My Warbands, My Stories: Ronnie’s Trident Realm & Dwarfs

Hi, Ronnie here.

Now obviously, when I get excited about a game, my blog is not going to be about the best power combos, my world class painting, nor any detailed rule explanations. I feel I aim for a slightly more existential, a more erudite, approach to the gaming genre, and my prose reflects this incredible wisdom and insight. In other words – I’m not a great painter, I can never build a legal force list, and everyone here has to let me win (or the game gets canned), so I have to talk about some of the other aspects that have got me excited.

And Vanguard has seriously got me excited!

Back in the day I used to tolerate the building – but loved painting. Basing (back when minis came on metal bases! Bah humbug!) meant gluing the figure to cardboard bases, then adding Tetrion (a wall filler) and then painting. A long boring process coupled with it being impossible to buy super glue - so metal models were stuck with 2-part epoxy resin.

However, as I have ‘matured’ I’ve really started enjoying building the figures -and not just because the glue, design and basing has got better! These days I do it almost just for the pleasure. The intention is that they will go on to be painted – although usually less than half actually are. But I really love that early phase of getting an idea for models and the theme for their bases and embarking on a hobby project. The first bit is always the best!

What Vanguard has allowed me to do it to have a go making a force for races that I always wanted to build a full Kings of War army for – but I know I probably never will!

[caption id="attachment_20287" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Ed's note - not necessarily a legal warband or with models that are actually in the game (yet) :)[/caption]

The first up was Trident Realm. I’ve really loved this army since we released it – and by dipping into the army set, plus a few models released for the summer campaign - and even Dungeon Saga - I cobbled together a great little force. I even have some seaweed-looking lichen that I foraged from trees last winter to finish the bases. I’m sure that these will get painted very soon (yeah definitely any day now)! Actually I have just seen Sunni in our warehouse actually start a Trident Realm army and he sprayed it gold and then washed brown - and it has me more confident that I might be able to get the Niaids painted.

However, if you have ever had a yearning to try a new army then Vanguard is a great way of trying out something new. There are a only a few models needed to get started - and while I would love them to be bought immediately from www.manticgames.com or your local FLGS -  I realise many of you already have Mantic models. But this is absolutely the time to get them out, get them assembled and based so you can try out the game. At the very least you’ll have some models for your display shelf – and at best it’ll re-spark your love of classic fantasy gaming. Before you know it you’ll have a 2,000 point army ready to go – or maybe five new fancy warbands instead!

After getting all excited about the Trident Realm our new resin Vanguard dwarfs appeared in the resin room… and I forgot about those stinking fishmen! These beauties not only got assembled, and based… and undercoated… they even got paint on a few of them too!

Not only that – but I also went back to the figures that I had always wanted to add to my army (like the Warsmith) and some of those that had been based/undercoated – when I embarked on my KoW Dwarf army - and got paint on those too.

The result is I now have some fantastic heroes for my KoW army – and I’m about ½ way there to my Warband.  I have to say that the resin figures are so good, it made me realise my painting was not actually good enough for them! Anyway, I did my best, and they are nearly battle ready.

So if you have lead under the bed, a few sprues still in the box or a yearning to try out a new army, I’d recommend downloading the free Vanguard rules, getting your clippers and glue out and have an evening of hobby time. In a couple of hours you’ll have a force assembled and based – and who knows you might even paint the minis and get to play a game!

Vanguard is super easy – please do jump in and have a go!

Best wishes
Ronnie

P.S. Right on that note – I’m off to Essen and then Crisis – so if you are about please do pop over to the Mantic stand (6G114) and say hello!