Review - Kings of War: Uncharted Empires

I've been eagerly awaiting this book, Kings of War has been very well received in my gaming group and we've been having a lot of fun experimenting with new army lists.  This book of new lists by Mantic is a very clever move, they don't make minis for any of them, but quite a few bear a striking resemblance to armies from the now defunct Warhammer Fantasy Battles.  This will ultimately encourage even more people to give KoW a try and allows those of us who already have extensive Warhammer collections to use a lot more of our minis in our games, and ultimately for our group pretty much signals our complete conversion from Warhammer Fantasy to KoW.  It sounds like a giant win-win, lets take a closer look.

The book is just over 70 pages, softback and in full colour, plenty of art and photos, some new some reused.  The footprint is the same as the gamers edition of the main rulebook and the interior is done in the same style.  This is all for the good, I like things to match, it makes it feel like there's a bit of thought gone into the range.  There are nine new lists for some of Mantica's minor factions, and whilst a lot of them are shall we say 'Inspired' by Warhammer fantasy armies the included background section for each list grounds them firmly within the Kings of War world.

Lets take a brief overview of the Lists one by one.

Name: The Brotherhood
Alignment: Good
Warhammer Equivalent: Bretonnians

This knightly Brotherhood guard the southern realms from the depravations of the abyss.  These are classic good guy knights and peasents, very closely following the Bretonnian mould, except with added water elementals.  There are different flavours of knights, including the long lost and much asked for foot knights and some cool flying knights.  And there is even a Robin Hood style unit which will allow me to use my 'Bowmen of Bergerac' minis again.  It's not the most inspired list, but then neither was the Bretonnia one, but it is solid and I definitely plan on giving it a go.

Name: Salamanders
Alignment: Good
Warhammer Equivalent: Lizardmen

This one like the Brotherhood is very inspired by the Warhammer equivalent, in this case the Lizardmen.  The Saurus have been renamed Salamanders, the skinks Ghekkotah and the Kroxigor Tyrants.  No sign of any Slann though.  There are also added fire elementals to fit in with the Salamander background.

Name: The Herd
Alignment: Neutral
Warhammer Equivalent: Beastmen

Fauns, Stayrs, Beastmen, Centaurs, Minotaurs etc.  This is my favourite list in this book, I love the fact that they made them neutral which puts a totally different stance on them.  I think this makes a great companion list to my favoured Forces of Nature army.  Nice to see Harpies and especially Lycans in the list as I have some being painted.  Adding some units from this list to my collection is definitely going to happen.

Name: League of Rhordia
Alignment: Neutral
Warhammer Equivalent: None

I've said 'none' for the equivalent army here, but it's sort of old school Empire.  This is a mix of fairly standard human troops, lots of Hobbits Halflings and some cool war machines.  The ability to field Halfling armies is welcome and it's cleverly done with the humans to create a balanced list, whilst leaving the pure Halfling army open.  Not on the immediate horizon for me though.

Name: The Trident Realm of Neritica
Alignment: Neutral
Warhammer Equivalent: None

This one was unexpected, finally the much joked about Fishmen list appears!  Most of the troops are a variety of Naiad, which is handy as Mantic will be releasing plastic Naiads in the new year, this list is the converting opportunity list.  Just how far can you push that one sprue? As well as the Naiads you get various water elementals and sea monsters.  I also think calling the armoured Naiads Placoderms was inspired!

Name: The Empire of Dust
Alignment: Evil
Warhammer Equivalent: Tomb Kings

The ancient desert undead, mummies, pharaohs, chariots, scorpions and plenty of long dead skeletons.  Another pretty straight 'inspired' list here, nothing really exciting or radical, but of course welcome if you have a tomb kings army, or just really like undead chariots.

Name: Night-Stalkers
Alignment: Evil
Warhammer Equivalent: None

This one is interesting.  The night-stalkers are the embodiment of the fears, horrors, nightmares and dreams of mortals.  A whole army of trans-dimensional Nightmares.  Rules wise they are fascinating they have no inspiring of their own, but steal their opponents, they also have a unit that can use all their opponents fighting characteristics in combat.  I'm not quite sure what to make of it all yet, but it certainly is interesting.  I'm also not sure which models to use, Mike (my regular opponent and irregular contributor on this blog) has a plan to use some of his Tyranid minis to play this list.  I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with and I'll see if I can persuade him to share it here.

Name: Ratkin
Alignment: Evil
Warhammer Equivalent: Skaven

Another pretty straight copy here, but nonetheless a welcome one.  In the Mantica background they are a former slave race who have broken free.  You have the various infantry you'd expect with a mix of crazy war machines.  In a change from Warhammer you can also have Ratkin cavalry and you can give the Vermin Lord equivalent wings!  I have small Skaven Ratkin army, with some more to paint up at some point, and one of my main opponents has a large collection so we're really pleased to see this one included.

Name: The Varangur
Alignment: Evil
Warhammer Equivalent: Warriors of Chaos

These are the barbarian tribes from the north with attendant monsters.  You have heavy and light infantry and cavalry a few specialist infantries (including some bowmen!), trolls and wolves.  Pretty much what was expected (except the bowmen).  The background is a bit different than I expected though and I like it.  The Varangur don't worship the Abyssals as I was expecting, but a different older god of the north 'Korgaan' he is a many faced god and there is a limited 'mark' system here as well.  As I have quite a big Warriors of Chaos force I'll be looking to try out this list at some point.


In conclusion I think this is a fantastic and imaginative product, and I have absolutely no qualms in heartily recommending this.  In fact I would even go so far as to say it's an essential purchase if you're a KoW player.  I also hope Mantic do eventually make some minis to support this, a single plastic kit for each of the lists would be a great start.  Things continue to look very bright for Kings of War.

Warhammer Is Dead, Long Live Kings Of War

I've played Warhammer for many, many years, it was in it's 4th edition when I started and I've played it on and off ever since.  So it is with some sadness that I greeted the news of Warhammer Fantasy Battles discontinuation.  Although it saddens me, it doesn't surprise me, if the 'end times' wasn't a big enough hint there's been a problem with Warhammer for a long time.  It's got clunky and unwieldy, in background and rules, and whist I've still been playing every so often I've hardly been buying any new minis for it at all, and I expect that's a common story.  The entry costs are too high as well, so if older players aren't buying and new players aren't joining it had to go.

What's interesting is its replacement the 'Age of Sigmar', the new fantasy game from GW.  The successor to Warhammer, but a very different beast.  There's some stuff to like here, GW have provided the rules (all 4 pages of them) and stats for all old Warhammer minis as free downloads so you can start playing straight away.  Also apparently army books are a thing of the past and rules will now be included in the box of minis when you buy them, excellent stuff, this will help players pick up a box or two of minis they happen to like and get them on the gaming table, this is a move forward.  The new miniatures are of course fantastic, I really like the look of the new Sigmarites and whilst the chaos stuff isn't a radical redesign, it is well done.  However there are some mortal problems that I see with the new system, firstly it's way to simple, Warhammer was a game of manoeuvre, this isn't, this is a game of rolling dice and killing stuff.  The real killer is the lack of points values, you just use whatever takes your fancy or until you run out of space to deploy it!

I can see what GW are trying to do here, it's a big gamble and I hope it works for them, but I'm not going to be getting on board with this, I'll still play Warhammer and will be keeping an eye on the new model range to see if there's any cool stuff I can retrofit into my Warhammer armies.  It seems to have got off to a good start in one way at least, the White Dwarf with the free Sigmarite mini has completely sold out, and before I could get a copy :-(

However as it happens this has all happened with fantastic timing for Mantic Games who see the release of their own mass battle system 'Kings of War' next month.  The mechanics are different, but this is very much a strategic fantasy massed battle game.  Two of us in our gaming group pledged for the Kickstarter a few months ago and the first packages are due soon.  We'd been looking at Kings of War as we were finding problems with Warhammer and wanted a slicker, but still strategic, fantasy battle game, and Kings of War seems to fill this hole nicely.  Ultimately whilst Warhammer and Kings of War were direct competitors, trying to do the same thing, Age of Sigmar and Kings of War are doing very different things, which I suspect will ultimately benefit both systems.

And as for the bases? I'll be sticking with square ones.

From The Painting Table #18

Another mix of recently painted minis for me to showcase today.  I've not had a greatly productive year so far on the painting front if I'm honest, I'm getting a few bits and bobs done, like those shown below, but no projects getting completed or even that many actual units (although there is one of those below), on the plus side I'm still getting a lot of games in, I suppose you can't have everything.......

Starting today with these Masai villagers from wargames foundry.  These were an xmas present from my sister (along with some Masai warriors) and are a welcome addition to my growing 'Darkest Africa' collection.

This is an interesting mini, from the dawn of Warhammer 40K, a 'Sensei'.  These are the immortal sons or descendents of the Emperor and are invisible to physic powers, the Inquisition naturally see them as a threat.  

An actual unit with gaming purposes now, 10 Nurgle Plaguebearers, which will see use in Warhammer fantasy, Warhammer Quest and potentially KIngs of War.  I'm always apprehensive of painting daemons, especially the skin ones, but I think these came out OK in the end, they still look a little to clean though and not disgusting enough.

 Below are a couple more plague spreaders, but this time for the Skaven.

 

Finally we have this 'Lizard Sorcerer' from the old Darkworld boardgame.  He's not the greatest mini but is being added to my Warhammer Quest collection to act as a stand in for a Liche.

Army Focus - Warhammer Fantasy Dogs of War

 

It's been over a year since I last dug out one of my collections of painted minis for a photo-shoot (although there has been a couple of looks at some prepaints inbetween), this time I've settled on my Dogs Of War army for Warhammer Fantasy.

 

Dwarf Slayer Pirates, my favorite unit in the army

I started this collection back towards the end of 5th edition when the Dogs of War army book was released.  At the time it was a great innovation, a selection of wacky units that could either be fielded as a complete army of mercenaries or added to normal armies to add more variety (although I won't deny it was open to some abuse).  GW also continued to add more of the 'Regiments of Renown' in White Dwarf.  I enjoyed fielding this army at tail end of the 5th edition period, but one thing that always bugged me slightly was the lack of 'generic' mercenaries, everything had to be special unit, almost always led by a hero.

 

Spikey!

Then came along 6th edition, and all the previous army books were thrown out in one go and the game radically reworked.  A couple of PDF's were released with what ere supposed to be 'get you by' lists until the books were done.  Dogs of War never got a new book and I'm stuck using those lists to this day, however, the lists aren't actually that bad.

 

Heroes and Wizards

Inevitably with such an old list Dogs of War sit low on the power curve, but there's a lot you can do with these flexible lists.  They provide the best of both worlds, the 'Dogs of War' list is a generic list featuring normal unnamed regiments, such as heavy cavalry, light cavalry, dwarfs, marauders, pikemen, crossbowmen etc.  Then you have the 'Regiments of Renown' list which features all the special regiments from the previous book and White Dwarf, and you can use these regiments in an army based on Dogs of  War list.  It's good because you can theme a Dogs of War army however you like, but still add the wacky (and sometimes powerful) Regiments of Renown.

 

One of the 6th ed changes was to take the Halfling Hotpot out of the Empire army and put it into the Dogs of War army

There are two painting eras shown in this army, as easily seen by the two basing styles, the older style ones were painted when I was about 16, and the flocked ones after I returned from university.  I'd like to find the time to repaint the older part of the army, but it's not on the current priority list.  I'm not really planning on adding anything else to this army either, but it's still a collection that I enjoy and wouldn't want to part with.

 

5th edition; when two giants and a wizard was a suitable regiment

When being used this army is often joined by Dwarfs from my Dwarf army, Marauders from my Chaos army and any cavalry I can lay my hands on to represent light cavalry in particular, but occasionally some heavy cavalry can add a little punch.

 

Flying crossbowmen

From The Painting table #17

Hi there everyone, it's been nearly a month since my last post, I suppose I've not had much too say, I've still been playing a LOT of Warhammer Quest, and as I write this our party has reached level nine and we've slain our first Bloodthirster.  I have managed to get a bit of painting in here and there as well and I've a few new minis to show off.......

These are the first of my four striders for Deadzone that I've painted.  I reckon these are really rather excellent generic sci-fi walker minis.  These are for the Enforcer faction so are assembled 'vanilla' but the kit also came with options to make Rebel or Plague versions as well (I have one of each assembled and undercoated but they're a long way from being finished).  As with a lot of my Deadzone stuff these have a dual-use and will also feature in my Imperial Guard army for 40K as 'counts as' sentinels.

Also for Deadzone is this merc Aqissiaq who is a Syphr who has caught the plague.

 

Now we move to Warhammer Quest, starting with these 6 Nurglings that came with the set of Plaguebearers that I'm painting at the moment.  They're designed to be added to the Plaguebearers bases to add a bit of character, but as individual Nurglings are one of the monster you can face at mid-level I left them separate.  They also worked as a nice test for the scheme I'm using on the Plaguebearers.

 

This is an old Wood Elf Wardancer model that I took out of my Wood Elf army and repainted and rebased for Warhammer Quest.  As our time with our current party is coming to an end we're starting to think about our next party and have decided to try an all elf party, which we think will provide a greater challenge.

Also for Warhammer Quest is this classic Warrior Priest mini who is in use in our current party.

 

Switching to Warhammer fantasy now we have a couple of champions for my Chaos army, a Pestigor champion (above) and a classic 1980's Slanneesh warriors of Chaos champion (below).

Classic Citadel Mummies for Warhammer Quest

Whilst we've impatiently been waiting for Dungeon Saga to arrive we decided to fulfil our Dungeon craving by returning to an old favourite, Warhammer Quest.  This uses the Warhammer fantasy range extensively and most of the monsters that are encountered I can draw straight from that collection, occasionally though something pops up that we have to proxy, Mummies were in that category, until now that is.

I got these four classic mummies off of ebay, these are over 20 years old and are from a time before Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings had been separated into different armies.  I remember them coming out not long after I started collecting Citadel minis actually.  They're a little two-dimensional, but I think on the whole they hold up pretty well to todays standards.  As my Undead army is Vampire Counts I've given them Warhammer Quest specific bases as that's the only game I can see them being used in.

Old School Silliness: Warhammer Arena of Death

Gaming and drinking only goes together so far, and after a few beers the other night me and Mike were fully aware that a proper wargame was out of the question, but we still needed something else to play.  Mike came up with an idea and suggested we play an 'Arena of Death'.  For those that don't know 'Arena of Death' was an article in an old White Dwarf (must be well over 10 years ago) that pitted the greatest lords in the warhammer world against each other in a knock-out tournament.  Idea accepted off we go to look at my collections to select 16 candidates.

We tried to spread the competing minis from different armies, and didn't have any specific requirements except the 'rule of cool' and which minis from my collection we thought we the hardest. The rules used happened to be the latest that I have in my collection, which are not necessarily those from the latest editions of the books (since the move to hardback I've not been keeping my library up to date) with a lot of the monster rules being taken from the Storm of Magic expansion.

The competitors are;

1.    The White Dwarf carried by Gotrek & Joseph Bugman
2.    A Keeper of Secrets
3.    A Lord of Change
4.    The King of Bretonnia
5.    The Green Knight
6.    Orion, King of the Woods
7.    Vampire Lord
8.    Archaon
9.    An Emperor Dragon
10.  High Elf Lord on Griffon
11.  A Manticore
12.  Black Orc Warboss
13.  A Giant
14.  A Slann
15.  A Treeman
16.  Thorgrim Grudgebearer

Round One

The first battle, I had high hopes for the White dwarf and mates, but an initial draw against a greater daemon made me a little wary.  I shouldn't have been though, short work was made of slaanesh's servant and the White Dwarf progresses to the next round.

The second greater daemon this time vs the King of Bretonnia.  A bit of a surprise for us both and partly due to Mikes famous inability  to roll dice the King sailed through with an easy win!

The poor Green Knight really did not stand a chance here and the avatar of the elvish God tore him to shreds.

Generic Vampire lord vs the everchosen of the Chaos gods?  Win for Archaon of course!  After the defeat of both greater deamons Chaos look to have a contender here!

 Another foregone conclusion here, the valiant Elf prince soon met his doom down the throat of the Emperor Dragon.

 The closet match of the round this one was going down to a single wound on each side, but ultimately the Manticore got the win.

Well this was short, the Giant clubbing the Slann over the head and making mincemeat of him, in retrospect the Slann probably shouldn't have made it into the competition.

Two of my favourite minis fighting each other here, it took a couple of rounds due to the Treemans toughness, but the Dwarf High King wasn't going out in the first round, no way.

Round Two

Although the King got lucky in the last round he was totally outclassed here, the three dwarfs made epically short work of him and his mount.

Another close one, we favoured Archaon before the fight, but Mikes dice rolling interfered again and the mighty Orion took the day and a surprise place in the semi's.

 Ha, this didn't last long at all, the Emperor Dragon sails into the semi's

The end battle of round two and no surprises here either, the second Dwarf makes the semis.

Semi-Finals

 The first semi then, getting serious now.  Despite a good start from Orion he just wasn't tough enough to weather the torrent of attacks the three dwarfs put out and finally met his match.

We really weren't sure which way this was going to go, sheer brutal stats or fancy magic items?  It was a close one, but Dwarvish awesomeness won through in the end.

The Final

The final then, Dwarf vs Dwarf (see I knew Dwarfs were the best that's why I have so many of them), it took a few rounds but ultimately the White Dwarf and friends struck down the High King and claimed the throne for himself.

There we go incontrovertible proof that the White Dwarf is the hardest character in Warhammer fantasy.... Well at least when he brings two of his mates along....

P.S. please don't be too harsh on the paint jobs some of them are 20 years old!