Kings of War is currently my favourite wargame and although we have a nice (if small) community of players here in Berlin, the chance to attend such a large event was a chance not to be missed.
I decided to take Elves as I have recently re-based the army onto multi-bases (all the miniatures in one unit on a single base), which makes them very practical in terms of gameplay as well as looking amazing.
My list was the same as the one I had been practicing with (clash of kings preparation), even though I knew it was not exactly optimized!
Here it is again for completeness:
- Archer Horde - Jar of the Four Winds
- Archer Troop
- Spearmen Horde
- Palace Guard Troop
- Stormwind Regiment - Maccwar's Potion of the Caterpillar
- Stormwind Regiment - Brew of Haste
- Silverbreeze Troop - Fire Oil
- Silverbreeze Troop
- Bolt Thrower
- Bolt Thrower
- Army Standard Bearer
- Mage - Bane Chant
- Mage - Bane Chant
- Prince - Horse - Inspiring Talisman
Day 1.
Game 1.
My first game was against Empire of Dust, an army I had very little experience against. My opponent was a nice chap and tried to explain to me how everything worked. I simply noted which heroes had surge in order to watch out for any movement shenanigans.
My first game was against Empire of Dust, an army I had very little experience against. My opponent was a nice chap and tried to explain to me how everything worked. I simply noted which heroes had surge in order to watch out for any movement shenanigans.
This was also my first game using a chess clock and I was very conscious of how slow I usually am in making decisions - especially in the movement phase. It was certainly a little unfortunate that I hadn't managed to get any practice in using clocks, but how stressful could it be?
The scenario was pillage (controlling objectives at the end of the game) and I deployed reasonably well. My center being infantry, my flanks cavalry and up on a hill 2 bolt throwers. My archer horde had pretty good line of sight across the center of the table.
My plan was, as always, to take out any chaff units with my Shooting and then try and maneuver my heavy hitting cavalry into position to challenge the flanks of his main units. My Spearmen would hold the center with the mages (witches) dishing out Bane-Chant to either the Archers or the Bolt Throwers as necessary.
The game started well, with some strong shooting in the early rounds - my opponent even commenting afterwards that he felt a little 'nerd rage' coming on. However a double-one nerve roll on a heavily damaged Giant allowed my opponent to out-grind my Cavalry on the right flank and eventually get behind my lines.
The game was fairly even, right until the end, but ultimately, as I was frantically rolling dice in an attempt to shoot his units off of objective tokens, I ran out of time!
My opponent was very gracious and instead of recording an automatic 20-0 victory for himself, agreed to count up points as it stood, leaving him with a 16-4 win.
Game 2.
The second game was against Goblins and the dreaded War Trombones. His list was basically designed to take advantage of cheap breath weapon shooting, featuring a wall of cheap goblin hordes protecting Trombones and Wizards.
No one in my local area plays goblins, although I was aware of their play style from reading the Mantic forum. I knew he would simply progress the 'Wall of Death' slowly across the table towards me until he was in shooting range and that my only hope would be to concentrate fire on one particular section of his line and attempt to create a hole through which I could charge my Cavalry.
The scenario was Push, so I was committed to trying to get across the board and considering the amount of units he had, I was acutely aware how challenging this may turn out to be.
After deployment, upon assessing the battlefield, I felt that I had been somewhat out-deployed. With a fair bit of terrain on the table it had been relatively easy for my opponent to cover all gaps in his lines with large hordes or legions of goblins and all my cavalry were directly opposite of phalanx spear goblins.
My plan was, as always, to take out any chaff units with my Shooting and then try and maneuver my heavy hitting cavalry into position to challenge the flanks of his main units. My Spearmen would hold the center with the mages (witches) dishing out Bane-Chant to either the Archers or the Bolt Throwers as necessary.
The game started well, with some strong shooting in the early rounds - my opponent even commenting afterwards that he felt a little 'nerd rage' coming on. However a double-one nerve roll on a heavily damaged Giant allowed my opponent to out-grind my Cavalry on the right flank and eventually get behind my lines.
The game was fairly even, right until the end, but ultimately, as I was frantically rolling dice in an attempt to shoot his units off of objective tokens, I ran out of time!
My opponent was very gracious and instead of recording an automatic 20-0 victory for himself, agreed to count up points as it stood, leaving him with a 16-4 win.
Game 2.
The second game was against Goblins and the dreaded War Trombones. His list was basically designed to take advantage of cheap breath weapon shooting, featuring a wall of cheap goblin hordes protecting Trombones and Wizards.
No one in my local area plays goblins, although I was aware of their play style from reading the Mantic forum. I knew he would simply progress the 'Wall of Death' slowly across the table towards me until he was in shooting range and that my only hope would be to concentrate fire on one particular section of his line and attempt to create a hole through which I could charge my Cavalry.
The scenario was Push, so I was committed to trying to get across the board and considering the amount of units he had, I was acutely aware how challenging this may turn out to be.
After deployment, upon assessing the battlefield, I felt that I had been somewhat out-deployed. With a fair bit of terrain on the table it had been relatively easy for my opponent to cover all gaps in his lines with large hordes or legions of goblins and all my cavalry were directly opposite of phalanx spear goblins.
The game started poorly for myself, with me failing to shoot off any of his chaff and the table quickly became very clogged. I threw some of my cheaper units such as the palace guard forward (something that is somewhat relative when playing Elves) in an attempt to clear up the mess, but some terrible dice allowed the Trombones to go to work and the game was very easily won by the Goblins.
On the plus side, however, I didn't run out of time.
Game 3.
After 2 defeats I was hopeful of facing a slightly easier list in my third game and I ended up against Ogres. The scenario was Invade.
My opponents list and deployment was very straight-forward. In the middle 3 units of Big-Shield chaps with 2 units of Breath Weapon guys behind them. One flank had some 36" Ogre Shooters and a Chariot horde, the other was blocked off by a huge building.
I had the advantage of a huge hill, but at the front of it was a hedge offering cover to anyone behind it. We discussed how this should be played and it was decided that as long as the majority of my unit was touching the hedge, then I could ignore it and shoot over.
With this in mind, and the fact that the scenario was Invade, I decided to push forwards and hope that I still had enough time to shoot off some Ogre hordes before he reached my lines. As it turns out, I didn't.
The key moment in the game was a long charge by one of my Cavalry units into his Chariots on the only open flank. Both my opponent and I felt that, given average dice, I should have been able to break the Chariots, especially considering they had already been damaged with some effective Bolt Thrower shooting, but I completely wiffed.
In fact, this is something of a problem with Cavalry units, with only 16 attacks if you roll to hit poorly then all the lovely Thunderous Charge becomes wasted and even with 5+ defence, they are not strong enough to hold up to much punishment. Alas the cavalry went down and with them my hopes of winning the game.
Day 1, three loses, oh dear! - What had I learnt? Even in game three after 2 loses, my opponent had a really strong army (he actually went on the win all his games on day 2!).
Day 2.
Saturday evening was spent in the pub and after having played my first ever game of Dreadball, I ended up chatting to a couple of Norwegians who had flown over for the event. Fun was had and we even invented a new award designed to replace the most sporting player award - 'The most normal player award' (more on that later). However, I was a well behaved boy and didn't get too drunk, meaning I was fit and raring to go on the Sunday morning (sort of).
Game 4.
First game of Day 2 and I was drawn to play against some Ratkin. Owning a Skaven army myself and having used it a few times in KoW, I was relatively well aware of their units and abilities. The scenario was Loot and this game easily turned out to be my favourite of the whole weekend.
The game started off excellently with my opponent presenting me with his Army's backstory.
Chairman Mou's Holy Crusade
"Led by the Warlock Chairman Mou, this army of albino Ratkin is hell-bent on world domination. They are fuelled by their belief that white fur makes them superior to the more common brown-furred Ratkin, and every other race for that matter. Mou has called a religious crusade to see this divine right done, using his personal guard of albino warriors to spearhead the march to victory, as well as using his political influence and devious scheming to bring his righteous cause to fruition. With the blessing of his deity, the Great Horned Rat, no force in Mantica can stop them."
I felt I could stop them, they were only Rats after-all!
My deployment for this game was much improved. Having learnt that one Cavalry unit alone was not enough to break most units, even on the charge, I decided to utilize both units together, in order to try and get a flank charge.
My opponent lined up a spear horde opposite them and I felt that if my left flank could hold out long enough against his onslaught of monsters, then my Cavalry could win their flank and begin heading back towards the center.
In an attempt to execute my plan correctly and out-maneuver my opponent on the right flank I ended up using an astounding amount of time on my clock in the early rounds. So much so that my opponent was starting to get a bit over-confident.
There were 3 loot tokens, one in the middle and one on each flank. He secured the one on my left and the one in the middle. I felt confident that I could get the one on the right, all I needed to do was find the time to get back into the middle and take the deciding counter.
My plan was working well. My archers on the left were making short work of the large monsters in his army and despite a slow start, my cavalry on the right were mopping up. In fact, I even got lucky in the middle, being able to kill off his blight regiment that was holding the center loot counter with some very lucky shooting from the Bolt Throwers and the small Archer Troop.
In a key turn I managed to kill his spear horde with one cavalry regiment and perform a long charge into his warmachine top-right with the other. Although I didn't necessarily need to kill the warmachine, I knew that with triple attacks it was a pretty sure thing and I would then be able to have a free reform back towards the center and the now unclaimed third loot counter. My opponent, knowing I was short on time, made me roll all 48 attacks, which was very much appreciated - although by this point in the tournament I was getting pretty adept at rolling quickly under pressure.
My opponent retaliated by luckily killing one of my Cavalry units with some good shooting and moving another small regiment onto the middle loot. I then headed my man of the match archer troop across to finally claim the loot counter on the right and my remaining, unharmed Cavalry regiment charged, killed and took the loot counter in the middle.
It was now that my opponent realised that he too was running incredibly low on time and made a desperate charge into my Cavalry with a heavily damaged warrior regiment. In normal circumstances, he shouldn't have even wavered the Cavalry, but he rolled out of the box and made them rout! In my last turn and with time very low I did all I could and charged with a Prince on horseback. All he needed was to squeak though 1 damage and have an average nerve roll and the game would be a draw. He managed it and killed the warriors.
I had one loot counter. My opponent had one. My Prince was sitting on the third, in the middle of the table, unable to claim it due to being an individual, but at least preventing my opponent from claiming it. I had 10 seconds left on my clock. My opponent had 16. We rolled for turn 7 and naturally, a seventh turn was to be played.
We looked at the table and ascertained that one small troop of Clawshots could charge the Prince for the win. My opponent had 16 seconds. I, being the sporting chap that I am, said that he could play his seventh turn off the clock. The Clawshots only had five attacks, hitting on fives. The unharmed Prince has defence 5, nerve 11/13 and with the Inspiring Talisman, could inspire himself. As sporting as I am, I honestly thought the Prince was safe regardless and the final attack would be 'just for fun'.
Amazingly the Clawshots did 2 damage. Impressive. No problem though, my opponent still needed to roll 11 twice on the nerve roll. First roll, 12. Ok. Again. Second roll... 11. Hmmm. Wow. I lost.
It was however, very amusing and my opponent was more shocked than I was. Great fun, but alas, I had still not won (or even drew).
Game 5.
The penultimate game was equally fun. I ended up drawn against one of the Norwegian lads from Saturday night and as we both had 0-4 records we were determined to finally get a win. He was playing Undead and the scenario was Dominate.
Our table was a bit weird, with a building in the middle taking up half of the Dominate zone, meaning that all my Infantry hordes couldn't actually fit into the space left. This forced me to deploy everything on one flank, in the hope that I could eventually get my Cavalry into the zone towards the end of the game.
My opponent deployed similarly and the game ended up being incredibly congested on one side of the table.
My shooting in this game was terrible, with me failing to rout anything before turn 4. Undead are tough, with high defence units, but my bane chanted Archer Horde couldn't even take out small Skeleton Regiments. The Bolt Throwers were even worse. Failing to hit once all game, despite Elite.
My opponent played the game very well, using the hill to constantly protect his units from line of sight but still threatening flank charges with Surge.
For most of the game very little happened, with both players jostling for position. I jumped first, in an attempt to get a few units into the Dominate zone. It nearly worked, with my opponent needing some good Surge rolls in order to counter my Cavalry.
In the end the game winning roll was a double six nerve roll from my opponent, causing one of my units to waver and blocking my line from advancing, meaning I just couldn't quite get enough points in the dominate zone to prevent me losing the game.
0-5. Proper sad face. Oh well, at least my opponent nominated me for the 'most normal player award'. Having discussed with him the night before how silly 'most sporting player' really is and how it's nothing more than either a popularity vote or sometimes a pity vote, we invented 'most normal player'. In which, you simply vote for the opponent you considered to behave the most like a normal human being. A wondrous compliment indeed.
Game 6 (aka must finally win dear god).
My last game was Control against Orcs and my opponent was pretty new to the game, having only recently put his army together specifically in order to play at this event. He explained that he had lost all his games and had not even accrued many points throughout the tournament at all. He had been having a great time though and was looking forward to building a new and hopefully more competitive army for next years event.
Unfortunately, being rather tired by this point, I forgot to take any pictures of my last game. A great shame as I finally ended up winning! My opponents army was very slow and with all my shooting and some fast moving cavalry, he didn't really have much of a chance. Of all the factions in KoW, Orcs are certainly one of the weakest and in this game I really felt like I had the scissors to his paper.
The scenario was ultimately irrelevant as I tabled him in 4 turns, having only lost one Bolt Thrower and a troop of Palace Guard myself. I felt pretty bad, but we had a nice chat after the game and discussed how he might have played it differently. I was seemingly gracious enough as he voted for me as most sporting player, but it was certainly not how I wanted to win my only game.
Conclusion.
The event was super fun and all of my opponents were really very friendly. Kings of War lends itself to this kind of tournament really well, although I still feel that the clocks are very pressurizing for new players and players like myself who haven't got the time (or opportunity) to play regularly.
The Venue looks superb, being in an old Church, but it was also unbelievably cold and as such, I'm pleased that they are changing venues for next year.
I ended up 1-5, so not a great performance at all, although I never expected to compete at the top end, I was still hopeful of maybe going 3-3. I feel I was lacking practice with the list, but also that my list was far from optimized. Although I had some shooting, I certainly didn't have loads and I had no flyers. I also had lots of Cavalry, which seem to suffer a bit under KoW 2 and the tendency that tables are full to the brim with terrain.
I've never been a huge fan of big flying monsters and love the look of a traditional balanced army, with some infantry, some cavalry, some war machines and a few heroes. Although Kings of War does a pretty good job regarding balance, the current meta seems to be towards magical shooting and high defence flying monsters, which out-class most regular infantry.
I also feel cavalry needs a bit of a rethink, because at the moment they are simply 'fast units that are not quite as fast or maneuverable as flyers'. The fact that flyers are faster completely negates the point of Cavalry, meaning they will never get the charge and thus will always suffer. Personally I think Cavalry should be the fastest units in the game, with flyers filling the niche of being more maneuverable. As it stands, there seems to be little motivation to take Cavalry over Flyers.
List grumbles aside, I had an excellent time and am really looking forward to next year.
Lastly, a quick shout-out to my partner in crime for the whole weekend, Lachlain, who flew over all the way from Greece (although he's Australian) and kept me company. Amazingly he managed to draw 3 of his 6 games. I'm not even sure how that's possible...
Ghorros.
Lastly, some pictures of 2 armies that I found to be quite simply wonderful, especially an incredibly colourful Trident Realms army!
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