could then tweak the list to your theme, even if it wasn’t done completely successfully.

From a mantic lore progression thing, do think potentially that League of Rhordia might die off as a standalone army list given how the background is going?

The Halflings have started to bugger off on their own (hence separate army) and Darvled is stirring things up with quite a pro Basilea, hate everyone else rhetoric from outside the LoR?

Plenty of scope in 4th to have themed lists more based of a LL or character types giving you access to units.

Outside of doing plastic sisters (probably mentioned already in the thread!) as a halfling style infantry/archer/cavalry kit which would solve lots of problems, the only other humans they should touch are Ophidia

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Ophidia could be straightforward as a potential theme list.

Access to mummies, skeletons, enslaved guardians and similar, reflecting that the Ophidians use undead for labour,… And then presumably you’d have human foot and cavalry reflecting the ‘alive’ part of the Ophidian empire.

For characters, presumably you’d have human kings, priests and champions in place of undead counterparts, and then you’d have God Kings as the heaviest hitters or named individuals.

But another theme list wold be the opposite of the kind of clean-up of theme lists that a lot of people seem to think should occur.

I think I’d rather a new faction entirely rather than Ophidians, if they would be as above.

Regarding League of Rhordia, would it be a dick move if Mantic just said, in 4th, that you can play as a KOM army with halfling allies of your choice, or a Halfling army with KOM allies of your choice… And a similar arrangement for Ratkin slaves? Tournaments would probably have to consider exceptions to any “no allies” rules for armies formerly playing as League or Ratkin slaves. Workable?

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It would be a dick move but a reasonable one. There would need to be a bigger clean up than just theme lists though. Some factions could be rolled together and have formations to guide the original theme. Kom could get halflings by default but to make them sing have a formation with a major buff to them. Like abyssal dwarf slave orcs get. Formations are under used and each faction having 3 but only 1 allowed per list solves many of the theme list problems. Wood elf formation gives verdants a big buff and your elf list now looks the same but its one list with a formation supporting the keyword. Like halflings already do naturally. And you can balance things so to make a unit shine you want to build around its types not just look at stats. A plus 1 to hit for all X coming from the formation takes an okay unit and makes it good.

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The important thing IMO is that people still have a way to put their minis on the table.
Add rat slaves to the Abyssal Dwarf list with “slave”, “rat”, “orc” and “dwarf” keywords and formations and then you don’t need Ratkin Slaves as a separate list.
Give KoM generic “mercenary” units to include halflings OR just let people with halflings use them as halflings.

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Couple of things have popped up about Mantic for this year.

Firstly is the long awaited revamp of the Mantic Points range (the ones you get with the coupons from the boxed stuff).

In a post relating to the Basilean cavalry teased at uk Clash, when asked when these were coming Ronnie replied “Soon…so soon :fire:”

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59

Oh that cavalry tease.
I wonder if they will get more weapon options, like being able to take swords or greatswords instead of lances.

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As not (currently) a weapon upgrade I’m not entirely sure that would be the case.

However, since these are paladin knights, it hopefully comes along with paladins on foot - who definitely do have access to sword/board & 2hw and compatible kit?