The More Unusual Elements of the Salamander army

Following on from the rank and file, I’ve now finished a bunch of the more unusual units for the salamanders army for Kings of War. Once again, I’ve multibased to make them easy to set up and use. Thank goodness for the MDF sellers on eBay who helpfully sell most base sizes that I needed.

This unit are fire elementals. The salamander army seems synonymous with fire and the units completed here are mostly fire and flame related.

These chaps were pretty quick to paint up as I decided to be pretty abstract with the flames and use a mix of red, orange and yellow and some black to show soot and smoke. As larger based (40mm square) model, there are three of these to a regiment.

Next up are the scorch wings, which appear to be animated rocks in the shape of birds who exude flames!

Don’t ask how they fly, I guess it’s magic.

Now for the biggest flame based model in the army - the phoenix!

This is an absolutely beautiful model and, along with the other models above, Mantic had done a fantastic job on the resin figures for this army. It’s a bit of a beast, that’s a normal 28mm model in the last photo.

It’s quite the chunk of resin and was great fun to paint.

This next unit consists of Tyrants. They’re bigger lizard creatures and also need three to a base for a regiment and 6 for a horde….. but I’ll admit to have cheated and broken the 75% rule for this lot. I’ve put two one one base and one on another to make a horde sized base.

They’re lovely resin figures once again and I was tempted to get more, but I decided to cheat as I want to get the army done and I wasn’t filled with excitement about painting another set of them. I may come back and add to the unit later, but for now they’ll certainly do.

I then moved onto the characters for the army. These two are a mage priest (who throws fireballs that get more potent if he’s standing by the flame elements of the army) and a war leader who can be one of a couple of options.

Really pleased with how these have gone so far and I just need to stay focussed and finish the last few units and I’ll have a 2,000 point army all painted and ready to play.

Rank and File for the Salamanders Kings of War army

I tend to find that I can sometimes be laser focussed when hobbying and sometimes flit around doing lots of projects or units without finishing anything! It was very much like that with the salamanders as I got my colour scheme for the main units and so was able to smash out a lot of salamanders in pretty good time….. but then I left the basing and a few models to finish each unit and so had virtually the whole army on the go at the same time!

Whilst this can be frustrating (even for me as I do it!) and messy (with lots of half finished things laying around the hobby room) the benefit of this approach is that every now and again lots of things get finished at the same time. This happened here and so I herewith present, the rank and file salamanders.

This unit counts as a regiment in game and I armed with swords and shields. I decided to multi-base them as it means I can be set up for a game very quickly. Whilst it means that I can’t use the figures in other games, I think the trade off is well worth it as I’d rather use figures properly in one game than have them more flexible for other games that I’ll likely never play in reality.

In Kings of War, you’re encouraged to use 20 individual figures in a regiment, but they suggest a minimum of 75% of that where possible as it looks good. These salamander figures are pretty bulky and so I went with 15 and as you’ll see from this picture of the next unit, it’s not like I had much spare space!

This next unit is the same as the first, but is armed with clubs and axes. The figures were all stuck together already when I picked them up, but I was fortunate as I had enough of each armament to split them like this.

Broadly speaking, Kings of War allows you to use Troops (10 infantry), regiments (20 infantry) or hordes (40 infantry) with each base size being double the previous one. I discovered that I can put these two regiments together to make a horde, but only one way around - sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good as I didn’t plan this whilst putting them on their bases!

The last main unit is armed with double handed weapons. These lads trade away some armour for additional hitting power.

The final unit that I completed is the ceremonial guard. These are elite warriors armed with spears, which are good against cavalry. I’ll admit to having painted them because they were in the bundle army that I bought rather than any tactical acumen, but they do look cool. They use the same base bodies as the main units, but have resin upgrades for arms and heads.

Again I went for a lighter model count than the maximum but there was again very little space left on the base!

Next up is the more unusual units for the army and to see if I can keep my focus enough to get this army done in its entirety before I start working on a different project……