Faith and Fury

Previously on "Unt l Somebody Loses an Eye" I talked about the new Kings of War : Champions starter set, but didn't go into detail on the new Basilean models (men-at-arms and Paladin Knights).  So it is time to do that now.

So first are the Men-at-arms.  No, this is not a new sprue, but when it came out I never actually did pictures of it, so time to rectify that now.

This was the first hard plastic sprue the Mantic redid - because the quality of the original sprue (from the original Kings of War kickstarter back in 2013).  It wasn't that the sculpts were bad, the casting was just very soft on the detail.  In addition, in order to make crossbowmen it required metal add-ons.

So when they did the Vanguard kickstarter in 2018 the redid the sprue - and added all the options - so you could now build them with crossbows, spears or hand weapons.

The 'new' men-at-arms come on a sprue and a half.  The half is for the bodies and shields.  I found it interesting that the sprue makes 5 models, but comes with 6 shields.  I'm not really sure what they expect people to do with the extra shields they will have.

The main sprue then has the heads and weapon options.  There are five identical (well, they all look the same to me) heads, and one with a plume (for a unit leader), and one without a helmet.  The original heads were ONLY the plume head.  There are six spears, and five hand weapons.  There are enough arms, quivers and crossbow bits to make 5 crossbowmen.

The company specifies a troop of spearmen - the Guardians of Tarisios.  Sorry for the pictures from my workdesk instead of the lightbox (but at least I got them).  Sometimes when I get busy I simply forget to take proper pictures.

There are some upper arms for shields, and some that match the arms holding spears.  I actually did not use any of the two parts spear arms, as I had plenty of the single piece ones - which are much easier to work with.

The company box comes with 4 sets of sprues, enough to 10 spearmen and 10 crossbows.  However I think 10 per troop gets a little crowded - I prefer 8.  In this case though I only used 7 spearmen (and 8 crossbows) so I did not have to cut into the last sprue.

The crossbows are the Watchmen of Tarisios

The box includes a base assembly diagram - unfortunately for the crossbows it really isn't sufficient.    Nor are the sprues marked at all - so it is quite a bit of trial and error to match up the upper arms with the appropriate hands (some holding crossbows, some holding bolts, some are open to hold the crossbow that is in the opposite hand).  For the majority I tried to use the right arms loading a crossbow bolt and the left arm and hand to holding the crossbow.  There were some though that have the crossbow in the right hand, and it sits in the empty left hand.

The new Paladin Knights are much more straight forward - these are Gnaus's Lions.

First is the new generic horse sprue - this is great, as this can be used for multiple kits in the future without the horses looking overly chunky (i.e. Stormwind Cavalry - the horses (the old 'premium plastic' horses) just look too chucky for elves.  Here the bodies are numbered, and you do need to match up the numbers.  Some may fit, but then all four hooves may be up in the air, and that doesn't quite work :-).

You will notice these do not have heads - those are added in the Paladin sprue - again so they can be reused with other units that have less armored heads.

The Paladin Knight sprue is a  sprue and a half.  The half being the horse heads and armor bits, and the main sprue being the riders.

The heads and armor bits can fit with any of the bodies.

I didn't add the extra armor bits until after the horses were painted, as these were easier to just spray black and drybrush with gunmetal.

If you have never done any type of mounted models before, then I highly recommend that you assemble the mount separate from the rider (unless it is one of those really annoying kits with the riders legs (and maybe torsos) sculpted to the horse already) and paint them separately.

I thought I would save a little time after I got the horses finished and go ahead and put them on their base.  DO NOT DO THIS!!!!!!  If you notice below - some of the riders are extremely bow-legged.  I could only get three of them onto the horses that were based - I hade to remove the other two from the base, glue the riders on, then re-attach them to the base (flipping their positions) to fir those wide legs.  (Note in the picture below - a couple of the riders DO NOT have bowlegs, but three of them do.)

finally the champion - Alanis Sallustis herself.

For the Bloody Cardinal, I have already talked about the sprues back when they all came in (the Berserkers and Nagari just a few months ago).  In fact, both of these were still waiting to be painted, so instead of going into a 750 pt ambush army, I just used them for this.

First the Macrabe Missionaries - i.e. Abyssal Berserkers.

Then the Slithering Bishop - a single Nagari

The Cackling Choir are lesser abyssals (and I just used some of the ones that used to be in my 1000 pt Forces of the Abyss demo army, but were cut out when I reduced it down to 750 points).

Lastly the Bloody Cardinal himself

So two companies down, 4 to go (with Origins five weeks away!)

Because it is all fun and games . . .