Evil Things Come To Elves That Wait – Twilight Kin – Kings Of War
7th Sep 2022
Jonny Mann
The Twilight kin are no mere kindred of elves. While all elves are possessed of an innate understanding of magic, the Twilight Kin have taken this to an excess. They walk in magic, they are saturated by it. With the incursions of the Nightstalkers, the Twilight Kin have sailed out into the endless dimension that those twisted beings reside in. They call it the void. An infinite twilight ocean, beyond dimension or reason. Like all seas, it has nameless horrors lurking in its depths and such treasures for those brave enough to seek them. The void will provide the Twilight kin with everything they could ever need.
And when you look into the void, the void looks back into you…
Ronnie here, and in case you haven't guessed...it’s time to reset the clock – and take a walk on the wild side!
The Twilight Kin are getting the full ‘holy smokes, make me dark dirty and fantastic(al) treatment.
Let me talk you through a few of our thoughts about the process and our hopes for where we end up.
‘KIN HELL
Since the Twilight Kin first appeared in Kings of War: First Edition, they’ve always been in a bit of an odd place. We released a range metal conversion kits to add to the elf plastics – basically as a way of getting more armies out quickly, but they never quite hit the mark. They were removed from the core rulebook in Second Edition and, for a time, languished online in the form of a downloadable PDF. Meanwhile, the miniatures disappeared into the black hole of the Mantic website, never to be seen again (probably a good thing!!).
Move forward to 2015 – and for "some" reason there were lots of people with big beautiful fantasy armies – all looking for a game to use those armies in! The Twilight Kin made a semi-triumphant return in a downloadable beta list for through all 2nd edition – and all those players with evil elf armies could port them over to KoW seamlessly (and we put those armies in Unchartered empires just in case we got any legal letters and had to take the book off sale it would not affect the main rules book – we heard some places love sending out C&D letters!).
Several of the armies in the original Unchartered Empires got sculpted – especially the entirely new ones – Trident Realms, Forces of Nature and Nightstalkers (blame those on Matt Gilbert – he looks so normal, but man there's some dark stuff in there!).
By 3rd edition the narrative had changed to intertwine them closer with the horrific Nightstalkers and we felt like the background was starting to head in the right direction. We knew what we wanted to do with some of the armies – like the Halflings and so took them from the main rule book to allow us to develop them so both the IP, the army and brand new sexy sculpts fitted seamlessly - and what a fantastic release that was. By far the biggest KoW army release ever!
However, we didn’t have the IP or the minis of the Twilight Kin clear in our head. So, we put out the rules – to let everyone keep using their armies from you know where or their old metal Mantic conversions - to accompany the hideous Nightstalkers and keep playing.
Skip to 2022 and we feel it is time to do something bold and really give the Twilight Kin the army they deserve!
INTO THE VOID!
This means all-new hard plastics, alongside a range of accompanying resin heroes and monsters. Finally, Kings of War players will be able to field a full Mantic Twilight Kin army – and what an army it will be! Weird, twisted and awesome!
That means we need free reign to rework the army list and the background to turn them into something really unique. We definitely feel like we’re close with the connections to the Nightstalkers, and our thoughts about their ‘soirees in to the void’ but we want to turn the Twilight Kin up to 11… and then cast them into a magical alternate reality full of horrors.
As we work on the IP, which has begun, the army will change in the reboot (some, most, all – who knows!!) As a result, we didn’t think it was fair to include the army list in the new book because 100% we wouldn’t want people to start a new Twilight Kin army, only for it to massively change in 2023 – or indeed you be ½ way through a tournament year and then find your army entirely restyled.
In fact, as we thought about it, we felt the template we used for the Halflings worked really well – take them out of circulation once we know we are redoing them – and then bring them out big (well, not big) and beautiful all as a cool new thing in their entirety!
TWILIGHT DESCENDS
“Hang on, I’ve got some of those old Mantic Twilight Kin minis and some Nightstalkers. Should I just throw them into the sea?” Don’t worry imaginary blog reader. Chances are, if we’ve previously released miniatures for a unit, then they’ll appear in the revised Twilight Kin list… or there will be a comparable replacement.
“Hang on again – I have just bought the big red book and I have a TK army - how can I play KoW now??” fear not, trusty imaginary reader – the wonderful rules committee had included the TK in all of their machinations and balancing earlier when working on the current book – so their stats will be updated in easy army and the Mantic App alongside all the other units, and you will squeeze another 3 to 6 months of play with the old emo elves version of TK. On March 31st they will be taken down from online army lists - so please bear this in mind when picking your army for 2023. Of course TO’s can just keep the TK list valid until the new one comes out – so do chat with your TO to see how they want to handle the TK in their tournaments until the new lists arrives later in 2023.
So, I hope you are as excited about these developments for the Twilight Kin as we are. We hope between updating the lists online but dropping them from the book we have given sufficient warning to not start a new TK army yet allowed you to carry on playing with what you have, and you are suitably pumped up to see what we do with this most maligned of armies. We can’t wait to keep you updated about their progress, and what we are planning.
