Mantic: Building Your Vanguard Warband
The scouting parties of the Vanguard love to be in the middle of all the action, in the most dangerous parts of the battle. The Vanguard are tasked with taking down enemy camps, stealing their supplies, and gathering information. Ready to get started? The folks at Mantic walk you through putting together your warband in this preview.
Before we jump in, Kings of War: Vanguard is now available to pre-order, and Mantic is offering the rule book at a special price. Pick up everything you need here.
Every Warband is made up of…
- COMMAND – well, you’re going to need someone to do all the shouting. Command units come in all shapes and sizes, from the massive Snow Troll Prime in the Northern Alliance list to the humble Biggit in the goblin faction
- GRUNT – these are the lowest of the low. Even in an elite warband, you need a little bit of chaff to throw at the enemy. However, when they’re not dying horribly, grunts are useful for claiming objectives. You can also give them one piece of common equipment, should you wish
- WARRIORS – now we’re talking. Warriors are far more capable when it comes to getting stuck in and can choose two pieces of equipment from the full range of items
- SUPPORT – this is the catch-all name for a range of specialists that can add some extra oomph to your warband. Although some will be used to back-up your core troops, others (like the Forces of Abyss Hellequin) are ready to lead the charge when it comes to combat. Support units tend to have a special ability that can form the backbone of your squad
- SPELLCASTER – as the name implies, these are your magic users. We’ll be covering magic in a future blog because Vanguard introduces some interesting new mechanics for the way magic works in Mantica and each faction gets some unique spells!
- LARGE – Large models are the big guys in your warband. However, they don’t always just provide the muscle, because a large model can be a mix of types. This means you can have a Large Command unit (like the Snow Troll Prime), a Large Spellcaster (Forces of the Abyss Warlock) or Large Support (Ice Elemental)
So, now you’re up to speed on the unit types, let’s have a look at how to build a typical 200 points warband. Firstly, you must take a minimum of 5 Warriors and/or Grunt models and 1 Command model. To give you an example, we’re going to build a Forces of the Abyss list. To start with, let’s choose the Grunts and Warriors:
- 2 x Flamebearers (Grunts – 9 points each)
- 2 x Lower Abyssals (Grunts – 8 points each)
- 2 x Succubus (Warriors – 14 points each)
he above comes to 62 points, which means we’ve got another 138 points to spend. This is when we can start to have some fun with the other types of units. You see, for every 3 Warriors/Grunts in our warband, we can take up to 1 Command, 1 Support and 1 Spellcaster model. What’s more, for every 150 points in the warband, we can take 1 Large unit.
In our Forces of the Abyss warband we’ve got 6 Warriors/Grunts, which means we can add up to 2 Command models, 2 Support models and 2 Spellcaster models. We still need a Command unit, so let’s add that to our warband.
- 2 x Flamebearers (Grunts – 9 points each)
- 2 x Lower Abyssals (Grunts – 8 points each)
- 2 x Succubus (Warriors – 14 points each)
- 1 x Tormentor Champion (Command – 44 points)
We’re now sitting on 107 points, so we’re going to have to think carefully about what’s next in the warband. Well, we can take up to two support units (because we’ve got 6 Warriors/Grunts, remember), so let’s add a Gargoyle and Hellequin to the list. Now our warband looks like this:
- 2 x Flamebearers (Grunts – 9 points each)
- 2 x Lower Abyssals (Grunts – 8 points each)
- 2 x Succubus (Warriors – 14 points each)
- 1 x Tormentor Champion (Command – 44 points)
- 1 x Gargoyle (Support – 18 points)
- 1 x Hellequin (Support – 29 points)
We’ve now got the maximum number of support models for our warband, but we can still add one more Command model or two Spellcasters. The Forces of the Abyss only have the one spellcaster: the Warlock. As well as being a Spellcaster, the Warlock is also a Large model – thanks to the chubby cherub carrying our tormented magic user.
This means that if we want to include a Spellcaster in our Forces of the Abyss warband, it will come at the expense of the Despoiler, because that is also a Large model. Decisions, decisions. Well, in this case, we’re going for the Crushing Strength of the Despoiler to hopefully cause our opponent some problems.
- 2 x Flamebearers (Grunts – 9 points each)
- 2 x Lower Abyssals (Grunts – 8 points each)
- 2 x Succubus (Warriors – 14 points each)
- 1 x Tormentor Champion (Command – 44 points)
- 1 x Gargoyle (Support – 18 points)
- 1 x Hellequin (Support – 29 points)
- 1 x Despoiler (Large – 37 points)
With the addition of the Despoiler, our total goes to 190 points, which leaves us 10 points spare. This could be spend on an extra Flamebearer or Lower Abyssal, or we can add some equipment to our warband to boost the existing units. Check out a future blog when we’ll run through the various options for giving your warband new equipment.
As you can see from the example above, you’re going to have to choose carefully when it comes to creating your warband because you’re not going to be able to cram everything in. Of course, when making your Company for a Campaign you’ll have 400 points to play around with, but you’ll still be forced to choose a 200 points list when heading into combat.
Kings of War: Vanguard is now available to pre-order!
