Taking Flight

With the new expansion for Mantic Games Kings of War: Armada, Seas Aflame, all fleets now have access to wizards and fliers. At this scale, the wizards are too tiny to be seen, but the flyers are available (well except for the Dwarfs - the feedback that Mantic got when they first revealed these has led them to redesign the flyers for Dwarfs (and I'm not sure when Kingdoms of Men fliers will be available - it isn't like these are made by warlord or anyone else since they are unique to Armada).

What are out are Orcs, Basileans and Empire of Dust. (Ok, Twilight Kin are also out now, and Elves are coming in October, but those are for two more posts).

First off, the packaging for these are large blister packs, so the fronts are nothing to look at but resin bits. The back of the packs actually have pictures.

It turns out I have had these for a few weeks - so in anticipation of Gencon, I actually managed to get them painted up. Now I won't be using them at Gencon (and I'm not even sure I'll have enough room to be bringing in all the extra ships I have that I am NOT using for the Learn to Play sessions (all of which have sold out!), but it gives some color pictures at least.

Every pack has two resin bases in it for the fliers. These are 30mm, the same base as the tiny ships. They are textured with waves, and have holes to put the stands from the normal clear flying bases in them. Of course I want mine magnetized for transport, so I glued them to existing magnetic bases.

As an afterthought, it probably would have been better for me to glue sheet magnets (or magnetic tape) to these instead. However they do paint up pretty well, and save me the step of adding water effects to provide texture to my bases)

Every pack includes three cards - one for each of the models, and one with special rules they may have.

The orc Winggit Flight is represented by a single model, that requires no assembly. It does seem a little odd after painting up the full size one that it has no tiny little goblins on it, but that is just me.

The Assault Slasher comes in 4 parts on two spruelettes. All of the fliers are simple to assemble, so the labeling of the resin isn't critical. Which is good, because I wasn't able to actually make sense of it.

I thought I'd do a picture (this was before I had them painted) to compare the fliers to the 'normal' ships as well - so here they are next to a Large and Tiny orc ship.

The Empire of Dust has a Bone Dragon and a Scavenger Flock (I have already heard people talking about using these for Deadzone Murderbirds - however Mantic announced this past weekend that they would be doing new Murderbirds for Deadzone 3.

The Dragon is only three parts - the spruelette is shared with the wings for the scavengers.

I broke off one of the horns of the bone dragon (and never found where it flew), but it isn't like you expect an animated skeleton flying into battle to be 100% complete anyway.

The scavenger flock was just slightly less straightforward to assemble - you have to make sure the bodies on one piece match up to the necks on the other.