A Kingdom of Men on the Cheap

One of the biggest things that puts people of wargaming is the cost. But it doesn’t have to be like that. I’m here today to show you how you can build a 1500 point Kingdoms of Men army for Kings of War for £101 that is adaptable and completely playable, with the extra option of painting it up. With no official models for this army, it can be daunting for a new player to approach this faction, especially if they have little experience of the hobby as a whole. Below is the army list I will be working on. I believe it is reasonably well balanced for the tabletop and you should have no problem in using it yourself, even if you are a newcomer to the game.

Unit Name	Number	Point Cost	Upgrades
Heavy Pike Block	20 (regiment)	165	N/a
Heavy Pike Block	20 (regiment)	165	N/a
Beserkers	20 (regiment)	145	Blade of Slashing
Beserkers	20 (regiment)	155	Pipes of Terror
Arquebusiers	10 (troop)	100	N/a
Arquebusiers	10 (troop)	100	N/a
Arquebusiers	10 (troop)	100	N/a
Arquebusiers	10 (troop)	100	N/a
Knights	10 (regiment	195	N/a
Cannon	1 (warmachine)	85	N/a
General on Winged Beast	1 (hero)	190	N/a

Assembly

As you can see, it is quite an infantry heavy army and should give you plenty of hours of fun painting and collecting before you even get to the tabletop. Below is a list of different kits and suppliers, with instructions on how to assemble them to get a table-ready Kings of War force.

1. For the Heavy Pike Blocks and the Arquebusiers there is a wealth of available historical kits. What I would recommend is Warlord Games’ Pike and Shotte products, more specifically their ‘Imperialist Infantry Boxed Set’. This wonderful kit comes with 43 miniatures, 24 of which are men armed with muskets. The remaining are officer models and pikemen. You should purchase this kit twice, as then you will have enough models to build both Heavy Pike Blocks and all four Arquebusiers. Separate the models out into appropriate piles, ten musketmen per troop of unit of Arquebusiers and 19 pikemen and officers for Heavy Pike Block. You will be one model short for each unit of Heavy Pike, so you should substitute this man down with one of your spare musketmen. It would even be hard to convert the musketman in one carrying a spear, though this isn’t necessary. What is important is that you have six units; four Arqubusier troops and two regiments Heavy Pike.

The ‘Imperialist Infantry Boxed Set’ retails at £22.50 at the time of writing and a link is available here:

http://store.warlordgames.com/collections/pike-shotte/products/thirty-years-war-imperialist-regiment

2. For the Beserkers I’d recommend Gripping Beast’s plastic ‘Viking Hirdmen’. You get 44 in a box, and you should only need one box for two 20 man regiments. If you wanted something slightly less representative, but more adaptable in terms of its usage, you could substitute the ‘Viking Hirdmen’ kit for Gripping Beast’s ‘Dark Age Warriors’ kit. This kit comes with 40 miniatures of the shield bearing warrior variety. While these models don’t fit the idea of angry grizzled Beserkers as well as the Hirdmen do, they can be reused as regiments of Shield Wall when you decide to start editing my list and making your own.

Both the ‘Viking Hirdmen’ and the ‘Dark Age Warriors’ kits retail at £22 at the time of writing and a link to both is available here:

http://www.grippingbeast.co.uk/GBP01_Plastic_Viking_Hirdmen–product–2789.html

http://www.grippingbeast.co.uk/GBP03_Dark_Age_Warriors–product–3276.html

3. For the Knights and the Cannon, you’re going to want to swing by Perry Miniatures site. You’ll want to pick up a box of ‘Mounted Men-at-Arms, 1450-1500’ for the knights and a ‘Demi-Culverin (9 pounder gun) plus crew firing’ for the cannon. You get 12 Men-at-Arms in the box, which is two more than what you need. You should however, take care to look after one of the spare riders you have, we’ll use him later.

The ‘Mounted Men-at-Arms’ costs £20 and the ‘Demi-Culverin’ costs £9 at the time of writing and a link to both is available here:

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_62&products_id=2713&osCsid=5o35v845ckl7vnh3bp9no952o1

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=23_40_45&products_id=1852&osCsid=5o35v845ckl7vnh3bp9no952o1

4. Finally we come onto the General on Winged Beast. I decided that the best kind of winged beast would be a griffon. First you will want to buy a Griffon from Reaper Miniatures’ Bones series. These cost $7.99 (about £5.5) direct from Reaper themselves, though to avoid high postage it might be easier to buy from somewhere local or take a look on eBay. You will need an appropriately sized base for this beasty and making one of this size is not hard at all.  It will need to be 50mm by 50mm and I recommend using the plastic from a flat ice-cream tub lid or thick card. You should then use glue to attach one of the spare riders from the Perry Miniatures ‘Man-at-Arms’ kit for your general and that should finish off your army nicely.

Here is a link to the Reaper Miniatures Bones ‘Griffon’:

https://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/griffon/latest/77157

Painting

To keep costs and time down, you should seek to keep your paint scheme as simple as possible. While I cannot foresee every situation that might arise while painting, after all, variation and choice are the spice of this hobby, I can recommend a few tips and paints. I find that Warlord Games’ ‘Napoleonic Russian Paint Set’ to be quite useful. The set contains a good variety of colours and shades that you will need. In addition to this you may wish to make your own scheme with colours that are not available in that paint set. If you do want to do this, I’d recommend picking two colours; one for the primary uniform colour and one for the trim. In addition to this you will want to buy a black primer, to spray paint your models before you paint them. A primer and the starter will cost you £28.5 in total and you’ll also want a ‘character brush’. I’d like to take this time to stress that painting is absolutely not a necessity and you shouldn’t make it a priority if you just want to game. After all, this is a hobby, not a job, paint them at your own pace.

The starter set costs £20, the primer costs £28.50 and the brush costs £3.75 at the time of writing, here are links to the products:

http://store.warlordgames.com/collections/starter-paint-sets/products/napoleonic-russian-paint-set

http://store.warlordgames.com/collections/individual-paints/products/matt-black-base-primer-spray

http://store.warlordgames.com/collections/paint-brushes/products/character-brush

Well if you have done all this and are still struggling to decide what else to do with your army the options are truly limitless. You might decide to take a wizard to supplement your force, or diversify even further, adding allies. What allies work well with this force you ask? Well any can justifiably work within the rules seen as Kingdoms of Men are a neutral faction. Adding some Orc or Ogre Mercenaries can be fun I’ve found and Mantic themselves provide excellent models in that department. You might decide that the men of your force are evil, and thus as a wizard with a troupe of Lower Abyssals that he’s summoned from the Forces of the Abyss list. What you need to remember is that you are only limited by your imagination and what you can come up with.

Well that is that! One of the cheapest large armies I’ve ever built, drop a comment below and let me know what you think!