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Cheers! As some of the folks in this venerable forum may know, I am presently serving a two year term as Chair of the Organizing Committee of the US Masters fantasy wargaming championships. The shift in direction of GW this summer required Masters to make a choice whether to continue playing Warhammer 8th edition, or to switch to another gaming system- be it AoS, Kings of War, one of the fan-made warhammers that are being worked on, or some other system.

Masters is, and always will be, a US fantasy wargaming championship system by gamers for gamers- a voluntary coming together of gamers from across the US to share our hobby. Each of the 8 regions of Masters voted their preference, the regional voting for which game system Masters will use for the upcoming season January 2016 through December 2016, culminating in the championship in February 2017 has closed today. The decisive winner was Kings of War by a regional vote of 7-1, with the one vote against a very close one within their own region.

Although I would have been happy as Chair to press forward with whatever game system the Regions came to a consensus on, I am most glad that it was such an overwhelming vote for a single system. Keeping this national community of gamers united is good for everybody, providing choice and community for gamers, helping bolster attendance in a time of unprecedented transition for TO's, it's win-win all the way around.

Now that a system has been chosen, the Regions can start talking with their player bases about Regional methods of team selection, as that is decided by each Region internally within the bounds of the Charter. For some Regions like South, little will change about the selection process since all GT's in the Region went 100% Kings of War, but for some it may be a little different so I urge all players to get active in the regional subforums of the Masters forum to stay informed. The names of all of the regional reps are stickied in this board, they are your first point of contact for questions about selection of regional teams. The Masters forum is at:

www.wargamersusa.com

Turning to Kings of War itself, while I would have thrown my whole heart and effort behind whatever system the Regions chose, there are some particular upsides to Kings of War and the game company behind it, Mantic Games. As folks in this subforum know, Mantic is a very accessible to its fans, and is very interested in and supportive of, a competitive scene for its games. Being openly embraced as competitive gamers by a game company is a great feeling. I have already had some very positive conversations with Mantic about developing a mutually beneficial relationship between Masters and Mantic moving forward, and should have some really interesting announcements to make in the near future as we look ahead to the Masters championship in Vegas in February. Since February is the culmination of the January 2015- December 2015 qualifying season it will still be warhammer 8th one last time.

The first of those announcements is that I will be running a small three game Kings of War event at US Masters Vegas 2016 on the Friday before the Masters event proper. Now that the vote is official, I can give Frontline the details so it can be added to the LVO list of events and will post them here. Mantic leadership will have a strong presence at LVO (and now at Masters), and so my thought was that a small event was a good way to look forward and get a small taste of what KoW might feel like on the Masters level as we all start to look ahead to the 2017 Championship weekend.

For more information about US Masters, that link again is:

www.wargamersusa.com

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john bailey
Chair, US Masters Organizing Committee

Congrats! We in Europe can only look at you with envy.

Score!!! Thanks US Masters for exercising foresight. KOW is the direction we need to go.

Tremendous announcement, and the right call (as evidenced by the almost universal support).

Now I only wish a few of the desperate hold-outs would admit that, while possibly fun, Age of Sigmar is just not viable in a competitive setting. Seeing people like MiniWarGaming.com try to keep doing AoS bat-reps, while ignoring KoW feels awful. :-p

Meanwhile, I hope this will get more KoW played across the US. I have tried earnestly to create a community in the NY Catskill/Hudson Valley region, but work just won't let me commit the time I need to to be a proper event organizer. You had better believe the wife and I will attend every event we can get to, however.

Supporting KoW as the successor was the right move.

newtruthneomaxim, the Northeast area folks active in Masters are positive about KoW, and my second-hand understanding is that there was general consensus in favor of KoW among attendees at Crossroads GT last weekend, so you should see plenty of KoW events in your area in the near future. I live in the Masters South Region (Texas specifically), and the TO's of all six GT's in the Region voted recently to go uniformly KoW, so you can always take a trip to sunny Texas (or Arkansas or Louisiana) to take in a KoW GT. Others will be springing up across the country as things continue to grow.

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john

Sounds great John. We'll be looking forward to it.

It makes me really happy to see KoW taking off in such a big way. I've been plugging them to friends ever since the free ghouls in the wargames magazine way back when. Even when people adamantly told me they expected it not to go anywhere...

Agreed. And make now mistake, it will be a slow road, but this Masters endorsement will be a huge shot in the arm.

If there was ever a time for us to do our local leg-work to get the game started at smaller stores, etc... now is that time.

I've got eight armies ready to demo anywhere from 1000 - 2000 pts... I just need time to run said demos more often. I'll say this, I really want to see someone in our area (Catskill/Hudson Valley NY) organize some events. We have thriving communities for so many games, but not one is a mass-battles game.

What's the average point battles for KoW

This is great news.

 Rainbow Dash wrote:
What's the average point battles for KoW

The "sweet" spot seems to be 2000pts. Mantic themselves hold events at 2500pts, but I am of the mind that 2000pts makes you make difficult choices in army-building, which is part of the challenge.

1500pts works just fine. Smaller starts losing some of the feel of what the game is, but it still "works" at 1000pts.

It's only the UK Clash of Kings that was 2500 this year. Tournament standard will be 2000 points.

Fair enough. Our own Mr. Gilbert is the authority after-all (though I did get to make a tiny contribution to the 2nd Ed. book lol).

2000pts is bang-on, but I do want to add that the game scales incredibly. I have played 4000pt games that feel epic, and still take less time than an 1850pt game of 40k. :-p

It is amazing to read that KoW is taking the WHFB slot. I currently play in Charleston, WV. Three of us Started playing about a month ago. We now have 4 consistent players and about 6+ others (those that already had WHFB armies) that are very very interested. I have done several demos already and people constantly come over to watch us play, ask questions, and ask us to run them through a game. I expect our numbers to be at about 8 consistent players in the next month or so. We will be continuing to push this game in our area to be THE game of fantasy battles and are going to try to start traveling to out of state events.

Well if Fayetteville, Arkansas isn't too far to go, there's a 2 day KoW GT there at the end of January.

http://shilohslaughter-com.webs.com/

For other events near WV, check the US Masters Mid-Atlantic Region subforum here:

http://wargamersusa.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=18

And Southeast Region subforum here:

http://wargamersusa.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=145

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john bailey