My club got onto Mantic’s recent club promo and I was lucky enough to score myself a Kings of War: Vanguard Basilean warband. When I got it home I greedily tore open the box and started gluing figures together. Stopping only occasionally to giggle with glee. The box contains 15 miniatures and multiple copies of their accompanying game cards.
There are 5 Men-at-arms figures, which are one sprue worth of Mantic’s Basilean Men-at-arms Regiment 2019. These are a typical hard plastic multi part kit which allows some flexibility in poses. There is enough parts to make 5 spearmen, or 5 swordsmen (no stats in Vanguard), or 5 crossbowmen, or any combination. I assembled these with plastic glue.
The other 10 other figures are the same as those from the Basilean Mega Army 2019. They consists of 2 Gur Panthers, 2 Sisterhood infantry, 2 Paladin Defenders, 2 Sisterhood Scouts, and 2 Sergeants. These plastic resin figures come with enough parts to make 2 distinct figures in each category, plus some extra heads. I used super glue to put these together.
All the figures went together quite easily. The 10 unique figures have keyed parts which makes it very easy to line up hands and weapons. The Men-at-arms have more play in their poses so you can vary them as much as you like. Mold lines are very minor, and easy to live with if you’re so inclined. Of course, I proceeded to apply my usual butcher job in an effort to remove them entirely.
Joins between parts are well concealed under shoulder pads or robes, but there are some small gaps. The most obvious are the Sisterhood’s left arm/shoulder join, and the Gur Panther’s left side fore and hind legs. But these gaps can be easily filled with a bit of green stuff or baking soda and super glue.
Overall, I’m quite pleased with these miniatures (it’s hard to complain about free stuff!). They look great because the details are good, the molding is crisp, and the poses are dynamic. Possibly a little too dynamic for the Sisterhood who’s only contact with the base is the ball of one foot. But this can be easily remedied by pinning the other foot with a long piece of wire and either painting that exposed piece of wire black, or concealing most of it with a tall tuft of grass.
The only oddity in this whole thing is that the 20mm square bases provided in the set have circular cut outs in the middle. Since none of the figures in this set are molded with circular bases, I assume these are just the standard Kings of War bases that suit most of their other miniatures which are molded on circular bases. Since I already own a set of the Frostgrave Undead Encounters miniatures, I might even use these bases for some of them!
