Kings of War Preview! Goblins!

Hi everyone!

We’re back for another recap of our Virtual Adepticon announcements. Over the weekend we released a number of videos covering all the exciting stuff coming up for Deadzone, Kings of War, Vanguard and The Walking Dead. However, just in case you missed those videos, we’re recapping everything on the blog… and clarifying a few bits and bobs 😊

Today’s in the turn of Kings of War and there’s a LOT coming up.

ONLINE CAMPAIGN

First up, let’s talk about the summer campaign. We’re hopeful that, assuming the world returns to relative normality, we’ll be running a massive online campaign this year. The exact date is, of course, rather fluid but we’re going to make sure everything is in place ready to launch whenever we can.

The theme of the campaign is magic! You see, those pesky Abyssal Dwarfs have been tunnelling too far under the Halpi mountains and have tapped into a sort of magical ley line that runs across Pannithor. This has, understandably, caused a right old nuisance for everyone. Plus, all the various factions are pretty keen to get their hands on this magical energy and immediately converge on the Halpi mountains.

Luckily this story is explained much better in a new short story by the exceptionally talented Mark Latham.  Here’s a quick extract to whet your appetite…

From Basilea, a great force of Paladins marched east towards the light in the sky, guided by their priests who had sensed a great evil amassing in the Halpi Mountains. But the Paladins had barely left the Samarites behind when they were beset by a strange and violent storm. The sky roiled with crimson clouds; frogs fell from the sky like hailstorms, and an unearthly mist enveloped them, until it seemed the world itself had vanished, so eerily silent were they, enveloped in an endless sea of silver clouds.

And they were not far wrong in their assumption, for when the mists at last thinned, they looked not towards the Low Sea of Suan as they should have, but instead across a blasted wasteland of black ash, with a sky of indigo and violet. The air was freezing, the warriors’ breath misting icily on a bracing wind. If their priests had not quickly discerned that the army had left the material realm, they would have known it from the movement on the horizon, a tide of black forms, gangrel and scuttling, surging with great speed towards the new arrivals – these invaders into their realm of darkness. The Basileans had somehow entered the Etheric plane, and here, the Nightstalkers were masters…

Exciting stuff, eh?

GOBLINS! GOBLINS! GOBLINS!

Alongside unleashing a load of ancient magic, the actions of the Abyssal Dwarfs have also disturbed a LOT of goblins that were sheltering in the hidden tunnels and passages of the Halpi tunnels. And that can only mean one thing… NEW GOBLINS.

Although we’ve had goblins in the Kings of War range, the hard plastics didn’t quite match the standards of the latest KoW releases, like the Northern Alliance or Nightstalkers. So, we thought this was a fantastic opportunity to release a brand-new hard plastic sprue.

The 10-goblin sprue comes with the parts to build Rabble, Spitters or Sharpsticks. As you can see below.

If you’re interested in how these paint up, Rob has been busy painting some resin versions of the Rabble. They’re resin, so we can get them painted by an expert (not Rob) for the packaging and somehow he sneaked some out of the building before lockdown.

NEW MOUNTED HEROES

But that’s not all. With the new hard plastics, we’re also using the opportunity to release some new resin mounted heroes. Theoretically you could have an entirely mounted goblin army now! It’s worth noting that we aren’t redoing the Fleabag Riders – the Mawbeasts shown here are designed for the heroes.

LUGGITS!

We always like to reveal something new in these recap blogs, so today we’re happy to announce we will be making resin Luggits! Taking our cue from the Vanguard Luggits, these are slightly bigger goblins armed with mildly ridiculous oversized weapons.

NEW NAMED HERO!

As part of the online campaign, a number of armies will be getting a new named character. For the goblins, that character will be Grupp Longnail. This trainee Wiz accidentally stumbles across some old dwarf gauntlets that end up playing an important part in the backstory of the campaign.

Here’s an extract from her back story…

Darting her eyes around the room, she stopped on a pair of silver gauntlets partially hidden under some papers. Cautiously Grupp cleared the papers and licked her lips with eager anticipation. She could feel magical energy emanating from the gauntlets and a tingling sensation crept up her claws as she reached out towards them. Grupp had never seen anything like them. They were clearly dwarf engineering, but she also recognised elvish lettering etched into each metal glove. Her face screwed up in confusion as she tried to decipher the text.

“D-A-N-G-E,“ she mouthed silently, before rolling her eyes and quickly thrusting her hands into the gauntlets. A mad glint entered her eyes as she held the gauntlets aloft. Considering their size and the material, they were bizarrely light. Experimentally she wiggled her fingers and cackled to herself.

Suddenly small traces of lightning started arcing between the gauntlets and up her arms. The air around Grupp became heavy with magical energy and blue lightning crawled out towards other metallic objects in the room.

Panicking, Grupp tried to pull her claws from the gauntlets. She struggled pointlessly for a few moments before realising she was trapped inside the infernal things. Spinning round, she tried banging the metallic contraptions against a nearby desk. It collapsed into a heap and Grupp screeched in frustration. Stupid grogging dwarfs and their stupid grogging magic.

So, plenty going on in the world of Kings of War. As you can imagine, exact release dates are a little fluid at the moment, but we’ll keep you updated over the coming weeks and months.

Plus, stay tuned next week for a whole blog week dedicated to everyone’s favourite mass battle fantasy wargame, Kings of War.