So.... for any of you guys who saw the prices for Wizkids Frameworks Kobolds and how little you get in the sprue. Do you guys think a Kobold box (and I mean reptilian Kobold) would be a good idea for Wargames Atlantic to try sometime in the future?
Just like the Mermaid post by JTam, I'm going to add a poll for if you guys want to vote on it.
@Charles Tottington I would support WGA making kobolds, but I have never been interested in them personally. I suppose I could use them in RPG's but dont play many low level games and while a kobold individually can be powerful, you still dont normally find something like that in numbers... I have also never had one of my players (or myself) play a kobold... the closest I had was in my Council of Wyrms game, one of the PC dragons had a kobold minion... same player had a goblin minion named Pap Smear... so that player was... not representative of the group in general. His wife in real life thought "good ol' Pap" was hilarious though... but I will also point out that their divorce just became final this month...
I've seen WGA brought up in a couple of discussions about the prices of the WizKids Kobold kerfuffle. I'm low key hoping that one of the surprise future releases will be kobolds to take advantage of this. (Also I love Kobolds in D&D, so I could always use a dozen or so.)
Seven models for 50 bucks?
Amateurs, they still have a way to go to be as big a rip off as GW.
I'd love to use Kobolds instead of goblins for Kings of War personally.
Kobolds, either in sprue or in regiment, would interest a lot of people. However, I don't think WGA has this in the works.
I suppose I could use them in RPG's but dont play many low level games and while a kobold individually can be powerful, you still dont normally find something like that in numbers...
There's an old, oooold (think it happened in 2nd edition and was retold officially in a Dragon Mag in early 3rd) anecdote about someone terrorizing a mid to high level party with nothing but lowly kobolds. And while kobolds CAN be used as introductory enemies (which is why they went from 1d8 damage crossbows to 1d3-1 damage slings in the 3.5E revision), they are kind of expected to build a warren around a dragon's lair, so they will every once in a while have the job of attriting a party of sufficient level to slay a CR 11+ creature. They can totally hold their own in such a situation, you just gotta play to their strengths:
That last one is key for this discussion, because the right minis for them are next to impossible to find: Reaper makes one crossbowman in a set of six kobolds, out of their five or so different sets. Wizkids makes a single extremely ugly prepainted flask thrower, who is actually not in the kit discussed here either. And there was one flask thrower in some official D&D stuff in the early 2000s, I think related to the Miniatures Handbook and its skirmish wargame.
Let me reiterate.
Kobolds should be using crossbows and splash weapons.
Nobody makes kobold minis with crossbows or splash weapons.
I might be treating D&D a little different than most people, still playing 3.5E and all that, but to me this looks like a HUGE void in the market. So to answer the question in the OP: if they have the right weapons, I would definitely get a box. If they don't, I'd just make do with the six Reaper Bones dudes I already have.
Amateurs, they still have a way to go to be as big a rip off as GW.
IDK, most infantry in GW's lineup seems to be in the 4-5 dollah per mini range. Savage orcs are 20 dudes for 50 USD with three sets of weapons, Empire troops and dark elf warriors are 10 for 35ish, black guard are 10 for 50. Only witches are inexplicably more expensive than the rest, but still better than this bloody scam (10 chicks for 60 USD, with extremely elaborate hair styles, plus a complete set of spare weapons and heads for the sisters of slaughter).
@Blutze well... they did have a recent price hike... The last new kit I got was the Blissbarb Archers for Slaanesh... Retail is $55 for the 10 guys (I think technically 11 as they come with a little bearer guy... I did get some Drukari Incubi for my birthday which are $60 for 5 guys... (technically 6 as they come with a little icon thing) and Drazhar who was $42 for just him... Now the Drukhari were gifts from my gaming group back in february, so not sure what the prices were then... The Slaanesh archers i think i got for $42? From Miniature market back in December.
I did just get (like 3 weeks ago) 30 Hobgrotz for $20 off e-bay... which i think was a great deal... but not representative of normal GW pricing. :)
I play Pathfinder 1st... in an ongoing campaign for the last 12 years that started in 3.5. The party is 12th level... and Includes a Raptoran fighter, a Tiefling Gunmage, a human bard... and... A werewolf lord and a silver dragon (from the In the company of dragon's book). Your ideas on kobold are interesting but there are so many minion races and kobolds dont really call to me.
Hobgrotz are generally cheap right now on German eBay, I suspect similar prices on the British and American ebay lists.
I was going to say Reaper has Kobolds pretty well covered (we just got a bunch) but@Blutze has made a compelling argument.
I don't think i'd be too invested in a kobald sprue I normally use goblins, and the reptile sprue tends to be close enough. could be fun if they did, but i'd rather they make something else
I'll abstain from voting, as I'm with William - I don't really make much use of Kobolds, rolling with reskinned variations on Goblins as low-level humanoids instead, so I don't really have much of a rat in the race.
Speaking of which, the Kobolds originally had dog and rat qualities that seemed to get de-emphasized in favor of dragon-like qualities in more recent editions:
Kobolds are a cowardly, sadistic race of short humanoids that vigorously contest the human and demi-human races for living space and food. They especially dislike gnomes and attack them on sight. Barely clearing 3 feet in height, kobolds have scaly hides that range from dark, rusty brown to a rusty black. They smell of damp dogs and stagnant water. Their eyes glow like a bright red spark and they have two small horns ranging from tan to white. Because of the kobolds' fondness for wearing raggedy garb of red and orange, their non-prehensile rat-like tails, and their language (which sounds like small dogs yapping), these fell creatures are often not taken seriously. This is often a fatal mistake, for what they lack in size and strength they make up in ferocity and tenacity.
- 2nd Ed. Monster Manual
If Wargames Atlantic ran with a design that brought back some of those old rat/dog/lizard-thing qualities - fur, rat-like tale, etc. - then their Kobolds might stand in for certain other companies' rat-men.
And absolutely, provide the arm/weapon bits for slingers,flask-throwers, and crossbowmen, as well as dart/javelin-throwers.
And trap-makers, if possible - seems to me that Kobolds aren't hosting a proper dungeon party, if they aren't dropping caltrops and setting snares, dart traps, and the like. Just the bits for some guys to carrying steel-jaw traps on their backs (or steel-jaw traps to use as as scenic bits or dungeon dressing, and lock-picks to optionally add as belt-pouches), to designate one or two trappers, would be fine with me.
Kobold sorceror bits would be nice as well.
I think that ultimately, Kobolds are at their best when they're keeping their distance, to harrass a dungeoneering party with traps, ranged weapons, and spells, then running away when threatened.
For whatever it's worth, those pre-painted D&D Miniatures (I believe by Wizkids even back then) had the Kobold Skirmisher as a reasonably common figure - armed with a crossbow, with javelins/darts on the back. I think two to four of them came with one of the versions of the 3.5 Edition "Basic Game" starter set for D&D, as well as being common(?) figures in an early random mini set, and you can probably still find them on the secondary market. That's not really the same as getting a wargame mini box of the little fellows, though!
I think Kobolds might make some fine grudge-match traditional opponents for halflings or dwarves in a wargame, in any event....
@Charles Tottington Yes actually for DnD alone, but if WA gave them blow pipes to make them the skink add on to the lizardmen it might not be a bad idea and I wouldn't mind seeing blackpowder guns/weapons.
Oh, I really like the idea of arming fantasy Kobolds with guns, and other advanced technology!
I've seen some fantasy settings give Goblins a sort of fanatical and savage lunacy niche, with Pathfnder for example making Goblins extremely superstitious about writing, suicidally insane, and obsessed with fire and so on, while other settings try to give Goblins a technological angle with robots, guns, and so on, with Eberon (iirc) making Goblins a fallen technologically-advanced empire.
But, now that you mention it, Kobolds seem to me a more appropriate fantasy creature to get a "lost technology" angle: a sort of primordial humanoid creature whose time has been and gone, driven into the underworld by catastrophe, replaced by warm-blooded creatures, and left to bide their time away in shadows for the stars to come around right for their return, as they are dwarfed and stunted by theri long imprisonment in the hollow earth.
Draw some inspiration from Lovecraft's "The Nameless City" for the default fantasy Kobold:
I saw that the passage was a long one, so floundered ahead rapidly in a creeping run that would have seemed horrible had any eye watched me in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my surroundings and be sure the walls and rows of cases still stretched on. Man is so used to thinking visually that I almost forgot the darkness and pictured the endless corridor of wood and glass in its low-studded monotony as though I saw it. And then in a moment of indescribable emotion I did see it.
Just when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but there came a gradual glow ahead, and all at once I knew that I saw the dim outlines of the corridor and the cases, revealed by some unknown subterranean phosphorescence. For a little while all was exactly as I had imagined it, since the glow was very faint; but as I mechanically kept on stumbling ahead into the stronger light I realised that my fancy had been but feeble. This hall was no relic of crudity like the temples in the city above, but a monument of the most magnificent and exotic art. Rich, vivid, and daringly fantastic designs and pictures formed a continuous scheme of mural painting whose lines and colours were beyond description. The cases were of a strange golden wood, with fronts of exquisite glass, and contained the mummified forms of creatures outreaching in grotesqueness the most chaotic dreams of man.
To convey any idea of these monstrosities is impossible. They were of the reptile kind, with body lines suggesting sometimes the crocodile, sometimes the seal, but more often nothing of which either the naturalist or the palaeontologist ever heard. In size they approximated a small man, and their fore legs bore delicate and evidently flexible feet curiously like human hands and fingers. But strangest of all were their heads, which presented a contour violating all known biological principles. To nothing can such things be well compared—in one flash I thought of comparisons as varied as the cat, the bulldog, the mythic Satyr, and the human being. Not Jove himself had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet the horns and the noselessness and the alligator-like jaw placed the things outside all established categories. I debated for a time on the reality of the mummies, half suspecting they were artificial idols; but soon decided they were indeed some palaeogean species which had lived when the nameless city was alive. To crown their grotesqueness, most of them were gorgeously enrobed in the costliest of fabrics, and lavishly laden with ornaments of gold, jewels, and unknown shining metals.
- HPL, "The Nameless City"
I would kind of think of the Kobolds as the real brains of a lizard-man empire: diminutive, weak, spindly, pale, decadent, and sensitive to the light of the surface world, but infintely old, wise, wicked, clever, and jealous of those warm-blooded things that have inherited the sunlit world of the upper surface, sending out tribes of larger, less sophisticated, more brutish Lizard Men to do most of their dirty work for them by day, while the Kobold sorceror-king taskmasters work subtler mischief by the light of the moon, using strange weapons and even stranger machinery crafted deep in the earth's shadows in the Kobold's weird workshops and laboratories....
@Yronimos Whateley I do like how Kobolds are portrayed in the Midgard setting. Especially in Zobeck. They live in the kobold ghetto, and have an elected king who when bad things happen gets all the blame... I dont know if I would buy kobolds as high tech users, but meh, i would be ok with it too.
I tend to prefer goblins because... they are easier to find... miniatures, art, etc... most people, even non gamers instantly know what a goblin is, so easier to evoke the image in players. I also like Paizo's cute goblins... (but not their cute hobgoblins...) Kobolds also kind of have an identity crisis as old school gamers may picture the doglike kobolds where as younger gamers (and no insult is implied to either group) might picture the lizard ones...
I do have like 50-75 kobolds in my collection... all of them bones... I dont think i have used them once in a game... I havent thrown them out as I do have hopes of doing a Midgard or Southlands campaign at some point... side note... the bones goblins annoyed me as they are soft plastic, tiny and multi-part... gluing ultra tiny arms on ultra tiny bodies for mostly soft detail minis that i will probably never use... Irked me...
I think to start, maybe make a poll and see what people like. Dogbolds like the 1st 2 pics above, or lizbolds like the 2nd 2...
I was going to say i prefer the dog ones... but i am torn with the pics i posted.
Polling for weather to do kobolds as doggie, rodent or draconic/lizard like kolbolds was already done a while back at least once or twice now (same deal with weather to do kobolds, which actually keep getting added to every "what fantasy subject to do next" poll and generally places in the mid to top tier options).
I believe it was even done either after or before some rodent or dog like kobold renders where previewed but those kind of fell flat (they had floppy rabbit ears), so they then polled about which lizard like ones people preferred.
Frankly if it can’t be solved with just head swaps for each , unless they really want to go with manga Kolbolds which is the best way to do dogbolds in my opinion (in which case short samurai armored dogmen) they really should just do them as very small dragon/lizard men kolbolds given that the draconic ancestry version is the one in the current popular TRPG rule sets and it actually fits better with the original folkloric kolbolds which were mischief making fire elements.
Plus last I checked gnolls are often depict as either short dogmen or human sized hyenamen in these same rulesets, so dogbolds might be confusing at this point for D&D and Pathfinder gamers.
@JTam Bruh those are literally GW numbers but with less customization and fewer extra bits. Cmon wiz kids
seems to me that if you do the tails as fairly generic and use clothing that covers most of the body, that in 28mm you could include both lizard and dog style heads as variants on the sprue.
The very end of his snout is a little weird, but other than that image #2 in William Redford's post is clearly lizard based. Honestly, I would be fine with some hint of dog simply as a homage to the older edition (which is roughly what I'm seeing with other manufacturers anyway), but for the primary theme I'd want lizard/miniature wannabe dragon.
@Blutze I used that article as inspiration back when I used to DM. I destroyed a lvl 12 party with a dungeon of kobolds and their ambushes and traps. On two seperate occasions. The highest level kobold in that dungeon was an 8 or a 9.
I had prepped the dungeon as an exercise more than anything else. I never actually planned to use it. The first time, one of the players who had helped me with some of the kobold dungeon exercise (we'll call him Bob) wanted to run the gauntlet and the rest of the group was game. They gathered their dead and retreated about two thirds of the way through. A good time was had by all. After that, I started giving kobolds more prominent spots in my world building.
The second group I ran had some obnoxious players that decided to challenge that "weak-a** kobolds" should have any prominence in the world, so I ran them through that dungeon too. They ate it even harder than the first group.
The best part was that Bob was also in the second group. He got tired of a couple of the other PC's actions and egged them on into the dungeon. Bob's plan worked. The most obnoxious of the PCs rage quit and the group dynamic improved dramatically.😀
@Yronimos Whateley I agree with the suggested weapon selection.
Javelins, crossbows, slings, potions/grenades, some sorcerous effects/equipment, trapmaking supplies, and a small number of spears and handweapons (daggers, mining picks, etc).
Was just about to chime in about Reaper's kobolds. My brother just bought a bunch and they look pretty great.
That said, if WGA put out a mutli-part kit for kobolds, they could put them, the goblins, the skeletons, and other "horde" enemies under the "Dungeon Fodder" label! 😁😁
Cannon Fodder for sci-fi, dungeon fodder for Fantasy.
@Benjamin Hayward
"Dungeon Fodder," I like it!
Potentially you could eventually release a combo sprue small dungeon in a box set.
This was William Ings' idea here:
https://wargamesatlantic.com/community/xenforum/topic/48738/creatures-of-the-night-box-set
Wow, Wizkids kobalds are that much, they have not hit my area yet but they are coming. To tell the true I may buy one set but right now it's to high a price for me. I would love to see WGA go down the fantasy line hard core, Dungeon Fodder line goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, Orcs halforcs, skeletons human ones, and dwarf ones, others too. I would love to make a lizardman army with regiments of lizardmen, and kobalds, both having hand weapons/sheilds, and bows/crossbows. To be honest I would love to see WGA make Adventurers Kit with all kinds of weapons, packs, bedrolls postions, scrolls, coils of ropes, side pouches maybe pack bundles for there horses kit, so we can make RPG/Hero minis for tons of games. With the horses kit I would love to see other pack animals common and not so common like lizards on two or four legs plane so we can make them pack or cavalry just by putting saddles or cargo on them. They could do something like that for Sci Fi too. But would I pick up three boxes of kobalds, "YES", if you don't put a stupid boot on their heads.
@Daniel Lillis they already do human skeletons, short race skellies might be a good idea though.
Actually given how kolbolds are rather varied in their depictions, while they should have some trash melee weapons (spears, hand weapons, mining tools), I could actually see them being a shooty race with guns as well as crossbows.
If Wargames Atlantic did make a kobold box, I'd like to see a crossover set like the goblins and spiders. As much as I'd like to see Drake mounts or something of that nature, maybe just add bits to a general accoutrements mining set? Or general traps and small seige equipment for classic fantasy line?
The possibilities that can be conjured up by this set are interesting, I must admit, given as others have pointed out, Kobolds have a variety of different forms of appearance - the mini dragon-men from current editions of D&D, dog-men or Snotling-like midget Goblinoids from older editions and spin-off games, and Warcraft's Noseybonk Skaven. Also because they're so small, I wonder how many WGA might be able to squeeze into a box? At least 40, given their figure boxes usually have 20-30 figs each? Perhaps even 60?
Personally I'd like to see mini dragon-men, but some non-Blood Bowl Snotlings would also be fun.
@Caratacus Well... on the Facebook poll I think it was asked if people wanted them "as big as the halflings" which I think was what won the vote. So at that size, I would think they would have the same numbers in a box. There are 40 Halflings in a box. The Halfling Sprue is a half sprue though. If teh Kobolds got a full Sprue, Then they may not get the 40 that halflings do (or may get more) depending on how many bodies they can fit on the sprue. If they did them slightly smaller and molded teh bodies and heads as one piece but with a choise of weapons, then maybe they could do more But I doubt it would be more that 40, unless they were doing an "army builder" type set. But It seems like Kobolds would benefit more with the different customization bits (extra heads, tails, etc) since people have different ideas on what a kobold is.
Here is the NPC kobold (Dornab) that is in my Kingdom of Ghouls pathfinder 1st game. He is kind of a henchman for the PC silver dragon Paladin in our Party. ZiBa, who is a female Jalpurain (think India) Silver dragon that can take human form. I would be cool with some Kobolds in this style.
It's definitely time for a box of small, ambiguous, reptile people. We're in a golden age of miniature agnostic skirmish games.
@William Redford Isn't that specifically the PF kobold style? The way Reaper's PF minis are marketed makes me suspect that Paizo is gonna pay a little bit of attention to their copyright, but maybe that snout shape would be suitably generic.
@Blutze I am actually not sure... I have never been a kobold fan so never really paid attention.
I'd certainly grab a box of decent smallish kobalds of the reptilian type (and as suggested above if clothed alternate heads could represent dog faced ones too
I think lizard kobolds that could be used as stand ins for skinks for the Lizardmen would sell well. A more "realistic" Lizardmen army would be cool. Maybe some sniper rifles for a Deathfields option.
