It looks like Kings of War is going to be a big focus for my painting and modeling time and energy in the foreseeable future; my friend Tom bought the 2-player starter box, and I'm just waiting to pick up the undead from him next time we meet.
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| *childish grabby motions* |
I'll also be doing a second army, a Kingdoms of Men force using Perry Miniatures' War of the Roses line. This began as a means to give my mother a list of miniatures I would like for Christmas that aren't all skeletons and ghouls, but I've honestly become really excited about the tactical flexibility that the Kingdoms of Men list allows for. I've been spending a good amount of time toying with different combinations of lists - how much artillery do I want to bring to the table, what role do I want cavalry to play, how many units of armor-piercing "can openers" can I get away with, et cetera, et cetera. Gina bought me a Reaper Griffon yesterday to help me recuperate from a particularly stressful day, which will become the mount of my General on Winged Beast in higher point games. Truth be told, I'm so excited for this army that I may put the undead on the back-burner and focus on the Kingdoms of Men list.
I might be able to buy myself a regiment at the end of this month, even with taking care of Christmas shopping and putting money into savings, which would be exciting, but I may still hold off even if the money's there - we're firming up plans to do a little bit of holiday traveling and are also hosting Gina's brother for Thanksgiving, so I may not actually have the money handy to spend on foot knights and archers. Which is fine, I should probably wait and see what sets my mother finds for me in London before I buy anything anyways.
This doesn't mean that I'm putting away Frostgrave - I may shift towards a focus on playing, rather than painting, when it comes to the Frozen City, but I will finish the warbands I have started.
What I think I would ultimately like to do is position myself to run demo games of both Frostgrave and Kings of War at Just Games, my FLGS - Matt, the owner, has mentioned that he'd love to stock Mantic products but he needs evidence that the demand is there before he pulls the trigger on investing money and store space in Kings of War. I'm hoping running demo games would inspire people to want to play; this is a bit of an iffy proposition, as when a Frostgrave store league was attempted a while back, it quickly fell apart as people decided they'd rather play at home than at the store, and I think the Warhammer grognards in the area have either gone Oldhammer or switched to Age of Sigmar, and at any rate I'm fairly certain most of them hang out at one of the other game stores in the area.
All in all, I think I need to adopt a bit of a "wait and see" attitude while trying my best to get all this off the ground. And, of course, doing lots and lots of painting wherever I can.
Two unrelated notes:
ReplyDelete- Mantic's got a not-great reputation with retailers, from what I understand. The owner of my FLGS is totally fine with Kickstarter, but something about the way Mantic's built their business on top of it means it's very, very difficult for him to move Mantic product. He gets quiet and sullen when people talk about Mantic. That said, he _has_ been able to move copies of the KoW Rulebook, as well as the new historicals supplement for it. I don't think he'd stock Mantic minis unless he was charging them rent, since they wouldn't go anywhere.
I've given Mantic a disconcerting amount of $ over the years... but I absolutely see where he's coming from. I've got boxes and boxes of their figures, but/therefore I'd never buy one at retail. I don't think you'd be doing your FLGS any favors by advocating that he stock their figures.
- You should take a look at Dragon Rampant: I'm just starting it up with a friend and it looks to be in your wheelhouse. It's a light and lazy game that's intended to be flexible enough for people to raid their old Warhammer, Saga, or historical armies for figs to play with. It's an Osprey game, so investment is next to nothing.
Richard, thank you for letting me know about the issue with Mantic - I just talked it over with my FLGS owner and he's heard similar, which is disappointing because he loves the models - but they're not worth his investment in immobile product.
DeleteTruth be told, this actually alters my willingness to give Mantic my business - I believe very fervently in supporting my local game store first and foremost with my purchases, and if Mantic's business model doesn't support local businesses then my money needs to go elsewhere.
I'll honor my agreement to buy half of the KoW starter box off my friend Tom, but those War of the Roses figures I'm coveting will be a Lion/Dragon Rampant force, not a KoW one. I have LR and have been considering DR already; I may pick that up (and Broken Legions as well, to give new life to the Greek and Parthian figures sitting in my closet) this weekend.
Books, at least, don't require a huge space/money investment, so if people in the store will play it risk is low for the store... and it's not like your FLGS can't _order_ the minis.
DeleteBut yeah, the way my FLGS owner gets around Mantic you'd think Ronnie slept with his wife.
DR looks just like LR, but with more unit types, more flexibility around model count (Ogres are big, so maybe they're two strength points a model! Or three!) and some special rules to let you theme units (Undead, or lycanthropy, or spellcasting, etc).
I was disappointed by Broken Legions. The cover is SO METAL that when I opened it up and it was just kind of a servicable Roman-ish skirmish game with mythological creatures in it, I was disappointed. I expected something more, so that's probably on me, but I didn't see anything there that couldn't be done nearly as well or better by Frostgrave.