Kings of War project!

[Estarriol]

Right! I've achieved almost nothing hobby-like for the last year, and it's time I got motivated. KoW is picking up in my club right now and I've decided to jump in.
Consulting the lead pile, I can make a start on one of three armies:

1) Undead
2) Elves
3) Kingdoms of Men

First step, pick one. Any preferences, forum?

[hjorhrafn]

Undead, for purely selfish reasons.  I'm thinking about heading down that rabbit hole myself, and it is always great to see what others work up. 

[manic _miner]

 I have some of the Undead sets which are nice.The Ogres keep drawing me in and i may well end-up getting some.

[PatrickWR]

Undead is my main army for Kings of War. As I'm sure you know, you're not limited by the models produced by Mantic (of which some are good and some are marginal). Personally my army is composed of a glorious combination of Citadel, Ral Partha, Mantic, D&D prepaints and many other smaller manufacturers.

[fairoaks024]

If it's Mantic models you'll be using, the undead are FAR better than any of their other ranges

Regards

Jim

[Timbor]

AFAIK, you can mix and match units in your army, so you could always make an elf/human force.  I think the rules say that mixing good/evil guys in the same army is frowned upon for fluff reasons though.

[carlos13th]

Undead models are the best mantic range.

[Wilkinson73]

Undead for sure. 

[Momotaro]

The hard plastic undead are the best models Mantic makes for Kings of War.  I have a soft spot for the orcs too.  EYou'll either love or hate the elves, and the dwarfs are quite chunky and cartoony.  Some of the metal characters are also very nice.

Their restic ("premium" or "sprueless" plastic) stuff - hmmm.  Mouldlines are a pain to remove and some of the sculpts are soft on detail and  downright ugly to some eyes.  For me, the undead horsemen are great (mouldlines are a pain) but the mummies, wraiths and wights are not so nice.

Their £100 armies are worth a look - there's a LOT there.

My solution was to mix and match with other manufacturers.  You'll have a lot of spare heads from the zombies and ghouls - perfect to put on Gripping Beast plastic bodies.  

GW Spirit Hosts can be assembled as nine separate figures rather than three combined models.  You'll need some gravestones to anchor them though.  Good alternative wraiths.

90s-style GW skeletons can still be picked up cheaply enough, including archers and cavalry.

Reaper have a lot of undead in their budget Bones range (watch out for bendy swords though) including some nice translucent figures (which stink to high heaven by the way).  There are more coming in Bones II which should see general release this summer, including the Barrow Knights which would make good wights if you don't like the Mantic ones.

A pack of Renedra plastic gravestones will help you pad out your units.  As it's the unit base size that matters and there is no casualty removal in the game, units of 13-15 rather than 20 may be more acceptable to KoW players (especially if you can make a great diorama for the unit!).

I don't need to tell you where to find vampire and evil necromancer models...

The undead can use zombies as "tarpits" to slow down the enemy while hard-hitters flank the attackers.  Werewolves (I have GW Dire Wolves, but the plastic Rackham Wolfen can be found cheap if you don't like Mantic's) and wraiths are good fast units for just that job.

One of the big buffs in the KoW undead army is the Dark Surge ability, which overcomes the movement limitations imposed by the "shambling" special rule and makes flying wraith units especially nasty.  You'll want several cheap necromancers to buff your key units if you're going to use this tactic.

[eilif]

Congrats on starting KoW. I really like it and the second edition promises to be quite good.  My first preference is Kingdoms of Men for the sheer variety of armies you could create. 

However, if you want to get things done quickly to play with your friends, Undead is probably the speediest.  It's alot of figs (though so is almost every KoW army except for Ogres) but no other army is as fast to paint. This is especially true if you're dipping (I brush-dip with minwax) and dipping looks especially good on skellies and zombies.

The ideas to use gravestones on bases group basing or basing on larger bases than recommended are great ways to put less figs on the same footprint since KoW has no casualty removal and all that matters is the overall size of the unit or movement tray.  I painted up 10 pavises, each on their own bases to add an extra rank to my archers.

[Momotaro]

Also... Mantic has said that they will release official KoW ratmen, lizardmen, etc. army lists so you can use existing armies from Other Games with just the names changed.  There are already unofficial lists for such armies floating around the web, of course.