Trying out Kings Of War

With a day free, as the rest of the family were busy, I got to try out Kings Of War from Mantic Games, with mate Matt.

Matt is a WFB player, from the local KWC club who has been adversely affected by the GW switch to Age of Sigmar. Obviously feeling shafted by GW's complete change to their fantasy gaming system, Matt and several other local WFB players are looking to change over wholesale to Kings Of War from Mantic games.

I stopped playing WFB about 20 years ago... so this game change has not affected me. I did have a dwarf army still from around that time but I have largely sold most of it off over the last year or so...

However I did used to play WAB and have a medieval army that has been sitting gathering dust in my display case for several years now as WAB went 'phutt' a few years back too, another kick in the bollox back then from GW to its existing player base...

Matt had spotted this over the last few visits when I had been introducing him to Flames Of War, and had thus suggested todays game, as once dusted off my Medieval army will do very well as a Kings of Men army for KoW.

So having set the scene with free rules and army list downlaods from Mantic website, we were off...

Matt brought his WFB Undead army he had, and we played a ~1600pt game in a straight up battle, with a 6 turn game limit.

Deployment:

Matt takes 2 catapults, skeletons , ghouls, zombie horde, werewolves and Soul Knights, led by Vampire, Mounted banner and Necromancer.


I took 1 x Knights, 2 x Scouts, 2 x Archers, 1 x XBs, 2 x Polearms, 1 x Footknights, Peasant horde, and a cannon, and led by General, mounted Hero and Foot banner, with basic Wizard.

Matt gets first turn shambles forward and starts his flank attack with his cavalry.

I start my own cavalry flanking move, and take a cannon shot at the soul knights, killing a couple.

Matt continues his cavalry advance and moves to adjust his flank to deal with my cavalry

Sensing Matt is going to over run my canon, I put a speed bump in the way with my polearms, thinking they'll be able to withstand the soul knights charge and then the second polearm unit can hit them in the flank next turn.
My canon hits the knights again but again only causes a couple of wounds.

The soul knights in turn charge my  polearms, and obliterate them in one charge, the remnants fleeing. Ouch!

My own cavalry charge into the skeleton spears and my hero peels off to charge a loan undead hero - who I thought was just some minor dude, not the army leader - oops!

My second polearm unit looks to become the next speed bump to hold up my flank... in the face of the soul knights.

Woohoo, I manage to kill the skeletons with my cavalry charge but my hero bounces off the Vampire.

I re-position my scouts looking to overrun the catapults next turn, and get ready to face the ghouls.

The Vampire charges my hero and kills him...(causes him to flee)...and my knights take some licks from the ghoul and evil standard bearer. Lightning from the Necromanacer sees to my scouts with some lucky rolling, saving the catapults. My 2nd polearm unit is severly battered by the soul knights but the miraculously stay on the field though are now wavering - no surprise by that!

 I manage to now catch the soul knights in the rear by my second scouts and in flank from archers... I have them now???

Nope, I do little damage... the soul knights keep after the 2nd polearms... and my foot knights are next in the speed bump line after that having moved across with the general to try to help 'hold' the flank...

The polearms are crushed and the knights re-position for their third meal of the day...

Payback time and I hit the knights in the rear with my scouts and archers and in the front with my footknights and general and in the flank with my wizard... They're dead this time right???

Meanwhile I advance in the centre for the hell of it...I might as well make the soul knights march a little further for their dessert course...

So what happened in the fight... yep I bounce off after causing a few desultory wounds...

The soul knights continue their merry jaunt and destroy the footknights, cheekily turning to break wind afterwards in my genrals face, having now enjoyed 'three courses' they are getting rather full...

Having destroyed the flank of my army, the soul knights now catch all manner of shooting, ... fortuneatly my cannon hits and and actually does a little serious hurt this time, and the archers, scouts, XBs and wizards fireball all contributing a few extra hits, with what they have been carrying from the melees , the soul knights finally break and rout! Yippee! The archers breath a sigh of relief as they were probably next on the menu for the soul knights...

A turn or so ago the vampire had also flank charged my own knights and routed them... the rest of my shooting had been slowly picking off the werewovles at range and after several rounds of fire they too had finally routed...

And with that the game pretty much came to an end after the prescribed 6 turns. After totting up points of destroyed troops the game has ended in a draw. Victory is only achieved if you destroy 20% more enemy points in troops than you lost yourself.

The soul knights were about 300 points and they ate about 300 points of my foot troops. The skelies and werewolves were worth about the same as my knights and hero. So it all ended up pretty even...

So what did I think?

Well the game play was fairly fast and furious with no great rules difficulties. I liked the use of casualty markers rather than removing figures. and liked the wavering morale issue...

I did feel the game was still a bit herohammer-ish... with the vampire being able to wade in and kill off a knight unit himself and the soul knights were over the top powerful to my mind... being hit in the front, flank and side, they should have died and when they shrugged that off I felt something wasn't quite right...

I did get lucky with the cannons - they only hit on one roll of a 5+... without that, the soul knights would have continued their unstoppable advance...

I think the game would have worked well in a Men vs Men, War of the Roses type setting.

I'll certainly give it another go though...

I guess I'll have to have a jigg about with my list and see if it can be made more effective and not just be fodder... maybe a bigger cannon battery - 3 not just one... make my own Knights unit bigger perhaps?

Options are also to re-purpose my LOTR figures; Men, Elves, Orcs etc - since individual figures do not need to be removed, whatever you can fit on the ascribed movement base for unit type and size would work well enough ... and still allow to me play SBG afterwards with the individual figures.

Not sure the Mantic Army lists quite accurately reflect the Tolkien setting, but it may be worth a try...

I still need to give Hail Caesar-Fantasy a proper try out as I instinctively feel this will give a better overall game - I like the idea of giving commands, having units take wounds and track casualties, rather than remove models, and reduce heroes to being commanders who give commands and can join a unit to augment their potential, rather than be roving powerhouses in their own right... Basically; 'Warmaster' - but adjusted to 28mm scale...

But until Warlord release an official Fantasy variant - the sought after 'ideal' Fantasy Tournament rule-set... may still be just out of reach?
I guess it all comes down to what you want from a fantasy rules set and whether this set of rules floats your boat, or not, and whether it fits your idea of a fantasy setting...

Thanks to Matt for taking the time to give this game a try out with me :)

Getting back to enjoying a weekend of hobby fun.

After a frantic few weeks with the new business, where I have at times felt my feet haven't touched the ground... it was nice to get the chance to 'chill out' with a some hobby time for the weekend at the FoW Panzerschrek doubles tournie at Palmy North.

I wasnt 100% sure I'd be able to attend but wifeypoos gave me the green light, having secured a little help to run the store on Saturday morn.

So that was me off with army packed up, and another last minute addition, my son Chris choosing to come along to watch and see what else was going on at the event.

A frosty early morning start, had me getting to Pauls just about on time, and then a wait to collect Ste and then we were all off, driving through the dawn rising sun of a foggy frosty morning to Palmy... Paul was running his soviets with Ste along as 2ic...

Once arrived we registered and I met up with team mate Bryan.

I was running 1000pts of panzers from Desperate Measures with some nebs for a little arty help and Bryan was running Fuhrer Begliet GPGs backed up by StuHs and Remer along for the ride...

We tried to cover a few bases with this combo and just hoped we might get a match up and mission where things might work out in our favour... but since our team name was Kampfgruppe "wooden spoon"... we were not aiming too high!

Game 1
First up Game 1 saw us play Wayne Turner of BF staff fame aided by Victor Pesch. They were running soviets. Game was Breakthrough and we ended up as attackers.

As it happened we got off to a blinder in the this game... first turn saw us move up to shoot up Victor's T34s parked in a wood whilst the recce Luchs and GPGs raced for the nearest objective. Remer would lead more GPGs on from reserve  to go for the further objective.

After weathering a little largely ineffective return fire from the soviets, our 2nd turn saw us kill off the T34 platoon and continue our advance with Luchs and GPGS, parking up on the first objective; my son delivering the coup-de-grace on the T34s as he sauntered past at the right time, asked if it was OK to throw my dice and did so, killing the T34s, then sauntered back off to his WW2 aeroplanes! The problem for the soviets was not that we were on the objective, as it wouldn't go live for several more turns, but that we had killed the only on table platoon from Victor, which resulted in an immediate company morale check, which Victor obligingly failed. His company thus broke which in turn auto broke the whole force! This gave us a rather rapid and unexpected 6-1 win after 2 turns...

The mid tidying up shot from this first game... we had come on from the top centre corner ...

This result shot us to the top end of the leaders for the next round of opponents and were then drawn against Nick and Tim's 'Flaming Roundheads'... running a combined British force featuring lots of Crocs, infantry Challengers, Cromwells and a pesky tiffie... The game was Dust up.

Game 2
This became quite a cagey affair, with the tiffie making itself known, taking out a panther early...We tried to make headway across the board leading the HQ panzers and StuHs through the centre town and a tank duel developed between the Panzers, StuHs and the Cromwells which the panzers eventually prevailed in but by then the crocs and infantry were on pressuring our objective...which forced us back on to the defensive and the usual style of feeding teams into the zone, and hanging on by your fingers nails whilst trying not to die and kill what you could!... Our own reserves arrived but failed to achieve much in the face to defending crocs and challengers... Our dogged desperate defense in the end had us at least gain a point for the killing the Cromwells... and help keep the Roundheads to 3. So a 2-3 against...  we did kill a croc with a side shot from a panther so I'll take that as a morale victory! ;-)

Game 3
And what do you know, were drawn against Paul and Ste, in a Fighting Withdrawal. The soviets were Auto Attack so we'd be defending. I didnt fancy our chances having been run over by the Shtraf in a practice game, but we had learned a little from that experience...
We also decided to keep Remer and the full GPG as the ambush. Our Panzers went into position to hold the flank objectives.
This game quite frankly couldnt have gone much better for us, we seemed to just get a feel for how it would develop and even though we were defending we were just about able to take the game to the Soviets. The soviets threatened the objectives with the tanks and rushed the shtraf up the centre, at-the-doubling to get into position... but this played into our hands... the GPG ambush was revealed and since the shtraf had doubled, the ~30-odd MG dice turned into ~60... then the nebs and StuHs joined in... when the smoke cleared the Shtraf had been largely gutted... and our panzers had been able to tie up and deal with the T34s. The cat killers did managed to snipe our Panthers despite our best attempts to cover them in smoke. But with the shtraf gutted and the T34s taken care of.. it was shortly clear that the Soviets were pushing it up hill, and they conceded the game. So we a lost a point for the loss of the Panthers... resulting in a 5-2.

So with 3 games in we were sitting on 11 points... far better than we had expected!

As it happened Chris had had a great day too, getting involved with a chap demo-ing a WW2 air-war game he had under development, which from my quick glance, seemed to work a little like X-wing... then with the promise of a Terminator themed game coming Sunday, Chris couldnt wait to get back and try that out too!

Arriving back home and wifeypoos had had a quiet day at the shop and then traveled to Wello for some shopping and collected Smaug from GW that I had ordered a couple of weeks back...

An awesome model, yet when I am going to find the time now to build and paint it is anybody's guess...

A Facebook message later that night had me informed by Bryan that we were actually in 5th place
and were drawn against Simon McBeth and Chris Otton in a Free for all for first thing Sunday morning.

Sunday morning and a rinse and repeat of saturdays journey though thankfully no frost this time.

After the traditional beauty pageant; armies on parade, it was on with the game.

Game 4
Simon and Chris were running Brit/NZ infantry with some 105 arty, shermans UCs, m10s, 6pdrs, 17pdrs.
Another mobile mission that turned into another cagey affair, that again became a tank duel, with a little arty assistance... each side looking to soften the other up before progressing with any real attack. Neither side really prevailed, and with some naff dice on both sides... neither side made much head way...then game timed out with us losing out in another 2-3.

Game5
The final game saw us drawn against Damo and Shep, with another soviet horde with 2 Shtraf blobs and flame tanks and a God of war battery, plus 2 pltns of SU's, and some AAAtrucks.
Mission was Surrounded, and on the longer tables this had us terribly stretched out. Bryan and I looked at each other and agreed, we were dead... so we looked to see if we could just pick up a couple of points by picking on the small soviet units; the SU's and trucks...
After a turn of re-organising, one bonus of a very mobile list, we had things as best arranged as we could hope for. The two Shtraf came at us from two sides going for each objective. The main thrust backed up by the flame tanks...
We started firing and shooting up the soviets as best we could... the panthers managed to take out one SU pltn and the GPGs shot up the AAA trucks. Fire from the StuHs and panzers had begun to hurt the flame tank platoon but not before it had fried up the short defending GPG platoon. The Luchs and a couple of half tracks were knocking off odd teams from the other shtraf  on the other board side.
Things got a little confusing late in the game as a huge artillery template dropped on the Germans, and troops got flamed and pinned and there was some discussion over who was pinned or not and where Remer was and who he was with, and I think the confusion had us talking at cross purposes about the rule in question. But we managed to get it resolved... though it chewed up some time unnecessarily...
The crucial final phase ensued and it was an all or nothing defence for us now...all our tanks that could drew a bead on the remnant of the flame tanks... the GPGs lead by Remer roared back down the road ready to assault the houses by the objective that the shtraf had just captured. everything opened up that could, with the nebs getting dropped into the chaos as well... one of the StuHs had to moved forward to point blank range to to keep the objective alive another turn...the tank fire managed to kill off enough flame tanks to force a morale check which they failed, so we were now three enemy platoons destroyed... Remer and the GPGs assaulted and killed more Shtraf but they hit back gutting the GPGs and killing Remer and only the Pltn Commander managed to survive and break off... and with that time was called... we had miraculously held on for a defensive 5-2 win, having only lost the short GPG pltn.
If the game had gone on any longer we may have killed off the last of the shtraf or last of the SU on the 'busy' end of the table, but the other shtraf blob on other objective would have captured that, but would have needed another turn to start their turn holding it and thus win... so time became crucial in the game, and confusing situations and messy assaults can drag these things out...

So that was that tournie over, with 3 wins and two losing draws... not too shabby as they say, and far better than we ever anticipated...

We stayed till the end to cheer and applaud the winners... only to be quite literally gobsmacked when, once 1st to 4th had been announced , we won 'Best Generals' for 5th place - winning a medal and prize choice from what remained... I picked up State of the Nation, and Bryan grabbed Grey Wolf... Very cool! All competitors also got a free WI magazine and a free FoW Objective marker!

Excellent prize support from BF.

Home with a smile on my face and a kiss from wifeypoos evidence by my lipsticked cheek.

A great weekend, and good to catch up with past acquaintances and friends and meet new folk, particularly good to meet Mike Haught of Scary Biscuits blog fame. Really nice guy. Well done to Mike and Andrew who came first.
Russell and Tony came 2nd, and Nick And Tim of the Flaming Roundheads came a deserved 3rd, and the Stanton twins came 4th.

Victor Pesch deservedly won best painted and he got my vote for some very nice Soviet armour and supporting infantry.

A great weekend all round and a nice chance to clear the head a little from being busy at work recently :)

There was also much good natured general chat, carry on, and banter and discussion, and with the WFB-ers active at the other end of the room, I couldnt help but chuckle when another Scott started whooping and hallooing with clippety clop hoofbeats - looking for a bonus re-roll in his game... a tongue in cheek dig at some of the crazy new "rules" in what WFB has become - Age of Sigmar...