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So, after a three year long hiatus from wargaming, I am starting to get ready to play a game or two with my poor girlfriend in the near future. I'm quite excited by the current KOW rules and am looking forward to using them.

That got me thinking about the changes for KOW 2. I know somewhere on Dakka some of the guys involved had done a summary of the changes, but I couldn't find it in my search. So I thought I'd post this thread and hopefully start a discussion or get a link from someone helpful!

A second question...

Is it a rebalancing, or a re-focus? What elements of KOW are unbalanced, and if I am planning an intro game for my girlfriend, what should I consider to ensure she has a good time but isn't overwhelmed (some roleplaying experience, no wargaming experience but she's an engineer so she won't have problems with the system)?

I can put together small armies for-
Kingdoms of Men
Orcs
Goblins
Ogres
Dwarves
Undead
Abyssals

So any suggestions on which of these would give the best experience would be helpful. I was thinking about leaving out warmachines and characters for the first game.

Interested in answers to this myself as I will be starting KoW with version 2 and an abyssal army

IMO some of the unit costings and army lists/construction were a little off. There's currently a difference in what you can take in a casual game (anything) versus compettion play (x number of unit size of any unit type so you can't spam). Some lists just are stronger (e.g., Basileans can easily dominate if you stock up on angels and horde human infantry).

The core mechanics for the 2012 edition are pretty solid in my book.

From what Ive heard, a couple of special rules are changing (mostly to be less annoying/require less bookkeeping/scale better), there are a few new spells, warmachines get nerfed slightly, TLoS gets dumped, and everything gets rebalanced a bit.

Ah, here we go:

Looks great!

Thank you! Very useful.

From looking at that, it looks like Vicious and Elite armies just got a huge boost, and magic users are a little more flexible. The change to war machines looks good to me. I vastly prefer those rules for Line of Sight too, I hate TLOS.

Well, Elite and Vicious were one re-roll regardless of the dice roll. Now it's all 1s, so it's a slight upgrade, albeit one that scales with the size of a unit (or their attacks) when previously it was more effective for smaller, more elite units (and Warmachines, heroes, etc).

And as a side effect, the change to Elite might fix the horrible "Dwarf Warsmith Cannon Battery" combo.

Oh, I misread the rule as all misses. Okay, that's a lot less powerful then. Interesting.

That height bit looks helpful for LoS stuff

Yeah, I much prefer abstracted LOS than TLOS because it allows for more creative modelling and is just a lot clearer and easier to work with. You don't need laser pointers and there's no interpretation needed or getting down to a model's eye view bollocks.

On the whole I am happy with these changes. I would still like to see "Evil Humans" as a faction so I have impetus to finish my chaos marauder army, but I suppose I can always ally Kingdoms of Men with Abyssals or something.

LoS is vastly superior to TLoS. No "I CAN SEE THAT SHOULDER BRAH" arguments and people can freely model any...model...to their liking without having to fear being constantly in LoS.

 Riquende wrote:
And as a side effect, the change to Elite might fix the horrible "Dwarf Warsmith Cannon Battery" combo.

It's only horrible if you're standing on the wrong side of the barrel

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, I much prefer abstracted LOS than TLOS because it allows for more creative modelling and is just a lot clearer and easier to work with. You don't need laser pointers and there's no interpretation needed or getting down to a model's eye view bollocks.

On the whole I am happy with these changes. I would still like to see "Evil Humans" as a faction so I have impetus to finish my chaos marauder army, but I suppose I can always ally Kingdoms of Men with Abyssals or something.

The RC are apparently making some "officially unofficial" lists to come out after the 2e rules with analogues for a lot of "other forces" found in "other games".

I love these changes. First off, the model height idea is great. No more TLOS, !
I like the changes in Elite and Vicious. Elite especially will now prevent Dwarf and Elf Warmachine spam. Elven Bolt Throwers with Elite were too much, as were Dwarven cannons with engineers. This is a shift towards units, not warmachines.
I didn't expect the lack of long range for shooting, to be honest. Also, maybe this was just a typo, but it says: -1 for moving. I suppose it means if the shooting unit has moved, but it would be interesting if it would be -1 if the target unit had moved. It would somewhat balance the lack of long range shooting modifier.
The Bane-Chant is awesome! About time there was a buff in the spell list!
Also, loved the change in Breath Attack. Finally I might actually be able to play my Ogres!
Can't wait, Mantic!

 .Mikes. wrote:

 Riquende wrote:
And as a side effect, the change to Elite might fix the horrible "Dwarf Warsmith Cannon Battery" combo.

It's only horrible if you're standing on the wrong side of the barrel

Crap, that will feth up my dwarf gunline, won't it?! Cavatorrrrrrrrrreeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Thank god! Nobody wants WHFB Dwarfs in any other game...

 angelshade00 wrote:
I didn't expect the lack of long range for shooting, to be honest. Also, maybe this was just a typo, but it says: -1 for moving. I suppose it means if the shooting unit has moved, but it would be interesting if it would be -1 if the target unit had moved. It would somewhat balance the lack of long range shooting modifier.

More that they have made shooting at short range easier - instead of a penalty at long range you get a bonus at short.

My cannon batteries are weeping for the changes, though....

The Auld Grump

Just realized how powerful the Jar of the Four Winds suddenly becomes. 40 Golbin Spiitters shooting 20 attacks hitting at 5+ no matter where you are. Combine this with a Piercing 1 by a well-placed Bane-Chant, and they will eventually wear you down.

I tried out the rules changes last night... fairly brutal - dwarfs vs. dwarfs.

My force was mobile, hers was artillery and a gunline, with bulwarkers to fend off attack.

The unit most affected on my side was my rangers - the choice between charging in on the Bulwarkers with two handed weapons or standing back and shooting with that +1 to hit bonus.... If I had been fighting anything but dwarfs... I think that I would have gone with the shooting.

For her... the changes for Blast was very, very painful. It meant that my Brock had the chance to actually reach her gunline - and her Ironwatch ended up doing more damage than the cannon had.

It was her Ironbelcher Organ Gun that saw the rangers off the field. (Short ranged, but enough dice to hit that giving it Elite really hurt. A lot. If I had charged the gun instead of her Ironwatch... I think that the rangers would still have been wiped off the table - they never Wavered, just got crushed under the weight of fire.) The change to Elite really helps the Organ Guns and their like, while the changes to Blast really hurts regular cannon.

Makes the Organ Guns worth taking.

The only Heroes on the table was her Warsmith and my Standard Bearer - which was marching behind the rangers.

I think that next time I will get a Berserker Lord to ride with the Brock - it would have made a game changing difference, I think.

The battle ended up being dead even on victory points - both sides badly hurt, well beyond decimation.

The Auld Grump

So I take it the overall feel of the new rules was good? I am thinking of telling the guys at my gaming group to start playing them already, even they are almost certainly not complete yet.

One question about the Counter-Charge rules. The Counter-Charging unit does not suffer a -1 penalty due to difficult terrain. So Unit A charges Unit B which is just within a forest. It gets a -1 to Hit as normal. Unit B does not break and Counter-Charges, without a penalty. If Unit A does not break, it then Counter-Charges Unit B with no penalty? I mean, does this rule mean that in extended battles, the -1 penalty will actually only be applied to the first charger?
(I do hope I worded this correctly )

 angelshade00 wrote:
So I take it the overall feel of the new rules was good? I am thinking of telling the guys at my gaming group to start playing them already, even they are almost certainly not complete yet.

One question about the Counter-Charge rules. The Counter-Charging unit does not suffer a -1 penalty due to difficult terrain. So Unit A charges Unit B which is just within a forest. It gets a -1 to Hit as normal. Unit B does not break and Counter-Charges, without a penalty. If Unit A does not break, it then Counter-Charges Unit B with no penalty? I mean, does this rule mean that in extended battles, the -1 penalty will actually only be applied to the first charger?
(I do hope I worded this correctly )

Correct. Basically, you get the penalty for moving into the forest on the initial charge, but now both units are well stuck in to the forest so no more -1's

Good change. The combats where both sides got -1 on every attack would just drag on for ages sometimes. This way, you still get something for defending a good position (the initial -1) but can't rely on it to tar-pit something nasty.

 Riquende wrote:
Good change. The combats where both sides got -1 on every attack would just drag on for ages sometimes. This way, you still get something for defending a good position (the initial -1) but can't rely on it to tar-pit something nasty.

Exactly. Just had this happen to me this morning when two units were locked in combat between them for 2 rounds (beyond the first charge). By the time they were finished the game was pretty much over.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
I tried out the rules changes last night... fairly brutal - dwarfs vs. dwarfs.

What are you guys using? The 1-page document?

Beta:
http://manticblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/KOW-2nd-Ed-WIP5.2.pdf

Feeback:
https://manticforum.com/forum/kings-of-war/kings-of-war-2-beta

Heh, Baragash beat me to it.

Over a hundred pages of crispy Beta goodness.

Last night I intended to take my girlfriend out to karaoke - instead she dragged me to my first Deadzone game in months... And she stomped everyone!

I was so happy.

The Auld Grump - Orx... suit her. (And I had just started putting together some Gorka Morka stuff for her....)

Thank you Baragash, that proved an interesting read.
So a unit of shooters will not be Disordered in the unlikely event the charger fails to inflict any wounds, right?
And Thunderous Charge as well works this way I suppose.
Oh, they forgot the Twilight Kin out.

Also, why are the Ogre Heroes still not Individual?

 angelshade00 wrote:

Also, why are the Ogre Heroes still not Individual?

All large infantry heroes have nimble now .