Redesigned and hopefully unique to Pannithor Twilight Kin are due later this year and are looking interesting. So I thought I’d collect the hints and art Mantic have been releasing here.
Let me know if I missed something and please comment if you have some insight (from a bit of lore, for example), hope to see something (like extra nightstalker sculpts, separate butchers please) or just have some speculation or opinion to add (please keep it positive though).
As far as I can tell the new along the lines of current TK, but more nightstalkers involed. The art is looking quite dark, in a way that nightstalker players would probably like.
From the original announcement
We got an old picture of Mantic Twilight Kin models, an old bit of art with reapers in the background and the new art of dark elf with a pet butcher.
Those minis together with the concept art looks really promising! Will probably end up buying a totally new set for my twillight army instead of using my old miniatures if the mantic standard for the new twillight army is up to that.
I think if it as a nightstalker, but Mantic refers to it along with the new Twilight Kin.
The new butcher fleshripper will presumably be an enemy in the Twilight Kin bit of Dungeon Saga Origins.
Neophytes are supplicants – young elves who compete for the chance to gain power or a place among the void fleets. Lightly armed and armoured, they hurl themselves at their foes with wild abandon…
Origins was the first chance to present the new direction for the Twilight Kin. The new style is strongly tied to their relationship with the Nightstalkers, leaning into organic-looking armour, rather than archetypical serrated plates. Are we looking at metal or something living? Best left to the imagination perhaps! There’s also a theme of hidden eyes, or extra eyes, across both the Twilight Kin and Nightstalker sculpts that further builds that sense of strangeness. We kept coming back to the goal to make them cool and unsettling, without resorting to full-on horror.
You can see a clear hierarchy in the range, reflecting how much time they’ve spent in the void, and the darkness of their deeds. Neophytes are the lowest of the low (looking almost classically elven), although they are rarely seen on the battlefield. The towering Impaler and Soulbane are heavily layered in organic armour shapes. You start to question if it really is armour, or perhaps more like the outer shell of an insect. And then we have the Summoner Crone, who shows us what sacrifices the Twilight Kin will accept in the name of power…
There was a short story about the new nighstalkers in the Mantic Newsletter.
What’s relevant here is that there’s an elf Inquisition “to stamp out the threat of the fallen kin” and look for those “touched by the Void”.
La’theal Bleakheart is set up as an antagonist, bringing nightstalkers to Elvenholme.
Looks like soulflayer mounts are how commanders get around; maybe some cavalry?
Flying monster looks like a gordrake from Armada.
Not sure about the boats, but the void mutated elf looks cool (more sensible armour/attire would be nice though). The mutalisk looking things in the background ring a bell, presumably a new flying unit? Maybe stretched out Void Lurkers?
Looks like butchers and reapers on the right of picture 4; so straight nightstalker units are likely.
I do wonder what those boats actually are going to be.
Most likely a flying unit but exactly what?
Maybe just a unit like the NA Raven Riders or maybe a single special unit like the EoD Monolith.
The later I can easily imagine, two of those boats flying around carrying a cage with a prisoner between them.
Inducing terror on their enemies and/or buffing nearby units with the fear induced by the prisoner.
Either way guess we will see soon enough.
And the Biggest Shields we’ve seen in quite a while Which would make a nice high Def anvil-hammer in a list of relatively low defense. Plus moving these to large infantry opens some room for the other Elf troops to have a little more identity / agency. I’m digging it.
A shooting version possibly means a plastic dual kit. By the look of them it might just be upgrades for reapers though.
Some kind of void spawn perhaps? This army is looking more dark and twisted than I was expecting.
Which would make a nice high Def anvil-hammer in a list of relatively low defense. Plus moving these to large infantry opens some room for the other Elf troops to have a little more identity / agency. I’m digging it.
