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 adamsouza wrote:

 RivenSkull wrote:
I really want to get the abyssal army starter, but I really don't like the mouths.

I don't want the demons to have goofy smiles.

They are more like Devils than demons, and I have a pretty good idea where the artist got inspiration from

That's no Demon or Devil - that's an Efreet, from the Elemental Plane of Fire!

 Azazelx wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
$15 for just the books? That's 30%, which is worse than most places that charge for percentages. They must be holding off on the $1 pledge level until later. Get people down now for $50 or $150, I guess.

I believe they're counting on more freebies at the $50 level unlocking.

I can't see that many freebies for the $50 rules-only level, to be honest. The counters for example are rubbish (I have the DZ ones) and they look a lot nicer in photos than in-hand. I'll stick to using dice for wound counters and disrupted.

Honestly I love the KoW wound counters (but yeah, the Deadzone ones are rather mediocre/poor). If they're like the KoW wound counters, which get constant use, then I'll be very happy.

Yeah, the deadzone ones are a bit poor. However, the dreadball counters are frikking amazing and, I'd call them near essential.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Quick question for you KoW players- what are Orcs like? Any good? I figured I may as well get an Orc army since I'm getting a great deal of them in Dungeon Saga..

Orcs are fantastic and my favorite army to play. The average Orc Ax are the best basic infantry in the game, with high defense and Crushing Strength. Orc Sniffs are the best scouts in the game as well (Vanguard gives them a free move before the game begins, they are fast, and they also have Crushing Strength, so are great for being speedbumps or getting flank charges). And Morax are one of the most feared units in the game, with their Elite-level melee value and the high number of Crushing Strength attacks that tend to, on average rolls, auto-kill any unit they charge. And the Orc Krudger on Slasher is a beast of a solo character and can chew up units all by himself.


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 Azazelx wrote:

ced1106 wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Quick question for you KoW players- what are Orcs like? Any good? I figured I may as well get an Orc army since I'm getting a great deal of them in Dungeon Saga..

Remember to check out the existing retail armies. They're also very good prices, though lack the "elite" units I'm seeing in the KS armies.
Thanks to everyone who're working on the point values and army lists!

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/orcs/product/garlaks-barbarous-horde-mega-army-96-figures.html

This is absolutely a perfect way to start a Mantic orc army. Plus, all the sprues come with Orclings so you will have about another 6 40mm swarm bases worth of Orclings. The fact there's an extra 5 Orc Ax means you can use the extra dudes for conversions (an army standard bearer, another Orc Krudger, etc)


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 .Mikes. wrote:
Someone on another forum brought up that they didn't like the to and fro of combat (charge in, step back an inch, other side charge in, step back and inch etc etc). Does anyone know if there have been any changes to this aspect of combat? I don't have an issue with this, btu I thought I'd ask.

Honestly awkward at first, but now it's how I prefer to play. All your stuff and your stuff alone is done in your turn. It makes the game go by so incredibly quickly.


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 Daedleh wrote:

At the moment both banners and musicians are (mostly) overpriced. Those 25 points per unit very, very quickly add up into a whole new unit. Most people I know only take musicians on a select few units and never take banners. 15 points for +1 nerve is pretty naff for most units. The points are much better put towards buying new units altogether or an artefact or two.

So what do we do?

I disagree, but that's just me the Banner is not +1 Nerve, btw, it's the enemy has -1 on his dice roll AGAINST your Nerve - Melee or Ranged - has saved one of my units on many, many occasions. It is infinitely more useful than the Musician, which is why it's 15 points versus 10 points.
The Musician only affects your nerve against melee.

If you're going to auto-include command, then yeah, get rid of the bonuses/etc. Make an option instead to have no command (Leaderless? perhaps call the rule "Garrison", or something, to signify no regimental colors and such?) that just confers the Enemy always getting a +1 on any Nerve rolls.


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NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Incidentally, on the Musician/Banner front... I know I am a brand new guy to the game, but from my perspective having just read the old free rules .pdf... it instantly occurred to me that the two functionally cancel each-other out anyway. If all players put both, in all units, they have essentially done nothing but shrink the size of the game, yeah? Call me crazy but auto-cancelling design mechanics normally never make it to print in the first place. :-p

Banners make the enemy roll -1 on the Nerve check against your unit. Any Nerve check. Musicians only give you a +1 bonus in melee. So, they cancel each other out in melee, but the standard is a huge huuuuuge huge bonus when being shot at. A single point of damage from shooting will cause a nerve check.
I've got over two years and at least a hundred games under my belt; all of my combat units take a Banner straight up; some take Musicians; none of my speed-bump or reserve units have them, though. (Kings of War is very much a multi-line game; at 2000 points I'll tend to have at least two full lines of infantry across a 6' deployment area; sometimes going as deep as three lines. Reserves are very important because flank and rear charges are so deadly - if a hole gets opened in your battle line you are going to be dead unless you can plug it)

Since I am starting to get into Kings of War now, how competitively good is a mixed Orc and Undead army? How competitively good is Kingdoms of Men if done in a Mediveal Crusader style? I ask because those are the two armies I have in mind fluff-wise for my army, but I was wondering how much the difficulty curve is for each army.

 judgedoug wrote:
I disagree, but that's just me the Banner is not +1 Nerve, btw, it's the enemy has -1 on his dice roll AGAINST your Nerve - Melee or Ranged - has saved one of my units on many, many occasions. It is infinitely more useful than the Musician, which is why it's 15 points versus 10 points.
The Musician only affects your nerve against melee.

If you're going to auto-include command, then yeah, get rid of the bonuses/etc. Make an option instead to have no command (Leaderless? perhaps call the rule "Garrison", or something, to signify no regimental colors and such?) that just confers the Enemy always getting a +1 on any Nerve rolls.

I think it is just you. I've not seen a single unit banner probably in over a year. How is -1 to the dice roll any different to having +1 nerve?

Why would we make a special rule for command when it would just be -1 nerve?


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 Tanakosyke22 wrote:
Since I am starting to get into Kings of War now, how competitively good is a mixed Orc and Undead army? How competitively good is Kingdoms of Men if done in a Mediveal Crusader style? I ask because those are the two armies I have in mind fluff-wise for my army, but I was wondering how much the difficulty curve is for each army.

I don't know about the allied Orcs & Undead. Some elements from the Undead army (Werewolves) would be useful to counter the relative lack of anti-war engine units that Orcs have, but I think the two styles would clash. Orcs need to get into combat as soon as possible because they're such a glass hammer, but Undead are much slower than Orcs. Trying to screen Orcs with Undead tarpits like Zombies would just mean the Orcs moving slower and getting picked off before they get to combat.

KoM is an extremely flexible list that can do pretty much any style of play you want.

All 3 armies are up there in terms of "competitiveness" on their own in 1st edition, but 2nd edition will see some pretty big balance changes anyway so there won't be competitive and uncompetitive armies. I'm not naive enough to think that we'll get perfect balance, but we are definitely going to get it to the point where you're never penalised or on the back foot for choosing certain units (or even certain armies) over another. Having said that, the two styles of Orcs and Undead seem to clash a bit and I don't think there'll be much synergy to take advantage of. KoM will definitely be the easier of the two styles to learn, just because you won't be learning how to overcome the alliances clash of styles.

Overall the games pretty well balanced so you won't need to worry about whats competitive and whats not too much, off the top of my head I can't think of any units in either Undead or Orcs armies that are
outright not worth taking, except maybe Undead Wights but only because how situational they currently are, they're better for siege games rather than most normal games personally speaking.

**Edit**
I'll leave tactics between Orcs and Undead to Daedleh.
**Edit**

In terms of Crusader theme KoM what exactly do you have in mind unit wise, lots of foot Knights and cavalry or something else?

 Rolt wrote:
Overall the games pretty well balanced so you won't need to worry about whats competitive and whats not too much, off the top of my head I can't think of any units in either Undead or Orcs armies that are
outright not worth taking, except maybe Undead Wights but only because how situational they currently are, they're better for siege games rather than most normal games personally speaking.

**Edit**
I'll leave tactics between Orcs and Undead to Daedleh.
**Edit**

In terms of Crusader theme KoM what exactly do you have in mind unit wise, lots of foot Knights and cavalry or something else?

I was thinking slightly cavalry-heavy Crusaders to start with support troops like Crossbow men and Trebuches with some Infantry to clean up and/or tarpit then. Kind of Brettonia-esque, but more emphasis on a somewhat balanced force.

 Daedleh wrote:

I think it is just you. I've not seen a single unit banner probably in over a year. How is -1 to the dice roll any different to having +1 nerve?

Well, I do tend to win
It's entirely different. The Banner is a -1 for your enemy's Nerve check against the unit in melee or ranged. The Musician adds a +1 when you are rolling a Nerve check against an enemy unit in melee.

Shooting at a unit that has a Banner, regardless of my own command situation, means I roll a -1 when testing that unit's Nerve at the end of the Shooting phase.
That ^^ alone is worth the price of admission.
Amusingly, in a teaching game on Monday, the new player's Foot Guard took a zap spell and the Nerve check would have wavered the unit had it not been for the Foot Guard unit's Banner. It neatly underlines that important distinction as we were explaining the difference between a Banner and a Musician. those Foot Guard then survived and wound up charging in and obliterating their target unit.

I was thinking of a similar thing, if just to get a chance to use some of the brilliant Fireforge miniatures crusader guys..

^Those do look pretty sweet, though it could just be the nice paintwork too

Having a -1 to your nerve roll is exactly the same as the enemy having +1 nerve. If a unit has nerve 15, has taken 8 damage and has a standard then you need to roll 8 to rout them. If a unit has nerve 16 and doesn't have a standard then you still need an 8 to rout them.

And yes you can point to anecdotal situations of where the +1 nerve has saved you, but cutting command from a few units gives you a brand new unit altogether, something which is infinitely more useful than a the odd situation where +1 nerve saved you.

If I give a troop of Orc ax a standard, then they cost 90 points and effectively have a nerve of 11/13. Except a Regiment of 15 costs 90 points and has a nerve of 12/14. If I give a Regiment a standard then it has an effective nerve of 13/15 and costs 105 points, except a Krudgiment costs 100 and has a nerve of 13/15.

If I drop standards from 4 units then it will give me a whole troop of sniffs (with 10 points left over) which can be used to tie up enemy units, capture objectives and any number of other uses - far more than "well in this one game my banner saved me."

Edit: looking at the top 3 lists at the clash of kings tournament, there was not a single banner between the lists. There were a few musicians dotted around, but only on a couple of units per army. I don't think there was a single banner in the entire tournament, except for the guy who came dead last.


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 Tanakosyke22 wrote:
I was thinking slightly cavalry-heavy Crusaders to start with support troops like Crossbow men and Trebuches with some Infantry to clean up and/or tarpit then. Kind of Brettonia-esque, but more emphasis on a somewhat balanced force.

Cavalry and trebuchets are very, very powerful in the current edition They'll be toned down a bit in the new edition, but still more than playable.

Thinking ahead you would be peppering the enemy with your crossbows and trebuchets while your cavalry wing swings down a flank. You might want to keep some melee infantry or cavalry with your ranged units for protection against enemy cavalry, or be accepted to lose them quickly (within 3/4 turns). Your cavalry will need to pick targets of opportunity and make sure they don't get bogged down in a protracted fight. Punch a hole in the enemy lines (with your ranged units targetting enemy models nearby to disrupt their counter-charge), get behind the enemy and start mopping up.

But one anecdotal example doesn't prove the point. For every time that -1 modifier has meant the difference between steady and wavering, or wavering and rout, there will be ten times as many moments in the same game where it would not have made a difference.

 Daedleh wrote:

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 Tanakosyke22 wrote:
I was thinking slightly cavalry-heavy Crusaders to start with support troops like Crossbow men and Trebuches with some Infantry to clean up and/or tarpit then. Kind of Brettonia-esque, but more emphasis on a somewhat balanced force.

Cavalry and trebuchets are very, very powerful in the current edition They'll be toned down a bit in the new edition, but still more than playable.

Thinking ahead you would be peppering the enemy with your crossbows and trebuchets while your cavalry wing swings down a flank. You might want to keep some melee infantry or cavalry with your ranged units for protection against enemy cavalry, or be accepted to lose them quickly (within 3/4 turns). Your cavalry will need to pick targets of opportunity and make sure they don't get bogged down in a protracted fight. Punch a hole in the enemy lines (with your ranged units targetting enemy models nearby to disrupt their counter-charge), get behind the enemy and start mopping up.

Also, the word from Mantic (via their blog) is that ranged units (archer, crossbow, etc) are going to be better in the new edition. this is very good news for me. I've been running a couple of archer units in my KoM/AbbysalDwarves force and they are not great units right now.

The change for cavalry is reportedly that in general they will not have the same crushing strength, but will have a "furious Charge" ability that gives them a bonus on the first charge.

 Eilif wrote:
Also, the word from Mantic (via their blog) is that ranged units (archer, crossbow, etc) are going to be better in the new edition. this is very good news for me. I've been running a couple of archer units in my KoM/AbbysalDwarves force and they are not great units right now.

The change for cavalry is reportedly that in general they will not have the same crushing strength, but will have a "furious Charge" ability that gives them a bonus on the first charge.

That word came from me They're not going to do as much damage as melee units do, but they'll be useful for putting a couple of points of damage here and there.

Overall they're fine, just a tad expensive. I've spoken before though about how there should be a few abilities to help out ranged units that are supposed to be more mobile (horse archers, slingers, so on) - abilities that allow the unit to ignore the penalty for moving and firing, for example.

For example, I'd love to know what the plans are for TK Heralds of Woe. Right now they are hands down the game's most awful unit.

I was thinking slightly cavalry-heavy Crusaders to start with support troops like Crossbow men and Trebuches with some Infantry to clean up and/or tarpit then. Kind of Brettonia-esque, but more emphasis on a somewhat balanced force.

Yep you won't have any problems running a decent list like that under the current KoM army, Crossbows, Pike Phalanxes and Trebuches are all fine choices, although you might want to run at least three Trebuches
to get the full use out of them due to their low Range skill (5+). In fact I'd say KoM have some of the best Calvary choices around, you basic Mounted Knight is Me 3+, DE 5+, At8+ with half decent Nerve (11/13) and they can be run from
troops (5 units) up to a Hoard (20 units), you can also run Mounted Scouts as troops (5 units) which can be armed with either pistol (piercing 1, half range) crossbows (24" range) or rifles (piercing 2, reload), which make great harassment
troops and you can take Mounted Sergents which are basically cheaper Knights, but great for unit filling and still decent in combat. IIRC any of the KoM hero units can be Mounted (not like that...) for a mere 10pts.

so a Brettonia style army is more than possible.

 Riquende wrote:
Overall they're fine, just a tad expensive. I've spoken before though about how there should be a few abilities to help out ranged units that are supposed to be more mobile (horse archers, slingers, so on) - abilities that allow the unit to ignore the penalty for moving and firing, for example.

For example, I'd love to know what the plans are for TK Heralds of Woe. Right now they are hands down the game's most awful unit.

A special rule which lets a unit ignore the moving and shooting penalty seems in order. Obviously not given to everyone, but mounted archers certainly.

Also, Kingdoms of Men Scouts are worse than Heralds of Woe

 Daedleh wrote:


Also, Kingdoms of Men Scouts are worse than Heralds of Woe

By default yes, but they can have rifles which make them an okay choice. Heralds don't have any options to become competent.

Come on.. this creep to the 150k mark is painful!

Liking the sound of some of these rule changes, I have only dabbled in 1st edition but glad efforts are being made to improve the game balance.

Shhh don't bring attention to it Pacific it'll just go slower out of spite.

But yeah these Succubi are taking too long, although it is the weekend so go figure, next up is going to be that Abyssal Champion and I'd imagine after that Mantic will break up the hard plastic funding abit with a metal hero or
two for the other factions, hopefully hard plastic Abyssal Warriors will soon follow as one the next goals.

Speaking of Succubi anyone else think these girls would make decent Basilean Sisters replacements? You could either change the heads or remove the horns and tail, add some basic armor, a hood/cloak and they might just work.

So change the entire model?

^If you're going to go with a hood and cape, and are planning to make your own armor... maybe just order some armatures

Be interesting to see how much of a goal they put up for Drech'nok probably $10k but with things slowing down and the sculpt already done and to be cast in metal I wonder if they will go a bit lower.

Put this on the OP if you like...

Seriously guys and gals?, none of you have any appreciation for the sheer joy* of heavy conversion projects, Dakka you disappoint me.

@Grim
No, no, no ,no, you don't ever buy armatures, least not the 28-32mm types, I can make about 20 of those in an hour.

Also we just hit 150k, the Succubi are unlocked.


(*Frustration and anger)

Ok well just sculpt them from scratch using your own armatures

I like heavy conversion projects sometimes, it just didn't sound like much of the original model would be left to justify using them as a base

In all fairness Grim your not wrong, I think most conversion projects I end up planning start off simple and very quickly escalate in replacing/re-sculpting 60% of the base model.

Go figure why I don't complete many conversion projects, one day I'll keep things simple (but not really).

Now time to go work on that elohi dragon-ogre project...

New stretch goal is seriously awesome lol

New goal: $160,000 – BONUS Kickstarter Exclusive Resin Tyrant King Blaine on Gramakh

Blaine has become Mantic’s quintessential Kickstarter mascot – an inter-dimensional traveller that crops up everywhere. At first, he was a total badass. Now he’s a total badass on a freakin’ dinosaur!
Tyrant King Blaine recently featured in Dungeon Saga as a playable hero with unique special rules. This time he’s mounted up on the vicious Gramakh to take to the battlefield alongside whichever army will pay him the most.

This Kickstarter Exclusive high quality resin miniatures (proper top-end resin) will come with special rules for use in Kings of War that means he will fight for any army.
If we hit this goal, we’ll include one FREE Tyrant King Blaine on Gramakh and his rules in every pledge of Living Legend ($50) and up!
You can also add on this miniature to your pledge for $15.