 What's up Kings of War fans? Kyle from Mantik here to talk about the new and exciting Nightstalkers changes that are coming in the pipeline later on this month. So we've seen that we've got some brand new hard plastic reapers and butchers. They're getting ready to be released later in May. With that we've got some brand new units and there are some out of cycle new unit releases that are happening. Kings of War has a huge year plan. We've got a tremendous amount of new hard plastics that are coming all throughout the year ending with Twilight Ken and the Clash of Kings book later in the fall. So we've got a lot to talk about how we're going to implement these new units and rules as well as give you a preview on how these new units are going to work on the table. One of the goals at Mantik currently is to phase out the old PVC that we saw released with things like Vanguard. So for the Nightstalkers that meant that units like the butchers and reapers in particular some of the most popular and powerful units in the lists could be made in hard plastic. We've got a great new casting facility that executes with tremendous details. We want to make sure that we put some wonderful touches onto these new models and then make them available so that everyone can buy them in bulk because previously butchers and reapers were much harder to get. In addition to that when you make a new hard plastic frame you have the ability to design new units. You can do variations on the existing unit and kind of fill it out and make it more appealing. So what we'll talk about first is essentially how you see the frames, how they come and what to expect when you're building them. One of the things that our fans have been asking for are some high quality build instructions and we've got those covered for you now. So with the two variations on both the butcher and the reaper kit, there are different ways that you can build these into two separate units. The butchers now come with an option that it's a ranged option called the ravagers and the reapers now come with an alternate option called the tormentors. So understanding which is which on the frame and how to build them becomes very important. So our team has put together a wonderful guide that will be available for everyone to see when you're building these units exactly how you can put them together and make the correct ones. Another thing that you might notice is that on these new hard plastic frames like the reapers, there are only a certain number of models that come on the frame. We really want to lean into something that makes Kings of War unique and that's multi basing. So we know that people love to make these wonderful dioramas and that sort of thing and the individual basing is sort of a thing of the past. It lets Kings of War stand out and be unique. So why don't we sell to that and actually embrace it? And so we can give you some different kits that have a lot more posibility, a lot more motion movement and fluid sort of posing that goes into everything. So this was a great opportunity to put this into play right off the bat. We've seen with the ambush box sets that they come with MDF bases instead of the individual bases. And this is the next step in that iteration with all the wonderful changing coming for Kings of War later throughout this year. We wanted to start with Nightstalkers which is a premier mantic IP faction and get going from there. So you'll notice with the Reapers they essentially are going to be able to fit about eight on the base to give you a full unit profile. And now there's some even decorative bits like on the butcher kit that allow you to lean into that multi basing and create some great dynamic elements that you can put into the basing and make a unit that's uniquely yours. Try not to be too concerned with making the base a full model count. Preferred model count is generally what you want to go for but realistically just make that base look full put lots of cool elements on it and posing and I think you your opponents and even mantic will love what you've done. Share it with us using the hashtag my mantic. There's been a lot of speculation out there about what sort of changes the Nightstalkers are seeing and obviously this is an out of cycle change. So the list is receiving a number of changes outside of the Clash of Kings update. Now that we have the companion and it can be a living updated rule book that gives everyone access for free immediately at launch. It allows us to create some really interesting changes throughout the life cycle of product development. We don't have to wait to release products at a certain point in time to the book and it's all updated immediately. One of the changes that a lot of you keen eyed shoppers have noticed is that the specters are no longer labeled as specters. This is the Scarecrow multi kit that was developed years ago. But at this point we've repurposed the unit that was specters into the doppelganger. So these are now the official doppelganger models. Specters have been removed from the list entirely. We know that that might upset some people. But hey, you've still got a unit to use those models for and we've replaced that with a new ranged option that the specters did and never could quite get right. So with the removal of specters you obviously want to give Nightstalker players the option to have some sort of ranged attacks. Butchers became the perfect dual kit for this. The standard butchered unit is going to stay exactly the same. You know what? You love it. It works really well. It's an effective unlocking unit that is fantastic. The alternate to that is the ravagers. These guys have giant cannons on their arm and they're going to function very similar to what an ogre boomer does, except obviously with Nightstalkers they've got the stealthy rule built into them. So that makes an extra dynamic of play that makes things really interesting. So what about the reapers? Obviously reapers are one of the nastiest hard hitting high attack units that are in the game. And when you look at creating an alternate build for them, there's a lot options of what could come into play. But what we really liked and what we kept calling them within the studio were leapers. This thought of a unit that would jump over other units to get into combat, very similar to jumping frogs that we see in other army lists, that sort of thing. So we started work on the rules and development of them. And we came to this place where we would call them tormentors. And they were these really twisted units that would be able to draw line of sight as if they were one height higher than they actually are. So that means as a height two unit, they technically can draw line of sight for their charges as height three, they've got flies so they can jump over intervening units. This means that this unit is going to be really kind of surprising and nasty. You can jump into multi charges really easily with them and find a lot of really appealing places to dive into. They're going to have Strider. So just in case there's an issue getting into combat that makes it a lot easier to land. I think that this is going to be a devastating unit that a lot of people are going to want to take advantage of. And now that they're in hard plastic, they're readily available for you to pick up. Then you have some units in the list such as the Terror that had a good place. I think a lot of people liked it, but we wanted to sort of improve on that. Some of the feedback that we've gotten about the Terror in the past is that even with the low defense and great regeneration roles, it was a little tough to get the best use out of it. You have the Shadow Hulk that obviously is really good with Slayer to match up against larger targets. Let's make the Terror really good against infantry targets. So it now has a defense of four, its same Regen of four plus, and then a ridiculous Rampage 8. That means with a base of 12 attacks, Rampage 8, it's going to take you up to 20 attacks against infantry units. So it becomes this perfect tar pit and then absolute infantry muncher. We're putting this in the Mega Army, so obviously with the great stuff that goes along with it, this is a wonderful pickup and it's a great time to sort of synergize your lists ahead of launch. One of the design philosophies that we're trying to move towards Atmantic is if we don't produce models for the unit, we don't really want it in the list for the stuff that's RIPs at least. So it became important when looking at things like the planar apparition, what can we do with it? It was either design the Voidlecker or the planar apparition and we decided it would be really easy to take the planar apparition and roll it into the mind screech's profile. So the mind screech is going to work very similar to how it had in the past except now you're going to have the choice of taking either the mind screech profile or the planar apparition profile. So you can get that heel 7 and radiance of life or go heavy with a lightning bolt shooting. It helps balance things out too because obviously spamming mind screeches was kind of an issue in some different metas across the world. So this allows you to make a decision about which way you want to go. Do you want healing support or do you want offensive capabilities? There are a few other small point tweaks and different changes that are in the list and you might be asking how can I get access to these rules? Well on the Atmantic companion on the 19th we're going to release everything available to everyone even at the free level so you can see what's changing. Another important note is that obviously there are some pretty big tournaments coming up. The US Masters is right around the corner. What happens to these official changes that go into play before those events? We're going to have two different states of the rules available in the companion until at least after masters so that players can use the current rules if their TO doesn't want to support the new changes. These are obviously last minute for some tournaments and events. We don't want to disrupt exactly what's happening and make all your lists go away. So for now everyone's going to be able to see and use right away if your tournament organizer allows it the new rules but the old ones will still be there just in case. In addition to the Nightstalkers changes later on this year we're also going to take a look at the Northern Alliance and release some wonderful new hard plastic kits for them as well. Very similar to the Nightstalkers we're going to do the same sort of unit tweaks and sort of list look and get an idea of exactly how we want to go forward with the faction. We know that in some cases certain rules will be rebalanced, certain units will be tweaked, things will be rolled together. It's a lot of opportunity to sort of look at this and make an exciting big time release to get Northern Alliance and everyone's minds and know exactly what's happening with them. So some of the changes that we're really excited about is reworking some of the Frozen mechanics and how that works. There's a new rule that they'll have access to called Tundra Fighters where against units that have the Frozen rule they're going to get a vicious role applied to it as well and you might think to yourself well that doesn't really work how Frozen and shooting and all that kind of stuff works but all that's being reworked and there's a really interesting mechanic and how you can apply Frozen even in the movement phase for example that way it works for your advantage when you get to roll attacks in combat. So there's some really cool tweaks upgrades that are happening and those doors on ravens are fantastic. It's a great looking unit. I just saw them painted the other day and they are looking fantastic. Hopefully there's a preview of them and you can see them very soon. So stay tuned for that and then at the end of the year we've got the Twilight Kin that are coming and they are my bread and butter. I've been trying to stay as heavily involved in this process as possible with the design philosophy, the rules, everything that's going on and I think that there's going to be a huge monumental release. We can tell that the story is sort of going in a direction where the Night Stalkers are rising up. Maybe the Northern Alliance are going to be able to fight back against them and then at the end of the year let's see what the Twilight Kin do to bring it all together. Their rules will be available in the Clash of Kings book as well as all the factions getting rules and updates as usual. We're already hard at work in making all those things happen. So this is a wonderful and exciting year for Kings of War. We're spending more money on hard plastics than we ever have in history and company including those Kickstarter years. So it's a huge investment year in what we're doing with Kings of War. It's a great time to get your friends into it and dive on to the tabletop. Ambush rules and box sets are coming for all the things that I've mentioned. So easy way to jump and dive in and get started with Kings of War. So it's a fantastic time to be a Kings of War fan. Hope you guys are as excited as I am. There's wonderful things that are coming down the pipeline. So stay tuned. We've got lots more to show you throughout the year.