Kings of War

AS I have mentioned in a previous post despite wanting to play a fantasy war game I could never get into the old Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Just far too complex a set of rules that I found was just not fun to play and I really did not like the setting for the game. The Old World was just a strange hodge podge that never really made much sense. Then along came Age of Sigmar. I rejoiced because the game was nice and simple, and I loved the setting - which reminded me of those old 70's progressive rock album covers. But as time has gone by I've found myself losing interest in Age of Sigmar. Partly because I am finding that I want a little more to the rules set and also because at the heart of it, I want to play a generic fantasy war game. Up on my radar suddenly pops Kings of War from Mantic.

Just watching a dozen or so battle reports on Youtube and reading through their forums, I have developed quite an interest. The system is simple - you can even download a basic set of the rules from their website as well as intro army lists for the main rule book armies. The setting is nice and generic as I like and because of the way it is set up there are some great opportunities for modelling the units. Thirdly, the game is miniature neutral. Although Mantic sell their own miniatures, the point is that so long as the miniatures are the correct scale you can use any model. Sneakily, the armies are also loosely based on what Warhammer Fantasy Battle used to have so you can just import your old established armies over.

Kings of War has 11 factions in the version 2.0 core rule book:

Abyssal Dwarfs: Chaos Dwarfs in Mantica. Simpler put, they're Nazi Dwarfs. Slavers who focus on shotguns, war machines, and fiery golems.
Basileans: Fluff-wise, the Basileans are a lot like the Byzantine/Eastern Roman empire but can summon angels. They have armoured knights, men at arms and nuns riding giant cats.
Dwarfs: Exactly like all other Dwarfs in all other settings, hard and tough and beardy, but unlike Warhammer or Lord of the Rings Dwarfs, they are an expanding empire. They have cavalry... BADGER CAVALRY!!!
Elves: The elite, noble Elves, who are better than you. The Elves are 'good guys' but are responsible for a lot of bad things in Mantica, including splitting the gods into good and evil half-gods, and educating a gifted human child who would grow up to be Mhorgoth the Faceless, the most feared necromancer in all of Mantica. Exactly like the Elves from every other fantasy universe then.
Forces of Nature: Exactly what it says on the tin.
Forces of the Abyss: Servants of 37 evil half gods who live with their masters in Mantica's Hell. They look like the horns and pitchfork devils, with some big ogre demons throw in for good measure.
Goblins: Separate from Orcs in the setting, although they can ally with each other.
Kingdoms of Men: Generic human army intended to be used with your other fantasy and historic miniatures. Different from Mantic's own human models described above.
Ogres: Mercenaries who sometimes get ballsy and make their own little kingdoms. They enjoy fighting, adventure and telling wildly exaggerated stories about their exploits. Ogres don't hold grudges or have any inherent racial prejudices, so they are happy to ally with anyone from Elves to Demons and everything in between. The ogre models produced by Mantic are excellent.
Orcs: Brutal and horde-based; called "greenskins" and "a sea of green," with the Ogre's tendency towards cannibalism thrown in.
Undead: Generic undead including everything from vampires and werewolves to zombies and mummies.

There are also 9 army lists contained within the Uncharted Empires supplement. These lists are intended to rip off a number of different fantasy miniature lines, particularly missing Citadel armies from the core rule book:

The Brotherhood: Another holy order style army, this one more inspired by Bretonnia and Azeroth. Has both big and small water elementals in addition to lots of cavalry options.
Empire of Dust: Essentially Tomb Kings with a larger emphasis on healing than the more standard undead.
League of Rhordia: An alliance of humans and halflings.
Nightstalkers: An odd list in that there aren't really any major miniature lines to represent it. Spooky and strange creatures that resemble Eldrazi and pumpkin monsters in the art. Mantic have announced they plan to release a full product line for this army in the future.
Ratkin: Pretty much Skaven.
Salamanders: Lizard people of a couple different stripes. Formerly known as Reptilians.
The Herd: Beastmen, either taken from the Warhammer Fantasy line or from another line, such as Wrath of Kings.
Trident Realms of Neritica: An aquatic faction, mostly consisting of fishmen and sea beasts.
Varangur: Vikings and raiders reminiscent of Warriors of Chaos. Formerly known as the Shattered Clans.

In addition there are future armies planned that don't yet have full lists yet, although some have beta lists available:

Northern Alliance: A good Elf/human faction from the far north. Said to field various ice-themed creatures as well, such as yetis.
Ophidians: A mix of Arabian and Persian motifs with undead servants and Conan the Barbarian style snake men.
Twilight Kin: Dark Elves with a bit of smexy Dark Eldar thrown in for flavor; live in caves beneath the desert after getting thrown out of the main Elf homeland. The Twilight Kin do have a temporary basic list you can download from the Mantic website.


I've already got a nice sized Tomb Kings army from the days of Warhammer Fantasy so I can field as either generic undead or more likely, the Empire of Dust. I'm also tempted by a couple others, mainly Neritica (cthulhu people!), Nightstalkers and Elves. The costs of Mantic's own barmy bundles is reasonable so I may pick up more as well.

I'm hoping to tempt a few of my fellow players away from Age of Sigmar to this in the coming months as I think they will enjoy this more than AoS for the most part. But the best thing is there is no reason to not play either game because of only one set of miniatures.

Moosive Battle to the Death!

Last night my chum Mike and I played a battle of Age of Sigmar featuring everything we had. My undead force came in at around 275 wounds and his Stormcast Eternals at about 265 wounds. Surprisingly the game took about two and a half to three hours to play.

To start with my undead did really well but I was claiming the initiative so I was able to replenish my units and models quite nicely and it kept him busy as everything else moved up to pile in. Half way through the game the tide turned and he had initiative. At that point my lines folded as I couldn't recover quickly enough to keep my units intact. I think the game went 6 or 7 turns before I conceded with about 6 skeleton warriors left on the table.

Surprise unit of the night went to the Carrion who are hard as nails and putting out 4 attacks a piece (5 bird unit) and although they did take casualties were great at holding up units that were otherwise being a pain.

Well done Mike. Looking forward to a somewhat smaller rematch. :)

Only a half dozen weeks to go and the league is done. Really it was far too big but for the most part it is nice to see the club being active and used.  The victor at this stage still looks like Jon to me but there are friendly bets floating around that it may be Jason or Ashleigh. I feel bad for Brian though as he never has the best of luck and this league hasn't done him any favours.

Once the league ends we can have some friendlies and just chill with fun games. I'm hoping to turn a few of the old Warhammer Fantasy players over to Age of Sigmar before I start a league for that next year.

Age of Sigmar

After a couple more games of Age of Sigmar I have pretty much fallen in love with this version of Warhammer. It is just so much fun win or lose, and yes, I have lost all my games so far. Mainly because my opponent plays Ogors (ogres) and they are bloody tough.

One player who has pretty much quit Warhammer has given me his entire Tomb Kings army which gives me the basis for a legion of the undead that I want. Now that the silly must have a vampire and crumbling army rules are gone, it is feasible to play one. I'm looking at finding a suitable necromancer figure to represent Heinrich Kemmler aka the Lichemaster, who will be my regular commander.

I find it odd that I really want to get into this game now. I am going to give an uncharacteristic thumbs up to Games Workshop for what they have created here.

Age of Sigmar

Last night at the club I had my first game of Age of Sigmar, the newest iteration of Warhammer Fantasy. You have to be aware that I was already positively disposed towards this before I had the game. It looked to me to be exactly what I wanted from a fantasy war game. My friend Brian build two lists, one ogre and the other wood elves. Both were balanced to 55 wounds total with no monsters. I chose wood elves and off we went.

Movement is now more like 40K in that your units are essentially skirmishing which is much more historically correct and you can just move as you want without all the old wheeling nonsense. Much more preferable to what we used to have.

The magic system seems nice and basic although it did screw me over severely. Brian had a magician in his list and I didn't. I had a nice tough hero though. He only did the spell once but it basically opened up the ground and devoured an entire unit of elf warriors.We had a good laugh about it but even with a 50/50 chance of ending the spell kept going and it was frustrating. I'm not going to hold it against the game for now as it was just dumb luck one way or another.

Combat was good and simple and there still are tactical decisions to be made if you end up with a multi-unit melee. In an odd sort of way it reminded me of very early Warhammer and Rogue Trader. The only issue that I had run through my head was the multi-wound ogres compared to my little elves. It was much much harder to drop a single ogre and thus their unit effectiveness, than it was for them to smash through my units. It should balance out but something still niggled.

Brian's ogres did me in ultimately as I gave up the ghost when I was down to two archers and my hero. At least my elf lord died giving the ogres a good thrashing.

I don't like the world setting and shall just ignore it, but I found the system to be just about (maybe 80%) what I want from a fantasy game. Saying that, it isn't going to be good for the traditional Warhammer Fantasy player who wants the OTT level of complexity that Fantasy had. But for casual players and newcomers to this sort of hobby, Age of Sigmar is going to be a breath of fresh air.