Kings of War - a WFB successor

Our page is here; Kings of War, and their official page is here

So it's made by Mantic Games and it's a rank and flank war game. Part of the appeal for me is that they tried to attract people unhappy with the mistake of WFB's End Times and abandonment for Age of Sigmar; introducing a bunch of WFB-style armies that they didn't previously have to the roster.

One of the things I really like about the system is that there are master lists for armies and themed lists. So they get a little more use out of their model lines and introduce some interesting ideas, for example: the main dwarfs of KOW are an expanding empire with the myriad defensive rules you'd expect from an Our Dwarves Are All the Same army. They added a theme list of like dwarf city-states that use the same models but swap the defensive abilities for movement ones; turning the typical Determinator wall of steel and beards into a mobile guerilla force.

There's also the generic Kingdoms of Men faction in the game, made to represent . . . whatever human miniatures you want. Bring your Spartans or Ottomans or whatever historical army from another game in.

The system is ultimately model agonistic. Bring in your WFB or AOS models. Buy Mantic's line, which are pretty neat, or use whatever else you want. The units have rules for what's legal and what a given unit counts as independent of what specifically you place on the table. Also you don't remove slain models from the unit, just record casualties suffered, so you can make dioramas of your men's ranks and use about 25% less models to depict the unit in the process.

Fluff is interesting. A forbidden romance between elf and human aided by a shifty god results in most, if not all, of the gods being split into good and evil halves. The evil ones were banished to a northern wasteland known as the Abyss. There's a kingdom of shining paladins and battle nuns riding panthers with phoenixes and angels aiding them; a kingdom that abused necromancy and were preemptively destroyed by the rebels who founded a new kingdom with restrictions on their wizards, who rose from the dead to get revenge; the orcs were a weapon made by one of the fallen gods; the ratmen slaves of the evil dwarfs who were too clever and numerous to control; lots of fun stuff.

As far as stuff not cribbed from WFB, you have a neutral nation of merpeople and their aquatic allies, a nation of humans, dwarfs, and elves united to survive in the northlands; and Eldritch Abomination born of nightmares who can take the form of your worst fears—saw somebody make their nightstalker army into a psycho circus of evil clowns.

It all seems pretty cool and I haven't even played it yet. Thinking of getting into the game and looking for people more experienced and familiar with it. It has armies for both "Bretonnia" and the "Tomb Kings" who were squatted by Games Workshop when they killed Warhammer Fantasy, the two guys I was most interested in. But the dwarfs and abyssal dwarfs both seem interesting to me.

Edited by Rotpar on Jun 12th 2021 at 12:06:37 PM

I haven't played the game yet, but I like plenty of the miniatures by Mantic. They offer a low-budget alternative for any Oldhammer-project, some models better than others. I've bought a box of their skeletons, which are a bit on the scrawny side compared to other 28mm skellies, but still a stylistic fit with Warhammer.

Yeah, I'm debating if I want to get a starter boxset. It's neat that the combatants can ally with each other, but I've kind of made that mistake getting into 40k—getting a huge box of marines and orks when I didn't want to play them.

I love that damn phoenix, gorgeous model.

Rot, can you do something with whatever is under your user picture, is broken and is kinda messing the layout.

You could buy a box and do a trade with someone who wants models for the other faction. I'm of the conversion-happy sort, so I would try to figure out how put to good use even those minis I don't actually want. But I generally avoid starter sets with two factions, unless I really want bits for both.

Part of the problem is that nobody I know seems interested in the game. I'm looking into the local wargaming community but one of our haunts didn't survive COVID. The starter seems like a good bargain, especially the included supplement, but ultimately I don't want either faction.

I can only speak for myself, but if there is any chance of kitbashing either faction into more desireable shape, then I'd consider buying a box. Then again, I'm into miniatures strictly for the crafting.

I picked up the rulebooks for now, don't want to deal with nearly a hundred models for armies I'm not really interested in.

So unfortunately I'll be seeing how Mantic's customer service goes. I've got my Uncharted Empires book but they sent me the cheaper, rules-only main book rather than the one with all the fluff.

That's too bad. It went smoothly the one time I bought something directly from Mantic's webstore, but that was just a pair of sprues. If you're lucky they'll send you the correct thing for no extra cost, and let you keep the thing they sent you.

Seems that'll be the case, they've already contacted me to replace it.

Alright, fantastic got my replacement book in. Delving into the fluff and whatnot. I do like how this doomed human/elf relationship played out—he tried to show her all the good that would come but fast-forwarded to how everything goes to shit. And it was all likely a trap in the first place.

I'm a little annoyed that themed armies can't be taken as allies. Because I was leaning toward Brothermark and Free Dwarfs and I can't do that. Brothermark is still probably leading since I wanted Bretonnia back in the day. I'll read up more on the Empire of Dust, though I'm not a fan of the Mantic model range. Wish I had more than a single box of Tomb King chariots available.

Still, I've grown to like dwarfs over the years. And I do dig the idea of the slow, stubborn, shooty army being less stubborn, less slow, and still shooty.

That sounds needlessly inconvenient, so I'd just ignore it and allow everybody to be allied with whomever you want. As for the models, I generally like the look of many of Mantic's models, as a cheaper and slightly less polished alternative to GW's miniatures.

Yeah, don't get why that is. As for their model line, I really like the lion's share of them. Empire of Dust just don't compare to the old TK models for me.

Checking them out now. Overall I think they look close enough to Tomb Kings, but from personal experience I know that the Mantic skeletons are tiny compared to most WH-skeletons, even the newer ones. The sculpts are nice, but the proportions make the weapons look weedy even on Snotlings. While the actual Tomb Kings models are unfortunately discontinued, I think that you could get a reasonably good alternative by kitbashing bits from Necrons, Vampire Counts and some of the newer undead for AOS.

Edited by Mara999 on Aug 1st 2021 at 4:57:08 PM

For the most part I'm going to stay way from AOS models. The main reason I'm here is because they fucked up and killed WFB—that and their models are almost as good while being cheaper.

That being said, if I play dwarfs I might get the ironbreaker models because they're fucking sweet. So they're not completely out of consideration.

I totally understand the resentment for the game and your principle. But many of the miniatures look pretty good and can be used for WFB as well, though I also understand why you would want to avoid the GW prices. North Star offers relatively cheap regiments of Dwarf Heavy Infantry for Oathmark. They look a bit like an Anglo-Saxon alternative to the Norse-ish Ironbreakers.

There have recently been several cool additions to the Kings of War range. The new Halfling army has some great Tolkien-style models, which also avoid the common portrayal of Halflings as fat by giving them svelte physiques. They also have some steampunk-units, like a walking boar-shaped tank, and dog-cavalry with knight's armour, as well as some other high fantasy goodness. Overall these Halflings look like something from the Age of Wonders series, which I approve of. Their steampunk-stuff would also make for some really cool gnomes.

Another new thing for KOW are the Riftforged Orcs, which resemble Black Orcs in Warhammer, but with fancy gear and proportions closer to the orcs of Warcraft. That means that the plastic box for these new orcs will be great for my Warcraft mini-converting project. Because they are partly Norse-inspired I would also like to use these for converting some Chaos Warriors or Marauders in heavy armour. Some of the models◊ even have very dwarf-like gear, so they'd make as good material to convert some fierce statues for dwarven terrain.

Edited by Mara999 on Nov 6th 2021 at 8:26:43 PM

Yeah, the halflings are pretty damn awesome. They and the abyssal dwarfs are my top choices for picking an army based on the sweet new models. The new orcs seem alright. Not super familiar with the fluff so not sure if this is anything people have been clamoring for.

To me it matters that these orcs fit with my various projects than Mantic's previous ones. The earlier ones are still nice models and do have potential to build Warhammer-style Hobgoblins or something similar, but they don't fit in with any of my orc-related projects at the moment.

Well that's cool.

Metroid Dread put my expensive modelling plans on hold, so I didn't pick up anything yet. Plan is still to do Brothermark, probably with a combo of Mantic foot paladins and some of Fireforge Game's knightly orders.

Had to check out the Order of the Brothermark, as well as the Basileans in general. I quite like most of the miniatures for the faction, because they seem so applicable to pretty much any fantasy tabletop-game with knights in shining armour and paladins. Another thing I like about these guys is that they too resemble units from Age of Wonders, as well some of the Heroes of Might and Magic. The more I look at Mantic's miniatures, the more I see similarities with those two franchises, merged with an Oldhammer-feel.

While not familiar with M&M, I love Age of Wonders. I'm slightly afraid of getting a Brothermark army just before, surprise, they get an official line for some reason.

Apparently the annual Clash of Kings adds a bunch of new Brothermark units. General rebalancing all around a well as the two new armies.

Still haven't invested in an army yet, cannot decide who to play.

If you're still iffy about committing to a bigger army, then a smaller band for skirmishes might be the way to go. That's what I'd do, even though I'm mostly about the miniatures and using them for the artistic side of the tabletop hobby. A small fighting force seems to be the smart thing to do, especially if Mantic offers an equivalent for Mordheim.

Finally ordered a regiment of foot paladins for my Brothermark army, possible Oathguard whenever I get the updated rules. Thinking about some Templar knights from Fireforge as the Abyssal Hunt.