"Kings of War overview" Topic

Per another person's request, I will attempt a down and dirty overview of Kings of War. I have to offer a disclaimer in that I have not played them yet. I would welcome input from anyone who has played the game to jump in and comment.

KoW is a mass fantasy wargame written Alessio Cavatore, formerly of GW. The game certainly shows some WHFB influences but does have its own departures. The game is described as "simple but not simplistic" by Ronnie Renton of Mantic Games.

Individual basing is the same as WHFB, but the unit is dealt with as a whole for movement, combat and removal, so you can run massed individuals or a big single diorama base according to your preference.

All of the standard High Fantasy races are represented. You are welcome to run any minis you have, provided you fit them into the existing lists. For example if you have an army of centaurs they might fit into some cavalry based Kingdoms of Man list; if you have an army of Lizardmen they might fit into Orcs or Goblins, depending on your take on that race.

Armies are aligned Good Evil and Neutral. Anyone may ally with Neutral, Good and Evil will never ally.

Emphasis is on unit coordination and conventional melee or missile fire. There are no deathstars or uber heroes. Magic plays a secondary role for the most part, and is not particularly deep or complex. There are noticeable complaints that magic is too minimized.

Compared to WHFB, the game is very streamlined and rapid play. The game very much lends itself to quick pick up games on one hand, and clear cut tournament settings as well. The game strives to eliminate cheese and min/maxing.

A new edition will be available soon, adjusting some game play and points allocations. The present rules can be downloaded here for free here: link

There are TONS of write ups and youtubes on the game. Here are a couple to start with if you are interested:
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link

I enjoy their forums. Very friendly, helpful, and a lot of sound questions, advice and perspectives. Mantic actually interacts with their fans and feels more like a company made up of gamers than of suits. manticforum.com

I played n a learning game at ORIGINS, then played in a 14 player game the next night.

I enjoyed them so much, last Sunday I bought a copy of BOTH starter sets…..

Nice overview and seems fairly accurate. I recommend trying the game out. It's quite good.

You can see 3 of our games and our review of KoW here: link

Where would my Chaos (mostly mortal) fit in here? I am sure there is an easy fit for my Bretonnians, and Dogs of War, not sure I see Lizardmen as being like Orcs. Thanks for the follow up.

Having gone over to the Mantic site I might have answered some of my own questions. One of the things that I enjoyed about Warhammer was the background and in particular I have mostly played Chaos through the years. Of course the fluff for Chaos is heavily borrowed from Michael Moorcock's novels. Therefore, I could see moving to Kings of War and either playing my Chaos using the Orc army list or perhaps do something that to me would reflect a Chaos background by having an Orc force with a Twilight Kin allied force. Not sure if that would work but it is a thought or just go with the Orc list for now.

kallman – Chaos would probably fit into an evil aligned Kingdoms of Man list, perhaps with an Abyssal ally to cover the more infernal beasties. Orcs in KoW are smarter and meaner than GW's Orcs. I'd say they are closer to Uruk hai.

Again, I am novice to the system, but I do like what I see, and I heartily approve the inclusiveness and flexibility that Mantic and KoW exhibits.

A second edition is out soon, and will deal with some of the issues of lists translations and points balances. The Mantic KoW forums will give you your best answers until then. I suspect you can get a lively discussion going about Lizardmen. Those who have that army seem mightily attached to them.

ordinarybass – Thanks for the link, and thanks for letting me know I got it more or less right. I'm still in the window shopping stage, and ramping up some Orcs. A great big single Horde base of Greataxe Orcs as a diorama? Oh yes, yes indeed. Researching those Frazetta carnage scenes!

PzGeneral – How did the massed 14 player game go? What sets did you buy? Basileans actually tempt me to buy good guys, which almost -never- happens! Abyssal Dwarves look pretty tasty too.

I play my bad-guy fantasy army (mostly based around Battlemasters Chaos figures) using the Kingdoms of Man list combined with the Abbysal Dwarves or Abbysal list. KoM army list is Neutral and by the rules can combine with either good or evil armies.

As for Lizardmen, there is an upcoming list that should cover them.

Forces of Nature have Salamanders and Naiads which could be looked at as Lizard Men but hopefully the promised army list supplement will add them and Skaven.

For now I'd agree with Chaos as Kingdoms of Men with a focus on elite (as opposed to "Elite") units like Foot Guard and Knights. You could count a unit of Beastmen as Orcs to allow you to take trolls. Demons are the Abyssal list, though it's not an exact fit. There's no special chaos god rules but there are demonic infantry, cavalry, large cavalry, and monsters.

Hopefully we'll see an evil human list someday. I'd also like a proper barbarian list with monsters. Right now I run them as shield wall or spearmen and take some ogres to allow me a mammoth. But I'd like a proper list that makes them ferocious in combat but easy to break.

Beastmen, Lizardmen and Skaven are the tricky ones. I could see a beastmen list of some sort with Skaven in it.

I play Kingdoms of Men with my historical medieval army. You might notice that Mantic does not make a Kingdoms of Men army. This is on purpose to let people like me use their historical figures. :)

KoW is fast and fun. I played in a tournament back in April and played 3 games in under 4 hours.

The rules are simple and short, but the play is very tactical.

I'm in the Kickstarter for the 2nd edition, and we should be getting our rulebooks in July. Hopefully we'll get the PDF in a few weeks.