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Hi all,
After seeing how much picking up in most areas I've decided to jump into it atleast.
However, clueless when it comes to the game.

I've dug through the armies and settled for forces of the abyss.

What's the best starting point please?
Just want to get an army together and get playing.

Thanks.

Hello. If you just want to learn the rules, there is a section in the rulebook marked "Smaller games". If you are using the free rule pdf from the Mantic website, it's on page 24.

It recommends 750p or less for learning the game. It strips away some of the army building restrictions to make it easier to start playing if you haven't painted a whole army yet.

If you are entirely new; what WGMelchior said; if you don't have an army the army bundles and mega forces are good value and a great place to start. To make a 1000pts or 2000pts army you'll need the respective bundle and hero/monster or two (depending on what you like).

If you are a wargamer coming in from the cold, I would advise trying two 1000pts games to start, it'll take 2-3 hours for both. Takes the time you are used to, but on games without too much going on and you can try different ideas.

Start by reading the free rules, it's only 27 pages of not so dense text. The rules are simple and intuitive enough that you will be able to play after reading them once, esp. if you are already a wargamer, but it is advisable to have a copy at hand when you play, "just to check" for peace of mind. Note that the rules and mechanics work much better than you would think after just reading them.

The rules are well balanced (i.e. units are worth their points), so if you already have an army then using them as whatever seems appropriate should do fine.You can (and Mantic encourages) use whatever models work as long as the unit's footprint is the right size, the FAQ states that as many models as you can fit on the right sized movement tray is fine.

Get the biggest army deal. While you wait, look at some live-action battle reports on Youtube.

What, if any, fantasy-related miniatures do you already own? Because of the way KOW's system works, it's really proxy-friendly without having gameplay effects. You just need to get or make trays of the right size.

And yeah, the Mantic army deals are pretty great for the price.

http://www.gamenerdz.com/kings-of-war-forces-of-the-abyss-mega-force-set-152

http://www.gamenerdz.com/kings-of-war-abyssal-army-73

I've been using boardgame figs for armies, specifically the B-Sieged creatures to build a counts as ogre army. The main box $80 or so gave me almost 2000 points of counts as ogres. I think with my zombicide Black Plague that I could build a great sized undead army as well. This also gives you a second game to use the models for in the same process.

I was a huge Mantic fan, but the boardgame plastics from CMoN are blowing away the models from Mantic and are even cheaper. You may not get the variety to flesh out a whole army, but you can always sub in other manufacturers and still come out ahead.

Fantasy wise I have around 15k (pretty AOS points) of skaven, 12k of lizardmen and 5k of dwarves.
So not short on a basic start.

However, I want to try and keep things separate.

I've gone through the starter rules and to be honest, seems pretty damn good.
Clear and concise rules, easy to pick up etc.

Ordered the £100 abyss army, rule book etc anyway.
I can play smaller games to begin with but rather paint more than I use as I can always run a fully painted army then.



All in all, seems like a decent game, so very interested in it.

With that many Skaven you'll be happy to hear that Uncharted Empires (the first KoW expansion) has the Ratkin army list, so you can still use them when you get bored with Abyssals.

 Jackal wrote:
Fantasy wise I have around 15k (pretty AOS points) of skaven, 12k of lizardmen and 5k of dwarves.
So not short on a basic start.

However, I want to try and keep things separate.

I've gone through the starter rules and to be honest, seems pretty damn good.
Clear and concise rules, easy to pick up etc.

Ordered the £100 abyss army, rule book etc anyway.
I can play smaller games to begin with but rather paint more than I use as I can always run a fully painted army then.

All in all, seems like a decent game, so very interested in it.

With that much stuff, couldn't you run separate armies with what you have.

 Jackal wrote:
Fantasy wise I have around 15k (pretty AOS points) of skaven, 12k of lizardmen and 5k of dwarves.
So not short on a basic start.

However, I want to try and keep things separate.

With that much stuff I would try out the rules with the minis you have will you wait for the abyssal to show up , Lizardmen can use the salamander list, Skaven the ratkin one and dwarves are pretty straightforward.

Try out http://kow2.easyarmy.com/ It´s a free army builder that contains all the armylists in the game.

That army builder is great for starting out, mostly because it warns you / doesn't let you add a hero/monster/warmachine if you don't have enough regiments or hordes in the list. Really helps with making a legal list! Then once you have the hang of it, it's pretty easy to just do with a calculator / Excel.