The lurkers slipped from the water with beguiling grace. Despite the weight of their quarry, they appeared unencumbered as they hauled the ratkin from the freezing pool and unceremoniously dumped the creature to the floor.  The rat-thing stank of the world above, despite its journey through the flooded caves, and the bedraggled beast shivered and whimpered on the slick stone floor at the feet of its captors.

Anthedon stared at the ratkin with disgust. Tearing her gaze away she caught the eye of the larger of the two lurkers, Melite. Despite the ratkin’s demeanour, she didn’t trust it as far as she could drag it along the sea bed and so she spoke to her warrior in the battle-tongue – a rapid sign-language accompanied by low vocalisations that carried exceptionally well under water.

Melite blinked her only good eye and replied. “Only survivor. Has information. More coming.”

Anthedon gestured with an almost imperceptible twitch of her fingers and the ratkin was dragged off into the dismal tunnels. It screamed as its knees tore across the limpets clinging steadfastly to the glistening rock and its howls of pain echoed round the walls. Anthedon turned away, the creature would soon reveal all. In the meantime her scouts would bring what news they could to allow her time to set her trap for the army marching towards them – and confirm if the rat-thing told the truth. She nodded to the pair of Riverguard in the shadows. They peeled away from the darkness and dived almost silently into the inky blackness of the pool.

As the ripples lapped gently against the rock at her feet, Anthedon arched her back and flexed her fingers. She spun on her heel and followed the despairing wails into the darkness.

Vanguard is upon us and all the excitement in the office has actually persuaded me to do some modelling… and maybe even some painting! With most people’s attention firmly captivated by the shiny new warbands and models funded by the Kickstarter. I thought one of the multitude of fabulous factions the Kings of War world offers deserved their time in the sun (or water as it turned out).

The Trident Realm offers a rather fantastic array of aquatic and amphibian warband options and some intriguing narrative opportunities. From the well-disciplined backbone of the Neritican army, the Naiaids, to the rather cool Riverguard (my personal favourites) and enigmatic Thuul, the faction provides a wonderful potential mix of colours and styles, resulting in something that can look strikingly different on the tabletop to any other faction.

I intend to build enough models to give me a good pool (“sea” what I did there?) of warriors to choose from. I’m not one for having a set list that I play every game and like to change my list every game for fun. That might be why I never win anything, but I’ll keep telling myself it’s just the dice.

To start with I’ve gone with 10 models from the basic list in the rulebook. I’ve gone for a balanced force that includes some of everything, so that I can be flexible for whatever scenario is played. Of course, when the full warband comes out I’ll most likely get over excited and buy enough for a whole army but that’s part of the fun isn’t it?

Even the basic warband lists, when combined with the equipment you can customise your models with and the faction and advanced spells, offer a great range of warband and collecting options. As you can see from the following list, I’ve used it to cover all the bases – range, manoeuvrability, magic and a large model for some of the tougher encounters:

My first adjustment once I’ve played some games will be to try without the Water Elemental. Freeing up those points I would probably add in a lurker and then kit out the rest of the crew with more equipment to support them where I felt they needed it after a couple of games. Lurkers are support models and add a very handy extra red power dice to the pool.

Here’s the warband so far, led by Anthedon, my Centurion (to the left of the elemental), in all their grey undercoated glory. The elemental has a little green stuff around the bottom to add extra waves to the base. All the bases have small slate stones and sand on them with small patches left empty where water-effects will be placed to look like puddles. Of course, if I do add that lurker, she already has a name – Melite – and I’ll have to model her with her missing eye and scar. I might even tell the story of how that happened…

The post My Warband, My Story: Matt’s Trident Realm appeared first on Mantic Blog.