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I've been looking to get into a fantasy game and I was wondering about these two systems.

Obviously the huge controversy when AoS came out with people burning their armies on YouTube (literally), tons of people vowing to never support GW again and jumping ship to Mantic KoW. Then people saying they are actually HAVING FUN with AoS and that the bitter old-schoolers were good riddance.

From you AoS players have you played both systems?

I tried playing AOS. Definitely not for me. I personally see nothing in this game that other games offer plus more.

However, I also did not like Warhammer Fantasy either.

Kings of War has been great fun and honestly is very easy to get into. Since both a free, and both are compatible with your models, I suggest giving them both a try. I suspect most people will find Kings of War to be the better game.

AOS tried to be a simple and easy to get into game, and to an extent does this, but Kings of War does this as well but with the added benefit of structure and so on.

But yea, definitely give them a try. KOW is a lot of fun, we actually had totally new people come to the club after hearing about AOS just to see if how bad it is was is true. 3 as of the other night, and they are all playing Kings of War now. I think we even have a tournament in November with prizes and everything. AOS was laughed at even by the 11 year old group.

Anecdotal, but in my experience Kings of War smashes AOS out of the water.


I think whats worse for AOS is at our club we have poor, young, old and so on. Heaps of different people, and some of those people (especially the kids) spent a looong time building up their warhammer armies only for them to have a completely new and sub par system replace it. While yes they can keep playing it kinda sucks for them I think. Kings of War is obviously the better alternative especially for these people who have all this hard work thrown down the drain by AOS. One of my mates only recently painted his whole Wood Elf army and then to hear about AOS and see the rules and the game being played etc just killed off his joy for the army until we tried KOW.

I suspect if AOS did not replace Warhammer, then AOS would be ignored like all of GW other mini games.

Why not try both? Have they added a Definitely-not-Sigmarines faction to Kings of War yet?

The rules to both are free, as far as I know, so you might as well just give them both a try.

When are the revised half decent rules for AoS supposed to be out?

Blocks vs skirmish, take your pick... The thing I do not get is why did ye olde players not play KoW before AoS... KoW is clearly better than WHFB so why did they not just play that instead of "jumping ship"

They are totally different games, mate. :-)

AoS is all about skirmish, small-scale battles with loose formations while KoW is basically WFB 2.0 - blocks of infantry and supposedly done better than WFB.

It's all just about your preferences, but remember that even if you play KoW, you can later use the same models to play AoS skirmishes with them - the rules are free and they're still there, so nothing stops you from playing both at the same time!

I'd personally recommend you going the KoW route and later trying AoS when you have your models for KoW - it's not that I don't recommend AoS, I just think that if you're having a hard time deciding, you can just go for the bigger game and then be able to use miniatures in the smaller one, rather than trying AoS and then, if you don't like it, having to expand your army as you want to check KoW out.

 bitethythumb wrote:
Blocks vs skirmish, take your pick... The thing I do not get is why did ye olde players not play KoW before AoS... KoW is clearly better than WHFB so why did they not just play that instead of "jumping ship"

Why did GW not keep their 30 years of fluff/experience and go old school and build 9th edition and make AOS on the side?

Your comment can be like "The thing i do not get is why ye olde Star Wars fans do not watch Battlestar Galactica ... it is better than Star Wars so why did they just not play that instead of "jumping Ship," when they changed Star Wars into Star Trek?....

 Spacewolfoddballz wrote:

Why did GW not keep their 30 years of fluff/experience and go old school and build 9th edition and make AOS on the side?

We don't know. GW knows. But it is generally assumed that people would just ignore AoS if WFB was still around.

Also finally progressing story. End Times came, there was a huge campaign, people died, people performed miraculous feats, world got destroyed, Chaos won, story goes on. As I said before in another thread - it's sad to watch the world I grew up with go away, but if GW decided to go forward with the story and not keep it for another 30 years at 11:59, then I'm okay with that. The new world can, with time, be just as good as the old one (just remember that it will be different, don't expect this to be Old World 2.0) when it gets developed. And if it doesn't, then, oh well, there are other games, I'm already past the age when I would get my knickers in a twist over that despite having thousands of points of models on my shelves. If I don't end up using them for, say, KoW, they'll still serve as a nice reminder of my childhood. Anything goes, try not to get too attached to something that is being sold. At some point it will stop and you will have to move on and grow up.

As others have said both have free rules and you can use your minis for both, so try it and see which you like.

Both have streamlined rules, but my perception is each has the following strengths:

KOW: super tight ruleset that can be played very competitively. If you enjoy the competitive aspect the most, play this.

AoS: 100% freedom in force selection. Play whatever you want. If you want to build a specific army with a theme and enjoy the narrative aspect of gaming, AoS does it best.

 Bottle wrote:
As others have said both have free rules and you can use your minis for both, so try it and see which you like.

Both have streamlined rules, but my perception is each has the following strengths:

KOW: super tight ruleset that can be played very competitively. If you enjoy the competitive aspect the most, play this.

AoS: 100% freedom in force selection. Play whatever you want. If you want to build a specific army with a theme and enjoy the narrative aspect of gaming, AoS does it best.

How... in Kings of war, with one simple sentence I can do the same as you claim AOS is best for (there are very few themes you cant do anyway) and that is "lets ignore the lose restrictions eh?"

Kings of war is no more or less narrative than AOS...

The decision is simple, less rules or more rules with the option to remove some.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
As others have said both have free rules and you can use your minis for both, so try it and see which you like.

Both have streamlined rules, but my perception is each has the following strengths:

KOW: super tight ruleset that can be played very competitively. If you enjoy the competitive aspect the most, play this.

AoS: 100% freedom in force selection. Play whatever you want. If you want to build a specific army with a theme and enjoy the narrative aspect of gaming, AoS does it best.

How... in Kings of war, with one simple sentence I can do the same as you claim AOS is best for (there are very few themes you cant do anyway) and that is "lets ignore the lose restrictions eh?"

Kings of war is no more or less narrative than AOS...

can I take 1 unit from each race in KoW and make it into one single faction? AoS allows me to REALLY make thematic armies of ANY kind I want.... for example, I can take a full sylvaneth force (trees) but I want to add more wild life, so I add a chimera, a cockatrice, a couple of lizard (big ones), some rat swarms (garden mice?) and even add spirit hosts from vampire counts (wilderness sprites?) and bamf I got myself a wild army with no humanoids and mostly trees and animals and forest spirits... this allows for greater narrative as people can create what they want to suit the story... or the army they want... another one is taking an all engineering force by taking empire warmachine and using them in a dwarf army (for added warmachiness) :/ a dwarven steam tank is pretty cool and suits them more than empire imo

The decision is simple, less rules or more rules with the option to remove some.

or add them? I do not get this point... I can just as easily add rules into AoS as you can remove them from KoW

for example

units must face the same direction they attack/move/aim, they can turn to face any direction in ANY phase but remove 1" from their movement during their next movement phase

if you attack the sides of any unit you gain +1 to hit roll and +2 if you hit them from the back

there, I just added extra movement rules, facing rules and flanking ... took me 30s to do that :/

What do you want to get out of a game?

AoS is a terribly balanced, bare-bones ruleset with little to no development time. It is aimed at young players / players with little or no tabletop experience and requires you to know your opponent beforehand or, alternatively, carry your entire Warhammer collection around. It's good for quick, fun games on a skirmish level and rocks if you play with friends.

KoW is a well-balanced ruleset that recently got a new edition. It has been extensively playtested and re-balanced according to it. KoW is what WHFB wanted to be, a large scale, competitive fantasy tabletop game that also allows you to use your entire WHFB army collection in games. Games usually tend to take around 1-2 hours.

 bitethythumb wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
As others have said both have free rules and you can use your minis for both, so try it and see which you like.

Both have streamlined rules, but my perception is each has the following strengths:

KOW: super tight ruleset that can be played very competitively. If you enjoy the competitive aspect the most, play this.

AoS: 100% freedom in force selection. Play whatever you want. If you want to build a specific army with a theme and enjoy the narrative aspect of gaming, AoS does it best.

How... in Kings of war, with one simple sentence I can do the same as you claim AOS is best for (there are very few themes you cant do anyway) and that is "lets ignore the lose restrictions eh?"

Kings of war is no more or less narrative than AOS...

can I take 1 unit from each race in KoW and make it into one single faction? AoS allows me to REALLY make thematic armies of ANY kind I want.... for example, I can take a full sylvaneth force (trees) but I want to add more wild life, so I add a chimera, a cockatrice, a couple of lizard (big ones), some rat swarms (garden mice?) and even add spirit hosts from vampire counts (wilderness sprites?) and bamf I got myself a wild army with no humanoids and mostly trees and animals and forest spirits... this allows for greater narrative as people can create what they want to suit the story... or the army they want... another one is taking an all engineering force by taking empire warmachine and using them in a dwarf army (for added warmachiness) :/ a dwarven steam tank is pretty cool and suits them more than empire imo

The decision is simple, less rules or more rules with the option to remove some.

or add them? I do not get this point... I can just as easily add rules into AoS as you can remove them from KoW

for example

units must face the same direction they attack/move/aim, they can turn to face any direction in ANY phase but remove 1" from their movement during their next movement phase

if you attack the sides of any unit you gain +1 to hit roll and +2 if you hit them from the back

there, I just added extra movement rules, facing rules and flanking ... took me 30s to do that :/

Can you take a unit from any faction and play it? Yes by merely saying "lets ignore list requirements for this cool theme." Done. Easy. I was doing it for my Lizardmen until the rules came out yesterday. It also comes with a better ruleset.

Can you easily add points to AOS? Come on genius, add points to AOS for me, I am willing to bet I can remove points, army restrictions or any rule in Kings of war faster than you can do the opposite of what I remove for AOS. This is not a hard concept to grasp. The examples you gave are already present in Kings of war, I could have removed them in less than 30s if I wanted. Much faster than adding those rules yes?

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
Why not try both? Have they added a Definitely-not-Sigmarines faction to Kings of War yet?

The rules to both are free, as far as I know, so you might as well just give them both a try.

This is the best answer. Both rulesets are free (well, aKoW requires you to buy a £10 rulebook for a few units, but all the basics are free), so only cost you a few MB of storage space and however long it takes to download. If you're building an army for KoW you'll have models to use in AoS and vice versa, and thanks to both games having basing rules that make using the minis interchangeable, you'll have no trouble with that. AoS essentially ignores bases and KoW uses fixed size movement trays, where the number of minis doesn't matter!

KoW isma great game, fast, deep and with plenty of tactical elements that are akin to something like chess; sacrificing, planning ahead, setting up moves are all key parts of the game. For bigger games, there's nothing better!

AoS on the other hand doesn't quite have the same depth, and is definitely something you play for the fun of the game itself rather than the end result, but that doesn't mean it's a poor game. It requires a little more pre-game legwork than KoW, but that's part and parcel of GW games these days, and as far as I'm concerned, not detrimental. It also handles smaller/shorter games well, whereas with KoW you really do need big armies on a 6x4 table to get the most from it.

Try both, and don't fall into the trap of thinking you can only play one game! The more variety and options you have, the better!

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
As others have said both have free rules and you can use your minis for both, so try it and see which you like.

Both have streamlined rules, but my perception is each has the following strengths:

KOW: super tight ruleset that can be played very competitively. If you enjoy the competitive aspect the most, play this.

AoS: 100% freedom in force selection. Play whatever you want. If you want to build a specific army with a theme and enjoy the narrative aspect of gaming, AoS does it best.

How... in Kings of war, with one simple sentence I can do the same as you claim AOS is best for (there are very few themes you cant do anyway) and that is "lets ignore the lose restrictions eh?"

Kings of war is no more or less narrative than AOS...

The decision is simple, less rules or more rules with the option to remove some.

I presumed we were comparing them off the shelf. Not with House Rules.

Can you take a unit from any faction and play it? Yes by merely saying "lets ignore list requirements for this cool theme." Done. Easy. I was doing it for my Lizardmen until the rules came out yesterday. It also comes with a better ruleset.

you will be ignoring a lot more than list requirements.. for example, the games balance that the "points" make will be broken INSTANTLY

Can you easily add points to AOS? Come on genius

do you have to be rude with your replies? or is that just your personality and yes you can.. its called WOUNDS count, people have been using that for ages now...

add points to AOS for me, I am willing to bet I can remove points, army restrictions or any rule in Kings of war faster than you can do the opposite of what I remove for AOS. This is not a hard concept to grasp. The examples you gave are already present in Kings of war, I could have removed them in less than 30s if I wanted. Much faster than adding those rules yes?

no..

firstly, we were discussing the normal out of the box rules that make the game, AoS is designed to be a narrative SKIRMISH focused game where the freedom of thematic armies is PART OF THE GAMES CONCEPT, KoW is not... you are the one who said the only difference is that "you can remove rules from KoW" BUT that is basically IGNORING KoW rules.. .whats the point of KoW without playing by its rules? and as soon as you remove the rules KoW becomes just as broken and unbalanced as you claim AoS to be and therefore you are saying that you CAN make KoW thematic but you will make it a broken, unbalanced game... well done :/

Secondly, AoS is designed to not have points, points are a KoW thing (and a whfb) and there have been PLENTY of "alternative" points things like using "wounds" (total wounds) that more or less work... (its not as balanced as a GAME DESIGNED FOR POINTS but that is besides the point) so to say "add points" is wrong, tell me if you remove list requirements/points from KoW how do the points work? will they be balanced? I THINK NOT... so as soon as you said "I can remove KoW points/list requirments" you have already made KoW a broken, unbalanced, pointless game that does not work as it is intended... adding points or "wounds" to AoS harms it in EXACTLY the same way(or maybe even makes it more balanced) ... so YES I can add points, its called wound count and took people 1 day to figure out :/

--- seriously why are you so defensive to my comment, you more or less said that "its easier to remove rules to add them" when that is just not the case as in both scenarios (adding points/removing points) makes the games equally broken... you are clearly just biased towards AoS :/






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sigvatr wrote:
What do you want to get out of a game?

AoS is a terribly balanced, bare-bones ruleset with little to no development time. It is aimed at young players / players with little or no tabletop experience and requires you to know your opponent beforehand or, alternatively, carry your entire Warhammer collection around. It's good for quick, fun games on a skirmish level and rocks if you play with friends.

KoW is a well-balanced ruleset that recently got a new edition. It has been extensively playtested and re-balanced according to it. KoW is what WHFB wanted to be, a large scale, competitive fantasy tabletop game that also allows you to use your entire WHFB army collection in games. Games usually tend to take around 1-2 hours.

what an unbiased opinion... hows about

AoS is a narrative, scenario, skirmish based game that focuses on the player interacting with each others and talking out the game as it moves along in a friendly none competitive environment, suitable for all ages, very simplified and easy to learn rules for the benefit of being able to pick up and play the game as quickly as possible and the freedom to create any theme you wish for your army, your imagination being your only obstacle, its good for long term scenario styled games where you create a story instead of enemies

KoW is a rule based, competitive game that focuses on win at all costs army list building, heavily restricted in army creation and limited to "best build" scenarios where the games can last 1-3 hours at a time where most of it is arguing about the angle your troops are facing and limited in thematic creation where your imagination does not matter as much as your calculator skills, its good for a lengthy game that focuses on playing with strangers for the glory of being better than them.

see how I can twist it around?

---

by the way, that is not my opinion on KoW, I am just pointing out that you can make any game "look" bad with the right wording... AoS and KoW are both designed for children, this is a children's hobby... and both are as balanced as intended... if you play the "scenarios" in the books GW provides, games are very balanced.

 Bottle wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
As others have said both have free rules and you can use your minis for both, so try it and see which you like.

Both have streamlined rules, but my perception is each has the following strengths:

KOW: super tight ruleset that can be played very competitively. If you enjoy the competitive aspect the most, play this.

AoS: 100% freedom in force selection. Play whatever you want. If you want to build a specific army with a theme and enjoy the narrative aspect of gaming, AoS does it best.

How... in Kings of war, with one simple sentence I can do the same as you claim AOS is best for (there are very few themes you cant do anyway) and that is "lets ignore the lose restrictions eh?"

Kings of war is no more or less narrative than AOS...

The decision is simple, less rules or more rules with the option to remove some.

I presumed we were comparing them off the shelf. Not with House Rules.

Well off the shelf you have to house rule AOS so... KOW wins off the shelf then too.

I was merely mentioning that AOS does nothing you can't do with Kings of War with a few seconds of house ruling, which I think is important to note since why play AOS when you can do something similar and superior with another ruleset?

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Bottle wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
As others have said both have free rules and you can use your minis for both, so try it and see which you like.

Both have streamlined rules, but my perception is each has the following strengths:

KOW: super tight ruleset that can be played very competitively. If you enjoy the competitive aspect the most, play this.

AoS: 100% freedom in force selection. Play whatever you want. If you want to build a specific army with a theme and enjoy the narrative aspect of gaming, AoS does it best.

How... in Kings of war, with one simple sentence I can do the same as you claim AOS is best for (there are very few themes you cant do anyway) and that is "lets ignore the lose restrictions eh?"

Kings of war is no more or less narrative than AOS...

The decision is simple, less rules or more rules with the option to remove some.

I presumed we were comparing them off the shelf. Not with House Rules.

Well off the shelf you have to house rule AOS so... KOW wins off the shelf then too.

I was merely mentioning that AOS does nothing you can't do with Kings of War with a few seconds of house ruling, which I think is important to note since why play AOS when you can do something similar and superior with another ruleset?

If you want Sigmar house rules feel free to use the same ones I do;

Did anyone actually burn their armies?? Would love to see that.

Enjoying AoS so far. Starting the game now will allow you to grow with it which is always good.

 Knockagh wrote:
Did anyone actually burn their armies?? Would love to see that.

Enjoying AoS so far. Starting the game now will allow you to grow with it which is always good.

How is it possible that you haven't seen THIS yet, bruh? This was all over the forums when AoS went official!

 bitethythumb wrote:


see how I can twist it around?

There's a difference between representing with a bias and outright lying.

AoS is not "narrative" by any means. 'tis pure GW propaganda / kool aid. AoS is as narrative as 40k, KoW, WM/H, FoW and pretty much every other game out there. AoS has nothing to do with narrative elements whatsoever. There are scenarios added to the basic ruleset - pretty clear-cut scenarios that aren't innovative by any means either. Slapping on scenarios does not change the basic set of rules. You could do the very same with KoW - add a scenario, there, the game suddenly is "narrative". The availability of scenarios doesn't make it "scenario-driven" either. Unless we agree on this term meaning that you need scenarios in order to get balanced....ish matchups.

"Freedom to create any theme" isn't exclusive to AoS either. You can do the very same with any other taletop out there. If you never played a "no points" WHFB game or 40k Apocalypse match, then you, as a player, are to blame, not being able to do anything outside of GW holding your hand and telling you that it's okay to use no points.

The main difference between our posts is that I seem to have played both games.

Play both. Since footprint matters for KoW and bases don't matter for AoS, base them however you want and use trays for KoW. Determine what you and your community like and play it.

There seems to be some confusion regarding the Ally rules for Kings of War, so I figured I'd summarize them here.

You can use any number and combination of factions in your army. It is recommended that you do not mix Good and Evil factions, but this is just a suggestion based on fluff.

If you mix factions, you need to pick one faction that is your main one. You can take any number of units for this faction. For all other factions, they are limited to being at most 25% of your point value.

Unlocking special units are done on a faction basis.

So if you want to combine a big group of paladins, angels and nuns with a small group of demons or beastmen, that's already supported by the rule book.


If you want to add house rules to this, you can skip the 25% limit. Which would make it identical to AoS in terms of allying. If you also house rule away slot unlocking, you would make it identical to AoS in terms of the whole army selection process.

Just because I'm curious, does KoW have any structure such as the old Lords/Heroes 50% Core 25%+ etc, or can you take an army of heroes or an army of cannons like you can in AoS?

Not including house rules, of course.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 bitethythumb wrote:


see how I can twist it around?

There's a difference between representing with a bias and outright lying.

AoS is not "narrative" by any means. 'tis pure GW propaganda / kool aid. AoS is as narrative as 40k, KoW, WM/H, FoW and pretty much every other game out there. AoS has nothing to do with narrative elements whatsoever. There are scenarios added to the basic ruleset - pretty clear-cut scenarios that aren't innovative by any means either. Slapping on scenarios does not change the basic set of rules. You could do the very same with KoW - add a scenario, there, the game suddenly is "narrative". The availability of scenarios doesn't make it "scenario-driven" either. Unless we agree on this term meaning that you need scenarios in order to get balanced....ish matchups.

"Freedom to create any theme" isn't exclusive to AoS either. You can do the very same with any other taletop out there. If you never played a "no points" WHFB game or 40k Apocalypse match, then you, as a player, are to blame, not being able to do anything outside of GW holding your hand and telling you that it's okay to use no points.

The main difference between our posts is that I seem to have played both games.

+1, just beautiful.

 sing your life wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:

 bitethythumb wrote:


see how I can twist it around?

There's a difference between representing with a bias and outright lying.

AoS is not "narrative" by any means. 'tis pure GW propaganda / kool aid. AoS is as narrative as 40k, KoW, WM/H, FoW and pretty much every other game out there. AoS has nothing to do with narrative elements whatsoever. There are scenarios added to the basic ruleset - pretty clear-cut scenarios that aren't innovative by any means either. Slapping on scenarios does not change the basic set of rules. You could do the very same with KoW - add a scenario, there, the game suddenly is "narrative". The availability of scenarios doesn't make it "scenario-driven" either. Unless we agree on this term meaning that you need scenarios in order to get balanced....ish matchups.

"Freedom to create any theme" isn't exclusive to AoS either. You can do the very same with any other taletop out there. If you never played a "no points" WHFB game or 40k Apocalypse match, then you, as a player, are to blame, not being able to do anything outside of GW holding your hand and telling you that it's okay to use no points.

The main difference between our posts is that I seem to have played both games.

+1, just beautiful.

Amen. My opinion exactly.

 Bottle wrote:
Just because I'm curious, does KoW have any structure such as the old Lords/Heroes 50% Core 25%+ etc, or can you take an army of heroes or an army of cannons like you can in AoS?

Not including house rules, of course.

You get a regiment or horde and they unlock a bunch of troops and slots. SO without house rules you get 20 men and then allows you to get up to 3 troops of 10 and 1 warmachine, hero, monster. Horde (40) does 6 I think troops and 1 of each monster, hero, warmachine.

To get allies you must get a regiment or horde from another faction then pick things based on the above from the regiments faction.

This is without houserules. Simple and easy.

The formations or Regiments can be from anything, so a regiment of horsemen unloocks the same as a regiment of spearmen etc. I think even things like Lizard Ogres still unlock slots etc.

It's 2 Troops per Regiment and 4 per Horde.

 infinite_array wrote:
It's 2 Troops per Regiment and 4 per Horde.

Ahh cheers, that's right.

But can I field 5 copies of Nagash in KoW like I can in AoS? My super creative narrative depends on it and it' not broken at all!