"So What's TMP's opinion of Kings of War?" Topic

So I have been getting the fantasy mass combat bug of late and have been eyeballing my old Warhammer Fantasy Battles armies. (I have Orcs, Nurgle flavored Chaos, Dwarves, and High Elves) With the recent implosion of WFB I'm shopping around for a system to try. I'm a fan of Warhammer 3rd edition, but it will a hard sell to get the locals to try anything that's not currently supported.

I downloaded the "here kid, the first one's free" basic core rules and teaser army lists from the Mantic site, and I like what I see. So what is your experience with Kings of War? Have you looked at the 2nd edition rules that just dropped? Other thoughts?

I like some of the mechanics but have yet to test them out.

It's a fine game, very playable and a great excuse to get ALL those old Warhammer minis out onto the battlefield at the same time.

Here are links to a couple of battle reports from my club:

link

link

My gaming group that grew up on Warhammer have all switched to Kings of War. They still love the history & depth of the Warhammer world, but even before the Age of Sigmar switch, they'd given up on the latest Warhammer rules.

Kings of War is simple & fast enough to actually allow you to finish a game in an evening. It does require a bit of a mind shift in some ways, like the inactive player does absolutely nothing during his turn. The active player rolls all the dice. But the turns are fast enough that the inactive player doesn't have a lot of down time.

I'd highly recommend Kings of War, especially with the ability to pretty much port any of your warhammer armies over, even armies that have been discontinued by GW.

Waiting for my 2nd Edition Kickstarter to get to me.

The game itself is a solid set of rules.

Just don't ask me my opinion of the publisher.

I love KoW. I played 1st Ed a lot, and I've already played several games of 2nd Ed.

Solid, fast, fun, easy to learn, easy to remember, but still deep enough to hold my interest.

As far as Mantic as a whole, their minis are average to poor (but getting better) but their rules are really, really good. I play a lot of Dreadball ( A LOT ) and Deadzone as well as KoW.

We're going to give it a try this week.

Great alternative to WHFB , with not as much detail to get bogged down in which allows the game to move along at a really good pace and still gives the satisfying feeling of playing a large massed units game. The army lists are pretty good and cover allot of choices and its always fun to see different armies interpretation of troop choices on the table ( ie: figure choices ) . We play this exclusively for fantasy gaming and have never had a bad game nor witnessed any. My only gripe is that players spend the first five minutes of the game moaning about where WHFB has changed to their dislike, after that initial moment the game moves along very well. cheers Tom

First impressions from watching it being played.

A direct quote from one of the players: "Your opponent does nothing during your turn."

I watched a unit of axemen slam into a pike phalanx with no ill effects.

The player with the pikes also had arquibusers who were rated as rifles.

I was considering it but this seems too IGOUGO for my tastes.

And don't get me started on the "buckets o' dice".

Oh yeah and you get to use lots of D6s Which I love

Also waiting for my 2nd edition Kickstarter to arrive, but received the pdf of the full rules and the first thing that struck me was the world intro fluff. Its actually really good! Honestly sucked me in and was a descent page turner. 8 pages of their world's history followed by 30 page gazetteer of the various nations/races which includes quite a bit more background and stories. Not usually a fluff guy, I was pleasantly surprised.

Otherwise agree with others here, I think the rules give a solid game that resolves in a reasonable amount and best of all allows you to immediately port most your WHF armies. I'm rebasing mine into nice unit bases to take advantage of the no casualties removed aspect.

KOW is Fun and easy to learn. It might not be as detailed as WHFB…but you also don't get bogged down in seemingly trivial rules. Both KOW and WHFB have their respective merits. For KOW, however, I taught my 11 year old son to play in about 10 minutes. We proceeded to play two games in less than 3 hours on Sunday. We had a great time…and that, after all, is what gaming really comes down to for us. Note: We have a Dwarf vs. Elf grudge match scheduled for this coming weekend…at his request.

Has anyone used KOW for Lord of the Rings games – still looking for a different set to WOTR from GW for larger than skirmish games…

Mike

Thanks for the opinions and experiences, gang.

I picked up a hard copy of the 2nd edition rules from the local game shop yesterday afternoon after work. I'm already brimming over with ideas for (to borrow a term from GW) "counts as" armies using the army lists in the book. I've got a great big bag of 28mm Germanic and Celtic barbarians that I'm sitting on that might make a good start for a fantasy barbarian force.

We have our first game with the rules set for this Thursday. I'm a little disappointed that it looks like my Chaos army is only going to point out to be 1000-1200 points or so under these rules. Ah well.

And now to close with a couple of specific replies…

Just don't ask me my opinion of the publisher.

Research online has turned up a mixed set of opinions on Mantic. I'm curious what your specific grievance is. As I have had no dealings with them before, I don't have a view one way or another yet.

And don't get me started on the "buckets o' dice". grin

Eh.
I don't mind lots of dice. But I play 40k and Force on Force. So I'm biased… ;-)

As far as Mantic as a whole, their minis are average to poor (but getting better)

I have mixed feeling on them. Some of their line I quite like, and others I don't…like most companies I suppose. One good selling point is that they cost a fraction of what their primary competition asks.

I'm not overly keen on the plastic/resin that Mantic use for some figures, I find it needs a lot of careful cleaning up.

As for the rules and force lists, I'm fine with them. One thing we have found is that the game plays very well using 10mm figures and concerting movement to centimetres instead of inches. Not only an your old Warhammer figures get a game, so can the Warmaster ones.

good game, very much enjoying it at the moment. Its even got our group buying new fantasy figures. Though not from GW obviously…

Martin, just so you know, 1200 points is a "small" game for Kings of War. You'll probably be able to play it to completion in 6 turns or less. We've found that 2,000 points is the minimum required to give a nice, meaty, hours-long battle, with each side having a chance to regroup, muster the reserves, and counterattack a few times.

Okay playtest over, 1800 points each, which is a fair size army indeed.

Done in 2 hours and we had never played before. Close bloody game, Loved it. Two thumbs up! I see alot of big games in the future.

Martin, just so you know, 1200 points is a "small" game for Kings of War. You'll probably be able to play it to completion in 6 turns or less.

Yeah, that's what I gathered from looking around online. It's small, but it will allow us to get a game in this evening to see how we enjoy the system. If we like it, I'll certainly build up to a higher point level. Any excuse to paint more toys after all!!

Tonight is my group's first try of the rules. We're going to run my Orcs against my Nurgle Chaos army using the "Kingdoms of Men" list. I'll try to set up an after action report thread tomorrow.

For what it's worth 1200 points gets me the following:
-Mounted General
-Wizard with a couple of spells
-Hero with an artifact that makes him "inspiring"
-Troop of Chaos Knights with artifact making them "elite"(counts as "Knights")
-Three Regiments of Chaos Warriors, one of which is armed with two handed weapons (counts as "Guard Infantry")
-Regiment of Chaos Thugs (counts as "Shield Wall infantry")
-Regiment of Diseased Flagellants (counts as "beserkers")
-Regiment of Trolls allied from Orc list

My opponent is making the Orc list, so I have no clue yet what it will consist of.

I've been playing Kings of War for a couple years now and am eagerly awaiting second edition. They do have some nice models but the plastic resin stuff is always on the small side. I think it shrinks as it cures or something. Their plastics are improving but still aren't great. The rules are solid but a little too abstract at times. You can play 500 point games but the system is best at around 1500 points.

So as I said, we played our first Kings of War game last night. My opponent took some photos and beat me to the punch with a report.

TMP link

Anyway, I found the game to be fun, fast moving, and the mechanics fairly simple. Despite the simplicity, I can see how it can have scope for tactics and is more subtle than it looks at first. I won't say I'm sold on it after a single game. But my first experience was positive.

In play, Kings of War is very different than Warhammer and your expectations and strategies take time to adjust. One of the larger differences is that units are fairly uniform and elites don't utterly destroy lesser foes very often. Oh they'll win eventually but it's rare to see a unit of 20 annihilated by anything in the first turn of combat.