Kings of War and Mantic in general

Thank you.

I wish I could help with complementary armies for an intro game but I'm as fresh as you.

>or is it more you can be as creative or uncreative as you like because it's just a stat block

Completely, to my understanding there's only rare odd upgrades like these "throwing dogs"(?), and not the consistent Champion +10pts/Standard +5pts/Musician +5pts kind of thing you might be used to.

>The movement though, it was late at night but I got a little confused. So you check first if your Leader Point is within "Speed x 2" of the enemy unit, then if it is, measuring is irrelevant after that, but you can make one 90° pivot on the way.

Your unit must be able to reach the enemy and not be hindered by terrain or other units. Use common sense and check if your unit is able to pass trough gaps.

> Except then when you get there, you then "flatten" up against that side of the unit you charged, moving your Leader Point to as close as the opponents or something?
Yes. Exceptions are made if there are multiple charges towards one unit.

Check out the errata for examples for some legal and illegal charges:

manticgames.com/SiteData/Root/File/FREE RULES/KoW-FAQ-003 Updated.pdf

Here is the newest errata/faq

manticgames.com/SiteData/Root/File/FREE RULES/Kings-of-War-Version-1.6.1-Errata-and-FAQ.pdf

How powerful is magic in KoW? And is a Necromancer lead Undead army viable?

Play a few games without model removal. After a while having to remove individual models will seem like pulling teeth.

>How powerful is magic in KoW?
Not that much. But you need it as a undead player
>And is a Necromancer lead Undead army viable?
Sure. You actually have to do some really stuipid shit to get a bad list. For example: A undead list without any characters = no surge spell would struggle

Also some WIP Zombie Legion Multibase. Just finished the running peasant

It is also about how battles in our real world went. You don't have to kill every dude. You have to break the moral of the formation. This is represented in the battle system of KoW. A dude is not a dude he stands for dozens. And a character is not only himself but his retinue.

Here's one with some charging being done, if this can help.
youtu.be/4PoAF-cJ1HE?t=29m10s

>Avatars of war dwarf plastic berserker
I love them. Bought a box of them, as well as some good old metal Slayers from GW, because I wanted to do a slayer army with the slayer King as a general, back when warhammer fantasy battle was still a thing. But with AOS rolling in, I simply lost interest in trying to make that army.

Until I heard about Kings of War, that is. Now I'm learning this ruleset, and my interest building an army of angry dwarves has been rekindled.

Why haven't the crusty WHFB neckbeards flocked to this game?

Btw. there are only 3 books (Core rules, uncharted empires and historical) floating around the interwebs.

Can somebody scan and upload the missing ones?

Well, here's what I have; Originally I wanted to build an undead army for WHFB... But than AoS dropped, and after being neglected for so long in that, I figure I might as well see how they fare on this.

My list was themed around the Vampire Coast and a rouge Magister of the Saphire College. The Ghouls in this last are converted skinks, and the Knights are conversions made out of a whole slew of lizard men, Dark Elves and Undead

1 Necromancer
1 Wight King
1 Vampire
1 Carrin Wraith
3 Spirit Swarms
20 Skeletons/w spear and shield
40 Ghouls
1 Mortis Engine
5 Blood/Black Knights

It's pretty popular in the UK from what I can tell.

When Fantasy was dying, quite a few rank-and-file games sprung up, along with some people staying committed to GW by playing AoS. It's a very fractured landscape.

As it all settles down and community projects like 9th Age likely schism, maybe then it will take more of a lead, if Mantic keep their foot on the pedal and don't get too involved in constant Kickstarter wankery.

Check the /awg/ Trove, in the wargames section.

Magic is mostly quite useful as a support tool. Buff or weaken units, heal a few damage, do a few damage with your lightning bolt to force another nerve check.

Undead (and a few other factions with certain units) uses surge to move shambling units (basically the "dead" undead like skeletons and wraiths) straight forwards. You can get surprisingly long charges, flank attacks, and respond quickly to flyers with this. Very useful.

There are a few specific times when magic is really powerful in terms of raw damage.

1. Efreets, characters in the Abyssal army, get Fireball (20) included for ~120 points.
2. Ogre warlocks throw more dice when they are near berserkers, so warlock lists can have 4 warlocks throwing lightning (7) each turn. This has become less effective now that magic no longer ignores cover.
3. The bloodboil spell lets you roll an attack dice for each damage that an enemy unit has already taken. So you shoot a unit for a bunch of damage and then use a big bloodboil to finish off a unit.

Hello Satan, nice that you show interest in our game.

Also that is basically what you have (see pdf)
The mortis engine is a Revenant king on undead wyrm. The Ghouls are enough for two regiments and a troop. The skellies also enough for a regiment and a troop but you should have a good number of spears on a base to look awesome.

So basically if you give them some magic items you can field 1500 p. which is a neat sized army

>Check the /awg/ Trove, in the wargames section.
Been there done that. Nothing

I'm taking Kingdoms of Men to a tourney on the 28th. I'm not sure how I feel about the list, but changing it is tricky since I have a certain range of miniatures and chucking in 'optimial units' won't look anything like a cohesive army.

Anyway, this is my attempt at a decent list with mostly Perry WOTR stuff with some angels thrown in.

They don't seem into it in my town here in Sweden. 40k, AoS and Malifaux seems to be king here.

I think a bunch of people took the opportunity to drop the hobby with the End Times and AoS, so that they would have a reason to get into something entirely different.

I find that to be true. One of the bigger local tournaments made the switch to Infinity out of all things.

Is it played/ sold in the US at all?

I have been getting increasingly bored with Games Workshop fluff and games since around 2005. I'm mostly in it for the hobby aspect now.

Well, thats a bit sad to hear, like I said in the previous thread, I really liked the magic system in WHFB. Everything else was just okay, so I wouldn't mind trying out KoW if it weren't for that. I'll still give it a try, but since I play undead, thats a bit of a bummer.

Glad to hear that it ports over strength wise; I always give my Skeletons Spears and such.

So, from a lore point of view, where do the Undead come from? And is there any Aztec themed locations they can loot from, considering they have a lot of bling, weapons and mounts from the lizard men kits. And how do Necromancers and Vampires function?

Necromancy works differently than it does in WHFB. Essentially necromancer tear the souls of said dead bodies from the afterlife and bind them back into their bodies as fuel. The equivalent of lizard men do live on Aztec themed islands and often fight, or become pirates. So it isn't unfeasible for the skeletons to have raided said lizards in life or in death.

My local store stocks Mantic, and there are some people there that play it. There are facebook groups for it too that seem to have a number of players. Ask around at your local place, maybe you'll get lucky.

Mantica is a much more diverse place than Warhammer, though. If you can imagine it, you can make it work somehow. It's all about serving your dudes rather than your dudes serving the fluff.

Yeah, I also get the feeling that you can go wild when creating your own units. It is really nice to have the level of creative freedom that kow allows you to have.
Also, the fact that using mantic miniatures isn't enforced at all, and that you can use any model that you like and want to represent your units.

Okay, so its pretty broad; the lore behind my Leader, is that she is a Black Magister, or aka, a Fallen or exiled mage from the Colleges of Magic, specifically the Sapphire order. She eventually wound up under the Service of the Vampire Luthor Harkon.

She experimented with reanimating corpses of the natives, and was even able to restart a spawning pool of the Lizardmen; however the results were poor, corrupted and idiotic creatures in comparison. The Vampire was her overseer, who was left to keep an eye on her.

How would that fit into Mantica?

Sounds feasible. I could imagine the corrupted Lizardmen as ghouls and werewolves.

AoS player here. You guys are cool dudes. I have never met a KoW player I didn't like. Just wanted you guys to know that whenever anyone specifically wants a rank and flank style game, I recommend them KoW. I have my own reasons for not playing KoW but I don't see a reason to keep it away from people. So keep on being an awesome community and helpful to new players.

I wonder what it will become after the lore book is going to be released

I imagine they'll still keep it fairly open, but make it more cohesive.

I don't imagine that they will do anything drastic with the lore. They will probably just flesh out a bunch of established fluff. I imagine that Basilea will probably get a much more detailed description since it is the human faction that's not intended to be totally generic.

Thing is with Basilea that they just look boring. The written fluff isn't even that bad. I mean it is like a dictatorship of the GOOD. But the design is just so plain. It reminds me of warcraft. They should have gonne with it in another direction.

>in general
This does not need a general, forcing discussions really doesn't contribute anything. Let these threads come naturally.

As for KOW, I really would like to support Mantic here, but I've still got a backlog of minis to clear up. Some of their newer models are really good, but I really need to clear those up first.

I want to do a marine force elven army.
I have the Seaguards as a core. But do you guys have any other suggestions how I could strenghten the Marine theme?

Is there any good lore for the setting out yet such as books, game or RPG books?

Tree herder is it good?

Mantic is working on that. They want to release a lore book. Other then that we just have the normal rulebooks.

Also the summer campaign changed quite a bit.
>mfw they flooded the abyss with shitton of glacierwater

Mantic is working on that. They want to release a lore book. Other then that we just have the normal rulebooks.

Also the summer campaign changed quite a bit.
>mfw they flooded the abyss with shitton of glacierwater

So are the new mega army sets with a big guy (and some other, smaller big guys) worth it?

Seems like for the Cha- Abyssal Dwarfs you would still need to buy all of their artillery.

I rather like their angels and I like that they have a classic design instead of going for more post modern look.

I didn't intend this to be a "general" thread. I'm just inviting people to talk about other stuff that Mantic is doing, which is less popular than KoW and I don't except it to dominate the discussion.

Anny opiniom?

Tree herder is one of the game's premier anvils, it's very good indeed. It was insane before they banned the regen item at tourneys.

I wish that they would just made dedicated plastic kits for the Abyssal Dorfs instead of those hybrid ones.

Did any one ever explain why they up charge people that use the American dollar? And not including Shipping?

Maybe it's a tax related issue?

My girlfriend and I are looking for a simple, pleasant and engaging game with which we can write RP narratives. We play 40k, but we're pissed at GWs ever shameless money grabbing.

Would KoW be a good choice? And how would we get started?

40K isn't a bad option. It is simple and pleasant enough for everyone. It is to the point where I use it in my D&D games to resolve big line battles, as teaching it to my players was super easy. It is fast too, so it won't take a while day to play a game like WHFB did. And if you don't like it you can use the same miniatures in other games as well.

Whoops, I meant that KoW isn't a bad option.

...

Is there somewhere with a rundown of what happened because of the campaign?

Aren't they also kickstarting that skirmish game that will somehow tie into KoW?

I'm getting pretty pumped for Vanguard. I was hoping Shadespire would fill the Mordheim void for a skirmish campaign game, but no such luck. But along comes Vanguard...

AoS is also pretty cool. Especially after what they have did with it in the General's Handbook. I would like to talk about it more on Veeky Forums if it wasn't for the fact that it has somehow become a constant shitpost magnet.

Yep. It shares the same minis and has rules for using the game as part of KoW campaigns and vice versa. Being a skirmish game it should be even easier to get into and faster to play, while letting you build up to larger armies.

>makes a game where everything's based on unit blocks so everyone multibases
>makes another game where everything's based on single minis so everyone has to buy more models to play it
Well played, Mantic

At least it avoids the problem that Frostgrave had that it wont require a large amount of terrain.

>if it wasn't for the fact that it has somehow become a constant shitpost magnet.
That is a shame. I don't believe in needless shitposting for any game system, whether I like it or not. Sometimes /aosg/ gets pretty comfy, but it is often plagued by it. Like I said, keep being cool to everyone, and foster a community with whatever you play.

I guess the /aosg/ is plagued by a couple of teenagers with absolutely nothing better to do than shitpost for attention and to desperately keep the threads from naturally 404. It's part of the reason why so many general threads becomes terrible over time.

I suppose, but that'd be a serious Tax. It's already 12.50 for shipping, so that brings it to about 97.50 all together; not a bad deal, but still quite a bit of dosh.

I'd be perfectly fine with aos were it not for my tomb kings

They addressed that earlier. The game focuses on heroes and other models that are individually based in the first place.

Two questions for undead players
First, what's the cheapest way to get boatloads of skeletons, preferably spearmen? Not looking for secondhand.
Second, is an army made entirely of skeletons viable?

forgot pic

You will probably want to go with Mantic's skeletons right now, as the even cheaper Wargames Factory figures aren't sold anymore. And a wholly skeleton army is certainly viable. It helps if you use a lich model of the skeleton type rather than the zombie type. Unlike VC you actually have catapults and archers, so you have a lot more flexibility.

It can be soruta viable. There are a lot of skelingtons options; from spears, sword & board, bowser and great weapons, you can even have them as revenants which are upgraded skelingtons. And if you want to go mostly one type of unit, magic items can help you to get toola for different enemies.

But, you must have necromancer or any one who push them and take care of them. Undead are all about having a boss who push your units.

Anyone have any experience with using 15mm for Kings of War? I can't seem to find a consensus on what the best method to downscale is.
I'm thinking 40mm x 20mm per troop, or maybe 40mm x 40mm.
Any thoughts?

25mms can't fit (by pure math) on the correct size base

not really, your best bet is to find your local clubs and ask around, if nobody plays it then you need to make two 800 point armies and demo it

alright listen up fuckboy

I've been on Veeky Forums for many moons, many fucking moons, two years ago there was a KoWg and it survived maybe six months. Now, I'm not saying I'm jesus but I started the /awg/ so I think I'm allowed to have an opinion here.

If KoW is popular enough to have a new general let them keep it, they're doing well for now and I hope they continue to get more.

multibasing is fucking rad, kow is a great system for battles, very fast and easy.

I mean the heroes in KoW are really weak, like really weak, it's mostly about troops so I would say that it doesn't lend itself to RP at all.

Maybe try AoS? Even then heroes are pretty weak.

Also ask /awg/ because they'll be sure to help you out.

Off the top of my head I would suggest SoBaH since they already have some great source books for warbands pillaging dungeons and SoBaH works great for event gaming (like where you have a set 3 hour battle/adventure kind of like an rpg)

There's also a lot of good Osprey stuff depending on what scale you're looking for, like of gods and mortals would be amazing if you wanted to RP demi-gods in a greek mythology setting

go back in time two years and buy wargames factory

the-ninth-age.com/lexicon/index.php?entry/2071-list-of-miniature-companies/

the-ninth-age.com/lexicon/index.php?entry/2174-miniatures-vampire-covenant-skeletons/

Terrible shame that. Good looking minis, if Warlord ever rerelease them they won't be as cheap.

Oh believe me, I'm aware WGF could have helped me out had I gotten serious about KoW sooner. I regret not buying more stuff from them when I had the chance.

WGF is a sad sad story. Warlord bought them out because they didnt like competition, and canned their entire product range with no word at all of them rereleasing any of it. This was especailly disappointing because WGF had some awesome cheap plans for scifi greatcoat troopers. Likely will never happen because warlord's shitty 'muh btgoa!'

If I had the capital I'd commission some sculpts. I think by now I know many of the major mistakes that kill off small players.

I tried an undead army with 2 liches and 2 necromancers for turn one charges. It did surprisingly well.

>for turn one charges. It did surprisingly well.
WTF?
Desire to know more intensives.
What was your and your enemys army? How many points?
How did the battle went in detail?

TL;DR: POST MOTHERFUCKING STORYTIME ...please

On top of my head :
>lich one with the book that gives more surge
>second lich with surge+healing
>2 barebone necromancers with surge+banechant
>two hordes of skellingtons with giant rats (dogs)
>one horde of skellington archers
>additional stuff I don't remember (at least one horde of werewolves)

That's 48 surge dice, used them on the speamen skellie horde to rush on the shooty flank of my opponent on first turn. Second turn I did the same with the second skellie horde.

Later in game the necromancers were handing out banechants like candies and the healing lich made the two cqc hordes a nightmare to kill

Of course the list needs a shitload of refinement. For example it needs something harder than a spearmen horde as a hard hitter, but doing spearmen (first wave)+wigths (second wave) or replacing the werewolves by revenants could be an option.

Anyway it's a very fast and funny list.

I have to paint up more necrodancers

[Ophidia intensifies]

Nice! As a fellow undead player I approve.
Especially the inclusion of living soldiers.

My undead have the following theme:
A not evil vampire count that rules his pretty shitty lands with a just hand and wants to protect his living subjects. To do so he bullied three necromancers into his service. So when the army of the count is marching out the living have to pay taxes by allowing their dead rrelatives to become zombies. Also there is a core of living troops that works as a guard/reserve formation made out of a Foot Guard and a Spearmen regiment accompanied by a troop of Archers from the Kingdom of men list. Every fallen regular soldier gets reanimed as a skelly warrior after he died on the battle field.
"We will serve you in life and in death."

As special rules:
The living get inspired by my Vampirelord
The three necromancers (one of them is a revenent king on undead wyrm = mortis engine)have better surge, healing and lighting bolt spells but each turn at the beginning I role a die for each of those three on a 1 they won’t do shit for one turn, since they hope that maybe in this battle their overlord will finally die and they can do as they please.

It's the first army I made following Mantica lore. I'll add djinns as whights and probably ghosts.

The fact that you use moons as a measurement of time rather than winters betrays you. That, and your spacing. I am not saying that KOW shouldn't get threads, I am saying it shouldn't get generals. Generals just burn up all discussion about something until all that is left eventually is low quality posting. I would rather not associate that with KOW; I respect the game.

> Now, I'm not saying I'm jesus
Well I didn't have to say if for you then o humble one. Missing your trip aren't you?

Operation £20.00 Dwarf army is a go. Going to get my dad to laser-cut me some trays and use a circle saw to make 25mm round holes in a top layer

And yet it is your posting, on a matter that you cannot control, that is detracting from the quality. Whatever will be will be, friend.

What are you gonna use for djinns?

Mantic ogres with sculpted baggy pants legs maybe.

Yeah, 20p each or 50 for £7.70 is fantastic
The dwarfs look pretty decent too

I love what you're doing user