No i haven’t. Ill watch some battle reports. It doesn’t seem to have the same gritty feel as MORDHEIM.
I agree with Bloodaxe. Vanguard is fine, but the Mordheim setting was just so gritty and awesome. I never tried Frostgrave, but always wanted to.
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Frostgrave is coming out with a new edition soon. I’m planning to pick it up then and give it a try.
Dave Graffam has great paper buildings on Drive thru for a demo game.
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The War of the Ring game was quite a fun one - with models unit based rather that being individually activated/moved. Didn’t last overly long though in production.
Saga is a fun skirmish game and has a fantasy supplement that has a number of generic options which you can fit pretty much any style of army into.
Loved old school mordheim, like the Frostgrave model range (but haven’t played) and vanguard looks interesting (but again, not played)
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I realy liked WHFB back in the days of 5th and 6th edition. In the 7th edition some rules got in the way of enjoying the game. That and the Fluff changes made me finally stop playing WHFB. I tried other games but nothing gave me that “I am home” feeling until I found KoW. There are many great games like Frostgrave, Rangers of the Shadowdeep, ASOBAH and many more but KoW and Vanguard are my favorites. Nevertheless I’m going to look at WoE and others, not to replace KoW but to supplement it.
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Recently got into A Song of Ice and Fire, really like the alternative activations, and None Combat Units. Not too fond of the Tactic decks, but the core mechanics are solid.
Just wish it were a bit more affordable here in the EU. The models are wonderful and make great KoM, and NA alternative miniatures.
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i wouldn’t be surprised if the ‘old world’ WH fantasy doesn’t just adopt a version of those rules, adjusted to work with AoS stats.
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I was thinking the same thing when I heard about Fantasy returning.
Recently being playing a lot of Dragon Rampant. A great little warband fantasy game from Osprey Publishing. It has a neat mechanic where units have to pass a test to move, shoot, or charge. Fail one and a players turn ends immediately. Can result in some very fun moments, it isn’t a system to approach with a competitive mindset, more geared towards a relaxed mindset.
Picked up Warlords of Erehwon by Warlord Gaming. Not had a chance to play it yet, but it does look fun. It is written by Rick Priestly, so has a very good pedigree. What is interesting is that it is a D10 system, however rolling low is good, and rolling high bad. An interesting cha he to the usual role of dice.
Still waiting to see how Oathmark develops. So far it does look good.
It is a good time for fantasy gaming, lots of rules and a whole host of fantastic plastic ranges. Can’t remember a time where it was this good in the hobby. It seems that it has taken a few years after the death of WFB for fantasy to leap into a new lease of life.
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Managed to finally get a game of Age of Fantasy Regiments in over the weekend. Very enjoyable system, the alternative activations really help add a layer of depth to the game. While the combat, shooting, and magic are easy to resolve, the real challenge comes in the form of having only 4 rounds to secure victory all the while balancing which units to activate.
We played Humans against High Elves. The High Elves may be proficient in combat, but their armour doesn’t save them against being changed by cavalry. The Impact hits mechanism makes cavalry deadly… which is in keeping with how devastating they are in real life.
Think this and KoW may become my go to games for Fantasy gaming. While AoFR may be very easy to teach (the rules can fit on two pages of A4), KoW does have a bit extra depth for when players want more crunch in their system.
Only managed to take a few photos as my phone battery was low.
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Did you play with casualty removal or did you house rule it to match KOW multibased units?
Model removal, which felt like a nice throw back. Seeing units get depleted made it feel like our attacks were actually doing damage.
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Nice article!
- I haven’t played all these games, but KoW is my favourite amongst the ones I have
- games of WFB 8th took hours and some of the mega-spells created NPEs
- AoS I keep wanting to try (I like the models) but I dislike the double-turn/IGOUGO design
- 9th just seemed too complex
- I’ve recently heard of Oathmark but no idea if it will succeed
- Runewars looked ok (I bought it…never played it), but was kinda DOA.
PS - I like that KoW has an active forum, but wish it was even MORE active and the game was more popular.
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Thanks MiniJunkie.
I do appreciate people giving their opinions, it’s very valuable to me to hear what folks think 
I wasn’t sure what you meant by NPE but I am going to guess maybe “Non Player Experiences” ?? That sounds like a nice way to describe how dumb magic got in WFB for sure, never been a fan of it really. Whilst I know it’s significantly toned down from WFB in The 9th Age, I’m still a bit worried it may be too powerful there for my taste even, it’s definitely a HUGE part of that game that you can’t really do without if you want to play competitively at least. It does add a lot of complexity though (which you may or may not find interesting), whereas in KoW I’ve noticed that Magic seems like another optional tool you might choose to use, or not, which I personally like.
Unfortunately Corona has of course put paid to my plans so far this year to play any games! I’ve got my army painted & ready now, got the new Battleground rules & decks now, The 9th Age (I mean, it’s free!), and of course all the KoW 3rd ed books… but I’ve not been able to actually be in a room with anyone to play all these games! 
Pretty sure MiniJunkie means Negative Play Experiences, which are things in games that are usually overly ‘gamey’ (rules-driven and not narrative- or simulation-driven) and/or result in one or more players feeling like they can’t do anything and are just having bad things done to them. Also I 100% agree that WHFB had its share of NPEs, particularly in the magic phase. All those tales of woe around opponent’s six dicing dweller’s off and sniping your general along with half of the deathstar around him? Yep, those are NPEs - those players had next to nothing they could have done to avoid it outside of their army choice. So they walked away feeling victimized by the system, which we were.
FWIW, my experience with AOS has been that it’s a game loaded with NPEs, that has gradually removed some of them as the game has developed, but frankly still has enough that I don’t enjoy playing it. Double Turns? 100% an NPE. Crippling alpha strikes that cannot be avoided? 100% an NPE. I actually stopped playing for a while, and stopped ever facing Beastclaw Raiders (something I have never done in any game ever: refuse to play a person), because I was first turn charged while deployed on the table edge because I knew his capabilities and crippled. That’s … not a good game, y’all. The particular issue has since been fixed, but AOS continues to have too little crunch and too many NPEs for me to invest in any real way.
Anyway, I digress. I agree with MiniJ’s conclusions, including that 9th Age has always seemed needlessly complicated 
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Hi guys, yep I meant negative player experiences
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A Song of Ice and Fire by Cool Mini or Not has plenty of NPEs in the tactic decks. It has started to put me off their system. Shame, as the setting, minis and core game mechanics are pretty good.
Luckily I have KoW and Age of Fantasy Regiments to get my gaming fix.
AoS never appealed to me, nice models, but I was too annoyed by the destruction of the Warhammer world.
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I’m gonna try Warlords of Erehwon this weekend
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I was excited for Oathmark, as I think Frostgrave and McCullough’s other stuff are fantastic. Unfortunately the virus has made playtesting it difficult. I’ve had a few solo games, and a game or two with my son, so this is only based on first impressions. I have to say, regretfully, it doesn’t quite seem to tick the boxes for me- it’s a little non-intuitive in places, and there are some rules loopholes which, once you see them, you have to make a conscious effort to avoid exploiting and unbalancing the game. I don’t necessarily expect every game to be ultra-balanced and tournament ready, but I do prefer narrative games to have a little more in-built flavour to make up for tactical looseness. There’s no doubt that a committed group of players could absolutely bring their own flavour and narrative to the game with the innovative campaign system, but the game as it’s offered is perhaps a little too generically Tolkienian for me, with the slightly odd wrinkle of their being no problem in fielding, say, Elves with Goblin allies.
Speaking for myself it doesn’t quite offer anything substantial that KoW doesn’t for a game of similar model count. Add to that the 25mm base size for all human sized infantry: this could be ignored by consenting players, and isn’t hard to accommodate with an afternoon of temporary rebasing, but I fear it’s just the sort of minor speedbump that’s going to put off a lot of casual players.
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I’ve heard it’s pretty good. I just wish it wasn’t designed for skirmish battles as I don’t currently have too much interest in that. If I wanted a really small model count game I would try stuff like KoW Vanguard out for sure though!
Yikes, sounds frustrating to me. I have very little patience with badly written rules sadly, they annoy me immensely (been a big part of why I’ve dropped out of this hobby for long periods in the past).
If you feel like expanding on that point any time though, I’d love to know what you discovered.
The “mix & match” forces sounds like a nightmare for balance too. There must surely be some clearly optimal combos.
I wonder if like Dragon Rampant (also from the same publisher) it’s solely aimed at ‘casual play’ and perhaps narrative gaming as you mention?