Theme armies are just fine and excellent but having the generic elves dwarves men etc give people something to relate to.
Putting themes within the generic list is one way game systems have done this (space marine chapters for instance).
Ive seen countless minis and games for sale that had pretty cool looking minis but i had no idea what i was looking at so i never investigated further.
My loss? Maybe but i like my pointy eared fellows very much.
Regarding ignoring an army list for a decade and a half… im glad mantic updates all the armies all at once with either a new game edition or the cok. Piecemealing army list updates is horrible and when your chosen army is last on the list, it sucks. Or yours is first and then other army updates leave you in the dust.
GW seemed to just do stuff to manipulate customers rather than making a better game.
Ive been enjoying mantics way of doing things a lot. Dont change Mantic.
I’m a fan of the existing number of factions and think the concern about competitiveness is overblown. Remember when everyone said The Herd was underpowered… and then they won US Masters. And before that no one played Orcs… and then they won US Masters.
I wouldn’t want to expand more factions, but the current amount seems like a good mix to me.
That was my take as I read that comment @Nicanor, fully agreed.
Not updating army lists “because you want people not to play them” would be absolutely horrible and basically a huge middle finger towards your existing customers and pretty much the opposite of what “balancing armies” means by definition … 
So from me also a resounding NO to suggestions like those that imho advocate that Mantic should repeat GWs more idiotic follies for whatever reason that I can’t even think of.
And don’t take me wrong … I’m all for suggestions and discussions about how to make the game better … but wishing for Mantic to take a page from the worst that GW has to offer sure can’t be that …
It was partly a stab against GW and partly a suggestion to not remove anything. I can’t believe you thought I was being serious. 
I was a bretonnia player back then btw. Oh the agony!
Oh my … lol 
May i blame lack of sleep or will i not get away with that? 
Probably didn’t help that i didn t reply directly but to another post …
In any case, my sincere apologies @FredOslow
And i hear ya … I remember keeping up with GWs new releases in my teens and seeing other armies zoom past in power level. It’s not something that i would tolerate anymore nowadays.
I would far rather have an army without models than end up with models that can’t fit in an army - either by being removed, nerfed or made existing build not legal.
[Various Large Infantry units became Monstrous Infantry for example - some based on how big the actual mantic models were!]
Mantic do some very nice plastic kits (esp newer); the resin stuff they do is right at the top end for price/quality; the pvc kits are just about ok [bring a kettle!] They also clearly don’t (unlike gw) match new models with being good in game!
If any changes are narrative driven then I’m at least willing to think about them
Interesting premise, but as has been pointed out: the US Masters aren’t indicative of anything. Something about the US not being the world or something. Add IP being largely irrelevant (look at how much it applies in some parts of the world!) and outdated in the rest, well, despite this being an interesting topic the original points of discussion are a bit iffy. So I’m going to have to disagree pretty heavily with the proposed rewrite. Bigger and broader is better!
Given Kings of Wars open modelling policy I think that its always going to be open to creativity, and with so many people contributing their ideas it’ll be a wild place no matter what! And that’s good! But such things need a wide open playground to exist in, not a limited ‘Mantic IP only’ or ‘Unique Ideas Only Zone’ ruleset… the hybridised factions sound good in theory but in practice you’d just see more unused units! Perhaps those factions with overlaps could be made more unique and bigger, instead? I certainly don’t think we need fewer factions anyway.
Except Jarvis. “Good Undead” is an abomination of an idea and should be removed with prejudice.
My main issue with getting a(nother) full Mantic army is that the Northern Alliance range never got finished. How should I make myself a full Mantic NA army if they’re not selling Huscarls and Half-Elves? How can we have this discussion if we’re not talking about Mantic simply being too small a company to finish full model ranges before moving onto the next? Why are we looking at cutting the rules or pointing at players when its a production issue?
Yes i think they need to slow the lore/army development in favor of completing already begun army lists. Fortunately a lot of you fellows are extremely good at customizing your own minis (way better than me that’s for sure) so coming up with minis for army listings that mantic hasnt made minis for yet is a decent replacement for the short term.
I would like a bit of concept art for some of the units mantic hasnt produced though, if possible, so i could get kinda close to what they intend haha.
The whole thing I love about kingdoms of men is that they aren’t locked to any style, you can make whatever you want! I would hate to lose that.
KoM is an exception, I’d say. They need to be very ‘bland’ , so people could create their own kingdom. Other armies benefit more from fluff. But Mantics approach on relativly vague background back in 2nd edition is, in part, what brought me into KoW. I don’t need to commit to one of the exeggerated, evil vampire clans of WHFB.
My Undead can be whatever I want them to be! I can focus on ghouls, ghost, zombies or monsters without buying new books for everything. I said it before, I’m not a competative player, so I build the armies the way I like to play without concerning aboit effectivness too much.
I would like to see more tweaking and more formations for existing armies, maybe some new units here and there. I think formations are a good way of fleshing out existing armies without the need to buy new models all the time, giving Mantic time to fill the gaps in their rooster.
Is the zombie formation effective? I don’t care! It’s a fun and inspiring idea, I want to build it some day. If keeping armies interesting is the goal, it’s been achieved for me.
Concluding from the reactions, I’d say that the community is quite mixed about this. Some of us agree with Matt and some of us don’t.
In such a case, I’d advocate no sweeping changes to the game. Changes such as these is what made Gee-Dub loose contact with their playerbase (Remember the end times). Panithor is fine as it is and even though i personally think their game should reflect their own IP more, it appears that there’s plenty people also wanting generic elves and dwarves.
In such a case, I think i’d be best for the community as a whole not to change a lot and cater to as broad an audience as possible. That said, I an imagine the RC wanting a decline in number of armies for balance reasons, but that’s for them to decide. If that’s the case, this would be a valid argument, but I haven’t heard anything signaling this.
Finally, I’m quite happy that this community is capable of having a civilized discussion and we’re able to disgree on something without it getting nasty.
Vince
So here is a thought (bearing in mind I don’t play KoW but just Vanguard)
Would a new version of Vanguard be a good place to focus in on the Mantic IP more? It would be great if they could do this and then also transition from Vanguard stuff that works to KoW (i’m looking at you Northern Alliance Huscarls and helf elves). One complaint from Vanguard was the number of lists that were proper “bare minimum”. Maybe a new Vanguard with a cut down set of factions with more focus is the way to go, coupled with then getting these focussed outputs into KoW?
This is kind of like how deadzone to Firefight has worked, with the difference here being that KoW keeps all the factions it has for those who want to use proxies/non-mantic/kitbash etc.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong as usual 
What I’m still unclear on is why this focus on IP? Do we really want Mantic to go the “everything must be copyrightable” route that GW took? I’m pretty sure common fantasy tropes cannot be intellectual property, so the game would need to be made less open-to-all for it to be truly “Mantic IP only”, and no one wants that! It doesn’t make any sense!
I think it’s because many of us hold fond memories of the old world. Though the game of WHFB was at times horrible designed, the grimdark session of the old world ticked many boxes for me (and many like me)
One only needs to look at the popularity of Mordheim. Mordheim was launched in the previous century, was horrible designed as a game, but enjoys popularity until this day. Why? Because the fulff was great, the artwork matched the fluff and the game design matched seemlessly to this kind of game.
This fluff is mainly the reason why Wharhammer: total War is such a hit and I don’t see Panithor: total war in the near future.
And it’s a pity, because the game Kings of War is far better than anything GW has produced in, like, ever.
Of course, comparing the fluff of a game that’s now 7 years old to a game of several decades is unfair. And Mantic is trying. The Armada fluff and the 3rd edition rulebook is much better than it was before. The shires and the stormforged orks (whaever you may think about it) is firmly entrenched in Panitor. That said, while Panitor is slowly growing in story, it’s nowhere as compelling as the Old World yet.
We would like to see Panithor grow into something we hold as dear as the old world once was.
But what does that have to do with intellectual property? Yeah, we won’t see Mantic making a juggernaught like the Old World, a copyrightable setting written over decades, because Mantic is relatively small and hasn’t had said decades… but it doesn’t answer the whole “common fantasy tropes cannot be intellectual property” being directly opposed to Kings of War being such an open and welcoming game to all sorts of creative interpretations!
I don’t think you can grow the game by cutting off its limbs.
What would stop us from seeing specific Kingdoms (of men or elves or Dwarves) being written about in more detail in the fluff while keeping a lot of other Kingdoms (of men or elves or Dwarves, etc.) on the map that are only vaguely mentioned to give players room for creative freedom as well?
As others have said, fluff needs time to grow … and not just time, it needs to be quality as well. And while I would agree that GWs “Old World” is/was sure something cool (hey I played myself in my teens), the actual novels published in that world are for the most part just atrocious to read (exceptions only prove the rule.) … I mean… i didn’t mind in my teens as I was reading Black Library, Battletech and Shadowrun as much as I could … but 20 years later with some real SciFi literature on my reading list, the vast majority of the Black library looks just so meh’ that I’d rather not bother in the first place and just read something else that actually engages me. (And heck, I even did make another attempt about 2-3 years ago as some 40k novels caught my eye on Audible and not even as an Audio book I could get through that junk… yuck.)
I mean … when you’ve just finished something from Peter F. Hamilton or Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time / Ruin … dayum!) it’s really hard to go back and lower your standards again and read through that kinda stuff. Not that Mantic is that much better in that regard … I appreciate their latest efforts in getting novels out and I even did finish the short story collection and found it quite readable … but Pious I put back on the shelf before even getting a third through and rather picked up something else. Might try another of their books sometime, but don’t have too high hopes (sorry guys.). But to end that part on a positive note … “Containment protocolls” was actually quite enjoyable to read for what it is.
So yeah … fluff has it’s place and having good fluff is great … but I would dare say a lot of us “grown up gamers” won’t bother too much unless that fluff includes novels that can go toe to toe with top tier fantasy/sci fi authors and that’s where almost all gaming systems fall short … most of them way way way short.
Excuse my rambling on the matter, just my thoughts. As far as I’m concerned the fluff is fine as long as the overall “feel” is there and the rules are on spot. And the overall feel that a lot of people want from KoW appears to be mass fantasy battles … and you really can’t do that without Elves, Dwarves, Undead, Orcs/Gobbos etc. … well okay, you can … but then you end up with the same mess that GW ended up with and drive a lot of players away.
Well said!
What detailed background there is for KoM does really deal with a specific place (Valentica) and Darvled’s machinations with some vague fluff about a couple of cities in the Young Kingdoms
the problem is, the old world went downhill after GW went into the “strong IP” thing
having a good and extensive background is good, only allowing background for models you make is bad
so as long as game does not suffer from it, focus on the IP is good, but if mantic goes the GW way of restricting the game to the IP, it will die the same way the old world did