Gearing up for Kings of War

Well, after getting the finger from GW in the form of their Age of Shitmar ruleset I have been thinking of other rules to try out. Open Combat seems like a good and well produced skirmish set, but I like to maneuver blocks of troops around as well. Fantasy mods of Saga or Hail Caesar has come to mind, but as I don't play very often I don't want to have to tinker and house rule a lot. I downloaded the free Kings of War rules and they seemed to be what I wanted. Some novel ideas - to me at least - like no figure removal enticed me further and I bought the gamers edition of the rule book. This is without all the background of the hardback book but with complete army lists compared to the free rules.

A unit of Dwarf Shieldbreakers for Kings of War. Why do leaders have to stand in that come at me bro" pose.

I have been playing Dwarfs since Warhammer 3rd edition but Games Workshop essentially killed off my interest in them with their latest army book and figures. Too silly for my taste. I still don't like Mantics bucket-headed dwarfs, but the GW figures are worse IMO. Getting blasted by magic in every game without any effective countermeasures also helped, so I turned to Chaos. But my love for short, hairy things didn't end there, and I continued to buy Dwarf figures from other manufacturers like Avatars of War instead.

I hate that banner, I suck at freehand. But it was the best I could manage...

Avatars of War is run by ex-GW sculptor Felix Paniagua and are very warhammer-esque. Their anatomy is a bit dodgy, seems like they are either lacking knees or abdomens under that armour. But that is of no concern since the details on them are beautiful. They are a bitch to assemble though, multi-part resin models that you need about three hands to hold together, and a fourth apply the glue. The solution is to use green stuff to hold the figures together while you adjust the fit and then pour superclue into the joins. They are also very bulky and wield giant hammers which means it's virtually impossible to rank them up on 20mm bases. So I decided to mount four figures on the same width that you would normally use five figures.

This base is a "troop" in Kings of War terms. You can see how crowded the base is despite only having eight figures.

In Kings of War your figures fight in different units with a fixed size. The smallest is 10 figures in two ranks of 5 models and is called a Troop. A Regiment is 20 figures in four ranks, and a Horde is 40 figures with four ranks of 10. (There is also Legion which is a six ranks of 10, but dwarfs can't take any.) Since the size and number of figures is fixed and no single figures are removed during play, you can base all figures together on the base, making it easier to make all the figures fit and move the unit around the board. This allowed my to put only eight figures on the base instead of ten and still have them work in the game.

Expanding the base makes the unit a Regiment.

Since the box contains 30 figures I'm planning on adding bases so I can field either a Troop, Regiment or Horde. As long as the base size is correct it shouldn't matter that it's 30 figures instead of 40. So I have made another base that goes behind the first base to expand the unit to a Regiment.

Expanding it further with two flank bases makes it a Horde.

To keep the leader in the centre I also made two side bases to expand the unit into a Horde. I will also be able to field the side bases together if I want to have two Regiments instead. I made all the bases out of GW movement trays, using the squares to get the correct size. I painted and flocked them lying together so the bases would fit together, and I used less flock further back to simulate the vegetation being trampled beneath the weight of all that armour.

So what do the health and safety inspector say about this work environment? Luckily they all wear helmets...

The figures were fairly easy to paint, mostly steel and gold. I used various browns from Wargames Foundry on the beards, layering them in three tones. To vary them a bit I gave the leader a red beard (of course) and made one other grey and one blonde. No skin is visible on these figures, but lots of gems which I think came out nicely. Bits of clothings, the banner and hammer shafts were painted blue since my original Dwarf army had blue livery.

Oi, Blondie! (That mold line is not visible in reality, but here it stands out like a sore thumb).

I like the way you choose your forces in Kings of War. Besides points, each Regiments allows you to buy two Troops and either a Hero, a Monster or a War Machine. Hordes allows you to buy four Troops, as well as a Hero, a Monster AND a War Machine. Easy and makes your armies look varied and good. No more micro-managing if you should buy 23 Hammerers to have some extra figures to still get rank bonuses, or only 18 to save points. No more deciding wether you should have a five, seven or ten figure frontage. Since Heroes always move on their own, no more painting 25 figures to make up a unit only to realise that you want your general in there as well spoiling the formation.

Someone is a bit grumpy at the leader I think...

While I still haven't played Kings of War I must confess that it has gotten me interested in Fantasy gaming again, particularly my Dwarfs Army. While I have enough dwarfs to play Kings of straight away using movement trays I have quite a lot of unpainted stuff as well, and I'm going to base them for KoW instead.

Happy Gaming!