Why Kings of War?
Let me just thank everyone up front for reading through my post. I know it’s going to be lengthy before I even get started here.
Also, don’t take this as a negative write up toward any game you personally enjoy. We are playing games for fun. Play what you enjoy.
As many of you experienced, GW decided to blow up our game and force us to take a hard look at where we now spend our hobby time. Age of Sigmar was a completely different game, not just a new edition of Warhammer Fantasy, and that opened the door for exploration into a plethora of available game systems. I’m not going explain the difference here between games, nor am I going to rant about AoS or what I think the future may or may not hold for 9th Age, the fan based new version for Warhammer Fantasy.
What I am going to attempt to do is talk about what I love about Kings of War.
When I first looked at the rules for Kings of War, it felt like a “lesser version” of Warhammer Fantasy. I immediately missed the complexity of Warhammer. But, I wanted to give it a fair chance because I was looking for a “company supported” game that maintained a large scale battle feel in a fantasy setting and emphasized the movement of troops and line of sight. I also have spent thousands of dollars on models over the years and though I’ll always enjoy buying new models to build new armies, I didn’t want my previous work to be completely unusable in my new game of choice.
There weren’t too many games to choose from under that criteria and I have to admit, I was worried that I wouldn’t find a game as rewarding and fulfilling as Warhammer Fantasy had been for me over the last 13+ years of miniature wargaming.
I first tried out Age of Sigmar. Then I talked to players directly involved in the 9th Age project. I was even personally invited to help write the new Beastmen army book for 9th Age. At the same time I dove into Kings of War and approached it as a completely different game, trying to not drag my Warhammer Fantasy biases into my experience.
What I found were the things that initially felt less complete or a negative for the game to me became some of the things that I enjoyed most about the game. Here’s a bullet point list of many of those things that now attract me to the game and make me confident that Kings of War is the game for me.
– Rule Book: The rules are clean, crisp and compact. A Warhammer player like myself can read through the less than 40 pages of rules in an evening and have a very good grasp on how to play a game. This is a huge positive for encouraging new players to enter the gaming scene. I have run into many players over the years who chose to not play Warhammer fantasy because the rules were intimidating and complex. At first I thought I’d enjoy the game less because I’m the kind of person who enjoys spending hours upon hours reading through army books and rules so I know them well when I play the game. However, at the same time, I was always amazed at how many people had been playing the game for years and still didn’t understand some of the rules for the game. And, to see the rules questions that cropped up at the Warhammer Fantasy US Masters made me realize that more rules doesn’t always mean it will be a better game.
– Rules are intuitive: I’ve put on demos for this game and taught new players the rules and it amazes me how intuitive the rules are. At Waaaghpaca, I showed a couple of players on Saturday how to play the game and even lent them an army to play in the tournament on Sunday. After being walked through a game just once, they were comfortable enough with the rules to play in a 20 person tournament and enjoyed themselves without feeling like they were having to ask rules questions constantly. The rules are so intuitive.
– Simple Complexity: Easy to grasp rules won’t hold players for the long run though. So, is there complexity enough to keep me engaged for years like I was in Warhammer Fantasy? The answer for me is “yes”. This game is more unforgiving than Warhammer ever was. If you get out maneuvered and a key unit is charged in the flank or rear, you may have just lost the game. Like chess, this is a game of preplanning, forward thinking and careful sacrifice for the greater good of the rest of your army and is won and lost in the movement phase. I’m confident that this game will hold my attention for the long run.
– No “easy button”: In Warhammer we all know that there were certain armies that had more tools for winning than others. We all have seen the Purple Sun that ripped through a dwarf, ogre or undead army that won the game in a single dice roll. We’ve also seen the game where a nurgle demon prince single handedly destroyed an entire army. We’ve seen the game where a light council faced demons or undead and won the game basically before it started. There were many examples of “easy buttons” in Warhammer Fantasy. In Kings of War, there are some armies that can be tougher to beat than others depending on the scenarios. But, good generalship is still needed to win. This is a huge attraction for me and the game balance is light years ahead of what I experienced in Warhammer Fantasy.
– FAR less random: We are playing a dice game so randomness will always play a part. In fact, some of the best stories usually come from the abnormal dice rolls that went against all odds. But, for those who like their generalship to mean something, you want that randomness to have less of an impact. We’ve all had our level 4 wizard get sucked into the warp with a miscast at the worst moment. We’ve also seen our units panic off the table when we did everything we could to keep them within range of our General and BsB. We’ve seen our war machines blow themselves up when we needed them most. We’ve watched our frenzied units charge when we wanted them to hold their position. We’ve seen the single goblin left in a unit hold on snake eyes with Insane Courage. The list could go on and on. Well, in KoW, the only one of those on that long list of “what could go wrong” is the Insane Courage roll. A unit will still hold against all odds if double 1’s are rolled. But, that just helps create those great stories to be told in the future, without the multitude of other things that can randomly go wrong that overcome your generalship.
– Lack of complexity in army creation?: I thought this would be a HUGE negative for the game for me. But, after playing for over 6 months now, I’ve found that there is still an enjoyable complexity to the army building process that I didn’t expect. In Warhammer I would spend hours massaging my army list to maximize the tools I could bring to the table in order to give myself the chance to overcome the various challenges I thought I’d be facing. And initially KoW didn’t look very complex. What I’ve found through experience playing the scenarios that always crop up tournaments though, is that there is more complexity than I initially though and it’s very enjoyable. I’ve put together 30+ variations of my list for Adepticon alone. Because you can attach artifacts (magic items) to units, you now have to opportunity to customize synergies between your units like you didn’t have in Warhammer Fantasy. Sure, there were a couple of banners that were worth taking on units like the flaming banner, gleaming pennant and such. But, we have more opportunities in KoW to customize every unit far more than we ever had in Fantasy. Yes, there are fewer options for unit size because they come in static sizes. But, you can give special rules to any unit you want to that you just couldn’t do in Warhammer.
– Speed of the game: Seriously, I can’t believe how quickly this game moves. I get the same rewarding experience of playing a large scale fantasy battle with a friend in half the time…which means we get to play again in the same evening!!! For the same size game that used to take close to 3 hours in Warhammer, now takes an hour and a half…two hours tops if you’re chatting and drinking some beer. We’ve played a 5 vs 5 game with 7,500 points per side in 3.5 hours and that was going through 7 full turns and consisted of some brand new players to the game. The speed and fluidity of this game can’t be emphasized enough.
– New tactical challenges: As stated, the rules for this game are different. That presents new tactical challenges that you didn’t have in Warhammer Fantasy. The ability for you to move through your own units presents a plethora of tactical options you never had before. The systematic line of sight rules allow for different tactics as well as making you think about how you build your army list. I could go deep into some tactics here, but I’ll refrain from doing so and encourage you to listen to our Lake SWATT Fantasy podcast. We’ll be discussing tactics within the game in the near future.
– Affordability: The models are cheaper…though not up to the same quality as GW. It’s a fair criticism. But, it is flat out cheaper to play this game than Warhammer ever was. In this game you never change your formation. What this allows a player to do is glue models to a movement tray of that unit size instead of each individual base. The rules allow you to put less models on the base than the unit would normally require, basically 50% of the models plus 1 compared to what the unit should be. So, a unit of 20 models only needs 11, a unit of 40 only needs 21, a unit of 5 only needs 3 and so on. This allows for a tremendous cost savings to a player…or for a player to make almost twice the army for the same money. On top of that, the books are inexpensive. When AoS dropped, my shelf of nearly $1200 worth of books became obsolete. Yes, I had every army book, the large hard rule book, every End Times expansion, Triumph and Treachery…almost $1,200 invested in just knowing all the rules. In KoW the books cost $25 each and you only need a couple and you have ALL of the 20 armies in print along with the full rule set.
– Modeling opportunities: As mentioned above, you can make dynamic movement trays where you are only limited by your own imagination as to what you create. Instead of having to put every model on a 20mm base, which limits a hobbyist on what they can do, those same models can go on a dynamic base of 100×40, 100×80 or even 200×80. I’ve already enjoyed this style of basing and how dynamic and active I can make the units look. I can’t wait to see what some of the best hobbyists in our community can do with this opportunity. On top of that, Mantic encourages people to buy and play with the models they like. You can bring your “all GW” model army to an official Mantic sanctioned KoW tournament and you are welcome. That opens the door for a wealth of modeling opportunities and creativity.
– Easier for Tournament Organizers: As a TO, I had to create an FAQ for my tournament as well as decide on what I would or would not allow in my Warhammer Fantasy tournament so the players would have fun and not knock heads over ambiguous rules in the rule book or bring “broken” unit combinations that ruined everyone’s fun. We won’t have that in Kings of War. The rules are so clean that a TO should very rarely have to answer a rules question. And, as “broken or overpowered” unit combinations become apparent, Mantic reacts themselves and adjusts things. The FAQ is short and concise and little if no comping is needed for game balance because a rules committee that consists of actual players in the community is used to help balance the game.
– The US Masters: Those who know me personally, know that I like competitive tournaments. I like to just have fun with the game, but I also like to challenge myself tactically. The fact that 7 out of 8 regions for the US Masters voted in favor of Kings of War going forward, means that we will have a strong tournament circuit going forward for players to participate in. This also brings our KoW community together across the country and allows for us to feel a part of something bigger than just our local club or game store.
– A company that involves and cares about its community: This is a HUGE positive for me. To see a company where they want input from the community and care about the players who buy their game is so refreshing when coming from Warhammer. If you go to their forums you will find players and employees responding on their forum who were directly involved in writing the rules. The owner himself responds directly to correspondence and accepts personal friend requests on Facebook. Mantic is a company that makes you feel at home when being a part of their family.
All of these things stated above and even more have me excited to play Kings of War going forward.
Thank you for your willingness to read all the way through!