Category Archives: Fantasy

Kings of War – revisited

I had my first game of Kings of War for probably 3 or 4 years.  Derek brought two beautifully painted armies along to the club and he reacquainted me with the rules.

We played using the Undead and Abyssal Dwarves.  I took the Undead.  My army consisted of a;

  • Vampire Lord,
  • 2 Necromancers
  • 2 Skeleton Regiments
  • 2 Skeleton Spearmen Regiments
  • 1 Regiment of Revenant Warriors
  • 1 Regiment of Revenant Knights
  • 1 Regiment of Werewolves

Undead Army 1500 points.aspx    (Easy Army pdf File)

Derek’s army consisted of

  • Abyssal Half-breed Lord
  • Abyssal Magic User (?)
  • 2 units of Abyssal Half-breeds
  • 2 units of Abyssal Golems
  • 2 Units of Slave Orcs
  • 1 unit of Slave Orc Warriors
  • 2 Regiments of Abyssal Dwarf Handgunners
  • 1 Abyssal Dwarf Elites (?)
  • 2 units of Abyssal demon flying things (?)
  • 1 Mortar

Abyssal Dwarf 1500 Points.aspx   (Easy Army pdf File)

The game is incredibly fast, and despite both of us being relative novices the game progressed very quickly without too may hiccups. (apart from the Undead being defeated.)

Our battle probably started at 8pm after all the talking and explanations about troops etc.  The game itself was over and packed away by 10pm, so two hours for introducing a new game and playing to conclusion.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the game itself could be set up and completed within 1 and a half to 2 hours with ease once our familiarity with the rules was improved.

Next game has been arranged for hopefully 3 weeks time.

A useful resource is the Easy Army site which is currently free and provides a great army construction feature for all of the current armies.

http://kow.easyarmy.com

 

Tribes of Legend

Wargames Foundry published a set of Fantasy war-games rules a few years ago called ‘Tribes of Legend.’  This was a lovely hardback book with three sets of rules and a lot of unnecessary bumf.  One of the sets was for small unit skirmish action of about 40 or 50 figures a side.  There were only four army lists included which was somewhat limiting, and these were greek City States, Satyrs, Centaurs, and Hill tribes.

Needless to say that we ended up buying figures which have little utility beyond these rules, and we may well have been one of the few groups to buy figures specifically for the game, but that’s all in the past.  Many of the figures came from War-games Foundry, strangely enough because they were actually cheaper than most of the alternative suppliers at the time. (You may want to have another look at Foundry because they aren’t as expensive comparatively speaking as you may have thought).

The games are quick and brutal, and we would often fit three games into a club evening.  As I mentioned previously though we did start to muck around with the rules, initially looking to expand the army lists available.  Foundry did publish another set of Fantasy rules from the same author Jake Thornton called ‘Gods of Battle’ which we did investigate for expanding our troop selections.  We also started playing the Osprey rules ‘Of Gods and Mortals’ which whilst fun in their own right soon became a source for fusing ideas into the other set.

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Of Gods and Mortals

A few of us have succumbed to the Osprey set of rules ‘Of gods and Mortals’.  The game is at its most basic a fight between two gods and their supporters.  The base book describes the heavenly pantheon of the Celts, Norse, Egyptians, and the Ancient Greeks, along with their heroic supporters and their minions.  On the inter-web though there are a host of alternative lists available for almost every conceivable ancient nations heavenly host.

The game is a based upon a somewhat lightweight set of mechanics with much of the meat being held in the special rules associated with the units and characters.  The gameplay is fast and brutal.  It isn’t often that your main character dies and comes back again as your god can be killed but can also be brought back through the intervention of their minions.  This does lend a very pleasing balance to the gameplay as even the most menial troops become quite important to the success of the god.

A group of us play the game on a fairly irregular basis, but the beauty of the game is that two games can be played side by side on a standard table, and multiple games can be played within one evening session.

As is the won’t of wargamers we have begun to explore fusing the game rules with other sets including the Tribes of Legend set from Foundry.  These are a fun set for quick games between Greeks, Centaurs, Barbarian tribes, and Satyrs.  Unfortunately these rules are somewhat limited by the lists so we have merged the rules into a something loosely called ‘Legendary Tribes’ or ‘Legendary Gods and Mortal Tribes’.  These can be somewhat noisy affairs given that none of the fusion rules have actually be written down!