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Kings of War sound off


jesselowe

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As a backer, I have the full rules. If you have any questions on units or abilities or anything in the main book, feel free to ask.

Any chance I could get a rundown on the Kingdom of Men units not present in the free army rules? Don't necessarily need all the stats, just curious about what units the free rules are lacking.

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Dwarf units not in free rules:

Ironguard - elite infantry

Rangers

earth elementals

greater earth elemental

flame belcher

battle driller

steel behemoth

stone priest

special characters

 

Kingdom of Men:

heavy pike block

pike block

militia

berserkers

mounted sgts

chariots

beast of war

various hero options and special characters

 

I think the key to taking your WFB army and turning it into a KoW army is to look over the whole range. For instance, lets say you are a bret player. What army of KoW do you choose? Lets say look at the Basilean army. It has four types of foot infantry to choose from. It has mounted paladins for your knights. The elohi could be used for your pegasus knights. The arbalest for your trebuchet.

 

Or say you are a beastmen player right now...I've run beastmen as an orc army. Same base size, the abilities seemed to match for the most part. Also, rules for allies in KoW is pretty simple. So you wanted to represent your minos, but didn't like the stats for trolls. You could use an ogre unit and take it as an allied unit. There are some restrictions, but for the most part, it is pretty open.

 

If you can find something close to your unit in WFB, then you shouldn't have a hard time building an army in KoW.

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Dwarf units not in free rules:

Ironguard - elite infantry

Rangers

earth elementals

greater earth elemental

flame belcher

battle driller

steel behemoth

stone priest

special characters

 

Kingdom of Men:

heavy pike block

pike block

militia

berserkers

mounted sgts

chariots

beast of war

various hero options and special characters

 

I think the key to taking your WFB army and turning it into a KoW army is to look over the whole range. For instance, lets say you are a bret player. What army of KoW do you choose? Lets say look at the Basilean army. It has four types of foot infantry to choose from. It has mounted paladins for your knights. The elohi could be used for your pegasus knights. The arbalest for your trebuchet.

 

Or say you are a beastmen player right now...I've run beastmen as an orc army. Same base size, the abilities seemed to match for the most part. Also, rules for allies in KoW is pretty simple. So you wanted to represent your minos, but didn't like the stats for trolls. You could use an ogre unit and take it as an allied unit. There are some restrictions, but for the most part, it is pretty open.

 

If you can find something close to your unit in WFB, then you shouldn't have a hard time building an army in KoW.

Thank you sir! Mainly curious where my Flagellants / Demigryphs would fall, looks like they will be represented. I suppose I could use the 'Gryphs as either Beasts of War or Chariots, although I like the idea of a unit of Holy Priest War Chariots smashing into battle, heh.

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Yeah, the beast of war seems more like a monster, and you can put a small warmachine weapon on it..so it might even be good for some of those wacky chariot things the empire has. The chariots could probably work out for the gryphs. There aren't a whole lot of monster cav units in KoW...but I hope to see more of them in the "other armies" book.

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BroG, are there other  main rules (not just in the army lists) added to the full book?  E.g. more "special rules" or ??? I'm looking at the KoW rules and the biggest concern I have right out of the gates is the combat system... it looks highly predictable based on the numbers I've run, which could make it a little dry.  I remember in our game thinking that the certainty of combat outcomes was a weakness they needed to address... from looking at KoW2 pdf it doesn't seem to have changed meaningfully.

 

Don't get me wrong though the rules look very clean and in fact have a LOT in common with the block-fantasy-battle rules Micah and I are writing.  Nicely written and the game looks fun!  I just worry they've taken CC simplification too far.

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About the only thing in the BRB that would affect combat is the magic item list. There are 40 items and they do impact the game. For instance, there is an item that increases the range of a unit by 12". So magic items affect stats typically in some way.

 

But there is nothing that increases the mechanics at all. Its still the same to hit, wound, and nerve.

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Yeah the "wounds" to a unit just represent general damage to the unit's morale, and as such, it isn't directly correlated to the models in the unit.  Rather, the units Nerve (the "Waver" and "Route" numbers, e.g. 10/12) represent how resilient the unit is and how hard it is to wear down.  So a unit of 10 models could have 1/3 Nerve (say Gnoblars ready to flee at the drop of a pin), or 30/35 (Terminator Robots!)... whatever the rules writer decides.

 

So for example the same troop type (say Kingdom of Men Shield Wall troops) have 3 different sizes you can take: Troop (10 models, 5w x 2d), Regiment (20 models, 5w x 4d) and Horde (40 models, 10w x 4d).  Each size has a different Nerve value: 9/11, 13/15, and 20/22, respectively.  

 

Given an average nerve roll of 7 (2d6) you can (very roughly) see how many wounds a unit can take before it will "probably" Route.  11-7 = 4, 15-7 = 8, and 22-7 = 15.  So a 40-man unit of Shield Wall troops will "probably" Route on the Nerve test after taking 15+ wounds.  And they will definitely Route after taking 19 wounds (barring a roll of 2, the KoW Insane Courage equiv).

 

If anyone is curious to simulate some combats I've written a python script to work out unit vs. unit combat simulations. Check out my "Kings of War Combat Simulator" post for the code.

Thanks,
NtK

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Two quick questions I have after running through the rules on my lunch break yesterday:

 

-If a unit has a "-" value for part of it's nerve (for example, Beserkers for Kingdom of Men have a nerve of -/12), does that mean they are effectively immune to Wavering when it comes to Nerve checks?

 

-Do Heroes join units? Or can they only run solo?

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Two quick questions I have after running through the rules on my lunch break yesterday:

 

-If a unit has a "-" value for part of it's nerve (for example, Beserkers for Kingdom of Men have a nerve of -/12), does that mean they are effectively immune to Wavering when it comes to Nerve checks?

 

-Do Heroes join units? Or can they only run solo?

 

Yes, '-/12' means effectively immune to Waver, but Routes on 12.

 

Heroes are just standalone units.  There are also "Individuals", which are cav-sized or smaller single model units, and they have a few special rules around how they move and interact with other units (see "Individuals" in the rulebook).  As far as I know, they do NOT join units, but there may be special characters or whatever that acts as a "Hero" by being a unit champ... I don't know for sure.  Other than special character rules though, Heroes are just on their own, and unless they are "Individuals", they act like any other unit would.

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Actually, 12 is not a route...12 is auto-waiver. But if a unit can't waiver, it ignores that. So yes, basically a '-' translates to immunity to waivering as I understand the rules.

 

Heroes do not join units, they are always separate.

 

EDIT: whoops! sorry NTK..I was thinking you meant a "12" on a test would auto-route...but instead you were referring to their route value of 12 in the example...my bad.

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I gotta say one of the most lovely things about KoW is the limited unit size choices and although I've always thought that model removal was a very evocative mechanic, being able to do "whole unit unified base" for 5x2 blocks, and just plop them together for a 5x4, or 10x4, sounds SO nice.  

I'm hoping the gameplay is rewarding enough long term... would save me and Micah a lot of effort trying to do army lists and balancing for our own system :)  Gonna dive in and get to know it after OFCC fo sho.  Game(s) at my place in the coming weeks, BroG?

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