I do not traffic in colloquialisms.

Peter paints and reviews a box full of tabletop terrain for Mantic’s Kings of War!

If you’re new to fantasy tabletop miniatures games, you might be daunted by the prospect of assembling a tabletop’s worth of appropriate terrain. Mantic have you covered twith this new Kings of War Fantasy Battlefield Set however! I’ve painted up the whole set and share my thoughts on it in this video. Enjoy!

By the way, don’t forget to download my rules & reference for Kings of War – you’ll find it in Tabletop Codex too!

My hands are filthy with the blood of UNSC marines.

Peter unboxes some cool new stuff for Halo: Flashpoint – the Noble Team expansion and the Reach Deluxe Gaming Mat!

More Halo: Flashpoint stuff! And I’m very happy to see a larger map area and some changes to the spawning rules in this new expansion. Let’s check out the new Spartan Noble Team models and the double-sized battle mat.

By the way, don’t forget to download my rules & reference!

Were we gods we’d breach these walls to the Eastern Ocean.

Peter and Andy get a fully painted Kings of War 4th Edition starter set on the table to try out the new game!

Mantic Games, though still a relatively small wargaming company, has been very busy lately churning out games and miniatures, most notably their Halo: Flashpoint system. But they’ve also found the time to release a new edition of their old rank and flank fantasy battles rules: Kings of War.

I received the new starter set Claws in the Sand at the start of this year and immediately got to painting it up, but it’s taken me a little while to finally get the game to the table. Please enjoy Andy and I putting the starter set through its paces, and having a lot of fun and laughs as we do so!

So uh, what’s it like, having such a short life cycle?

Peter and Will play Epic Warpath over some really incredible Gale Force Nine terrain!

My mini-season of battle reports from Will’s recent visit continues, and this time it’s an incredible game on probably the most spectacular tabletop of terrain I’ve ever had the good fortune to play on. That’s mostly thanks to Gale Force Nine, who sent me several boxes of their amazing pre-painted Gothic Sector epic scale terrain. You can see my unboxing of it all in this video.

The game is Epic Warpath by Mantic Games, and I’ve got to say I’m really impressed with this pretty streamlined, easy-to-use, and fun system for epic-scale scifi wargaming. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on some different factions and painting them up too! While panting epic armies can be a bit of a chore, the results, as you can see, are undeniably stunning, and the scale makes for big, beautiful games. So enjoy this session, where we show off Epic Warpath at its absolute best, and have a lot of laughs at the same time!

But it is not this day! This day we fight!

Be victorious on the battlefield with your Kings of War rules & reference!

I’ve been covering a lot of Mantic Games lately (especially since a certain other company decided they didn’t want the support of content creators), and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by their offerings. The new Epic Warpath is a great system with a wide range of classic scifi factions to play with, and Halo: Flashpoint is coming into its own as the range of available models increases. But the one game of theirs I haven’t explored yet is Kings of War. It’s perfect timing then, because the new 4th edition has just been released!

Kings of War is a classic ‘rank and flank’ fantasy tabletop miniatures game, in the tradition of the old Warhammer Fantasy Battle (now Warhammer: The Old World). It’s been interesting to see these old regimental games enjoy a resurgence of popularity – Hobgoblin and Conquest: Last Argument of Kings are two others – and there’s certainly something very satisfying about pushing around trays of warriors in neat rectangular formations. Kings of War commits completely to the concept because you actually model the miniatures attached to the base, rather than have them individually standing on it. It may mean a lot more modelling – building and painting 10 miniatures to make a single unit is a big job – but it certainly looks spectacular when you have a full army on the field.

As for the rules themselves, they’ve been cleaned up from previous editions. I haven’t played yet (I’ve been busy painting, which is now all done – watch out for a tips video), but will film a game when I do so you can see how it goes; but Mantic have a habit of making very solid rules systems, so I have high hopes. The new starter set Claws in the Sand is a good introduction box for new players and features two unusual small armies – the aquatic Trident Kingdom and the Medieval Japanese-syled dogmen of the Xirkaali Kingdom.

In the meantime, here’s my rules and reference to make your games easier and smoother – and of course you can also find it in my rules app Tabletop Codex!

Now, there will be some shooting.

Remember the Reach with your Halo: Flashpoint rules & reference!

As mentioned in yesterday’s video, I’ve updated my Halo: Flashpoint rules & reference to encompass the two new expansions, Rise of the Banished and Feet First Into Hell! But if you were quick and immediately downloaded it, check again, because I discovered a keyword was missing and have updated it again to v2.1. Enjoy!

Nobody asks to be a hero, it just sometimes turns out that way.

Peter unboxes two new expansions for Halo: Flashpoint by Mantic Games!

It’s great to see more stuff coming out for Mantic’s Halo: Flashpoint game, and I’m especially happy to see more aliens on the battlefield. Check out the new stuff – Rise of the Banished and Feet First Into Hell!

Never set foot on the wrong side of history.

Conquer worlds with your Epic Warpath rules & reference!

It’s been a bumper time for fans of epic scale wargaming lately, and Mantic Games has got in on the act by Kickstarting an entire range – 8 factions – for their own epic system, Epic Warpath. I received the starter set, a couple of large resin models, and some epic scale building sets for review, and as I write the painting is finally done and I played my first game last week – and had a blast!

The rules are a nice mixture between old and new, using the command dice system from Deadzone and the order tokens pioneered in GW’s original Adeptus Titanicus and still used in their recent epic scale game Legions Imperialis. Order and combat tokens do a very nice job of tracking each unit’s current status during the game, so you can see what’s going on at a glance, and the combat system is straightforward and effective. It wasn’t long before the rules began to recede into the background during our first game and we could concentrate on what was happening on the table. The order of the rules in the book is a bit clunky however, and I’ve tried to improve comprehension with my rules & reference. Stayed tuned for a battle report video as soon as I get an opportunity!

The miniatures look great and there’s a minimum of fiddly construction, which is good to see. For me the big draw here over GW’s offering is the variety and distinctness of the available factions – and the fact they’re all available up front. While GW seems obsessed with their Horus Heresy, Mantic is having fun putting space rats, dwarves, zombies and weird aliens together on the tabletop, and to me that’s far more enjoyable than civil war amongst space marines.

To see what you get in the starter set, check out my unboxing. More to come!

Any man who must say “I am the king” is no true king.

Peter checks out Kings of War for the first time with the new 4th Edition!

It’s a brand new year – the 14th! – for the Esoteric Order of Gamers, and I’m kicking it off with a new project – Kings of War by Mantic Games! Will this be your new favourite game of fantasy battles? Stick with me over the coming weeks as I unbox, build, paint and play (and of course, make a rules summary for) this rank and flank fantasy tabletop miniatures game.