@Stonehorse I think you’d have to be very careful about giving cav scout. On the whole, I don’t think people should be charged in their deployment zone on the first turn. For me Spd9 & Nimble captures the feel of Mounted Scouts.
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Speed 9 and Nimble captures fast cavalry. I doubt anyone would charge them into the enemy on the first turn.
They’d be unsupported and at most attack with 14 dice hitting on 5+ with no Thunderous Charge or Crushing Strength, and would be attacking units that have not been damaged.
So essentially, they would bounce off and then get wiped out in the opponents first turn… anyone doing that is giving their opponent some free kills and throwing away a useful unit.
The Scout move would be great to get them into a better position, or to redeploy.
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@MarkG , I do agree with some of your comments, but some are already possible to field. Let me explain:
While I would love this, it’s a bit off-theme for the Kingdoms of Men list. If you want to do such a route, it would have to become a theme list because adding scouts to the KoM army would increase their tactical options enormously and the army already has plenty of those.
I have thought of this. Would I ever buy such an upgraden on crossbows? (the historical logical unit to add them to) I think not, the way the unit exists now. So unless shooting becomes a bigger thing in KoW, shooting matches will occur not often enough to warrant such an upgrade. It would create lovely modelling upportunities, though!
KoM would indeed benefit a lot from short ranged mobile shooting. Instead of your suggestion, perhaps replace the riflemen option with a piercing (1), 12", steady aim model. Piercing (2) ranged attacks are bloody hard to balance, so they have been too expensive for 2 editions of KoW now, so maybe change them into something useful. I’ve got 200 Empire handgunner models laying around, half of them painted. If you want to represent these units with napta throwers, go ahead!
Lovely. But you will have to play Order of the Brothermark / Order of the Green lady for this option. Brothermark is fully viable with a historical army, Green lady needs some mystical additions.
I’d say buff the Mammoth to something useful. Fully agree it’s a sub-par unit, but the option exists and it’s not that bad that it’s unplayable. Or, alternatively, play League of Rhordia and field the elephans as honor guard. This is what I do
I would use the mammoth profile for this. Especially if my elephants are fielded as honour guard.
The fun of playing Kings of War with human-eque models is that you can use your models as several armies. During 2nd edition, I made this blog post about this, and in 3rd the options have only increased.
With my collection, I can easily play Kingdoms of Men (plus League of Rhordia) and Basilea (plus Brothermark) without limitations. With some limitations or a few new units I might even be able to build a Order of the Green lady and a Northern alliance/varangur army. All with just a few GW oldhammer models expanded over the last 6 years of playing Kings of War.
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That’s a good point.
Having the option to use those models or do that modelling is the important thing to me in this case though; even if sub par or rarely taken.
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When Kings of War Historicals* gets updated to 3rd edition rules, it will be interesting to see how the lists in that system out perform Kingdom of Men. As it is I would love to use their Mongolian list in 3rd edition.
*whenever that is, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Mantic have forgot about Kings of War Historicals.
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My experience with 2nd Ed’s KoW Historical supplement suggests that embracing historicals in a way that is satisfying and balanced is… hard. Echoing MarkG, I’m not trying to be Captain Bringdown, and heartily encourage homebrewing and creativity.
But for official support, I think Mantic’s best option is to make sure that ~75% of most ancient armies can be ported into the game either with similar units or fantastic analogues ala Nav, to make an easy avenue for new players to try the system before committing to a new army, or to enable casual play. But trying to accommodate realism or competitive quality is too heavy a lift.
But if we’re really making a wishlist… we’d need to overhaul terrain rules. None of this ‘horde of pike parked in a forest’ nonsense, and skirmisher/light infantry armies would have to be viable somehow.
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Haha, great point. Just the idea of pikes entering a forest is laughable.
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@Stonehorse I think people would charge scouting Mounted Scouts into troops, war machines, light individuals, units they wanted grounded etc.
Being charged in your deployment zone on turn one is potentially a bit of a gotcha moment. It can already happen but it’s not that common - and I wouldn’t want to see more of it.
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Agreed.
I think that a list that allows most historical miniature collection to take part (i.e. what I described in the OP) is the way to go.
Does the job for proportionally little effort.
The 2nd edition historical supplement was a lot of work and doubled the number of lists and fell short; both for balance and representing history.
Remember Roman armies with De6+ from shooting for testudo all the time and then two handed weapons too?
As you noted, another reason to play historical wargames for historical is that there are things KoW simply doesn’t do.
Like a distinction between heaven medium infantry. Heavy infantry cannot function in terrain, but in KoW pikes are fine in a forest.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting KoW should have those rules.
I really think having a list to give historical miniatures a way into KoW is all we need and probably a better way to do it.
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If they enjoy throwing units away, I guess.
The scouts would charge in do little damage, and then be murdered. They may have stopped a unit from doing a ranged attack at best.
Not a great trade off.
I see your point about the gotcha aspect, but I think it would be something someone does once for the novelty of it, then sees how it is a very bad move, and doesn’t do it again.
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@Vince I brainstormed a list of the first ideas that popped into my head - following a post where I said I thought this was all unlikely to happen, except as a bit of fun.
My suggestions for an actual KoM list (say in 4th ed.) would be different.
That said, I think Mantic is less interested in accommodating historical players than they were (move to Uncharted Empires, doesn’t feature other mini ranges). They have got people in and got Kings off the ground - I can see KoM moving into legacy army status.
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This is a common issue when a game tries to cover large periods of history, and again why I think the Kingdom of Men list has issues. Certain units were very effective in their time, but would be absolute junk against later time periods… so as such there is no way to balance this. Example Slingers were fantastic units in the ancient world (baleaic ones more so), however against late medieval they would struggle. How does a game designer work out their points?
Historical games are best when they are focused on one time period.
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What would those be?
That doesn’t appear to be a thing in KoW, as far as I can tell.
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The HKoW book was, due to no fault of the guys working on it, rushed, tried to do too much and (for a number of armies) covered way too much of a time span or was just historically “off”. Plus it was never intended to be tournament legal with the main rules.
Most historical gamers simply looked at the lists and dropped it. As has been stated by guys from the RC there is no intention of updating it - would need playtesting 30+ armies, for models that mantic don’t/won’t sell, so is so far down the list if priorities as to be impossible.
Anything that was put together - ie a direct v2 to v3 update - would be fan led/unofficial at best
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Some greatbrainstorming of ideas here everyone.
For me, i wouldnt be interested in a historical army to win tourneys , i’ll leave others to cackle madly with thoughts of world domination. Much though i like a good manic cackle now and again,
I’d be more interested in a balanced and realistic fun game using historical models and bending them to fit into KoW whilst maintaining some of the original theme and historical accuracy , as much as possible. This was why i opted for Herd rather than KoM for my Celtic army. It was the closest fit. If i had pikemen, i probably would avoid forests too with them
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I reckon this’d be fine (especially if they were irregular and no larger than a regiment). No different to Tribal Trappers, Halfling Poachers, Skulks etc.
It’s about having the option - +5/10pts if you have the minis. There are plenty of rarely taken upgrades in the game, for a bit of character.
Again, I suggested this to give people the option - wasn’t trying to balance it against other lists. Would just allow for a bit more flavour in all cav lists.
Reinstating a shooting option for the mammoth would be good - but I suspect it was v deliberately taken away. Fine to re-add it if this all a bit of fun.
You could use Rhordia for elephants though you’d lose some other KoM options.
I could use those rules to field naptha thrower minis - that would be one way of representing them.
I was aware of its poor reception within the historical community at large. I was not aware that it was a rushed product.
Shame to see that Mantic will have no doubt abandoned it, for the obvious reasons you say.
Guess it was a relic from before Mantic were main provider of Fantasy mass combat, so they had to make a name for themselves by being different.
Going forward in the all too inevitable 4th edition it would be nice to see some of the units from Historicals be ported over to help give the KoM a bit of a boost/character. Time will tell.
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On the first point - It’s not in the spirit of the thread, but I’d make the KoM list a fantasy medieval human list, basically Rhordia without the Halflings. I’d like to see Mantic create another human faction with minis (could be Rhordia) as a rival to Basilea. I played Rackham’s Confrontation and liked the contrast between Alahan and Griffon.
By legacy army - I mean the armies that Mantic created to cater for Warhammer players but don’t make the minis themselves. I see the future looking good for armies like Twilight Kin - Elves & Night-stalkers both made by Mantic, and the increasing Mantic-ification of armies that they don’t make the minis for.
KoM is a bit different, but I suppose I’m predicting that bits will either get swapped out for Mantic produced units, or they’ll be gently retired at some point in the future - with Basilea, Northern Alliance and Halflings as an alternative (obvs not an official status).
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A couple of the rules from Historical made it’s way into v3 - hills and blast. Its already a unit heavy, if admittedly not massively diverse, list so doubt huge amounts of stuff gets added. Will be interesting to see what the CoK buffs are in November
@MarkG mantic have made clear they aren’t doing KoM models and there already in a basilea theme list, among half a dozen human based lists, so
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Yes, that’s my impression of their stance too. I was just saying what I’d do/like to see, however improbable.