So people are trying to rope me into Kings of War (I'm looking at you, Matt) and the more I look at the game, the more I like it.

The rules seem solid, there seems to be limited (censored) and all the armies seem pretty decent.

...

Themewise, I like the idea of playing Abyssals, Undead, Skaven or Ogres. I don't know enough about the game to know if anything is better than the other, but that doesn't matter. Seems like a good funsies side project for Warmachine.

What I'm looking for, is suggestions on cheap and awesome manufacturers of viable models. GW is completely out of the question. I don't want to own a single model produced by them.

So where would you shop for models? Show me pretty pictures and websites!

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"The Dragon feeds on our wars. Every dead soldier is another weapon in the hands of our enemy. While we weaken, Cryx grows stronger."
- King Leto Raelthorne.

I don't get the GW hate, they make some cool mini's, and suit Kings of War pretty well.

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TheGambler#11893
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I'd go with Mantic for undead and abyssal dwarves. Not sure if any other manufacturers do reasonably-priced rat people or ogres. For tolkien-style orcs, wargames factory has a cheap box in their myth n legends line.

I'm using GW for the majority of my undead, but i have an order of mantic stuff that should arrive Friday/Monday that i'm looking forward to inspecting.
I will let you know how they look.

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TheGambler#11893
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Since I am looking at starting my rank and file collection from scratch, I am looking at Mantic to provide the majority of the rank and file as they are cheap first hand minis.....If i could afford GW, I would get them.

Then adding more elaborate and expensive models for characters and monsters......

Is there a lizardmen KoW army?

Just having a thought, for kingdom of men, there are plenty of plastic dark ages/war of the roses minis out there. Can they be used instead of the GW "fantasy"-style humans?

@swirly Yes, there's a list in development already.

@itchmonkey I'm not in a position to jump on the bandwagon just yet, but I have been eyeing off Perry Miniatures plastic 1450-1500 European and War of the Roses ranges as a way of building an army for Kingdoms of Men. 2 boxes of Mercenary Infantry, 1 of English Infantry, 1 of Foot Knights, 2 of Heavy Cavalry and 1 of Light Cavalry and you're done. With the option of an Italian Caroccio for wizards and war altar. Works out at £140 for about 160 infantry and 36 cavalry. The 28mm scale would look a little small next to GW but I'm okay with that.

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WMH: Khador and Circle; Malifaux: Gremlins, Outcasts, Arcanists and Neverborn; X-Wing: Rebels; DWars: Prussians; Blood Bowl: Lots Dreadball: Humans; W40K: Space Marines; Epic: Orks and Imperial Guard; Warhammer: Empire

@Obeisance, Mantic is your best bet price wise for Undead, Abyssals and Ogres. I don't know of any cheap skaven models. The cheapest way to go is to get hold of an Army deal box from the Mantic website (the bigger the box cheaper it is per mini). The biggest Mantic Undead Army box has almost 180 minis in it for 100 quid plus postage. So if you get hold of this you will have an instant army of over 2000pts that can be tailored to suit your purposes with other additions over time. That comes out to just over 1 AUD per mini, including Cavalry and the few white metal minis included (you can't even buy second hand plastic minis for that price at retail any more). The smaller Undead Army box has 110 minis in it which is the perfect add-on to get you close to 3000pts and provide lots of flexibility in list building. Abyssal Dwarves and Ogres also have Army deal boxes but these are smaller than the Undead Army boxes mainly because they contain a good selection of Large Infantry (Abyssal Dwarves Mega Army box which will come in at about AUD 2.50 per mini) or are all Large Infantry (Ogres Army box which will come it at about AUD 5 per mini).

As WanderingFool says the Mantic minis are noticeably smaller than the WHFB range, particularly the cavalry and Ogres. However the LoTR/Hobbit minis are quite close in scale to Mantic minis (some of the LoTR/Hobbit metals are slightly larger but most of the plastics fit in well scale wise).

I use a few second-hand WHFB Ogres as 2-handed weapon guys for my Ogre Army; their larger size compared to the Mantic Ogres makes them look like a better choice for swinging an over-sized claymore.

@Itchmonkey, yeah everything Perry is great! They scale well WRT Mantic minis, are of good quality and the box-sets you mention include lots of weapons options. I have used several boxes of Perry European Mercenaries as pikemen. The Deus Vult range (Firegorge Games) are also really awesome value and look lovely (Templar/Teutonic Knights on foot and mounted, Mounted and Foot Sergeants, as well as Saracens on foot and mounted; all of these represent really good choices for Kingdoms of Man Armies and are reasonably priced). Other people I know use Pike and Shotte or Hail Caesar minis (Warlord) and these look good too. I've also seen 28mm Vikings and Saxons in use (Saga I think) and 28mm Samurai which all look very cool. For Kingdoms of Man War Machines some unbelievably cheap options can be got from Warbases (these are made of press-cut MDF - a Ballista for example will set you back a massive 1.20 quid or only 2.50 AUD! So you can get a whole battery of these things for under 20 bucks Aussie).

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We've learnt from history that we don't learn from history.

Wargames Factory do some plastic skeletons aswell. Raging Heroes just did a kickstarter that included 'lust elves' that are basically daemonettes.

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When God gives you lemons... you find a new God.

A man's greatest work is to break his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all the things that have been theirs, to hear the weeping of those who cherished them.

My struggle is I love the GW Dwarf specialist troop models (hammerers, longbeards, etc) and don't particularly like the Mantic Dwarves (and the size differential between GW and Mantic means I can't put the GW in the front ranks and pad out the rest of the unit with Mantic)... but rebel at paying GW prices for a game that I am not particularly likely to play much... or at all for a while.

Avatars of war are even more expensive than GW (I know, that is shocking)... The life of a Dwarf general is sad. So sad.

So to hijack slightly, any suggestions for cool looking dwarf alternative manufacturers also appreciated.

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"There are some people who think less is more. Warhammer, conversely, believes that more is always more."

"Cry "Havoc!!", and let slip the dogs of war" Julius Caesar; Act III, Scene I

Avatars of war regiments for the dwarves Jason. So good. Agree with others abyssal and particularly undead are great in the mantic range.

I mostly like the idea of mantic/GW for rank and file plebs. Then for special stuff you can go hunting. I used raging heros, gamezone, avatars of war. Was pretty fun. Now i have 3000 pts for about 300 bucks with a fair amount of second hand rank and file.

On this note actually. CMON has a 40% off sale for quite a few lines. Managed to nab some sweet heros for cheap.

I hear your pain... if anyone made good, affordable rank and file dwarfs I'd be all over it. As it stands, you either have good and expensive (and a certain style) or affordable and models-only-a-mother-would-love. Avatars of War are cool, but they aren't particularly cheap, and the models can be a nightmare to assemble.

The sad reality of it is that there aren't really any good alternatives to GW, Mantic or Wargames Factory for plastic fantasy models. The more you look into it the more you realise why GW think they're justified selling their stuff at the prices they do--they aren't really competing with anyone directly for fantasy models of the quality they produce. And the fact even GW can't seem to make money from them shows there aren't a lot of people that are likely to try to compete.

As other people have mentioned, the best alternative for cheap plastic models are historicals, because they have a much wider market than GW. Fireforge, Conquest, Victrix, Gripping Beast and Perry make great medieval/Roman/Japanese stuff, though the quality varies from brilliant to average.

There are heaps more metal models out there, but their price is ususally worse than GW, especially if you're planning to make units of ranked models. These are great for characters though.

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Also known as Peter
Bloggin' - my record of painting and gaming in all sorts of 28mm games

I'll be using an approximate 40% Citadel, 60% Mantic for my undead army, only because I had a budding Vampire Counts army which I've finished off with some Mantic-specific models (mummies and werewolves, and much cheaper rank and file). My zombie unit will be the only unit to contain mix of both. Whilst there is the variance in style / size of the models, its not an issue for me.

With regards what was mentioned earlier about Samurai - if these are good and accepted as Kingdoms of Men then I'll look into that. I have a few samurai unit boxes unassembled that I bought because they looked nice but didn't have any use for them.

No problem at all with this. Samurai make an excellent themed choice for Kingdoms of Men. I think Perry also have some oriental war engines and crew that might work in well with Samurai infantry as line units.

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We've learnt from history that we don't learn from history.