Over the festive period Mantic Games teased some of what they had planned for the year ahead, among them new models for the Abyssal Dwarfs. Well the first traunch of those models has hit the webstore for pre-order with the release coming next Monday 17th in the form of the Abyssal Dwarf warband for Vanguard.

We've seen the unassembled sprues of these over a month ago, and even then the step up in quality over the old restic or metal-plastic hybrids was clear, but now there's a splash of colour on the naughty dwarfs I have to say, oh my God I need these in my life. In the photo above the majority of the models you can see are from the new plastic sprue, be it the Decimators rocking out with their blunderbusses, the standard Blacksoul warriors, or even the mutated mastiffs. That is a lot of evil in a small package of plastic goodness. So who are the two that aren't you may ask? Well go on then ask...

Well it's the first two of this delightful trio. The first being the mobile Katsuchan a short range rocket launcher developed by the twisted smiths of the Abyssal Dwarfs to supplement their shooting, ordinarily the thunderpipes used by their Decimator troops are a short-ranged blunderbuss, designed to inflict horrific and painful injury so that the victim might be dragged in agony back to the slave pits. He is joined by the Overmaster and an elite member of the Immortal Guard, both of which can be used as leaders in your Vanguard force.

To give more punching power to your already quite punchy force are the twisted creations of the Iron caster. These terrifying blends of machine, magic and magma are known as the Flamebound and can be used to fill various niches within the Abyssal force. Whether they are close combat monsters like the Infernox above, or obsidian creations like the Hexcaster below, that can be used to give stymie your opponents casting, or the Charnox that can...well actually he can punch, or flame, he's just all-round massive and terrifying.

The Vanguard free rules and warbands have been updated to include the basic Abyssal Dwarfs, so you can check those out at the Mantic Website, and I have heard rumours that both flavours of dwarfs will be central the summer campaign for Kings of War, so I imagine Abyssal players may pick up the vanguard force to get a jump on painting the new minis before they get their proper release for KoW in a few months.

Have you often wanted to rest your pint on a naughty dwarfs head?