Manchu wrote:

 .Mikes. wrote:
Hanging up on base shapes is bloody absurd,

Do you also think rules calling for a certain base shape is bloody absurd.

AN INTRODUCTION TO KINGS OF WAR: VANGUARD

Kings of War: Vanguard will be launching on Kickstater soon. Throughout this week, we’ll be exploring the game in more detail and giving you a taste of the rules. In today’s blog, we’re looking at the background behind the game.



Mantica is a world ravaged by war, a constant fight for land and resources, or prestige and power. The borders of countries wax and wane like the phases of the moon. The sound of mighty armies marching to war echoes throughout the land.

But wars can be won before the first arrows have been fired, or sword has smashed against sword. Small warbands of hardened warriors clash in desperate struggles to gain the tactical advantage before the battle lines are drawn. These are the bloody skirmishes before the war, where warriors become legends.

That’s the ‘fluffy’ introduction to Vanguard, however, it took us a while to come up with that concept! A Kings of War skirmish game is something that people have been asking for and talking about for a while. The problem was, we didn’t just want to set it in an abandoned city (or similar), as that’s something that’s been covered in numerous other games.

Instead we wanted something that would compliment our existing Kings of War range and also provide a starting point for those looking to start their own Kings of War army. So during a long drive to Belgium last year for Crisis, we began discussing an idea centred round the scouting parties sent out ahead of the main force.

We particularly liked this idea as they’re likely to be some of the most skilled warriors, along with a few supporting troops, rather than the more typical rank and flank. As a result, the warband would contain a grizzled sergeant or veteran captain, alongside specialists like magic users and saboteurs. Their mission would be to scout ahead of the main force in order to caption tactical locations, disrupt supply lines or even take prisoners, etc.

The more we discussed the idea of the scouting parties, the more obvious it became that we could generate some fun scenarios based around this core concept, e.g. objectives might be beacons that need to be lit or you might need to assassinate a key enemy ahead of the main battle. We’re also still thinking of potential scenarios, so if you’ve got some ideas let us know in the comments below!

Kings of War Vanguard

LINKS TO KINGS OF WAR

It was also clear how these battles could feed into larger games of Kings of War too. So if you play a game of Vanguard in which the objective is to light beacons to show the way, in Kings of War you’ll be able to deploy your troops in a more advantageous position. Likewise, the scenarios can go the other way too, so you start with a big battle and then play a game of Vanguard in which you loot the corpses. Of course, Vanguard can be played independently of Kings of War and there will be a full campaign mode that we’ll detail later this week.

Another beauty of setting the game around the scouting parties is it gives a reason for all armies to get involved! It isn’t just a Basilean city that some forces would want to ransack. Instead, as mentioned earlier, Mantica is a little like medieval Europe with battles happening almost constantly. This means there’s always going to be a reason to send out those warbands for a bloody good scrap!

What’s more, we were conscious that a lot of people have multi-based their armies for KoW so the warbands idea is perfect because it focuses on individuals. These can then become the heroes/unit champions in your Kings of War armies too and, because the poses/sculpts will be extremely dynamic, they’ll add plenty of character to your army. There will be a small number of troops used in Vanguard, however these will be optional.

On that note, it’s worth mentioning that Vanguard will use square bases. Again, we wanted to make sure that Vanguard miniatures could easily crossover into Kings of War or even Dungeon Saga, so it made sense to have them on the same bases. It also makes it much easier for rules such as attacking miniatures from behind, as there’s a clear facing with a square base.

In the next blog, we’ll be taking a closer look at the Vanguard star cards and what they mean for your character.

 mattjgilbert wrote:
Should be stat cards

jtrowell wrote:
Hi Matt, nice to see that you are involved in Vanguard, seeing the very good job that you did with KoW back then.

Out of curiosity, are you in charge or at least an official member of the design team or are you just a beta tester or something similar ?

 Psychopomp wrote:
Do we know when the KS will be?

Kings of War: Vanguard will be launching on Kickstarter soon. Throughout this week, we’ll be exploring the game in more detail and giving you a taste of the rules. In today’s blog, we’re looking at an example of a character card.

A little like The Walking Dead: All Out War, Vanguard will feature character cards that include all the stats you’ll need to play. Each of the heroes, special characters and warriors will come with their own cards, giving players a great reference during the game. When you’re playing a campaign, we’ll also be making a roster sheet, so you can track upgrades/new abilities/xp.

In today’s blog, we’re going to breakdown an example card to explain all the various elements, which will also give you a brief insight into some of the key mechanics of Vanguard. So, without further ado, let’s crack on…



1. NAME – if they’re a named character, this will be their name, e.g. Grekle Cacklemaster, or if they’re a standard miniature it’ll be the name of the unit.

2. RACE/TYPE – first up you can see what Race the model is. The model’s Race is also a keyword that may interact with other rules, e.g. a unit could receive a bonus when attacking a Race they particularly despise. Next, models will be one (or more) of the following Types: Grunt, Warrior, Support, Command, Spellcaster, and Large. Type is important when building a Warband and, once again, the Type is a keyword that may interact with other rules.

3. POINTS – this is how many points it costs to add the model to your warband.

4. STATS – this is where you can find all the stats for the model.

Speed (SP) - This value shows the distance the model can move in inches.

Ranged (Ra) - This is the target number the model needs to roll to hit a target when using a Ranged attack, typically as part of a Shoot or Cast action.

Melee (Me) - This is the target number the model needs to roll to hit an opponent when making a Melee attack.

Armour (Ar) - This is the target number a model needs to roll to avoid taking damage and suffering wounds.

Nerve (Ne) - This is the target number for any Nerve tests the model needs to take. This will come into play if the Warband is broken or if something unnerving happens.

Wounds (Wn) - This shows the number of wounds the model can suffer before it is removed from play as a casualty. The larger the number, the more resilient (or stupid!) the model is.

Height (H) - The height of a model affects how it interacts with other models and terrain for line of sight and visibility of targets.

5. SPECIAL RULES – here you can see any special rules the model has. Some of these will be similar to those seen in Kings of War, while others will be completely new.

6. POWER DICE – this indicates how many Power Dice the model generates. The Power Dice work a little like the Command Dice in Deadzone and we’ll have a closer look at Power Dice in a future blog.

7. RANGED & MELEE – this shows how many D8s the model rolls during combat. That’s right, we’ll be using D8s for Vanguard, rather than standard D6s. Even better we’ve got exploding D8s during combat to help create some crazy cinematic moments.

8. EQUIPMENT – equipment will play a large part in Vanguard, as warbands uncover and buy new items during a campaign. Some models will come equipped with weapons/items as standard and they’ll be listed here.

9. SPELLS – spellcasters will have their spells listed here. We’ll be expanding the number of spells available, compared to Kings of War. Also, you may notice it says (short) after the spell name. Just like Deadzone, models will be able to perform two short actions or one long action. Some spells will be long actions, while others will be short. What’s more you’ll be able to boost spells to make them more powerful. As spellcasters gain experience in a campaign, they will also get the chance to learn new spells from an advanced spellbook or faction-specific magic.

10. SPECIAL ABILITIES and RULES – if the model has any special abilities they’ll be listed here. Special Abilities use the Power Dice mentioned earlier, so we’ll go into specifics in a future blog.

So, what do you reckon? The card breakdown has given you a little tease of the rules so far and tomorrow we’ll jump into the topic of Power Dice and how they work in Vanguard.

 mattjgilbert wrote:

jtrowell wrote:
Hi Matt, nice to see that you are involved in Vanguard, seeing the very good job that you did with KoW back then.

Out of curiosity, are you in charge or at least an official member of the design team or are you just a beta tester or something similar ?

I wrote Vanguard

Vanguard will be launching on Kickstarter soon. Throughout this week, we’ll be exploring the game in more detail and giving you a taste of the rules. In today’s blog, we’re introducing the Power Dice.



When it came to writing the rules for Vanguard we knew that we wanted to bring over some elements from the excellent Deadzone 2.0… without making it a complete clone. With that in mind, one of our favourite aspects from Deadzone is the concept of Command Dice.

Just in case you’ve never played Deadzone before, Command Dice are six-sided dice you roll before each round. Each face has a symbol on, which represents a special move you can pull off during the game, e.g. moving an extra character, adding an extra dice to combat rolls, etc. The reason we like the Command Dice is that they represent the chaos of battle. Sometimes orders simply don’t get through properly so no one is clear what they should be doing but then the next minute your commander can be rallying the troops with their inspirational leadership.



Initially we were actually using the same Command Dice in Vanguard but the results were mixed. The problem is that although we could give different warband leaders different amounts of dice, ultimately you would occasionally roll a result that was completely useless in the game.

Another issue is that special abilities are tied to the use of Power Dice, so if you rolled the wrong result at the start of the turn, you might not be able to use your ability. Finally, it meant we were restricted on the cost of special abilities because you couldn’t have more powerful ones that required two or more command icons to be ‘spent’ in order to use them.

YOU’VE GOT THE POWER

Somewhat ironically, the answer was almost staring us in the face. The Walking Dead: All Out War comes with three differently coloured dice that are used for combat (red – weakest, white – slightly better and blue –best). These dice come with differing amounts of stars on (up to a maximum of three) to represent the amount of successes rolled.



During one of our playtest sessions we started to use the Walking Dead dice and they were much better than the original Deadzone dice. But why?

Leaders/support characters actually generate the power dice during the course of the game, so having three different colours gives us more options for having powerful characters that generate one blue dice, compared to weaker characters that only generate one red dice, for example
Different abilities can now cost more than one power to use, as you’ll potentially be rolling a lot more successes
During a campaign characters can level up their dice from red to white and then blue or gain more dice to roll
You’ll always be able to use your power and should never have a ‘wasted’ result that you can’t spend during your turn
POWER PLAYER

So, now that you understand how we came up with the concept of Power Dice, how will you spend them during the game?

Extra model activation – Vanguard has alternating activations but you can spend power to activate an extra model
Extra dice – you can add an extra dice to Shoot, Cast, Armour Save or Melee rolls
Forcing/clearing Fatigue – this is something we’ll be covering in the blog tomorrow…
Group actions – oooh, another tease for a mechanic that we’ll be covering in a future blog
Use special abilities – power is required to use a model’s special ability or the wider Warband special ability. The amount of power required is shown in brackets after the ability, e.g. Cackle! (1)
The Power Dice are an integral part of Vanguard that really help to create those cinematic and exciting moments you expect to see in a skirmish game. What do you reckon? Are you feeling the power?

Vanguard will be launching on Kickstarter soon. Throughout this week, we’ll be exploring the game in more detail and giving you a taste of the rules. In today’s blog, we’re explaining how Fatigue works.



By now we hope you’re getting a good idea of how Vanguard will play, what with the cards, power dice and the general theme. The overall aim was to create a fast, brutal and action-packed skirmish game with room for campaign play and links to larger games of Kings of War. Today we’ll focus on that fast and action-packed element of the rules!

From the start of development on Vanguard we liked the idea of having some kind of ‘fatigue’ mechanic. In other words, we wanted to create a rule where characters could push themselves a little more in order to perform one last action before they collapse in a heap due to exhaustion.

Initially we had a concept for each model to be given command points and each unit would have a limit to the amount of command points they could be given. If you went over this amount, then the character would become fatigued and you could only give them one command in the next turn. However, it quickly became clear that command points were a little fiddly and didn’t bring much to the game.

After dropping the command points, we looked at the Deadzone mechanic of short and long actions. Each model can be given two short actions or one long action. This was a much simpler way to handle activations and ensures you don’t require lots of tokens to indicate the number of command points a unit has been given. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Kings of War Vanguard

INTRIGUED ABOUT FATIGUE?

It also made the fatigue system much easier to handle because now characters could be given an extra short action after they’ve performed their two short actions or one long action. If you choose to perform the extra short action, it will then fatigue the model and during the next turn you can only perform a short action.

As a result there’s a fantastic sense of risk versus reward because you can really push your characters to the limit (often in the hope that you’ll capture that objective or take out a key enemy) but next turn you could be hampered. Thankfully you can clear fatigue at the end of the turn by using the Power Dice but that means you’ll need to keep some power in reserve just in case, and can’t use it for extra dice in combat rolls or special abilities.

Fatigue also allows us to have some fun with other elements of the game too and here are a few examples:

The Dwarf’s special warband ability is Headstrong, which allows them to clear Fatigue at the start of their activation on a 6+, so you don’t have to spend power to clear Fatigue… although it’s not guaranteed
The Goblin’s special warband ability is Flee!, which allows them to run away from combat if they haven’t already been activated but they will be Fatigued afterwards. This costs one power, however so you’ll need to choose carefully when you want to run away screaming
Some spells or special abilities will fatigue an enemy model
Finally, it’s worth noting that while models can be given a fatigue action as part of their normal activation for free, it is possible to return to a model that has already been activated later in the turn and spend power to fatigue them. Again, this helps to create the chaos of combat and keeps your enemy on their toes because you can never quite be sure if a model has completely finished activating.

So, there you have the basics of fatigue. Will you be pushing your heroes to the limit?

 Alpharius wrote:
Is it really called a "Showhound"?

p.p.s. – oh there might be some scenery in Vanguard too, and a gi…