Kings of War General

Short answer: KoW maintains all the important decision-making or ranks-and-flanks gameplay while shedding the granularity and rules bloat of Warhammer.
Hobby-wise, multi-basing is amazing for saving money on minis, making rabbles like orcs look like rabbles, and going to town with scenery on the base.

Long answer: youtu.be/NeYDpElRvOo

Also, you can play both Kings and 9th Age.

It's not a bloated, unplayable mess.

It being based on 8'th edition is probably the main reason I don't even want to play 9'th Age.

My only real gripe with the Succubi is the lack of bellybuttons. I am planning on getting some and painting them with a human skin tone later on. I wonder how dynamic you can make them with the ball joints.

It should have been based on 6th if anything IMO. I like KoW because it cleans off all the bullshit and plays very fast.

Bump

Beigng demons it seems bellybuttons aren't necesary, probably they are created. Also I think with a little care isn't that difficult to make them one.

It's always bad to shit up generals with edition wars, but I think that, as a base, 8th was the best edition. I played from 8th to 6th and the core rules from 8th were the best imo.
Magic and horde obviously need tweaking, but I guess that's what 9th is trying anyway.
The real problem are the armybooks/codices, which lead to and insufferable amount of bloat in special rules for every single unit. It's funny how AoS managed to make this bloat even worse with special mechanics for each and everything, while simplifying the core rules to a minimum.
I for once settled with dragon rampant, as KoW is just too much for me to build and paint. Also I like to use my 6th GW vampire count models, which I'd need to heavily invest in to get a nice KoW force.

So hows dragon rampant? I never seen it played and only yesterday I knew it existed. For medium sized games seems a good option but I don't know anything about the mechanics and all that stuff. For example how many minis for a regualr game?

I general you go with units of 12 models for infantry and 6 models for cav. A warband must have at least 4 units and 10 units max, including heroes.
It has a rather abstract mechanic which lets you reduce the model count of the units, so if you want to have a mighty hero, he counts as an elite infantry unit with just one model but 12 wounds. You can buy from a pool of special rules for every unit, but there is a max for points you can spend on a single unit.
If you want further information, take a look at this >toomanymetalmen.blogspot.de/2015/12/dragon-rampant-skirmish-fantasy-with.html
It's not my blog, but it convinced me to buy the rules. Also I share the guys opinion on dragon rampant being what AoS should have been, an easy beer and pretzels skirmish game, with enough depth and fleshed out rules to be enjoyable.
Only downside, which a KoW player might see, is that there aren't rules for flanks and vision arc. I read that the writers dropped it for some reason, but it seems to be easily houseruled. I don't miss it though.

It seems solid enough and interesting, it reminds me heavily to Song of baldes and heroes for what he says, but activating with 2d6 instead of 1d6, so I wil ltry to get it to read.
Did you play it already? Any rough points apart of no flanks and stuff?

Dragon (and Lion) Rampant have become very popular at my local club, which tends to like simple rulesets everyone can get into easily with existing miniature collections.

It is widely enjoyed, but the command system makes the game very swingy and dice-based. Units have a command roll to activate them each turn made on a 2d6, with disciplined troops needing a low roll and rowdy ones needing a high roll. But if you fail your turn ends. I half-remember the general giving a re-roll to a unit within a small command radius, but I'm not sure.

The other major thing abstract or 'weird' might be that each unit deals full damage if they are above half their unit strength and half damage if they are below that. So 12 models deal as much damage as 7 models. So the core mechanics are really simple, but the flavor comes from the scenarios, warlord traits and sidequests that you can declare to get (or lose) additional victory points.
I haven't played a full game because I'm still rebasing my undead, but I rolled some melee combats between some units.
Also I guess that the game can be quite easily broken if you want to, since you can give any unit any kind of special rule and there are no restrictions except points, min 4/max 10 units and max 10points per single unit.
So you probably don't want to use these rules for a tourney.

Bought the Destiny of Kings book for the Deadzone opening sale.

I know it has expanded general campaign rules in addition to their specific campaign, but I don't know how in depth those rules are. Really hoping for something cool here!

>8th was the best edition. I played from 8th to 6th and the core rules from 8th were the best imo.
I fail to see what was good in 8th. Manoevering was litterally made obsolete by random charge distance and the fact that flanking was nerfed to shit, plus the game was merely about getting your blocks in the middle of the table in a straight line from your side, then roll dice for the until the end of the game because they were all unmovable and steadfast. That, and the special rules creep of course.

Give me 6th edition over 8th shittery every day.

Yeah, activating minis is fun but it's very random. At least it gives you some extra tension. It also seems to be like one of my prefered little games, than I never see discussed here, Song of blades and heroes, but with units instead of individuals. If you guys liked DR, SoBaH seems to be alike, with the loads of cool expansions and all that.
Seems a good way to introduce newbros to big games really.

I just didn't like a lot of the changes in 8'th editon. The rules, shittier fluff, overdesigned models and GW's rising prices made me lose interest in Warhammer.

New player here.
What do you guys think about my army list?

Going to be using the Warhammer Chaos units I've collected throughout my days.

Forgot to exchange the shields to a two handed wep on one of the sons of Korgaan regiments.

Here's a new pdf with that included.

Seems solid, good for going to the neck of your enemies with all the cs and fast units, the heroe is very good for chasing warmachines or other flying annoyances and the mage will help you destroy anything heavy with the banechant (a bit of an over kill maybe with all your CS but you never know).

Thanks for the input. I reckoned that it would be better to go overkill than to leave anything standing.

How well does the League of Roidia proxy the Empire?

Do the Basileans get their own book? If so, does anyone have its PDF? I didn't see it in the Books link.

All their rules are included in the second edition of KoW.

Pretty well. All you are missing is Flagellants and Warpriests which have been scooted over the Basilea. And yes, an Empire engineer can be used as a Halfling engineer.

Not having flagellants in the army is annoying. Might as well get Berserkers from Kingdom of Man instead.

You can always add them in from Basilea as allies. You won't get things like Inspiring from the rest of the army but fuck it, they're crazed maniacs, let them go off on their own with their equally crazy priest.

...

That is rich. Glad to see CA care more about Warhammer than GW does, by even acknowledging the only real fantasy mass combat game left on the market.

Shame that Mantic's fantasy range is so inconsistent in quality.

On the flipside, their prices are so cheap that I don't really care too much. Aside from their Elves, their range isn't abjectly terrible--mediocre at times, to be sure, with a few stinkers, but there's a certain charm to their models that I find endearing.

Was.
1) Have you been watching the post-kickstarter stuff coming out.
2) Shit painters. Seriously the unpainted looks better than their official promos.

EG here's pro-painted Mantic.

Yeah, I know the Salamanders are pretty solid looking. But, some of their models are still hit and miss, though. I do think that the Dungeon Saga dragon is pretty rubbish looking and I wish they would have produced a different one for Kings of War. I also wish they would make hard plastic horses instead of restic ones.

However, besides the big winged demon the Abyss range is rather good and it's a good example of modern Mantic's minis and it looks like they will be getting some more cool stuff soon.

I wonder when they will be having a third KoW kickstarter?

>Dungeon Saga dragon
To be fair:
Mantic's painters suck

Literally just a bit better than the average person off the street.

I just don't like the proportions and pose of the thing. The scrawny neck on the thick body just kinda ruins it for me.

>body is too thick
Their old one was slimmer, but it kind of looked like a dinosaur

It looks like mantic took no effort to draw out details on the scales... like not even a wet or drybrush was done. That's pretty sad.

A lot of the Dungeon Saga minis has pretty shoddy textures. The Salamander hero is more low detail than the plastic Salamanders and he hardly has any defined scales.

I don't really like the dragon either, but I'm just going to be getting this one from the Bones 3 KS for $10.

I missed out on Kickstarter II and III. So many nice minis for D&D. Plenty of their minis would work great for Mantic heros.

It probably won't be much at retail. I'd wager under $30, probably closer to $20-25. Which is still pretty reasonable.

I ordered the model myself and plan on GSing some wounds and replacing the rider for using it as a Vampire Lord on Undead Dragon. The figure is perfect for one of the game's many dragon riders. The Basilean or Elven one would be the best bet of course.

Someone in the comments on this suggested why it might be- CA invited a bunch of Warhammer players to come play with them. They wouldn't have cared about proxies and stuff, they aren't GW.

I plan to do the same thing, except it'll be a Revenant King on an Undead Wyrm. I figure it'll be easy to have some rotting intestines hanging out of the dragon's stomach.

Still, someone should share this with Mantic, it's fucking hilarious even on principal.

Ronnie had been tagged in the post, so hopefully.

...

fuck me that's some poor photoshop

As a hobbyist, you have much more freedom on exactly what models you'll use and how you'll build, customize, base, and paint them, without opponents and TOs having fits over WYSIWYG or not using Official Products™.

Also, games take between half-an-hour to and hour-and-a-half where the same size WFB game would go for 3+ hours.

According to one of the White Dwarf Studio guys (allegedly), apparently the detail that GW achieves is actually causing new players to give up trying to be good at painting and then to lose interest in the hobby altogether. That's why all the best painting is now in Warhammer Visions, and they try to have good-but-basic paint jobs for miniatures in White Dwarf, even for the how-to-paint articles.

Apparently; I don't even read Warhammer Visions (or White Dwarf much) so it's not like I've done even the most cursory fact-checking before I repeat the story I've heard.

As I understand Mantic don't have a studio army (or studio painters); any images of painted miniatures will either have been submitted by fans, or be the personal projects of their staff. Maybe this is deliberate policy, to make them seem more accessible and less elitist...?

Will this game work for me if I want to pretend it's still in the Warhammer universe?

Why wouldn't it?

This is interesting.
Part of the butthurt towards GW trying to get into it is you see a 60$ pricetag on a model, and it looks fucking awesome, and a week and many tears later you realize you paid 60$ for a Pretend it's warhammer
They deliberately included as many 1:1 or proxies of Warhammer units/armies as they could, plus extras.

I was just wondering if there was anything that would keep me from doing some Empire vs hordes of Chaos, or Orc vs Dwarf battles with my friends.

We love the Total War universe but the simple rules of Kings of War and the fact that it "only" costs $100 to get an entire army of any one race appeals to us.

I'm a God Damn idiot, I meant Warhammer.

Literally all things meant to do in the game. There's tons of availablilty for empire or empire-like forces and Chaos, Orcs, and Dwarves are all factions you can make armies of.

Yeah, but it does for some reason bring the mind to Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

Nope, you can proxy nearly all the units. Don't expect magic to win games alone tough.

Are you trying to proxy models you already have?
Or buying into it?

If you're buying into it, you should know that they don't have all armies in production yet, and a handful of things from the original kickstarter run are wonky for consistency. The newer stuff is rolling out and it all looks good, though we'll probably never see those kickstarter prices again they're still pretty cheap.
Right now they're selling:
Abyssals (Chaos demons)
Abyssal Dwarves
Basilea (Not WHFB, unique to KoW)
Dwarves
Elves
Forces of Nature (The Herd aka Beastmen is actually another list)
Goblins (You'll have to ally w/ Orcs)
Ogres
Orcs
Undead (Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings are Empire of Dust)
And all of those so far have army deals, and they're working on "elite" army booster sets as well.
Twilight Kin have been pulled for a relaunch later this year (and they were really expensive being mostly pewter).

I'd prefer that desu. Magic should only be a buff or a ranged spell.

Then you will like it, magic tend to be a dandy tool than doesn't unbalance everything, and is quite fun to use (surge specially).

I can sort of understand that a high bar can be intimidating for people starting out painting. Too manyn detailes also means that a minintakes longer to paint.

Still, the Deadzone and new Warpath minis have a pretty good sweetspot of details. They are also not generally horribly painted either. They need to lay of the cheap photoshop effects in their stock photos, though.

That's pretty much all magic is in KoW. A small buff, or a minor offensive spell when your caster has nothing else to do.
It can win games, but not by itself.
Some armies can spam lightning bolt pretty effectively though, which is hilarious to see crush an army of glass cannons.

Forces of Nature is the newest complete army.
It's a good showcase of their new sculpting and such.

>surge
Don't forget windblast, it's the most underrated spell IMO.

You can also make terrain out of cheap materials and avoid having to buy some of that expensive plastic kit terrains.

Imho the game needs more spells than fuck up movement and stuff to be more fun, the problem as ever is in balance but making some terrain impassable and stuff like that could be fun, specially in campaigns or scenarios.

I figure they could add a couple of curses or something and a magical wall kinda spell that hinders units movement.

Having the magic be as simple as possible is what I like about it.

You can do that in literally any game
No-one outside of GW stores uses only official GW terrain, and even then my local GW isn't that tyrannical.

And Basilea really reminds me of Castle from HoMM3.

Really, I'd be very happy if Mantic factions were heavily inspired by HoMM. Here's hoping that Ophidia is remeniscent of Academy from HOMM5.

youtu.be/0_06EJIO4FU

Just got into wargaming, been looking for a fantasy wargame. Are the mega armies enough to play regular games? I have no idea how big armies normally are for battles.

Just eyeballing it, that's
Mummies troop- 120
Mummies troop- 120
Zombie Regiment- 80
Zombie Regiment- 80
Skeleton Spearmen Regiment- 105
Skeleton Spearmen Regiment- 105
Ghouls Regiment- 90
Revenant Regiment- 120
Revenant Cavalry Regiment- 170
Werewolves Regiment- 160
Catapult- 100
Necromancer - 85

=1335 points.
Standard games are 2000, but game works fine at 1500.
Obviously some flexibility in what you can field- a horde rather than 2 regiments, 2 troops instead of a regiment etc. Magic items fill it up a little, too.
The main things I would add to that would be a second catapult, because they're very inconsistent, another 3 heroes for surge and inspiring, and buff the Werewolves up to a Horde.
I recommend reaper bones for heroes myself, and you could easily get 2 werewolves while you were at it for a horde with 5 models.

Battles are usually fought at 1500 or especially 2000 points. Kings of War games are satisfying at 1000 points and above.

That army in the pic would be about 1300 points.
If you multibased those figures though you could probably stretch it to 1800 or more.

3 heroes minimum, that is. Add a strong combat hero, and as many necromancers as you can fit.

Alright, that sounds good. 100 pound isn't bad for a small-ish game. I may check it out if I can find a scene where I live.

I was kinda trying to make a halfassed point that wargaming doesn't have to be super expensive.

I'm think that the Abyss concept was Alessio's idea. He wanted the demons to be more based on Dantes Inferno. So it's probably mostly just old school designs rather than it being inspired from HoMaM3.

A 1500 points game is already something like 1h30 long usually.

I keep toying with the idea of trying to see how cheaply I could build a decent sized army. Going Dwarfs would let me use em4s miniatures, which are dirt cheap (

I've found papercraft siege weapons that look pretty reasonable. Especially because I need 4 for my elf list.

Plus if you do Orcs/Goblins you can scratchbuild that stuff and it doesn't even matter if it looks a bit shit.

This guy has really good points. I might add though, that Wights are one of the best units in the Undead list and are basically your can-openers. With CS3 and Brutal, they all but guarantee a rout of they get a flank or rear charge off of someone. Even a simple regiment will pull their weight and then some if you use them right.

The metal models are nice, but you can use any large-sized guys for them. Here I chose some Sigmarines I got for dirt cheap, and slapped a bunch of undead stuff onto them. I've moved them onto an MDF tray since taking these photos but I'm a bit too lazy to retake photos.

I will definitely do that myself, considering the price of the starter set Sigmarines. Where are the skeletons on the shields from?

They're old GW skeletons. Same with the heads. The horse one is from their skeleton horses, and the weapons are some GW swords I had kicking around in my bitz box. Pretty simple kitbashing.

I picked up the Sigmarines from Hoard 'O Bits. Eight for $11.69 is a pretty damn good deal, and if I wanted to make a third regiment I'm sure I could find a single Sigmarine out in the wild for either free or a couple bucks.

Wights are the most absurdly bullshit unit when surged so they hit on a flank, and maybe given a bane chant.

what's a good proxy models for Basilean models?

Basically any human 28mm fantasy or historical models.

Thematically they're based off of the Byzantine Empire, so Byzantine or Late Roman models could be a good start. Gripping Beast do some pretty nice plastic spearmen/archers.

Great use of sigmarines

Roman legions from Warlord maybe ? That's totally what I would use for them.

Also, here's an unpainted version of the shields for that guy. I cut the backs off the heads and torsos and then filed the backs to make them more flush with the shields. Still had to do some gap-filling, but not too much.

Yeah, I love'em. They are however, expensive, and regiments have a fairly low (14) Nerve so any amount of focused damage--say, anything with Piercing--will make them dissipate off the field pretty quickly.

I'd say Perry Miniatures. They have several lines of historicals to pick and choose from, including their excellent Foot Knights. Cheap, too.

Fireforge is also a good choice, what with their Templar and Teutonic orders to choose from. Their infantry is so-so, but their mounted models are great. Both companies would also work well for a Kingdom of Men or Leagues of Rhordia army.

Basilea is supposed to have the "old glory of Primovantor" feel, so I'd say a mix of late romans (for the basic units) and maybe a few caesarean romans for the elite units.

Look for late romans models or ERE. Some Sassanids Persians too for knights. A basilean army based in the King Arthur legend could be fun as fuck too.