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Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




So as stated in the subject I'm new to this game, haven't yet fully decided on a faction since I have no base knowledge of how they play and such.

Basically I'd like to get some information on the factions, namely how they all tend to play, but further the general meta of the game as I've not played anything similar. If there's already a good guide post to this I'd appreciate the link.

I have at least looked at the starter rules and army lists and have some basic idea of some things but by no means have a full grasp of things like I would want to have prior to buying anything or playing the game with fill in models to a degree.
   
Made in us
Repentia Mistress






So, take it with a grain of salt...but the 1d4chan tactical articles for KoW break down the base armies and some strategy:


https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Category:Kings_of_War/Tactics



Your horde armies are going to be orc/gobo, ratkin and undead (zombie lists). Your elite armies favor things like Ogres and Basilean (humans). High defense armies are going to be things like Dwarf/Salamander/Trident Realm lists. In the middle you will find things like Nature/Herd, the human subfactions (Brotherhood, who *love* cavalry), etc.

Keep in mind that in KoW, you can take 25% of your points as allies. If you run a "Good" faction, then you can pull from other good/neutral factions. Same with Evil, other evil or neutrals. Gives you some nice flexibility to run all sorts of hybrid lists.

You can try out KoW right now even without models. Throw together a small 750/1000pt list of your favorite army here:

http://kow2.easyarmy.com/


Then go grab some cardboard, and cut out the base sizes need for your army list. All of the base sizes for troop/regiment/horde are listed in the rules and the FAQ (which are free to download). Remember than in KoW, it's the *bases* that get removed, not the model. You can just write on them "Orc chariot horde" or "Dwarf Ranger troop", then go play a base game with the free rules. The visuals will be lacking without models, but you can quickly get a feel for the movement mechanics and damage tracking. If you're feeling froggy, you can throw on models from your warhammer fantasy or D&D ranges on your test bases, just to spice it up a bit.

You can *totally* use whatever models you have/want to buy as long as they fit the theme. A huge draw of KoW is the lack of discrimination to being just locked into one vendor. Since it's the bases that are removed from combat, it opens up the doors for you to make cool looking diarama-esque armies rather than having to worry about individual models


 
   
Made in ca
Grumpy Longbeard





Canada

roman90 wrote:
but further the general meta of the game as I've not played anything similar. If there's already a good guide post to this I'd appreciate the link.


Depends on what you mean by "meta". The game is incredibly well balanced, so if you want to know which army is top tier then the answer will not really be meaningful. Some armies are easier to get the hang of, but that depend on your style.
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




Didn't think of the cardboard idea so I'll try that out. That site gave some idea of how the armies might be best played and looking over it I can see how there's always a certain lean toward a small number of the unit options being used and a number of them that are generally more sub par to something else.

By the meta I kinda meant the general basics really. It seems like it has lots in common with most war games in that archers are usually best used sparingly, at least that appears to be the case.
   
Made in us
Damsel of the Lady





drinking tea in the snow

I'm fairly new to the game as well, but i have noticed that archers seem to be used mostly in troops as chaff, or as hordes. A horde of archers with the right artefacts can do quite a bit of damage.

realism is a lie
 
   
Made in us
Omnipotent Lord of Change





Albany, NY

 DarkBlack wrote:
roman90 wrote:
but further the general meta of the game as I've not played anything similar. If there's already a good guide post to this I'd appreciate the link.
Depends on what you mean by "meta". The game is incredibly well balanced, so if you want to know which army is top tier then the answer will not really be meaningful. Some armies are easier to get the hang of, but that depend on your style.
Aye, KOW is very well balanced, especially internally - which is to say unlike GW games (which classically have always had poor internal balance), every unit in a faction is usable. Sure, some units are better at things than their fellows, but on the whole you can make anything you want to take work in game.

That said, KOW like all games does have a prevailing meta. In the first edition, I understand KOW was a bit of a shooting gallery, however second edition (the current one) put a number of measures in place to curb those types of builds. They're still quite strong - heavy shooting Elves and Goblins are both very powerful lists - but have to work harder, and the number of objectives involved in games now makes static lists less advisable. Buuuuuut of course an emphasis on mobility means that the most mobile units will now be stronger, and indeed they are. The current meta, or at least through 2017, favors fast (preferably flying) elite units. Things that can get where they want to be quickly, can charge very far and can deliver high amounts of fairly reliable damage. Again, each update to the rules attempts to undermine this meta - Clash of Kings 2018 is this year's update, available in physical book form from online retailers or at your LGS if they happen to carrry KOW (and have this book in stock) - but I think flying elite will continue to be very strong throughout the year.

However, this doesn't mean you need to play elite flyers to win, if that's what you want to do in KOW. Orcs and Undead* are some of the strongest finishers in GTs (depending on what continent you play), and both of those are at core combat infantry armies, discounting that both have access to flying monsters and Undead have some frightening out-of-sequence movement shenanigans. I prefer to play grind-focused infantry armies with short range shooting, and while I don't crush my way through tournaments, I do alright, and more importantly have a lot of fun doing it. KOW really is a great game, and the balance between and within factions is impressive.

*And Dwarfs just won the US Masters, our tournament of champions! Madness! (Dwarfs are not considered one of the stronger armies, but they did receive a number of buffs in COK18 ...)

- Salvage

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/03/19 15:02:05


 
   
Made in gb
Sneaky Lictor






Following this thread as locally kings of war is picking up and I'm currently trying to pick a army!

A Song of Ice and Fire - House Greyjoy.
AoS - Maggotkin of Nurgle, Ossiarch Bonereapers & Seraphon.
Bloodbowl - Lizardmen.
Horus Heresy - World Eaters.
Marvel Crisis Protocol - Avengers, Brotherhood of Mutants & Cabal. 
Middle Earth Strategy Battle game - Rivendell & The Easterlings. 
The Ninth Age - Beast Herds & Highborn Elves. 
Warhammer 40k  - Tyranids. 
 
   
Made in at
Second Story Man





Austria

The "meta" in KoW can be a thing for a local group if they go into power creep
Like one plays an all flyer list, the opponent find another extrem list to counter that going into another extrem list to counter that one etc

Aiming for a balanced concept and using different scenarios help to avoud those problems


And heavy shooting is still a thing because back in Beta everyone was arguing that shooting is to weak resulting in keeping the first changes and not tweaking it further

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/26 07:08:12


Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise 
   
Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User




 kodos wrote:
The "meta" in KoW can be a thing for a local group if they go into power creep


Kodos is right, there can be a local "Meta" and it often depends on the terrain and scenarios that you play with. An open field and kill scenario will be very easy for a shooting heavy army, and a pain for a low defence melee army. 8 to 10 pieces of terrain is a good average, and the objective based scenarios help to make players move around the board.

A good thing to know is that Mantic has been releasing a yearly update called "Clash of Kings". This adds some new units, rebalances some old units, changes the scenarios and makes some rules tweaks, but doesn't change any points. For example in the base rulebook Vampires are Defence 6 which is super good, and people were taking multiples. In Clash of Kings 2018 they are now defense 5 and still good, but not spamable good. I'd recommend playing with the CoK 2018 book as it does balance the game a bit more. Easyarmy also has updated stats if you use the Clash of Kings 2018 page. Basically all tournaments use the changes from Clash of Kings.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/29 17:38:41


 
   
Made in us
Incorporating Wet-Blending






Where's the latest comprehensive army lists? On EasyArmy.com? I see that Mantic has starting army lists, but I'm guessing that these are the full lists. Thanks!

I also noticed that the same miniature pieces can be used for different units. If anyone has any army builds for the races (particularly orcs and undead), I'd appreciate it (ideally from the old Orc starter set, old Undead starter set, and Orcs vs. Undead Battle Box). I think these sets used older army lists, since some have 15 miniatures in a unit.

Also, if anyone has suggestions for hot-swapping the parts, I'd appreciate it. Some of the orc arms use peg-and-holes, so I don't need glue, and the sticky-tack holds the arms onto the bodies. Will be fiddling with museum wax in a week. Will still end up gluing together 20 Greataxes, but am not sure about how many Axes vs. Moraxes I'll need. I have enough models for 35 total Axes and Moraxes, though I certainly can conscript my non-Mantic orcs to fill the ranks...!

Crimson Scales and Wildspire Miniatures thread on Reaper! : https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/103935-wildspire-miniatures-thread/ 
   
Made in at
Second Story Man





Austria

EasyArmy and Battlescribe have both the latest army lists

Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise 
   
Made in fr
Regular Dakkanaut




Just a few remarks for a new player :


1) heavy fliers (things like dragons, or hordes of flying large infantry or cavalry like the Basilean Elohims or the elven Drakon riders) can be very powerful, but they are also very expensive in points, and while there is multiple tactics to counter fliers, it's usually easier to learn to use them than to learn to counter them.

In other words, I usually adivise beginners to try their first games without such heavy fliers and only add them once both players have masterd the base game without them.

That's not to say that they are unbalanced, it's mainly a learning curve problem, and it can result in boring games where the whole game depend on the big flier being correctly used or not.

Light fliers like gargoyles are however nice to learn the flying rule without them dminating your first games

2) Note that even when some builds are more popular than other, most armies can be played in very different ways and still be perfectly viable even at tournaments.

For example with undead you can both make horde armies with lots of cheap zombies and skeletons and cheap to average offensive units like zombie trolls, or you can go full elite with only revenant, vampires, werewolves and wraith, or you can do a mix of both.

3) Even with the previous point, it is however true that some armies do have some elements that can make them feel different from others

Among the more extreme are :

- Orcs

They have almost nothing in ranged attacks, and their fast options while decent are not as varied or as fast as some others armies.

You can still do an orc army with a decent number of fast units (fore riders, mounted heroes, heroes on slasher, especially the flying one), but gameplay wise orcs tend to be a very "in your face" army with a very direct style of play. They can be powerful, but some players might find them slighty boring *compared* to most other armies.

I find that they play somewhat like the Warriors of Charos in Warhammer 8th edition

- Undeads (both the core Undead list, and Empire of Dust in the Uncharted Empires supplement)

Those armies both have a lots of shambling units unable to "Move at the Double", but with good access to the Surge spell.

For beginners, surge might seems like wasting your precious spells to partially negate your speed problem, but in fact Surge is among the most powerful spells in the game if you know how to use it.

See http://s4.zetaboards.com/Khemri/topic/1301937/1/ for some example of Surge tactics

This will also be useful for other armies that have access to Suge and their own shambling units (mainly elementals), but where those other armies can chose to use Surge or not, with undead armies you are almost sure that you will want it due to the almost universal presence of Shambling units.

4) While the meta encourage fast units, in KoW the simple number of units is important too, so even a fast army might want some cheap options to get a decent number of units drops (if you don't you might find yourself outdeployed, easily flanked, or lacking in units able to occupy objectives).

This plus the new unit value system for controlling objectives means that even in this meta infantry or other cheap and weak units have their uses in the game, if only to hold objectives without wasting too many points, as chaff to sacrifice in order to delay a stronger unit and many similar tactics.

A classic beginner error is to only take units that look powerful on paper by themselves without thinking of your whole army.

Even if for example you like your soul reaver regiments (vampire knights) and it's often your MVP unit, instead of spamming two of them, maybe you could get similar results with only one regiment and one troop, or one regiment, and one regiment of cheaper but still effective revenant cavalry. Or maybe even a different type of fast units like werewolves or wraith, it depends on your play style.

In short, don't simply spam your best units, try to keep some balance so that you don't end sending a 350+ points dragon hero to do the work that a 80 point mounted hero could do.
It's usually easy to find a decent job for one dragon, but as you start taking several it's becoming harder to use them without wasting part of your potential, and it won't matter in the end that you completly crushed a poor 100 point regiment with your 700 points of dragons if in the same time the 1900 points left in the rest of your opponent army crushed your 1300 points thanks to their own relative advantage.

It's possible to make armies with a relative low number of drops work, but it take a good knowledge of the game and a lot of finesse and your margin of error will often be rather small.
   
Made in us
Incorporating Wet-Blending






Thanks for the tips. I just read an article saying that the game is tray-based, not figure based (ie. you don't remove a figure per hit), so I can make some tray dioramas with fewer figures, so have the flexibility of making armies the way I want rather than having to worry about the number of miniatures I have!

Crimson Scales and Wildspire Miniatures thread on Reaper! : https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/103935-wildspire-miniatures-thread/ 
   
Made in us
Repentia Mistress






ced1106 wrote:
Thanks for the tips. I just read an article saying that the game is tray-based, not figure based (ie. you don't remove a figure per hit), so I can make some tray dioramas with fewer figures, so have the flexibility of making armies the way I want rather than having to worry about the number of miniatures I have!


Correct. In essence, as you scale up the "power" of a unit, the base size doubles either length or depth.

Troop --> Regiment ---> Horde ---> Legion (rare, but does exist)

Let's say we have a 10 man infantry troop - that is 10 guys on 20mm bases. So, 5 of them long, 2 rows deep would be 100mm x 40mm. A regiment, which is 20 men, now becomes 5 guys long but double the depth ... 100mm x 80mm. Horde is 40, so double our previous size... 200mm x 80mm
Every unit scales in basically the same way.

For flexibility, it's better to build 2 regiments (2x 20 man squads) on bases and just put them side-by-side when representing a horde. That way, if you want to take them as an actual regiment, you've already got the right base for the job. You will find that the bulk of your force will fall into the regiment/horde frame, so might as well make it flexible.

There is a minimum model count and a preferred model count, these are primarily for tournaments. It just ensures it's easy to illustrate what something is - but the base size is the most important thing. When you're just starting out, you can cut some cardboard or MDF to the right base sizes, and slap on some troops. Even if it doesn't meet the minimum, for friendly games/testing, no one is going to really care.

Multibasing also has a huge advantage if you are into modeling. You can now making some really cool scenic/diorama style layouts.


 
   
 
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