"Kings of War: Historical - Full Review" Topic

Hey folks, long time no post, but I managed to get a rare game of ancients in and it timed with picking up the new Mantic variant of their Kings of War rules for historical games of pre-gunpowder warfare.

The full review is here:

link

But in synopsis I would say great game system, but purists may feel the army lists are not especially historical.

Anyway, read and enjoy!

Thanks

Nice review.

Did e.g. the Egyptian army list make sense to you personally? I mean, does it include generic troos like spearmen and bowmen and special/optional units like chariots and medieval cavalry tha cannot be combined? That would be a way to handle such a time span, I suppose.

" No doubt for friendly play they are easily adjusted, but they may well irk those who need every last detail pinned down." Yeah we got one of the latter in the club.

Thanks for the timely review as some of my friends are suggesting that we try them.

Allen

I actually am more interested in the fan made historical lists. They seem to be more historically inclined. I enjoy KOW. But we want to try the rules out for a historical game.

Thanks.

Kings of War is my new go to system. The rules are simple enough for use by infrequent gamers AND being the same for Historical and Fantasy helps rules retention even more.

We used original 1 Ed. KoW for a Viking / Saxon throwdown, and it worked just fine.

I insisted that we ONLY use the Rules as Written and all I needed to do was pick which units that already existed in the army lists for the armies. I use Dwarf for the Viking hearth troops b/c the attack dog rule made for a great Berserker, which is where KoW stole it from, anyway, in the WAB Shieldwall Supplement.

I will emphasize that as a finely tuned rule set, if you aren't careful with changing things you and your group will have an evening suffering with the Law of Unintended Consequences [LUC]! My advice is to use units and rules that exist already rather than just making up something that you like from another rule set. This is made quite easy thanks to the fantasy rules. After all, there's no difference if you're getting healed by a Catholic monk or an Elf queen, the point is you're getting Hits removed.

For a really historical game, I prefer Hail Caesar, but I do like to wargame a lot of semi-historical stuff like the Trojan War and King Arthur, and I like the option to field heroes and even wierder stuff.

I have played a decent amount of Kings of War and s long as you are in for the sporting it is a good game.

Kings of War is rather bad at representing anything close to ancient or medieval battle simulation, even in a fantasy setting.

But Kings of War is otherwise a strong and well crafted game that is well balanced and quick to play, especially if you time your battles.