Wrath of Kings: Teknes Patrol Force

I decided to take a break from working on my Antares miniatures and dug out my Wrath of Kings stuff.  This is a project that I'd started ages ago but it had just ground to a halt until recently in part because of the extra step to build base inserts to mount the minis.  This isn't difficult but is a little time consuming and messy but that said I now have two playable forces for a patrol game!  Huzzah!

Currently I own starters for four of the five factions in the game. For now I'm focusing on assembling my Goritisi and Teknes of which we are going to look at Teknes first.  Back when this game was first Kickstarted, I seriously considered jumping into it.  Most of the factions had something that caught my eye but I must admit that Teknes was probably my least favorite.  With their giant pig men and bizarre looking gnomish troops they just didn't do much for me.  When I decided to start getting more of the minis for the game they were the cheapest of the figures floating around on Amazon and since I wasn't looking to sink a ton of money into the game they fit the bill.

As I worked on assembling them and reading more of their fluff I actually found them pretty interesting.  Mechanically Teknes is supposed to have the most well rounded troops so in the end it just made sense to pick some up.  For my Teknes patrol force, I decided to field six union workers, four linemen backed up by one warsmith, a zaalak, and a galvanic defender led by a union boss and a lineman controller.  Which just leaves the question, "What the heck does all that mean?"

The defender linemen are the stock troops of the Teknes army and are pretty durable.  Equipped with greatswords, they have a chance to cleave through their enemy's defenses, they can rescue friendly models that are engage by swapping places with them, and they have a chance to launch a vicious counterattack.  They are lead by a lineman controller who has similar abilities but except he carries a massive hammer that knocks back the target of his attack.

Supporting the linemen is a warsmith, a trooper capable of smashing through her targets defenses but she can also offer some protection to friendly models or assist them to let them land a critical blow.

The other soldiers in the forces are the pig like union workers.  While these troops are easier to wound than the linemen, the workers can take more damage and become even more dangerous once they have been injured.  Driving them on with his whip and tongs is the union boss.  He make friendly models more effective in combat and he can also take his lash to the workers, damaging them while driving them into their pain fueled rage.

The last two choices for the army are the magical galvanic defender and the abomination known as the zaalak.  The defender is a mounted magic user who helps protect friendly troops while giving a measure of magical support.  He is also fairly durable and fast moving so he should be able to move to support the troops that need it most.  While the defender is fast, the zaalak is even more nimble with a higher move and the ability to ignore rough terrain.  It is more resilient that others in the list but once it is wounded it can potentially lash out one last time at all nearby enemies before it dies.

All but one of these are standard troops, leaders, and specialists right out of the Teknes army box.  This is a good force to start with but there is actually more in the army box; another six union workers, eight more linemen, another union boss and another lineman controller.  As you can see these army boxes actually come packed with a lot of figures though you do need to supplement your leader and specialist options for the larger games.  Even so its great to get a solid force just to start with.  As you might have noticed, the warsmith is one figure from this list which isn't from the starter; she is actually from a unit box that contains a total of eight warsmiths and one warsmith captain.  This is a little surprising since they overall seem to be more of a supporting unit so I would have expected them to be a specialist but I won't argue with CMON's decision to give me more for less.

It will be interesting to get these minis to the table.  The core rules of the game seem straightforward enough with the individual unit types have rules that tweak these in one way or another, kind of like a CCG with minis.  I can see how this would create a lot of strange and unique interactions that might be broken but the figures from the initial release have been errata'd to take care of these issues so I'm trying to focus on rounding out my troops with those minis.  The warsmiths are from the newer releases so they might be off but they don't seem to overpowered so I think they'll work well enough.

Next we'll take a look at the patrol force for Goritsi but that will come in my next post. In the meantime I'm also going to try to push these troops around the table as well so I can post some sort of a battle report after that.  Wish me luck!