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I recently got my hands on the kings of war hard back rule book and I'm having trouble deciding which army to pick that currently has models out or if I should wait for the baslians to come out. How does each army play? Whats each factions strengths and weaknesses? So far the only armies I refuse to play right now are the elves. Ild play kindoms of men but it would cost way to much to build an army using alternate models right now.

Lessee here:

Orcs: Unparallelled melee skill, but very light on shooting.

Elves: Fast and shooty and decent in melee, but few in number and fragile.

Twilight Kin: Ditto as elves, but more cavalry and shooting options and more magic

Kingdoms of Men: Well-rounded, with hard-hitting options in all categories but no real firm specialization

Dwarves: Good shooting and some of the game's best artillery. Also very tough and capable melee units, but few fast units and overall army is very slow

Abyssal Dwarves: Ditto as dwarves, but more magic and shorter-ranged shooting

Goblins: Lots of crap units, but make up for it in cheapness and sheer numbers

Basileans (As of last playtest booklet): Lots of tough and regenerating units, heavily melee focused with almost no ranged abilities outside of heroes. Has a notably bigger punch vs Evil armies due to army-wide special rule, and has lots of army synergy from all the healing and Inspiring.

Ogres: Hard Hitting and tough, weakness being lack of numbers


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Undead: Weak core troops that can heal, magic has a lot of uses, some strong elite troops, a slower army

Undead.... Tricky, kind of hard to play, really need heroes to function.

Still learning my way around them - so far the trick seems to be to get units into hand to hand, then use cavalry to flank engaged units.

Magic support alternately healing the undead units or damaging the engaged units.

Having much better luck with dwarfs, but my girlfriend plays them so she has my army much of the time....

The Auld Grump

Ild play kindoms of men but it would cost way to much to build an army using alternate models right now.

It depends on what models you're using as alternates - most people use historicals, which are usually cheap in plastic.

For example, Warlord's Pike and Shotte Battalia box is £60 (The Warstore has it for $77) and gives you this



Which translates to a good sized KoW army, even better if you take advantage of 'multibasing' to turn that Regiment of 20 pikemen (and the 4 spares) into a Horde of 40.

Perrys work great for covering all unit types in the KoW Kingdom of Men list.

Only penitents don't have an easy model to use.

You can also use fireforge, WGF or any of the huge amounts of historical options out there, all of which are hard plastic and reasonably priced.

WGF WSS artillery works great for cannons.

Penitents = WFB Flagellants? I know it's not a cheap alternate, but it's still an option

How bad can magic and shooting screw you over in kings of war?

 Gutstuf Ugfang wrote:
How bad can magic and shooting screw you over in kings of war?

Not badly. They're mostly supplemental to combat. Dwarf cannons and undead movement spells are the two exceptions. Dwarves get refills on cannons, while undead can surge directly into combats they should have missed. Those two hurt. The other spells/shooting won't win games, but they are useful.

So a dwarf or human gunline won't ruin an mainly infantry army trudging forward

Human gun line won't. A dwarven gunline with 8 cannons and multiple engineers might make you sweat bullets.

 Gutstuf Ugfang wrote:
So a dwarf or human gunline won't ruin an mainly infantry army trudging forward

Depends on the luck of the dice and who they're shooting at. Guns have a high piercing value and restrict movement, so the unit can punch through heavy armor easily but can't turn to face a possible outflanker (And unlike WHFB, outflanking a unit can quite easily rout it in the ensuing combat). Given this, a good tactic against a gunline might be to either confront them with cheap, weakly-defended infantry to screen in front of your heavier units (You can charge through friendly units), or to come around the side and hit them with a fast cavalry unit (If they wheel to face you, iirc that counts as movement and will negate their ability to fire that turn)

 darkPrince010 wrote:
(You can charge through friendly units),

Not... exactly - you can charge between screening units -

Moving Chargers

As they move, charging units can move forward without measuring how much distance they actually cover, and
pivot twice around their centre up to 90º, at any point during their move.

They must, however, always use the shortest way possible, going around any blocking terrain and any unit in their way (friends and foes). Note that they must go through any area of difficult terrain or obstacle that would normally slow down their movement. These elements of terrain do not slow down Charge moves, but they cause the charging unit to suffer a slight penalty in the ensuing melee.

Basically, the only thing that matters during a Charge move is that the unit has physically enough space to
move into contact with the target.

I think that you may be conflating Charging with Interpenetration When Pivoting -

Interpenetration When Pivoting

In reality, regimented units are more flexible in rearranging their ranks than our miniatures, so we allow units that
are pivoting around their centre as part of their move (whether it’s a Change Facing, an Advance, etc.), to move
through both friends and enemy units, and all types of terrain, including blocking terrain and even the edge of
the table.
They must of course still end their move clear of blocking terrain (and completely on the table!), and 1” away from
both friendly and enemy units.

That said.... maybe an article in Ironwatch introducing the idea of Skirmishing Units - with the ability that allied units can charge through them?

I really like the idea, it is just that the RaW does not support it.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

*Snip*
The Auld Grump

You're right, you can't charge through friendly units. However, unit interpenetration does say you can move through friendly units as long as you don't end your move on them:

Page7 wrote:Friendly units can be moved through (except when charging, see below), but you cannot end a unit’s move on top of another unit, so you’ll have to be sure that your units have enough movement to end up clear of their friends. Also, at the end of their move, your units must be at least 1" away from friendly units. This ensures that both you and your opponent can clearly tell them apart.

This does mean that if you're sheltering a unit behind another, they need to move to the forefront and weather a turn of shooting/charges before they can charge.

Outside of armies built to exploit the warmachine rules (dwarves with max cannons and a few engineers most notably), you won't see a lot of games decided by magic or shooting.

Unit shooting tends to be somewhat weak, with most armies geting a lot of shots, but needing 5's to hit (assuming the unit stood still, shot at a clear target, and is within half range). Hard hitting weapons have to stand still to shoot, and ranges aren't tremendous. OTOH, most armies shooters aren't complete pushovers in combat.

Magic is deliberatly low powered, which I like. It has a bit of a "3rd edition 40k psychic powers" vibe to it. Think of "magic" as a weapon or ability, and that's about all it does.

Cool. Also I took a look at fireforege crusade modeks and they will work prefectly so now I can play king doms of men without spending GW amounts of money.

 darkPrince010 wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

*Snip*
The Auld Grump

You're right, you can't charge through friendly units. However, unit interpenetration does say you can move through friendly units as long as you don't end your move on them:

Page7 wrote:Friendly units can be moved through (except when charging, see below), but you cannot end a unit’s move on top of another unit, so you’ll have to be sure that your units have enough movement to end up clear of their friends. Also, at the end of their move, your units must be at least 1" away from friendly units. This ensures that both you and your opponent can clearly tell them apart.

This does mean that if you're sheltering a unit behind another, they need to move to the forefront and weather a turn of shooting/charges before they can charge.

Move through, yes. Charge through, no, so it does limit the usefulness..

So... a new Quality:
Skirmish
The unit is in a loose formation, allowing other units to charge through the Skirmish unit freely.


Make it an optional ability, but not certain how to points it.

I would make it available to Troops, but not anything larger.

I can see a Dwarf Ranger troop with the ability, or a unit of Wraiths (when the Revenants go charging through the wraiths they go charging through the wraiths).

The Auld Grump

Hey Grump, what's your experience been like playing against a Dwarven army that's running massed cannons, a couple units of Brock riders, small units of Berzerkers to catch charges and die horribly and big hammer units? And if you haven't, why isn't your girlfriend at least trying a build like that? Lol. I've had pretty decent luck, but my player pool is small. My dwarves will also likely see less play with my new ogres running around and Basileans coming shortly.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Hey Grump, what's your experience been like playing against a Dwarven army that's running massed cannons, a couple units of Brock riders, small units of Berzerkers to catch charges and die horribly and big hammer units? And if you haven't, why isn't your girlfriend at least trying a build like that? Lol. I've had pretty decent luck, but my player pool is small. My dwarves will also likely see less play with my new ogres running around and Basileans coming shortly.

Let me dig up the dwarf list....

Here is the list that my girlfriend and I use - two elements of a single force. I wrote a bit about how it did in This Thread.

My Force:
Hunt of Herneas (1500pts)
1500pt Dwarfs Roster (Standard)
Dwarfs (Standard) Selections:
Solid Units (1370pts)

Rangers Horde (385pts)
Crushing Strength (1), Vanguard
banner (15pts), Jar of the Four Winds (30pts) (Jar of the Four Winds), Light crossbows (treat as bows), musician (10pts)
Jar of the Four Winds: The unit's normal ranged attacks gain + 12" range.

Rangers Horde (400pts)
Crushing Strength (1), Vanguard
banner (15pts), Heartseeking Chant (45pts) (Heartseeking Chant), Light crossbows (treat as bows), musician (10pts)
Heartseeking Chant: Grants Piercing (1) or increases the unit's current Piercing value by 1. Normal ranged attacks only.

Rangers Horde (375pts)
Crushing Strength (1), Vanguard
banner (15pts), Blasting Arrow (20pts) (Blasting Arrow), Light crossbows (treat as bows), musician (10pts)
Blasting Arrow: Roll one of the unit's ranged attacks separately. This one attack only counts as Blast (d6). Can only be used by normal ranged attacks.

Rangers Regiment (210pts)
Crushing Strength (1), Vanguard
banner (15pts), Light crossbows (treat as bows), musician (10pts), Piercing Arrow (10pts) (Piercing Arrow)
Piercing Arrow: Roll one of the unit's ranged attacks separately. This one attack only counts as Piercing (4). Can only be used by normal ranged attacks.

Heroes/ Monsters (130pts)

Herneas the Hunter (130pts)

Crushing Strength (2), Individual, Inspiring (Rangers only), Piercing (3), Stealthy, Vanguard

Skewerer (counts as bow)


Roster Rule Summary:
Army Special Rule: Headstrong: Whenever a unit begins a turn Wavering, it rolls a die. On a 4+ it shrugs off the effects of Wavering and can act normally that turn.

Selection Rule Summary:
Crushing Strength (n): Melee hits have a +n modifier when rolling to damage.

Individual: The unit does not have any flank or rear facings. When shooting against this unit, enemies suffer an additional -1 penalty on their rolls to hit. The unit also has the Nimble special rule.

Inspiring (Rangers only): If the unit or any friendly units within 6" of it are Routed, the opponent must re-roll that Nerve test.

Piercing (n): All ranged hits inflicted by the unit have a +n modifier when rolling to damage.

***
Megan's Force:

King Aldrun's Anvil (1490pts)
1500pt Dwarfs Roster (Standard)
Dwarfs (Standard) Selections:
Solid Units (1115pts)

Ironclad Horde (290pts)
banner (15pts), musician (10pts), The Fog (40pts) (Stealthy), Throwing Mastiffs (15pts)

Ironclad Regiment (155pts)
banner (15pts), Blade of Slashing (5pts) (Blade of Slashing), musician (10pts), Throwing Mastiffs (15pts)
Blade of Slashing: Roll one extra dice in Melee.

Ironwatch Horde (315pts)
banner (15pts), Jar of the Four Winds (30pts) (Jar of the Four Winds), musician (10pts), rifles (15pts) (Piercing (2))
Jar of the Four Winds: The unit's normal ranged attacks gain + 12" range.

Ironwatch Regiment (175pts)
banner (15pts), Blasting Arrow (20pts) (Blasting Arrow), crossbows (Piercing (1)), musician (10pts)
Blasting Arrow: Roll one of the unit's ranged attacks separately. This one attack only counts as Blast (d6). Can only be used by normal ranged attacks.

Ironwatch Regiment (180pts)
banner (15pts), musician (10pts), Piercing Arrow (10pts) (Piercing Arrow), rifles (15pts) (Piercing (2))
Piercing Arrow: Roll one of the unit's ranged attacks separately. This one attack only counts as Piercing (4). Can only be used by normal ranged attacks.

War Engines (255pts)

Ironbelcher Cannon (85pts)
Blast (2d6+1), Elite (if within 6" of a Warsmith), Grapeshot, Piercing (4)

Ironbelcher Cannon (85pts)
Blast (2d6+1), Elite (if within 6" of a Warsmith), Grapeshot, Piercing (4)

Ironbelcher Cannon (85pts)
Blast (2d6+1), Elite (if within 6" of a Warsmith), Grapeshot, Piercing (4)

Heroes/ Monsters (130pts)

Warsmith (105pts)

Crushing Strength (1), Individual, Inspiring (War Engines only)
Da Boomstick (Zap (3))
Zap (n): The unit has a ranged attack. You roll (n) dice for this ranged attack rather than using the Attacks value of the unit. This attack has a range of 24", always hits on 4+ (regardless of modifiers) and is Piercing (1).

Roster Rule Summary:

Army Special Rule: Headstrong: Whenever a unit begins a turn Wavering, it rolls a die. On a 4+ it shrugs off the effects of Wavering and can act normally that turn.

Selection Rule Summary:

Crushing Strength (n): Melee hits have a +n modifier when rolling to damage.

Elite (if within 6" of a Warsmith): Whenever the unit rolls to hit or to damage, it can re-roll one of the dice that failed to hit/damage.

Individual: The unit does not have any flank or rear facings. When shooting against this unit, enemies suffer an additional -1 penalty on their rolls to hit. The unit also has the Nimble special rule.

Inspiring (War Engines only): If the unit or any friendly units within 6" of it are Routed, the opponent must re-roll that Nerve test.

Piercing (n): All ranged hits inflicted by the unit have a +n modifier when rolling to damage.

Stealthy: Enemies shooting against the unit suffer an additional -1 to hit modifier.

Undead against the Anvil have their best luck when they engage the front of the unit, then Revenant Cavalry strike the flank - having a mounted Necromancer, who's main job is to increase the speed of the cav.

Sleepy time now, up late and wee mool.

The Auld Grump

Man, you'd hate to see my list. LOL I'll send it to you first chance I get, but it involves five-man blocks of berserkers as speed bumps, regiments of iron guard behind them, and cannons blasting with wordsmiths nearby. The cannon shoots, berserkers get hit and die, the cannons shoot again, The iron guard take a hit, cannons shoot again, iron guard take the second hit if there are any survivors. You go through waves of dwarves while getting shot to crap the entire time. It's pretty glorious. Not so much for the poor person doing the assaulting. Perhaps your girlfriend would enjoy trying that sometime?

I always deploy in waves, three if possible, with the hard hitters (like Morax) in 2nd and successive waves. I do not care if you kill the speed bumps as I will wreck you the following round.

I've also found that cheap standard bearers on cav (flaggers on gores) are the ultimate anti-warmachine as in 2 turns they'll be attacking your warmachines (triple attacks, and the warmachine can't shoot next turn)

Also a related question to my first post, what is a genral make of a human, orc/goblins, and dwarfs? How much infantry, cavalry, heros, and warmachines and different kinds of each?

You have a lot of flex, regardless of which army you choose.
If you ally, you can mix and match.

Even within a single 'race' like humans, you can build a widely varying force.

Each solid unit (20 or more infantry; 10 or more cavalry; and different amounts for large cav/infantry) 'unlocks' both a warmachine AND a hero/monster.

If you want a lot of warmachines and/or monsters/heroes, you'll need a lot of solid units. If you don't want many extras like that, you can always field small troop (10 man) size units that are easier to destroy but present more targets for your opponent/maneuver options for you.

For instance, you could build an entirely cavalry army with any of the armies you mentioned (you'd have to get alternate dwarfs on mounts for the time being until they're released).
You could go monster/hero heavy.

Basically, whatever models you have/want to get you can almost certainly build something that fits 'em or to fit the dream army structure you'd prefer----as long as 'solid' units support the number of warmachines and monsters/heroes you wanna field.

More to the point then what is the core ratio of different unit types to build up onto on average for a competitive build. Also, note that I don't know the common point lvl games played at.

Sorry but I'm not getting what you're asking.

Downloading the core rules (I think it's 11 pages of actual rules?) plus an army list or two will probably help you more than I am doing.

I have the rule book, so I kmow how the force org works for the game. My question is for competitive list. As a general rule what do you take and how much of it and then what do add to it to make the army do different things.
Example: as a general rule in 40k you want run medium to high troop count in an objective game.

Right now I'm using the forums to gain an edge on army builds becuase we only have about 4 people that play kings of war at my local shop and as a result we dobt have a large pumping info on what's currently good or bad, who and what not to play in your army. Thats what I'm getting at.

There really isn't a 'This One Wins!' army for KoW - balance is good, and rewards balanced forces.

Taking Heroes, Monsters, and War Engines... If an army can take cannon then they likely should - not just because of raw power but because the Grapeshot makes it flexible in a way that the other War Machines lack.

If you can't take cannon... then stick with what you can get - I have had decent results with the Undead catapults, more often targeting enemy characters and war engines than opposing units.

Heroes and Monsters... I tend to not use much, except for Undead and Dwarfs.

For Undead, you really want Necromancers. Sure, take a liche king - he's good, but the main point is speeding up your army. Undead are slow - and their spellcasters do much to solve that problem; Necromancer, Liche King, Revenant King - all have decent Dark Surge spells . If you have Revenant Cavalry then mount at least one of your spellcasters to keep pace with them.

The other 'must have' character is the Dwarf Warsmith - gives a bonus to the cannon and other war engines. I might go with one for each battery.

I tend to go shooty heavy, and favor Rangers. Like the Undead Dwarfs tend to be slow, and the Rangers get just a little bit of extra movement at the beginning of the game.

Brock Riders are also fun - again, they are faster than your typical dwarf.

One thing - I use a lot of Hordes, but they may not be the best use of points - since you can get one War Engine with each solid unit... if you like war machines then take as many solid units as you can.

But, as I said, balance is pretty good - a balanced force with combined arms will work better than a one trick pony.

I win about 90% of my games as dwarfs, and about 75% when playing Undead.

But I will sometimes swap armies with my opponent, and rate about 80% in those cases - I play the Undead in part because they are challenging.

Most of my losses as dwarfs has been against my girlfriend, also playing dwarfs.... She tends to take my Ranger army, which leaves me with the Anvil. Slowly but surely she is building her own army....

The Anvil works better as an element of a larger force.

When we play the same side in a multiplayer game... we have not yet been beaten.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Yeah - I'm boasting, but more honestly it has to do with willingness to capitalize on the other players mistakes - typically I have a battle plan, and follow it. The opposing player all too often becomes reactive, rather than pushing their own strategy.

In one battle my girlfriend and I scared the opposing players by not talking during the game - just pushing ahead with the battle plan.

As a result I was able to bring my rangers up behind their force, pinning them between the Rangers' Hunt and the Anvil.

In multiplayer games Megan takes the Anvil, while I take the Hunt.

*EDIT 2* Now that I have enough Brock I need to do another element.

So we're talking cheese then?

You can get silly with large cavalry/large infantry one piece units spam. Elf Drakons. Single Ogre units. Single Troll units. With, say, 20+ single model units most armies won't be able to destroy all your stuff even if they're a gunline. You get some flanks/rear charges and then you would be able to take stuff down. Not exactly fun lists to play against/with.

An all cavalry army can also be hella good if you get the right flanks/rear charges going. Of course, they can break like glass thrown against a cliff if they get in bad countercharge situations.

Fielding and facing reasonable mixes of infantry, cav, arty and hero stuff makes the game more fun for everyone IMHO.
YMMV.

privateer4hire wrote:
So we're talking cheese then?

You can get silly with large cavalry/large infantry one piece units spam. Elf Drakons. Single Ogre units. Single Troll units. With, say, 20+ single model units most armies won't be able to destroy all your stuff even if they're a gunline. You get some flanks/rear charges and then you would be able to take stuff down. Not exactly fun lists to play against/with.

An all cavalry army can also be hella good if you get the right flanks/rear charges going. Of course, they can break like glass thrown against a cliff if they get in bad countercharge situations.

Fielding and facing reasonable mixes of infantry, cav, arty and hero stuff makes the game more fun for everyone IMHO.
YMMV.

Hear! Hear!

Though the Spam armies can fold against enough artillery - Blast does a number on them, as does Breath Attack - but that assumes that the Spam is near enough. (I tend to prefer Breath Attacks on characters rather than Artillery, though a single flame cannon can do wonders to keep folks from getting in charge range of your battery.)

The Auld Grump

There is one important thing to note for KoW elves, and generally most KoW armies.

Elves are NOT gunlines, or even really a ranged army. Elves are a mobility army. That's because bows in KoW generally suck at outright killing units. What they do best is do 1-2 damage and thus forcing morale roles, thus wavering advancing units and taking out small weak specialists like rock throwers, solo cavalry etc. A large army of small archer units can work, but dont expect to run a gunline... instead, you disrupt the enemy ranks by wavering, then capitalize on the elves speed and universal hign melee stats to flank. The vast majority of the elven damage comes from flanking calvalry, drakons, palace guard, scouts.

If you wanna run a ranged gunline, dwarves are pretty much the only army that can do it reliably, and that;s because of the cannons and warsmiths. They are the best warmachines in the game, which can outright kill entire units in one shot, and you can double their chances to hit with a cheap hero. A dwarven hard core with a lot of cannons and some elven flanking forces is one of the most efficient ally armies out there.