It's not unusual for me to start a new project with the terrain rather than the actual models for the game and so it has proved for this year's new system. I'd been keeping and eye on Mantic Game's Armada for a while as they expanded the navies available. As Mr T already has some Abyssal Dwarfs under way with enough for a Kings of War: Ambush army already painted I was waiting for them to be released on the high seas as well.
I've got the Abyssal Dwarfs on pre-order and they should be with me by the start of August. Armada pits the navies of the various factions against each other in a game based on the Black Seas rules by Warlord Games. Each side will probably field about six ships or other units a side in a standard game.
Whilst I wait for the models to be delivered I thought I would get some terrain under way to spice up the table with. As the rules are all on the Mantic Companion I was able to have a look through and pick up the relevant bits of terrain. I also noticed that some scenarios required some neutral ships so I'm looking to get those 3D printed off using the files from my subscription to the Mantic Vault.
The islands and forts are from an eBay store I found that was selling items mostly for use with Black Seas but they looked within the desired scale so I purchased a couple of kits. I also got some extra basing materials from Geek Gaming to put on the bases to liven them up. I haven't spent lots of time on these but the addition of some saw-dust flock and some sponge trees has I think worked well. I also opted to 'base' the islands on some plastic sheets to simulate the danger area around each of them. This is an area that small ships can ignore but larger ships could become beached on.
I made a few sand-banks as well by simply using some Vallejo sand texture paste on some plastic sheeting.
As Mantic are planning to release official Twilight Kin miniatures for KoW later this year I decided to go for a Twilight Kin navy for my force. The TK have become entangled with the Nightstalkers in the latest lore so their ships have a distinctly horror vibe. Once the KoW models are released I plan to paint up a KoW: Ambush force and we can do a combined KoW & Armada campaign.
The Twilight Kin navy is already released and I'm picking up the models tomorrow at Attack! in Devizes so those will be the first ships to be painted up (probably). I also already have some monsters for use in the scenarios that require them so those should be coming along as well at some point.
