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Through an organic process that I still don't quite understand, I've ended up painting a gakload of LotR Minas Tirith/Gondor figures as a Kingdoms of Men force for KoW, having queue-jumped both my WIP Elven forces as well as the Ogres. OK, so far, so uninteresting. My main concern with all of the armies I'm building is being thematic, so no cannon, ogres, etc for Gondor. On that same point, since Human archers are pretty rubbish and there's nothing vaguely Ranger-like in that human list, I'm using Elven Scout stats for the rangers, as they represent the Rangers of Ithilien (Faramir's guys) and/or The Grey Company (Aragorn's guys) - in both cases, kickass elite rangers. Unlike normal allies, they'll also be allowed to use the rest of the army's Inspiring guys in our games. Which I assume you can't usually use across allies, though I haven't spotted where it says that in the rules, I just assume it's that way - right?

Down the line, I'll also use Elven stats for the Swan Knights of Dol Amroth, as they are elites with Numenorean blood, and so forth. It also keeps the Gondor army to two lists.

The problem I have at this point is the Gondor Ballistae. Trebuchet are already covered, but the Elven bolt thrower stats seem a bit ...too good for them, and so do the KoM cannon rules - but in a different way. (This will also become an issue at some point in the future when I get some Romans painted up).

Any ideas?

Hmmm... hard to say - there is a reason that the Elven bolt thrower is so good, if you look you will notice that it has a muzzle brake. (The thing isn't a ballista, it's a cannon!)

If you are playing with a friendly group, maybe the best thing is to come up with completely new stats instead. Here is a site for using Kings of War for historic wargaming. The Roman Scorpion might be a good starting point.

Though at 70 points, it might be a little underpowered for the cost....

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* The Basilean army list, from the Mantic site, has the Heavy Arbalest, which at 45 pts. might be your best bet.

Heavy Arbalest War Engine
Unit Size 1 Sp 5 Me -- Ra 5+ De 4+ At 1 Ne 10/12 Pts 45

Special: Blast (D3), Piercing (2)

If you/your friends are good with it you can make up your own army stats as discussed above.
On the allowing allies special rules from other armies, question to ask is would you/your group be okay with my human swordsmen releasing war-dogs as throwing weapons or were all headstrong or were all elite? Sounds like your group may be more accepting of these kinds of adaptations which is very cool.

If you/your friends would prefer to stay to the rules you could use the allies bit (in which you wouldn't be allowed to Very Inspiring on allied).

Or you could spice up the stopping power of your bow armored men by counting them as crossbow or even rifle-armed. It gives them reload but it would fit with the lag needed to pull a super powerful bow to cause Piercing 1 or 2.

Thanks guys!

TAG - That Heavy Arbalest looks like the best option. I'll just remove Heal from it for the Gondor army. For some reason I didn't realise the Basilieans had any artillery...

p4h - my main gaming group these days is a pretty unique situation at present. I'm pretty much the only miniatures gamer in the bunch, so we have a situation where I buy, paint and own all of the figures from all of the armies, and make up the lists (with some input from others - notably judgedoug when I was starting out). I'm probably not likely to find many other KoW players around my area, so I just make my own from my regular gaming group and their close friends (who are mostly RPGers/Board and computer gamers.)

Any given army is at least as likely to be played against me as by me - the last two games we played I let everyone else choose what they liked the look of and took the remaining force (8-player game) and the game I've played more recently than that I let my opponent choose a force and then rolled a dice to see who I would play. - So to answer your question, it's all about theme and fun for me - not building killer lists or breaking the rules for an advantage. Hence Ballistae for the forces of Gondor, and Elven stats to represent the couple units of their best elites, but no Ogres, Warpriests and Pentinents, or any of the gunpowder artillery choices. Even a wizard heading towards 2k points and beyond is iffy at best, since the stats are way too weak for Gandalf, and hedge-wizards aren't really a thing in Tolkien. It's not about making archers more powerful, but finding appropriate rules to represent the Rangers of Ithilien/Arnor and the SKoDA. (and everything else). Regular human archers (and I have a fair few of them) will be using the stock profile.

Other armies will get the same or similar treatment. These guys will be statted as/counts-as Ogre Chariots in the Abyssal Chaos Dwarf army, for example - because they're fething huge.. (I was actually shocked at the size when I got mine awhile back)


They make the old Chaos Dwarf Bull Centaurs and Mantic's Abyssal Halfbreeds (that I also have) look like midgets


My Wood Elf Wardancers will slot into the "Good" Elf army using the Twilight Kin Blade-Dancers rules (swapping Vicious for Elite).

Just using the figures I have and slotting them into cool-looking armies using the most appropriate units I can find when the "home" list doesn't have them. You get the idea. It's all about Theme and Fun here.

 Azazelx wrote:
Thanks guys!

TAG - That Heavy Arbalest looks like the best option. I'll just remove Heal from it for the Gondor army. For some reason I didn't realise the Basilieans had any artillery...

Blame the Brettonians. (I realy hated that rule, back when they just could not have war machines... They had castles for the love of mud! If you are going to take castles then you need war machines!

Then came the campaign conclusion, which was a siege... and the Brettonians literally couldn't do anything. Bad rules are not just a recent phenomenon for GW....

For that matter, the siege rules in Kings of War are not anything to write home about.

Thankfully, the first issue of Ironwatch addressed that, a bit.

The Auld Grump - if only cannon can take down castle walls then anybody fighting folks with castles will have cannon....

*EDIT* Also... dayum that thing is big!

I'm so happy to see more Confrontation Lion counts-as Basileans!

I'm considering selling my army BTW if anyone might be interested.

Which army, and why?

 Azazelx wrote:
Which army, and why?

My super converted Confrontation Lion / Basilean army. Because I have this many armies for Kings of War:
Orcs (4000 points) fully painted
Goblins, foot (2500 points) fully painted
Goblins, mounted (2500 points of fleabag riders, mincers, sharpstick slashers)
Elves 2k Mantic, 4k GW
Dwarves 2k fully painted
Kingdoms of Men (several... GW Empire 6k+, Pike & Shotte 3k fully painted, Greek 2k fully painted, Imperial Roman 2k)
Twilight Kin (Gamezone/Mierce 2500)
"Orcs" (Red Box Games Helsvakt and Mierce 2500)

and I recently moved and boy do I hate moving stuff, so I've been selling stuff, and the Confrontation Lion/Basilean army may go.

Well, we need a pile of quality pictures of each of them in that case.

 Azazelx wrote:
Well, we need a pile of quality pictures of each of them in that case.

Posted here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/558282.page

Obviously the pics are not the highest of quality, haha.

Also not pictured: the rest of the Confrontation characters, another troop of infantry, and a ballista made from Warlord Games Roman Scorpion, to expand the army to 2500 points.

Post more pics. Of the complete army, and all of the other complete armies. Because we want to see them.

haha, I've got some older pics of my goblins and orcs kicking around somewhere... found the goblins.

I've seen that one before - it's a good look.

But when you get a chance, take some more of them - and the Basilieans before they're sole - and of the others. Good army shots are always inspirational when you're working on your own ones, especially when they're not "the GW studio army" of whatever race - real people's armies are always much more interesting and good to look at (whether they use 100% GW figures, a mix, or none). Besides, you can always submit them to Ironwatch for the exact same reasons of showing, sharing and inspiring.

 Azazelx wrote:
I've seen that one before - it's a good look.

But when you get a chance, take some more of them - and the Basilieans before they're sole - and of the others. Good army shots are always inspirational when you're working on your own ones, especially when they're not "the GW studio army" of whatever race - real people's armies are always much more interesting and good to look at (whether they use 100% GW figures, a mix, or none). Besides, you can always submit them to Ironwatch for the exact same reasons of showing, sharing and inspiring.

Will do. I'm almost finished my Dwarves. I went with a steel/gold/green scheme, and are multibased on a rainy gakky battlefield - all mud and broken stumps, puddles of water. mud caked on their cloaks and boots. Wanted to make it look like they're hard slogging it right after a battle or during a massive battle, or it's just the worst day ever for marching. The KoW dwarves were perfect for that due to all the cloaks on the dwarves, so making them all muddy and damp is fun. They'll be battling my buddy's Abyssal Dwarves in that Dwarf campaign Mantic released, and then I'll probably sell them too But when I finish them, I'll take pics, and then take new pics of the other completed armies, with nice backgrounds and closeup shots and such.

I do like this thread Azazelx I've just started to work on my first KoW army and will be adding models from all different ranges that I like.

The new GW Nagash end of times inspired me to finally order my first box of Skeletons. I've decided to base them the thematic way so one base for each unit. Will make the unit look more interesting and requires less minis.

I'm going to do army lists for 600 points to start out with first and build them up slowly from there.

When I do humans I want to use Elspeth Von Draken as my general on her big dragon but Humans don't get to have dragons or Wizards on them that I recall especially ones who practice dark magic so any thoughts on that would be cool.

I choose Taur'ruk as my general for when I do my Chaos Dwarves, didn't realise he was that huge

 GiraffeX wrote:
I do like this thread Azazelx I've just started to work on my first KoW army and will be adding models from all different ranges that I like.

The new GW Nagash end of times inspired me to finally order my first box of Skeletons. I've decided to base them the thematic way so one base for each unit. Will make the unit look more interesting and requires less minis.

I'm going to do army lists for 600 points to start out with first and build them up slowly from there.

When I do humans I want to use Elspeth Von Draken as my general on her big dragon but Humans don't get to have dragons or Wizards on them that I recall especially ones who practice dark magic so any thoughts on that would be cool.

The easiest way that I can see is to take a solid unit of Elf allies, then stat her up as an Elf Lord on Battle Dragon - a Breath Attack [15] is enough that you can picture some of the damage coming from close quarters spell casting.

I would use a unit of Stormwind Cavalry for the solid unit - you can just call them elite cavalry - they have the stats to back that up, and as long as your opponent knows what the models really are, it should be fine.

The Auld Grump

Cool that sounds a good idea I think I will give that a go, cheers.

Yep, that's the same advice I'd give as well. Not too dissimilar to the Gondor elites that the thread started with.