Lets have a fun fantasy based general guys. Sick of the skub surrounding WHFB/AOS. You can use any miniatures from anywhere for Kings of War to play just read the free rules.
All rules for free:
http://www.manticgames.com/free-rules.html
>>44006652
Check the archives for the old generals for actual OP content FYI.
The rules are like 90% free officially because retailers didn't want to carry it otherwise. Unofficially you just grab the last draft of the beta rules that are identical to the print copy. Last resort you just pirate it like everything else. Otherwise the paperback copy was pretty cheap and is only missing fluff.
Uncharted Empires is out with more lists. Again, you can find the last copy of the beta lists which are the most recent.
New armies up next are Abyssal Demons and Salamanders. Then Twilight Kin. Current armies are getting the last of the missing models filled in.
Campaigns book coming out next, and another lists book.
The best advertisement isn't anything in the OP. It's just that the game is decently balanced, fairly well designed, has good support, the company isn't shite, and is actually pretty efficient for your hobby time.
>>44006652
Couple of questions:
- Is it fun to play?
- How balanced are the factions?
- Wasn't there a kickstarter for a few more armies a while ago? Human/Angels and demons or something? When's that turning up?
- What armies can you actually play at this point?
>>44006988
>- Is it fun to play?
Surprisingly. It's a lot simpler but you get a lot more bang for your buck in terms of play. There's some major changes from WHFB you might not like at first but they make sense pretty quick.
>- How balanced are the factions?
Surprisingly. Mechanically the game is simple enough it's not as impossible to balance like others, and they actually did a good job of beta testing and feedback on the beta testing and tournaments and such. There's no useless units and otherwise the only way to build a 'bad' list just depends on the play scenario which is supposed to be randomly chosen. It looks like they're not going with the "imperfect balance perpetually evolving meta" design philosophy to sell new overpriced shit.
They did a lot of key things in the listbuilding rules and other restrictions like the turn limit which factor heavily too.
Balanced very differently from WHFB, where Magic and Heroes and such are pretty low-key and the bulk of the work requires a balanced force with intelligent maneuvering.
>- Wasn't there a kickstarter for a few more armies a while ago?
Abyssal Demons? Within next year I think?
>- What armies can you actually play at this point?
http://kow2.easyarmy.com/
Elves
Dwarves
Kingdom of Men (Generic catch-all for humans)
Abyssal Dwarves
Goblins
Orcs
Undead
Ogres
Baselia (Unique to KoW)
Forces of Nature
Abyssals
Empire of Dust
Ratkin
The Herd
League of Rhodia
Twilight Kin
Brotherhood
Varangur
Salamanders
Trident Realm
Night-Stalkers
You can take up to 25% of your points from a similarly aligned faction or neutral faction.
>>44006935
Some cracks in the balance are seeming to start to show
Undead's ridiculous flying heroes, namely. Impossible to kill, impossible to ignore because of the insane mobility of being an individual
I'm pointing together a desert themed elf army. Where's a good place to get 28mm camels?
>>44007264
>Night-Stalkers
*Also unique to KoW IIRC
>>44007287
>flying heroes
Those lists are pretty easy to crush. Firstly you need to know how to handle flying units, which is all about layering your forces so they can cover each other and control where the flyers can land to minimize damage.
The problem is where Heroes are fucking tiny and get fucking everywhere so people get all butt-hurt frustrated.
The reality is that flying heroes are fucking EXPENSIVE and don't do a fraction of the damage regular units can for the same price.
If they're spending 185-330 points to harass one unit of archers, you're doing them a favor by focusing on the hero unit. Their main forces are 185-330 points weaker, crush them. Their hero can dish out some regular damage.
Heroes DONT get the flanking bonus either, and already do half the damage of the equivalent wraiths which can be surged into a flank in one turn instead of two for double or even triple damage on top of that. Really inefficient to take heroes excepting to shut down lone ranged units or mages.
If you do really want to crush hero units, firstly there's an artifact to grant a bonus against individuals, and throw it on a hero with crushing strength to counter. Otherwise there's artifacts that can punch through heavy armor, even the grenades artifact. Some warmachines can nearly one-shot heavy defense heroes too.
Otherwise, keep some crushing strength and piercing better distributed in your army. Having none, then a lone CS(3) or something is hard to get into your favor.
I play undead and dicked around with the flying heavies list. It really only works a few times, then they wise up about their list building.
>>44007264
Where is this 'Empire of Dust'?
The Twighlight Kin mega army deal doesn't seem that great of a deal compared to some of the others on Mantic's website
>>44007927
In the last batch of beta lists that just got published in the Uncharted Empires book:
The Brotherhood, Salamander Armies, The Herd, The League of Rhordia, The Trident Realms of Neritica, The Empire of Dust, Night-Stalker Armies, Ratkin Armies and the Varangur
...or just use easyarmy or another list building site and the last draft from the open beta rules stuff.
>>44007987
Metal hybrid kits
Based on their prior product cycles, they will become resin or full plastic. IIRC they doubled the units in the box last time a unit went to resin keeping the same price. Pretty sure that was the wraiths though.
Hybrid kits are on their way out. Twilight Kin are being re-done and will be re-released. They still sell small packs of the pewter conversion bits though if you want to mix stuff.
>>44007927
Empire of Dust is in the new Uncharted Empires book
>>44007987
I think Mantic might be redoing the Twilight Kin army, which is why they haven't updated their army deal.
>Want to start collecting a fantasy army
>No one in my area plays or is even interested in WFB or KoW only X-Wing Infinity and 40k
I just want to push rectangles around
Played a nice 2000 point game yesterday, my Undead vs. his Salamanders with the Invade scenario.
Pic was the deployment. Any guesses who won?
>>44012276
Woops, that was later on. Here is the deployment.
>>44012276
I'm guessing salamanders won. Care to retell the battle? My wife is building a salamanders army while I'm building my first undead army and I would love to hear about your game.
>>44012276
>Undead
>Bone Giant
Allied?I bought that same model. Have yet to paint it. Looks really good though.
> Any guesses who won?
The lone tree.Or salamanders. For sure.Feel bad for that skellington giant. Colonel Updoot's last stand.
>>44012331
>>44012276
No play report?
Looks like you got your ass handed to you. Would like to hear some insights on it. I need more experience myself.
>>44012345
>>44012355
>>44012431
>bone giant
Yeah, it and the skeleton regiment were taken as allies. I just wanted an excuse to use the model.
>batrep requests
Damn, the one time I don't actually record shit and take 40 pictures.
My other batreps are here if you want, which includes a previous Undead vs. Salamanders game, albeit at 1300 points rather than 2000.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnt2uvETjSKY6Aq35O_9khep19dLvebfN
>Care to retell the battle?
To put it briefly, we ended up trading flanks and it was surprisingly close. As soon as I had finished deploying I regretted such a long thin deployment I had made.
His Ghekkotah Hunters advance and shoot my Ghouls off the board. In return my Revenant Cav charged and routed the hunters. The lancers advanced up the hill and were charged by the bone giant, a combat it won after 3 turns of punching. His Ankylodon (a beast with at10, CS(4) and de 6+) charges and routes my wights before they can do anything, and the turn after my rev cav take it from the Ankylodon in the side and the battle-captain in the front, which routed them after 2 turns of brutal pounding. Meanwhile the skelly regiment advances tries to fight off the ancients and fire sprites. The Revenant Cav break so the Battle-Captain and Ankylodon take on Bone Giant, as in this pic >>44012276. During these proceeding the Lich King is running around healing things and trying to avoid being charged. The bone giant and skellies eventually break, leaving the Ankylodon, Battle-Captain, Ancients and Fire Elementals to score for my opponent while only my Liche King survives at the end of turn 6. Ouch.
The rest of the board goes much better for me though. My vamp crosses the bridge and spends 3 turns fighting the Tyrants, and winning with no damage because of Lifeleech(2). I know that his Ancients on Rhinosaurs are a real pain train, so I give them lots of focus. Catapult gets in a great hit first turn, though mitigated by the mage's healing.
(Cont.)
>>44012809
>Ghoul troop routed by shooting 1st turn
Undead player here. Checks out.
Haven't seen it in the OP description before, but over at 1d4chan there are some in progress tactica pages for Kings of War: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Category:Kings_of_War/Tactics
>>44012809
My revenants move forward to take the charge from the ancients on Rhinosaurs. Despite having De5 and -/17 nerve the break instantly. My Soul Reaver Cav had been put over the river so got a clear charge into the Rhinosaurs and did more damage, but they held. They counter-charged and made the Soul-Reavers waver, but then the catapult saves the day with another nice big hit and routs them.
The Revenant King advances to engage the Saurus Primes, just to hold them until help arrived. The zombies advanced to take the charge from the ghekkotah warriors, which they ably took, and the wraiths swooped around to get a tasty rear-charge while the zombies counter-charged the front. This routed the Ghekko warriors, leaving the zombies to flank the Saurus Primes on the next turn and rout them as well. The Clan Lord was mostly ineffective.
All of this meant that his left side was utterly cleared out and my zombies, wraiths, soul-reaver cav and 3 heroes had crossed over. I actually had more points over than he did. But then, like a fool, I thought that charging his ember sprites with my vamp was a good idea. Didn't rout them and a 220 point model wasn't scoring for me.
So what was the result?It was a draw.
The Salamanders had about another hundred and something points scoring than I did, but they needed to have 200 more than me to claim victory. Still, my opponent had more points and it 'felt' like he won so it was a moral victory for him since he hadn't won a game of KoW yet.
>>44012996
In another game I had they actually survived into turn two and were a marvellous 'interference' unit, screening for me and taking angles that would expose the flank of whatever charged them. I plan on bringing more ghoul troops as soon as I paint them up.
>>44012276
>>44012331
I like these and request more.
>>44006935
Over on the Mantic forums they had some more information on the upcoming campaign book. Word over there was that there are two campaigns in the book; one is a narrative campaign that includes a Dungeon Saga mission as well, while the other is a series of lopsided scenarios where one side has more points on the field than the other. The book is also said to have rules for the characters from the Dungeon Saga box for use in Kings of War. Kickstarter backers who pledged for it are supposed to get their hard copies in the coming weeks, with a general release in February.
I think this would be pretty neat to get into. it cuts out a lot of the fucking faff in gw games with abstract flexibility, on paper to me at least. I'm trying to wrap my head around what I would need to get for armies though. are there general principles about how to build and organize a force? I get the whole troops, regiment, horde thing but it's all a bit hard to work out how to compose your forces to work cohesively. without playing at any rate. any tips about building a solid core?
>>44013948
Army construction is a little different in this game than GW games. Army composition is based on unit size more than unit type. You can take any number of regiments, hordes, and legions. For each regiment you take you can take two troops and one hero, war engine, or monster. For each horde or legion you take you can take four troops, one hero, one war engine, and one monster.
As for building an army, it's going to depend on which faction you want to start with. One good thing is that the infantry units, which will make up a lot of the models in your force, tend to be close in appearance so you could potentially just collect infantry models of the type of army you're building and try them as different things.
For example, if you're going elves many of the units could be the same models without breaking fluff or looking weird. Hunters of the Wild, Kindred Archers, Kindred Gladestalkers, and Therennian Sea Guard could all be the same model, so you could get some archer elf models you like and try them as each of these and see which unit you like most.
My mate just came back from a kings of war tournament. He had a great time and said all the armies were exceptionally painted and mostly 28mm historical type armies. One army was a Swiss one!
He said no one expected his cavalry unit to have 30 attack. Vore riders or something, forget the names of the exact unit, but they were guys riding beasts. Almost everyone was surprised to see them move through forests and hit with 30 attacks and absolutely rape the unit they charge.
My mate almost won best painted and was close to best sportsmanship.
>>44014107
I mean, I get how the rules dictate how to do it but I guess the problem I'm having is that I have no real sense of what I need when I'm looking at all the options. I'm thinking about making some ratkin and then whatever else takes my modeling and painting fancy since the ability to multibase brings a lot of possibility. I had a quick search around for some tactica but I couldn't really find any. I guess I might just cut out some cardboard squares and play test until I get a sense of the differences between the different unit sizes. >
>>44014411
Some information can be found here: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Kings_of_War/Tactics/Ratkin
There's also a short discussion of Ratkin on the beta forum: https://manticforum.com/forum/kings-of-war/kings-of-war-2-beta/260533-my-evolving-ratkin-list-2000-points-any-help-appreciated
I'm working on Ratkin myself, although I haven't played them yet so my thoughts are all just on how they look on paper. I'm building a lot of Tunnel Slaves/Warriors for my main infantry with Blight as my more elite infantry, using Skaven Clan Warriors and Plague Monks as the models, respectively. The war engines all don't look that great to me, but I do plan to utilize a Death Engine, Mutant Rat Fiend, and a Demonspawn for the real heavy hitters.
Anyone have pictures of interesting multibases?
>>44014878
Pretty plain one, but it does use Mantic models.
>>44013604
>one is a narrative campaign that includes a Dungeon Saga mission as well, while the other is a series of lopsided scenarios where one side has more points on the field than the other. The book is also said to have rules for the characters from the Dungeon Saga box for use in Kings of War
Pretty cool how they're connecting the two games
>>44014222
>Vore riders
>>44015481
They remind me to black numenoreans. They look cool.
>>44007525
A mang of great taste I see. I would look at wargames factory, they have some in metal.
So it seems in the new books they will have rules for extended campaigns, even special rules gained trought them.
>>44017334
I was thinking of using these camels from the Perry Bros.
They'll work great if the riders of separate pieces.
>>44017554
They look cool, perhaps you coul try cheap ass toys too if uber quality isn't a must, some are quite nice.
briefly, what's the difference between this and warhammer 8th edition?
>>44017764
Plenty, KoW is more streamlined in lots of way, less stats, special rules common to all factions (minus some like army wide ones), focus on units and not monster or heroes, no tables, magic is useful but not game winning, doomsday spells don't exist or death stars, its very well balanced and you can use any fatnasy mini in legal tournies. The worst thing is the fluff is meh at the moment but the World campaing seems interesting, it would tie with the dungeon i don't remember what game too.
>>44017440
They have campaign rules on their site right now under Kings of War: http://www.manticgames.com/organised-play.html
Does anybody have a source for heads that might fit on Mantic Elves? I have the theory that most Mantic Miniatures are actually pretty good, but the head, which is the most prominent part, fucks them up completely. And since the elves are pretty much the most hated example, I'd like to test it with them.
>mantic
Anybody try out the deadzone test release yet?
>>44020189
My play group wants to start this, but I still haven't had a chance to look at the rules yet.
>>44019709
Been looking for a little while, but it seems like there's not a lot of fantasy conversion bits out there. Plenty of fantasy models and plenty of sci-fi conversion bits, but I didn't find much in the way of fantasy elf head swaps.
>>44020405
It looks fairly similar. The main difference that I noticed was that rather than having two HP, units die instantly if they take more damage than their size, and become wounded (and debuffed) if they take less. The recruitment system is also a little bit different. I think points got edited in general, too, but I'm not really knowledgeable enough to say anything about how that works. Oh, and apparently asymmetrical missions are now optional.
>>44020825
Interesting. So then is it like Kings of War in that models aren't removed from units until they die? If so, seems a little odd in a skirmish game, or am I misunderstanding what you mean by units becoming debuffed and dying?
>>44021467
Oh, units=models, sorry.
>>44021602
Oh, okay. So they have multiple wounds on each model? That's kind of interesting. I'm going to have to look into this a bit more.
>>44022828
Yeah, by size. It looks like the size stat is also the wounds stat. Worth noting that Ratman Conscript (wrench) manages to poke Dragonfucker Laserdick for one damage he starts taking penalties, even if he's not all that much closer to being dead.
I can't find any mention of what tests get penalties, and what the penalties are, though.
Oh, and blaze away is apparently gone, which is pretty frustrating since the choice between that and shooting on regular dudes was one of the things that made me like the system in the first place.
Is the core rulebook in
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/meedbza42sp4m/Kings_of_War
Still more or less correct/up-to-date? Or should the free one in the link be used?
I ask because the one in the mediafire is 44pg and the free one is 27.
>>44017554
I love using Perry Bros minis, too. Them and some of my Kingdom Death stuff.
>>44017764
More balanced, less unnecessary numbers so like the other anon said more streamlined. Increased emphasis on actual tactics instead of OP heroes and monsters and depending too much on dice roll.
The rules are made by Alessio Cavatore, who made Warmaster (if you're a 40k guy it was the Fantasy equivalent of Epic), and KoW really lives up to the first quote in the Epic rulebook:
"It is the purest folly to believe that an individual can save Armageddon. Wars are not won by heroes, they are won by firepower and force, and the application of strategy and tactics."
-Commisar Yarrick
Kings of War rules.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnDz-pd0kW-eOZjOKPRsQpg
Anybody know any good minis for Nightstalkers? I live near the Reaper store, so their stuff is super common here, which makes me want to use a lot of their models, but any company will do.
>>44025619
Zenit not-alive seems a good bet. We had a pastabin with some manufacturers than had some cool minis but alas it-is-a-gone in the ether.
>>44023673
Those are the current core rules in the mediafire folder. The free one doesn't have pictures, scenarios, magic items and a couple of other things.
