Thursday, 26 February 2026

From JamieM - Northern Alliance for Kings of War (95 points)

This weeks submission is for some troops and a character for my steadily growing Northern Alliance army for Kings of War. Whilst spring is tentatively raising its head early in the UK (after approximately 93 days of rain), it is still winter and so a good time to paint snowy figures.


This first set are Pack Hunters. Much like my previous entry, these are humans living in the frozen North and they carry bows to hunt. In packs, one assumes.


I went for bone bows for the most part because there is a lot of brown on their furs and so it’s a nice spot colour.


I went for red for the arrow feather as it seemed like it would pop and perhaps there’s something to having feathers the colour of blood?


This forms a regiment for Kings of war and are a unit of troops allowing fun stuff to also be taken. Like this fella.


A chimera with a rider. I swapped the axe they carried for a spear - I mean, how on earth are you going to get close enough to hit someone with an axe when you’re on top of this thing?!?!?


From the back you can see it’s a delightful mix of creatures. And there are two things that struck me as especially brilliant about this model. The first is that one of the heads is a goat. Not a bird of prey or wolf or anything, a goat. I should imagine it’s quite a handy head to have whilst not eating your enemies in battle as it increases the range of food the beast can eat a hundredfold!


The second thing is the entirely practical saddle harness. It was only whilst painting this model that I realised that as the sculptors of mythical beast riders don’t have reality to stymie them, they can sculpt entirely inadequate harnesses and nobody can tell them they’re wrong. Not so the sculptor of this bad boy - this is the kind of harness I’d want if I were to ride a three headed mythical creature into battle! There’s no way those straps are coming loose.


Photo of them together. For points I was going to go with 15x5 for the 28mm pack hunters and claim 20 points for a vehicle for the chimera and rider?

***

Brilliant work Jamie! While I maintain a sort of vestigial addiction to the classic Warhammer style "one-base-per-model", I think "Kings of War" is tremendous and the multi-based figures make a whole ton of sense. Your archers highlight all of the charm one imagines that comes with life in the high arctic - colourful furs, lovely bows etc. Bone-coloured bows make sense, as one imagines bone might be the primary material available to them to construct the bows in the first place! 

But the Chimera steals the show! What a lovely beastie - and the commentary about both the goat-head and the totally safe harness is spot-on. I'm sure he is just lovely to ride, be that into battle, or into town for a quick latte at the cafe. "Can I pet the goat?" "No, dear..."

Your scoring proposal finds merit with me - 95 points for you!

GregB

8 comments:

  1. Great work and a wonderful monstrous beast.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice painting on the hunters but the impressive Chimera is my favorite.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lovely looking archers and a totally awesome war beast!
    Best Iain

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very nice. The archers look very cold and that is one nasty beast.

    ReplyDelete