Kings of War, Bring and Try...

A couple of weeks back we had a few games of Kings of War at the club, in a warm up for a little local tourney of the rules.  I took my Human/Dogs of War army again, having been impressed by it's first run out.  My first game was against a very compact force of Abyssal Dwarves (Chaos Dwarves for you GW-philes).

I was able to anchor my centre on the stone walled field to my right and allowed the Dwarves to come on to me.  The only other unit Steve then had was of heavy Centaur cavalry; which I could send my Ogres, Knights and a Hero to counter.

Once they were despatched my centre manoeuvred a little to break up the attack of the now funnelled-in Dwarves.  Their advance was slow and disrupted, and it allowed me to get my cavalry and pikemen into its flanks.

Steve complained bitterly that my Pike are massively underpriced, and that this put paid to his having any chance of winning.  Since they had only one less point of Nerve than his equivalent troops, only slightly higher to hit rolls, but twice as many attacks and cost only two thirds the points, he is probably correct; but it's staggeringly rare for me to own an unfairly competitive army, so for now I'm not swapping them!

Elsewhere there were several other games ongoing; Darren and Andy got to grips with the Orcs and the Undead:

Whilst Mark and Laurie got together two different takes on the Elven list.

One thing I love about the rules is that you can get a game done in about an hour at this size - equivalent to a 1500-2000 point Warhammer game.  In fact the game is often played timed, with 5 minute turns, run out of time before the end of the game and you lose by default, so no dithering!

This meant everyone had time for a second battle, I found myself against Darren's Orcs this time.

And I have to be honest, looking at his army, I knew the same plan would work so I scarcely changed a thing, except the deployment of my useless cannon!  Darren's was another army with too many big units that hit hard, but had no tactical flexibility, only this time he had virtually no firepower.  As a result I was able to stand off and shoot his infantry, whilst putting his cavalry effectively out of the fight on the flank.  His centre ended up surrounded and destroyed.  Another victory for me.

I love the pace of the rules, and their simplicity, unlike Warhammer everything is clear and in one rulebook, there is no massive set of contradictory rules for each army to get your head around.  As a result it lacks the flavour of Warhammer, but it is much more generic and flexible, and above all fast.  You could play a game with several hundred figures each, in a couple of hours.  The rules would easily represent the battles of Tolkein, Moorcock or Robert E Howard.  Moreover the new army lists are more varied, and try to represent several possible builds of certain armies, so now you can make your Elves High elfy, or Wood elfy; you can make the Humans very Empire-esque, or more Brettonian, or more Dogs of War.  Variety is well covered.

And as for the Tournament, well details are on the Leeds Nightowls forum (via the website) but essentially it's a 1000 point army using one of the Kings of War army lists from the 2nd edition rulebook.  The event itself is at the new Farsley venue on the 13th November 10-3pm.  I'm sure you can turn up and play...