KoW Game 1 Undead vs Twilight Kin Batrep - Two Noobs go head to head!

Unless, you've been living under a rock lately, the new Age of Sigmar pics have popped up on the interwebz. Needless to say some have vented their nerd rage (especially over at Warseer), whilst others have accepted the fact that AoS is a whole new tabletop game altogether.

Personally, I don't mind the models, even if they do look more like 40k models than Fantasy. At the end of the day, I'll be judging AoS' rules and dynamics more than the models themselves. Not sure I'm a fan of it's supposed skirmish format. If I wanted to play skirmish games, I'd certainly dust off my Menites and/or Everblight army for Warmachine. I've always loved the mass fantasy battles setting, which was what drew me into WHFB.

So with GW taking a different direction with AoS, I've decided to dabble in the other Nottingham Fantasy game - Kings of War.

I've played a couple of small games, but this is my first real game - and I've pitched up a battle against Lindsay and his Twilight Kin - going up against my Undead.

We've made our 2000 point armies and for simplicities sake, we decided not to use any magical artefacts on any of our units and heroes.

The Beginners' War

Count Fredrik still didn't know where he was. He looked around and knew he wasn't at a familiar place. The clouds in the sky were different. It illuminated a pale orange and looked like the clouds were caging the Sun, as if it were desparate to escape the sky. The last place he remembered was Sylvania, in his former masters court and how he was scolded for his failed quest. Whatever quest that was, he cannot remember, nor did he care.

He was surrounded by a pile of bones. "Was this once my legion of summoned warriors?" He thought to himself. Count Fredrik picked himself up, his body aching. That's when he heard a loud sound. Like the sound of hooves. He noticed another character who looked familiar. He was raising his hands and chanting a strange language. Then one by one, the pile of bones that surrounded Fredrik re-animated and as fast as he had gotten up, a number of skeleton warriors started to form ranks around him.

"Count Fredrik," the strange character said whilst still waving his hands to re-animate the corpses. "We do not have much time. An army of Elves has spotted us and they don't look like the courteous types of Elves."

"I've never known any courteous kind of Elf." Fredrik shot back.

The strange character let out a wry smile. "My master still has his awful humour." He thought to himself.

That's when Count Fredrik saw the battle formation on the opposite side of the snowy valley. He could hear the shouting of orders. The war cries of rank and file warriors. The loud clanging of swords and spears together. He may not know where he was at that very moment, but he knew the sound of battle. 

A large shriek came from the skies as a dark winged figure hovered above the enemy horde. "A dragon?" Fredrik thought.

He reached for the hilt of his sword and realised his magical sword was not there.

"Just great. An unknown land, an army of pointy eared gits with a Dragon comes to wake me up." Fredrik mumbled. "And no weapon to swing. This is not going to end well."

I've got little experience playing Kings of War, but I have noticed that deployment and movement is the key to success. Sure, it may be the same in WHFB, but you have magic spells and shooting that can bail you out in certain situations. Much like the Undead in WHFB, most Undead regiments cannot march, so I had to be careful not to give the Twilight Kin too much of an advantage on the flanks.

The Twilight Kin had the early advantage of going first and shot my Undead Trolls. Shooting, however, did very little and put only a couple or so wounds on them. The Dark Lord on the Battle Dragon was making me nervous on the right flank and threatened my Necromancers with Lightning Bolt early on.

The Soul Reaver Cavalry hits hard in combat and wanted to make sure I made his Knights weary of their presence. His assassin was running around that same flank, but I refused to engage with it. I thought I'd set my sights on where the points were at.

Meanwhile, the Zombies and Skeleton Warrior block were continuing to shamble across the battlefield. What I like in Kings of War is the ability for friendly units to move through each other, so long as you have enough movement to place your unit without overlapping other units.

Surge is a neat spell. Probably one of the better spells in the game. I had all 3 of my characters surging the Zombies forward, threatening that War Engine. It copped a flank charge from Spearmen (which you cannot see here). The combat knocked some wounds off the Zombies, but not enough for them to Rout. I was able to charge the same Spearmen in the flank with my Werewolves on my turn. I didn't counter charge with my Zombies, instead, going after the War Engine.

The first 3 turns went by very quickly. It was only when we started engaging in close combat did things start to hot up. After wiping out the War Engine with ease, the Zombies were thoroughly smashed by the Blade Dancers. The Crossbowmen suprisingly charged the horde of Skeleton Warriors and Mummies. A dent was left on the Skeleton Warriors but managed to remain steady due to the presence of Count Fredrik the Vampire Lord. The Mummies took a couple of wounds and remained where they were.

The dragon on the right flank easily disposed of some Archers and the Balefire Catapult was ripped apart by the Assassin. So now I had these two to contend with who were running freely behind my lines...

I had a bit of a dilemma of the left flank. I charged the Soul Reaver cav into a unit of Shadows, did a fair amount of damage, but Lindsay rolled enough for them to waver and not rout. Bouncing from the combat meant the Soul Reaver cav were about to be flank charged by a Regiment of Dark Knights. This was going to hurt with an amazing 36 attacks coming my way. Ughh.

The Reaper Guard and other block of Knights were my other problem. The only way I could save my two Mummy units was to use the second unit of Undead trolls as a road block. A timely casting of Surge and enough movement to get them in front of these two units probably saved me from having my left flank getting smashed.

During my turn, I made a combo charge of the Mummies and Skeleton Archers on the flank of more Spearmen. It was a big gamble. If I don't rout these Spearmen, I was surely going to get flanked by not one, but two Knight units, which would've been terrible.

So in went the Archers, who are a measly 6+ Melee, but every wound counts in Kings of War, so I decided to go for it.

Fortune favoured the brave this time as the Spearmen routed and I was able to face the Mummies towards two blocks of Knights and reformed the Archers to take on some Shadows head on as well.

In the middle, the Blade Dancers poured on the attacks on the counter charge on Count Fredrik, only for the Vamp Lord to shrug off most of the attacks and repelled the charge. My counter charge finally saw the Mummies and Skeleton Warriors rout both Crossbowmen unit. I think it was a good tactic by Lindsay as he saved my Mummies from charging into the Reaper Guard first. He instead sacrificed his Crossbowmen instead and allowed him to charge me first. Very cunning!

Count Fredrik made his counter charge and dealt enough wounds on the Blade Dancers to finally rout. Hoorah!

Meanwhile, the Werewolves made short work of the Spearmen who were disordered from the previous combat. However, the Dark Lord on Battle Dragon charged the Werewolves on their turn, turning the foul creatures into nothing more than a feast for the crows.

Turn 6 turned out to be a bloody affair. A combo charge of both Knights into Mummies was the main headline. I had a bad feeling about this. The outcome of the battle was 14 wounds on the Mummies and with a rout value of 19, I needed to roll 4 or less.

BOOM! I rolled a 2 and 1. Mummies survive and ready their halberds for the counter charge!

The other important combat was on the far left flank with the Shadows and the Skeleton Archers. He charged and didn't do enough wounds to make the Archers rout. I didn't roll box cars to make the unit waver, as this would've prevented me from counter charging!

Needless to say, I counter charged on my turn with both the Mummies and the Skeleton Archers.

The Mummies regenerated some wounds and made short work of one of the Knight units. That CS 2 is simply amazing.

The Archer unit pumped enough wounds to make Lindsay make a nerve test. Adding the damage I did this turn along with what the Soul Reaver Cav had done at the early stages of the game, I managed to rout the Shadow unit as well.

As the dust settled, those two last-round combats tipped the game and gave me the Victory by 280 points.

The Twilight Kin were left battered and bruised, but at least a unit of Dark Knights, Dark Lord on Dragon, Assassin and, I think, the Reaper Guard remained.

First thoughts on Kings of War

What a battle! It remained close throughout with that Battle Dragon and Assassin running amok from the get go. I know the Dragon would've been hard to take down, but that being said, I don't think it would've completely wrecked my entire army if it went on-on-one with my infantry units. And that's what I like about this game - it isn't Hero-hammer. Infantry is what's going to grind it out for you and get the points, whilst your Heroes are there to ensure you whittle down wounds on units and keep infantry hanging around with the Inspiring rule.

I like how magic doesn't turn the game on its head. Magic does what it's meant to do in this game - support your units, whittle down units but not entirely remove them from the game. I think Surge is one of the better spells (from the limited amount) in the game. Anything that can gain you extra movement and even allow you to charge into combat out of sequence is amazing. Is it broken? Far from it, as you still need to roll 4+ to get an inch of movement. So a Surge (8) and you'll get an average of 4 extra inches of movement. I think that's fairly balanced.

Shooting and combat is fairly quick and is a lot easier to remember over the 'To Hit' and 'To Wound' table of WHFB. 

What's my range/melee value? What's your defense? Boom. Roll. So simple and easy to remember.

This game is simple compared to WHFB, but still offers important tatctics in the deployment and movement phase. Charges and counter charges is where the game is won. You simply can't hang back and pew-pew-pew your way to victory without ever having to engage in combat.

I love seeing the massed ranks on the table. I love how every rule of every army can be found in the one book.

Hopefully I can bring you more KoW batreps in the near future!