Kings of War A Veteran Wargamer's Newbie Guide

Command Orders are very important in 4th Edition and can be the difference maker in any battle.  When orders are issued the unit that has received one often doesn’t use it immediately as effects tend to apply later in the turn or in the opponent’s turn.  Therefore, markers are needed to remind players that a particular unit has been given an Order.

The Abyssal Dwarf Orders are “Last Breath” and “Mutated Throwing Mastiffs”.  Tokens for the Mastiffs are easy to do as the standard Abyssal Dwarf infantry sprue set comes with two.  I therefore mounted some on 25mm round bases to use as tokens:

Pretty straightforward paint job with the black back scales and their teeth both finished with gloss varnish so they match in with the general obsidian theme for the army.

Next I had to step away from Mantic miniatures for Last Breath.  I spotted these Green Stuff World resin casts at Wayland Games online and had to have them.  They were cheap but it took a few weeks for them to arrive from Spain.  I like the idea of some Abyssal Dwarf Iron-caster training some rats to deliver explosives to the doomed slave regiment who then blow them up to inflict the 2D3 or 4D3 automatic Crushing Strength (2) hits to any enemy unit in contact.  Boom!

The sculpts are very characterful and certainly have that edge of whimsy that I’ve happily embraced in this project.  Kings of War is fun to play so the armies we use should be fun to look at.

Now on to the Ogres.  When I started this project Ogres only had the two command orders in the main rulebook.  One of these was called “Snapping Crocdogs”.  I therefore went online and found some of the OOP crocdog miniatures that Mantic used to produce.  Since the Fracture update Ogres now have four Command Orders but Crocdogs has been dropped in favour of “Protect the Tribe” which gives Vicious in combat rather than Elite.    That’s fine.  The Crocdogs are still a suitable representation of this Order so I’ve painted them and tried some new basing too for the jungle scheme I’m working on.