I agree Stu. I’d forgotten about the Egyptian list. Complete bollocks! Another that comes to mind is Byzantine. The empire covered 1000 years and there is only one list. Also the Byzantine cataphracts carried bows and the skoutatoi ( spearmen) had rear ranks of archers firing overhead. That can’t be duplicated with the rules as they stand.
I hate that they made Holy Empire list which is set for Italian wars, but french list is for Hundred years war. And you can’t have Swiss unless you have 1000pts of other troops. What good are merceneries if I have to raise full army to hire them?
I think that diversity within lists is a way to go. French list, if you take Joan dArc, you can’t have hand guns or pikemen, but if you take Francis I you can, but you can’t have dismounted men-at-arms or knights. And perhaps adding army wide rule to make lists even more different.
I seem to remember going with Immortals as Byzantine infantry or maybe it was one of the Chinese mixed arms units
Um… No. Unlike many things argued about on the internet, this is actually my objective opinion.
You have no business telling me how I perceive things in my mind.
Well, yes.
I agree with this and I’m not sure what you are responding to?
My point was that the difference between historical armies are much less significant than the differences between difference races in a fantasy setting, so different historical armies (not fun count as armies) would not be as different as you seem to expect.
Which is really the problem with KoWH. It’s either not quite there and gives “Hollywood” historical, or Mantic have to make a proper historical list book. How far from the hundreds of lists and rules for realism that a historical wargame has should they stop? How much can KoW accomodate?
When is it just easier for everyone if people who are interested in history just play a a historical system designed to be that instead?
What? My comment was about first part of your comment, that I undervalue themed armies. Last part accidentally stayed in quote. Either way, I don’t get why are you all that offensive and keep attacking me. Dude, do with your plastic toys whatever you want. All I do here is discussing how to implement unit from real life in fantasy game.
My point is that historical army in fantasy setting like KoW can be made with vanilla list like KoM or using various fantasy units to better reflect its historical reputation. That is all. It is up to player to choose which route it wants to take and both are valid. And then there is Historical KoW, which I see as expansion of KoM list, and adds granularity to historical armies, which exists as some people here said, and it is third option for building an army for KoW.
Since KoM list appeared, people wanted more granularity, so that units better represent solders in real life. So they gave Historical lists. It was good attempt, but the problem was that they put too much lists and add too many vanilla units. So they basically undermined their own effort. If they ever redo Historical book, they just have to fix the lists so there are enough option for a player to customize its army to fit the period. Sure, balance could be a problem, but again, no one ever said that HKoW is balanced as regular KoW.
IMHO
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KOWH is a nice bridge from fantasy into historical. I play KOW with some folks who I think I can tempt into full historical games via this.
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I don’t mind that its not “accurate” as it gives a big game fast so has a nice spectacle. If I’m wanting something more serious I might play ?Armati on one of the many Ancients rules crowding my bookshelf. I especially like how cavalry armies look, even if you can skirmish.
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As an old WRG player I certainly know the perils of so-called “accurate” sets and army lists. I always chuckled how armies that maybe fought one battle could sit alongside ones that lasted decades
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I hope they do redo KOWH at some point as I’ve had some fun with it, if not I’ll cobble something together I’m sure
I’m also not one that cares all that much about accuracy in this instance. I would pick up a different game if I was. I mostly just want to see Samurai getting knee deep into a horde of zombies or Winged Hussars charging into a dragon, lol.
I don’t think there’s a heavy cav unit (5+Def) out there that’s also sporting pistols so moving the Hussars to another faction might be for visuals only.
If a player wants accuracy, they should play DBM. Kings of War Historical is a nice clean set of rules that allows plays to use their historical collections against fantasy. That for me is the main appeal.
As people will have seen I have a large Mongolian force, currently I use the Kingdom of Men list for it, but if an opponent ever wanted to do their fantasy force against an historical force, I’d be more than happy to switch the list.
Essentially Kings of War Historical gives players a much bigger selection of options to choose from, which is never a bad thing.
The current Kings of War Historical book just needs a few tweaks here and there to bring it into line with 3rd edition.
Now I really want to see my Mongolians face off against a Zombie heavy undead force 
No Pistols on HC in V3 but the Hussars did have them in V2 KOWH so maybe they will remerge if they redo it.
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there are 2 ways to approach a historical Wargame, either you are as accurate as possible for a very short time periode
or the design is for a larger time scale with generic entries and the player can chose whatever he wants or needs to make something specific
Longstreet or Battlegroup would be an example for the first, Black Powder or SAGA for the other
KoW-H should also be more generic with a larger timeframe
I liked the original one and going with Kingdom of Men as a Base and adding Theme lists for different timeframes and nations should work well enough to get a historical flair to KoW
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