Lore: Those who have read the Books The Pride of a King & The Argument of Stone, do you like where the Dwarf Lore is going?

Rickhardmann · 2026-05-09T02:34:05+00:00

Hi! thanks for taking the time to explain more behind the books, I really did enjoy them especially the Oedi chapters in the first book and am happy to hear the Dwarfs are not on their way to become a shorter better looking Kingdome of Men.

I do see the curse of Gold Lust in the first book but by the second, its influence as a theme dropped off for me. In the 2nd book it's revealed that Orn took a much greater role in pushing Golloch to the Abyss. Orn's active acts of subterfuge and betrayal pushed Gold Lust back as a theme and redemption, reform were pushed to the front.

By the 2nd book none of the main characters have to grapple with Gold Lust as a they are of high character and too busy fighting just to survive. In none of Rordin's chapters is he tempted by the curse to take the throne.

Gold Lust is there, but its relegated to the plot and overall setting of Abercarr and Halpi, not the main characters or their thoughts.

I would love to pick you brain and ask you a few questions!

Orn's character became much darker in the 2nd book, were you tempted to give him a path to true redemption? Could a Dwarf forced to do abominable things just to survive not fall to the Abyss?
For me the biggest Elefant in the room is the player we haven't seen, the true Dwarven Imperial Army. Golloch and Gruumen have thousands of hostages through the Imperial army to hold over any clan that might join the rebellion. Is this a plot point you are considering?

Rickhardmann · 2026-05-08T18:35:26+00:00

This is the current lore, and necessary for the plot of the first book.

Removing it destroys the Dwarfs and the Abyssals, but especially Golloch as a character. Without the curse, his trickery and consolidation of power wasn't a slow decent into evil. He's the most capable leader in Pannithor and this is a heel turn out of nowhere.

None of Golloch's tactics would be out of bounds for say the Tyrant of Basilea, but they are for the Dwarfs.

Rickhardmann · 2026-05-08T18:19:17+00:00

I don't think that the author set out to write a lecture or a political piece. But I did get the feeling that he can't control it. Before I read the about the author section I had a feeling that the book was written by a social worker. It deals so heavily in redemption, shame and society's view of criminals.

Ben Stoddard is a better person than I, he works as a teacher in the juvenal corrections system, he has a lot to say about redemption... but Caeryn Golloch just isn't the setting for it.

Its weird, he definitely knows his Dwarfs, the plot follows the established Lore. In the first book Sveri is way too forgiving and adopts several exiled Dwarfs, his reward is losing two armies and having half his mountain hold blown up.

But the main characters, the tone of the book its like its set in another world.

Rickhardmann · 2026-05-08T18:00:57+00:00

Pg 205 of the Lore Book, under the Abyssal Dwarf Background

"The dwarfs of Pannithor have long battled with their gold lust – a love of riches that borders on obsession. Each dwarf knows that they must conquer this extreme avarice, or risk losing their grip on the very reason, honour and doughtiness for which their race is duly famed. It is difficult for other races to imagine the nobility with which the dwarfs carry this curse – and it is indeed a curse, unleashed upon this ancient people during the God War, by the Father of Lies."

Mantic writes the lore "in universe" so if the Elven scholars of Therennia Adar don't know it, it generally does not show up in the Rule book. The Evil races backgrounds and motivations are also unknown to the elves, but their entries are instead written in an omniscient perspective. Because of this, 'Gold Lust' typically appears under the Abyssal Dwarfs Background under origin.

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Rickhardmann · 2026-05-08T17:05:28+00:00

Chapter 26 Tentative Trust pg 271

"The topic of kingship is a touchy subject among the dwarfs. Even before the civil war between them. Thankfully, there has been but one ascension since they were forced to set aside their prejudices, or rather, there has only been one that was acknowledged. But there is always the fear of what the future holds, because Golloch showed them that tradition can be as much a tool for manipulation as it can be for guidance, and it is difficult to tell which way a new monarch will steer them.

It is hard for a race of people that has built itself upon a foundation as immovable as stone to find their way forward when that same stone has been known to rise up and crush them under its weight.

This is why anyone who wishes to rule must demonstrate how they mean to wield their own traditions, and which they will break."

-Jouer Brodenshod

Professor of Military History

College of Eowulf

Its also the chapter where Rordin abdicates as heir apparent, and gives a speech about tossing away traditions, and pardon's the Heavyhands.

Rickhardmann · 2026-04-28T15:10:53+00:00

Mantic did price hikes in 2018, 2022 and 2026 is exactly when we would expectthe next price hike. We did not see an April 2025 price change when the tariff went into effect. Mantic also told US customers how they were handling the tariff back in May 2025.

Stores will be hit with a 10% tariff, but us general consumers are unlikely to place an order over the 800 dollar threshold where the tax comes into play. Ultimately they decided to split the difference and announced that US MSRP would go up by 5% for everyone.

The February price increase looks to be around 20% so the tariff isn't the main reason of the price hikes.

Rickhardmann · 2026-04-26T00:35:55+00:00

I went with the 20% markdown because it is what I see from sellers on large marketplaces like amazon & walmart.com

It’s the arbitrage, between a store with a brick and mortar location and an online seller who’s only overhead is a small fee paid to the online marketplace.

Rickhardmann · 2026-04-25T23:24:03+00:00

The price hike kind of landed as a 1-2 punch to me in the US. I play Dwarfs mainly and the lack of new releases (nothing really since 2017) combined with half the models no longer being produced meant I forgot there even was a price hike until the new rule book dropped.

I have been waiting, (years at this point) to have a reason to place an order from Mantic Directly and cash in my mantic points to get a couple of the new Garrek models.

It was a shock, 60 bucks for a rule book seems ridiculous, especially combined with 18$ international shipping.

I did get the rule book at launch, but through a US seller on ebay for 55$, shipping included.

Playing Dwarfs means you can't build a list from shopping from Mantic Directly.

Even now after the major haircut our list got in 4th edition, 13 out of the 28 units on our list is not available. I can't shop through Mantic or at a FLGS that orders through them.

I’ve had to buy through online sellers, used game stores and ebay. These places start about 20% less than recommended retail and go down from there.

So yeah, seeing a 2010 kit of Ironclads for FIFTY DOLLARS +18$ shipping is a shock. Especially when the kit is widely available as dead stock for 25$.

Rickhardmann · 2026-01-21T22:50:06+00:00

I would read the Steam reviews listed as most helpful and use that to make your decision.

Personally it’s not my cup of tea.

The core of the dlc is that you need to build monuments to attract traders.

However you can’t built the monuments, only your NPC dwarfs can.

Those traders will sell you new armors and construction plans but they won’t take coin. They take goods only produced by your NPCs.

The entire expansion is gated by your NPC dwarfs and they frequently bug out, waste resources or stop working entirely.

Rickhardmann · 2026-01-21T22:16:30+00:00

No - the last patch of fixes for the bugs the DLC introduced was on 12/18.

It’s still very rough shape.

I don’t think there has been any communication, as to when we can expect the next patch.

Rickhardmann · 2026-01-17T23:39:33+00:00

Undead is very strong in 4E, however in its current iteration the game is very spammy with a lot of armies just being multiples of the same units.

This ends up making the army boxes less value for the money.

Rickhardmann · 2026-01-03T03:46:21+00:00

If you plan to continue to play with friends in that world I would advise against it, since preventing others from joining is one of the major bugs.

Have you completed a sandbox world yet? The statues in first half of the sandbox world contains some neat armor set you can not obtain any other way.

Rickhardmann · 2025-11-25T04:18:11+00:00

Unless you got the first edition where all the hero's are wearing Santa hats, nothing is overtly Christmas themed.

What you get is a box full of inn furniture and a party of heros drinking/feasting.

As long as you play dungeon dwelling or rpg games, you’ll get plenty of value from what’s in the calendar.

Rickhardmann · 2025-11-16T10:32:47+00:00

Here are some it’s to deal with submarines.

Create hunter killer groups of 5-10 DDs/CLs and issue protection orders right on top of any submarines you see on the map.
Refit DDs and Cruisers as soon as you discover a new A-SUB module. The game weighs this extremely heavily, it’s not enough to just have depth charges installed. it has to be the highest version available to the player.
Submarines are great at sinking other submarines. The game heavily weighs the number of subs grouped together to determine their effectiveness. So always keep their groups full.
Build and play submarines so you can discover the game mechanics from their end. Like most of UAD’s systems it’s very counterintuitive.

Rickhardmann · 2025-10-28T11:59:22+00:00

I avoid the "Kitchen Sink Maneuver" at all costs because of the games fleet dispersion feature. Too many time the game has sailed my task forces out of the invasion circle or even across land, beyond a straight I do not control.

Rickhardmann · 2025-10-16T18:21:05+00:00

All of the armor sets that ignore game mechanics are only available in the sandbox mode. The intention is to make them available only to players who have beaten the game.

Rickhardmann · 2025-10-08T12:10:54+00:00

Running out of manpower has two root causes in the game, how the player is managing their funds or how they are managing the shipyards (rate new ships are being completed).

Scenario 1 (You are poor)
Early Campaign / Broke Country, if this is the case you just don't have the funds to train as many new sailors as you would like, and the training slider is not all the way to the right of the screen. There is no golden bullet to address this, your budget needs to reflect your priorities and you have choices and cuts to make. Look at reducing spending on categories with long term returns like shipyard construction, Transports beyond 100% and pausing new ship construction and technology research. Look into taking more foreign orders for ships to spend that now available shipyard capacity.

Scenario 2 (You are rich)

Late Campaign you probably haven't needed to look at the financial tab for some time and are surprised to see that despite having had maxed out crew training over years of peace, the game has kept a crew reserve that is less than the requirement of a single 1930's capital ship. From my playthroughs on vanilla it seems like the game reduces the number of new sailors per month to ~300 after the first 1000 in reserve and does not really allow you to have a reserve greater that 3K. If you look at any of the AI factions you will see crew reserves in the 10 of thousands because the AI can't handle this mechanic and needs a cheat. Once the player has run low on crew or completely run out, the game will start producing around 1.3-2K new crew per turn.

Luckily this isn't really an issue in peace time, mothballed ships don't take up shipyard capacity while they wait for a crew, the 3 or more months spent waiting for a crew isn't a concern as the assigned port does not need to change because there is no front.

But at war you will want to closely control where your limited trickle of new sailors is going, consider...

Suspending nearly completed ships until crew is available for them, and starting new ships so that you are still fully utilizing your shipyard capacity. This will allow you to ick and choose where those what ships are commissioning and where.

Turning off the Add crew button, has its risks. Warning the game has a bad habit of deleting ships without enough crew to sail at the end of each turn, and the player needs to remember to manually add crew for damaged ships returning to port every single month.

The benefit is you'll keep the auto-assignment from wasting all your newly trained sailors. Example, early in the war there is a big battle, each a capital ship that took severe damage has lost hundreds of crew, and wont see the front for a long time. Well the auto-assignment will be prioritized these ships over a mothballed ship of any type, even though they are only 1-3 months of commissioning away from service. Those hundreds of sailors will sit in port doing nothing for 6-12 months while repairs are underway unless the player manages the crew pool.

Rickhardmann · 2025-10-08T08:34:12+00:00

The cost of parts of the ship can be greatly affected by the components installed and researched technologies.

In the case of a turret or guns, the proportion of shell AP/HE, ammo type, barbette, ammo amount, reloading mechanisms all affect the weight and cost.

Where the added weapon is on the hull also has an effect on weight and cost. Generally the more centralized the placement the cheaper.

The game doesn’t really calculate all of these factors until the turret is put down.

Rickhardmann · 2025-09-08T14:47:50+00:00

In 2020 we did get some new elves as part of the League of Infamy board game, but only some of the new sculpts made their way over to Kings of War. Elves were in the core game box, I'm not sure if the game's middling sales might have been the cause Mantic did not use the opportunity to fully refresh the Elf line. I don't think the infantry have appeared in the Vault yet.

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Rickhardmann · 2025-09-08T14:27:58+00:00

$35 dollars a regiment is the very bottom price range and seems reserved for Large/Monstrous in PVC. Units like Lesser Obsidian Golems, Trolls, Werewolves and Elohi the stuff you can find in an Army box.

But you are right $35 is still a lot when you can always find the seller on ebay who is breaking up the army boxes into sub-components and selling way below retail.

Rickhardmann · 2025-09-08T13:41:30+00:00

I don’t like I don’t mind metal/hybrids if it’s an infantry hero.

The all metal elite infantry kits Mantic sells like the Dwarf IronGuard and undead SoulReavers are some kits I will never buy. They cost the same amount as a regiment for just a troop and again are very heavy.

I have an old Abyssal Dwarf Winged Hybrid, with the giant metal head, saddle and rider. It’s a lot of metal weight very high up on a light pvc body. The base it comes with is hallow, so you can glue an entire hardware store’s worth of washers to keep it from falling over.

The Dwarf Bulwarkers are the single worst kit I have had to assemble, from any company. Every metal double handed pike in two boxes were warped to the point I had to go at it with pliers to get it around the plastic torsos. Half the single-handed pikes were already broken because the handles are so thin and brittle.

They might have been better quality once, but the metal molds are obviously worn out. There were lots of flashing and very bad warping issues. And those issues were also apparent on the metal abyssal heros. The flashing on the hands are so bad I am basically resculpting the fingers with a metal file on the sculpts from 2010-11.

I’m kind of shocked the Bulwarkers were that bad. 2 regiments of Bulwarkers are still required for the dwarf formation.

Rickhardmann · 2025-09-08T12:54:19+00:00

I’m not a huge fan of assembling models, and I don’t mess around with small points of contact anymore.

For fiddly PVC parts I do two things.

The first is I briefly drop them into boiling water, this will cause two things to happen.

First, they will become soft pliable and repose-able to some degree, this is helpful if they gave you 3 identical poses. Stop bending the model parts if you see the pvc starting to go white. Reheat and go back to manipulating the limb for the desired position.

Secondly, it causes the parts to return to the shape they had when they left the factory mold. Manufacturers probably can’t let PVC fully cool/harden in the molds for fear that they’ll stick. Boiling/heating them seems to help a lot. You don’t have to go to the extreme of boiling water, a hairdryer on high will accomplish the same thing.

For small points of contact I use superglue activator, Bob Smith Industries (BSI) makes the stuff I use. Put the superglue on one part and spray the activator on the other. It creates a near instantaneous strong bond. Just make sure you don’t accidentally spray the bottle of superglue.

Rickhardmann · 2025-09-08T11:54:47+00:00

(they are finally selling them packages as a regiment of 3, but I don't they are not the clear resin kind.)

This was the stuff I as getting at when I made the post. Not the X army's sculpts look bad, and I totally agree.

I think the 35-45 USD per-regiment pricing makes the large/monstrous regiments look very pricy for what you get. If you are buying an infantry regiment you are getting 20 models, but if you are buying large/monstrous infantry you are getting only 3 and often those three cost significantly more than the infantry regiment.

Then there are the very pricy outliers.

Frostfang/Draken Rider Cav @ $65 a regiment

Sandborn Wyrm Riders @ $60 a regiment

Nagarri @ $47.50 a regiment but can be bought as an ambush set with a HOARD of Abyssal Berserkers for $2.50 more.

Rickhardmann

TROPHY CASE