Regnum Aeternum - Written Battle Reports for KoW 3rd Edition

Kings of War Battle Reports / Games
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Thanks for more reports! Wading into them now.

A terrain thing that I noticed a while back but haven’t commented on, in the Northeast / Mid-Atlantic, the standard height for woods is 9 and impassable (houses, etc) is 6. Functionally pretty similar depending on your physical terrain sets so eh but a difference I keep wanting to point out at least anecdotally!

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I got three more Ambush games in over the holiday weekend, and all are up now.
Battle 124 Varangur vs Dwarfs
Battle 125 Ogres vs Varangur
Battle 126 Varangur vs Halflings

As-ever, it doesn’t take much to get an advantage and snowball it to a victory in Ambush, so I’m not dwelling too long or digging too deeply on any of these. My quick takeaways…

  • To Boss’s terrain point… Ambush tables are cluttered with terrain, and in retrospect, all these games would have been a great opportunity to have run some unusual terrain… Height 3 Blocking skulls; super-tall forests; weird hills; etc. I’ll need to keep that in mind for next time the odd skull terrain hits the field, or whenever we do circle back to Ambush games again.
  • I like the Bows on the Varangur Night Raiders as the default. I will revisit axes now and then to see if I can find some niche uses, but as the games get bigger, I think the bows will get more and more attractive as the Raiders can pressure a bit and be more difficult to engage.
  • I am undecided on the default loadout for the Varangur Horse Raiders. If you need to force fights, axes could be worthwhile, but Snow Foxes are likely better chaff, and I think bows are probably still better as the default here as well, since it gives you the option of being cagey, but more testing is needed.
  • The middle game featured my Stormcast Ogres. I liked the Warrior-focused MMU, though it is only viable in Ambush, since you need hordes to unlock much more. They are the large infantry army though, and always seem popular, so it’s probably beneficial to keep a working familiarity with the roster. I don’t think my collection is deep enough to really explore the army fully (that’s just talking about Stormcast minis and Ogres; but I also lack Goblin equivalents currently as well), but I’ll try to get them on the table a few more times during this year’s league, and explore them a little more.

League games tend to dominate meetups, but I’ll try to fit in some larger games when I can. We’re at least escalating quicker this year, and the games in June will be 1200 points, and on larger tables, so those should be a little more exciting and engaging.

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I agree on the bows for night raiders.
12" shooting is nice to instigate a charge with other infantry or to deal some damage when moving into charge range.
It has to be on something that can take a charge though.
Like dwarfs with mastiffs or historical heavy infantry with thrown weapons.

“Light troops” that want to harass the enemy with some plink damage, but don’t want to take a charge are much easier to use with longer range.
Piercing and steady aim is tempting though. Something nimble and fast enough to get out of charge arcs could work with 12" range. So the horse raiders look like a better fit for throwing axes.

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The best matchup for the throwing axes. :upside_down_face:
Note, though, dwarfs only charge 8" and ironclad is a different unit to ironguard.

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Aw geez. Nearly a dozen games against the Imperial Dwarfs and now I start donking up my terminology. :sweat_smile: Thanks for pointing that out! All 30ish goofs should be corrected now.

For the Night Raiders, if the axes could be finishing off a unit, things change, but I feel like that would be a lot of setup and rather unlikely in this army. (Though I will try that approach when I can run triple Magus Conclaves) The majority of the time, I think they’re only going to get one round of tossing, so overall, I feel like the axe / throwing mastiff comparison you make is really astute.

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One of my clubmates is headed to Masters this summer with his incredibly ravenous Halflings, and was asking to sneak in some big games at the June League meetup, ideally against alpha-strike, flying circus, or otherwise mean and speedy lists. I was already set on bringing the Abyssals to the meetup, and not wanting to lug around multiple bins, I tried to split the difference between a number of competing factors, and ended up trying out some aggressive Abyssals. Battle 127 can be found here.

Battle 127
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  • The shiny new Berserkers underperformed on their rolls, but even still, dished out good damage. Chatter about them late in 2024 got me interested in the Herd Lycans, and I think there might be a parallel there, in that they really want to use their speed to flank stuff, but table space is limited, so there might be diminishing returns the more of them you run. (Ray Shields offers a bit of a counter-point from his affiliated channel and from the top table at a recent tournament, though player skill is a factor in him getting to that point.) I ran them stock here, but I think giving them items is the way to go, as they are expensive and central enough to most game plans that you really want them standing out and doing well for you.
  • The Horsemen gained Fearless in the revamp, and it did save a unit from a waver. I like the change, but they are just a grindy cavalry unit, and one needs to support and protect them better than I did.
  • The Sacrificial Imp change is neat but niche. I did not get first turn, and had a unit get shot off before I could activate it. I then popped it on a few units, which were then ignored in the subsequent round. Technically this influenced his targeting decisions, but still felt underwhelming. Thankfully it is cheap! It’ll take some experience to see what feels right though and not every unit can take it (Yes to Berserkers and Guard and Flamebearers and Lowers, No to Molochs and Succubi…),
  • I took The Manifestation of Ba’el and Zaz the Betrayer to bully a flank with lighting, and then pressure with the flier. Lightning doesn’t work well against ravenous Halflings with Spellward, but can work as intended against the Tinkerers, like the Grenadiers, which is what I was banking on this game. Each legendary pick is fine on its own, but I think they are better together, but more testing is needed if this is the way I want to run the army typically.

Overall, not a good showing from me! I tried to build a unique list a little out of my comfort zone with a rusty army, and that fell completely short against such a well-oiled list and a precise player even before we factor in the dice. These aggressive lists need to work in concert to be making multi-charges, and that is not how I played it. I am learning more what I need to be doing, but have yet to really internalize it during the deployment phase particularly, and I have a long road ahead of me for working on aggressive lists!

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Don’t be so hard on yourself. The dice didn’t help and it sounds like your opponent is an excellent player with a tuned and practised list.

On the list, I think that leaning into what a list offers is a good rule of thumb.
Abyssals have regen and fury, so being aggressive and getting in a slog is takes advantage of what they offer.

I got into KoW with Forces of the Abyss, so I have a soft spot for them, but it seems very different to the list I used to play.

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Rob and his Halflings have been a pretty frequent opponent over the last year, and the games are always uphill battles for me and my haphazard lists. He is precise and practiced, and he is going to Masters… If I am overly critical of myself, it is with an eye to improving my own play and this practice environment, as neither game he got in really seemed productive. A few 1/8th inch mistakes are things he should exploit in a competitive environment, but we should have been talking more and playing more collaboratively, to minimize errors and raise my play up to actually challenge him, and let him get the most out of the practice game. We’ve hopefully got 1-2 more meetups on the horizon for him, so I’ll try to approach those games a little differently.

Yeah, it’s been different for me too. I was digging my Chroneas + Tortured Souls + Abyssal Guard play from early last year, and was enjoying the Succubi and Lower Abyssals as a tangent prior to the revamp. However, the revamp certainly mixed things up for the army, and I don’t have my bearings yet. The Lower Abyssals seem pretty bad now, and there is tons to test and revisit. Speaking of, I got two more “high-speed” games in with the Abyssals recently, for league stuffs:
Battle 128 was Loot
Battle 129 was Compass Points

In both games, there was a discrepancy of speed that I tried to take full advantage of, isolating the single speedy unit opposing me, and then picking my fights. I played well and had good decisions overall, and with some luck, was able to secure two very convincing wins.

And then I was also treated to a weekday game recently against Trevor/Cartwright. I brought the Abyssals again, hoping to continue learning thigns, and ran into a very versatile Northern Alliance list.

Battle 130 was Hold the Line

I had a few positioning errors early, but was making good decisions overall for charges, engagement and tempo. The dice were very favorable to me though.

Takeaways after all four recent games:

  • The new Berserkers are nice and strong at either unit size. Defense 4 is a big liability though, and if they are caught up or caught out, it can be bad. They can take Sacrificial Imps, which seems like a great buy for them, and while they do ok as-is, you probably want items on your hordes.
  • Molochs are slower, but should hit a little harder than the Berserkers against armored units. The upgrade for Brutal and Vicious is a no brainer. Defense 4 is again a big liability, but if you can mitigate multi-charges (Imp units, Gargoyles, or Hellhounds and such), this should be a good brawling unit.
  • Hellhounds are actually pretty neat with Ferocious Charge! A regiment is pretty expensive, and troops are probably more points-efficient. They seem good for making “blocking charges” to hold something scary up and let the rest of your line advance under less pressure.
  • Nagarri still have weird stats, sculpts, and overall design. That said, if you want to run them, I think the new Formation is the way to go, and picking up the Sacred Horn for a bigger aura is a solid buy as well. Folks have tried the new Lower Abyssals alongside them… but that’s several hundred points of just a tar pit. I liked the Molochs as comrades instead, as the Molochs are a much more frightening unit on the counter-charge if your opponent doesn’t manage to clear them out.
  • Sacrificial imps are neat, but I’ve not had a good test for them yet. Thankfully, they are cheap upgrades.
  • Regeneration as-written, going unit by unit as they are given orders, is painful. I hope they change it to at the end of the movement phase or something, so you can speed the rolls along a bit.
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Good game! I’m glad to get one in during the week. I haven’t played much lately, and it showed–after some early setbacks, you bounced back and finished strong on this one.

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Thanks for the continued reports! Best day ever for your snakes in that last game :face_holding_back_tears:

I will, for the Nth time at this point, note that I’m still waiting for Abyssal Berserkers to be nerfed. I’m content to have their Nv dropped a point, the same as every other Werewolf-style unit, which also increases internal balance by giving Molochs a more credible reason to exist. As it is Berserkers are an Obvious Choice and I’m deeply opposed to those in wargame list construction.

(This is partially on my mind as I gear up for the US Masters, which by all accounts is going to be 1/4 Abyssal Berserkers & Friends, 1/4 The Dwarf List, 1/4 Alpha Strike Flying Cav (2024 Style), 1/8 Twilight Kin, and then 1/8 the rest of us losers playing whatever it is we drag out to Reno :P)

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No objections from me; you are spot on with the Obvious Choice issue. With defense the exact same, the Berserkers just have so much going for them relative to the old Molochs, including getting the Sacrificial Imp upgrade. There maybe could be a niche for Molochs against more armored lists, but yeah, unfortunately not a lot of reasons to take them over the shiny new unit.

I’d say they should have done it when they buffed the Nagarri, but honestly, they should have have just handled the revamp better. The initial reveal of the Berserkers really confused me. Based on the pictures I thought they had just refreshed the Moloch sculpts… and then looking at the stats I was confused why they felt the Abyssals needed a normal and a speedy berserk unit. There should have been more differentiation between the two. Decreasing the Nerve is probably the best and easiest move, though I think we missed the window for any hotfix. :frowning:

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Well done. Great use of pressure and timing.

All I can really add is that I avoid using troops with regeneration.
Troops don’t have the nerve to get value out of the regeneration they’re paying for. You’ll probably get better value out of a cheaper equivalent.
With the exception of low value/not meant for combat troops like gargoles or flamebearer.

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Well played! While youropponent’sdice may have been thematically chilled, you also look to be getting the hang of the army. You got great use out of fury and regeneration. It was also nice to see you decline a win or die charge to keep projecting threat instead

A good showcase of the current abyssal list, even if the molochs were somewhat disappointing

I think that the frostclaws getting and early charge worked in your favour. It’s the manoeuvrbility and threat projection that makes flyers dangerous. If you can get them to engage so that you can come to grips with them, the you nullify a significant part of their value and can likely beat them with cheaper units.

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Yeah, I think this is going to be the right call the overwhelming majority of the time. Anecdotally, we had someone in the escalation league last year trying out the previous Abyssal formation, taking it all they way from first game to last, and the troops of Flamebearers and Lowers just did not work for him, ever, and my own experiments with Flamebearer troops have also fallen flat, since they just get outranged and shot off if the opponent has any shooting at all. Depending on the list though, there may be a niche for troops of Horsemen, as Fearless and Def5 do really add to their overall resilience. Maybe in a list with a lot of other speed or attention-grabbing threats, a Horsemen troop or two might be able to fly under the radar a bit and do good work.

And then yeah, the larger game with the Abyssals felt like it was a pretty ideal game for the army. :grin: The

The early charge from the Frostclaws felt weird to both of us at the time. I think we’d both agree with your take on how things unfolded. Catching the Molochs out and getting a quick rout against them was ultimately too tempting considering the alternative was to dance against Gargoyles and the speedy Berserkers all game. Had a couple of Nerve rolls been higher for him though, that early charge could have easily been massively decisive in cracking open my whole line. Close game!

It’ll be interesting to see how Masters goes for the Abyssals, and how big of a slice of the field they occupy for lists. Piloting them, the Beserkers are indeed a lot of fun, but if opponents can focus-efforts on units before they can regenerate (shooting, or the slightly longer flying charges), they could have some pretty bad match-ups.

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And I got another Masters-prep game in last weekend. We had tried to get a few other Masters attendees from Chicago in on the action, but schedules unfortunately didn’t align. Summers are hard, and even our usual attendance took a bit of a dip, and I unfortunately only got the one game in.

Battle 131 was Herd vs Halflings in Hold the Line

Rob and his Halflings wanted to play against fast and aggressive lists, and drawing from the handful of previous Herd “throwback” games, I gave a pretty good showing, though I still have a lot of little positional errors and inefficiencies.

  • Scout moves are still hard. I did pretty well, and am coming up with a “best scouting practices” list for me too draw on in the future, namely that: I shouldn’t scout into enemy charge range, I should keep scouts safe and inspired, and don’t want to scout beyond my ability to support / avenge them.
  • Forest Shamblers did well for scouting, and the Def5 proved very valuable for the army, as they were able to hold things up surprisingly well.
  • Wiltfather wasn’t used amazingly, but was still very strong here as he could pressure alongside the Shamblers and keep them inspired.
  • The Lycans are still fun, and I am slowly adjusting to having that much speed at my command. I’m still predominately running waver mitigation on them, and am hesitant to switch that to something like the Brew of Strength, like Boss has suggested. Keith Conroy was also running Lycans with the Brew in a more recent iteration of his approach though, so perhaps that would be worth exploring with more experience.

I was really hoping for a second game, but alas, summers are difficult. I’m not one for “netdecking” or whatever the wargaming equivalent is, but these have been very insightful. I only have a few of these Herd throwback list ideas to finish up now, so hopefully I can wrap this historical foray up soon.

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That was close! Against an opponent who’s been giving you grief, so well done!

Just remembering to do the moves can be a challenge, especially when I switch lists.

I used to hear “netlisting” when I played Warhammer.
Lists don’t win games in KoW, though, so the term and it’s connotations don’t seem to apply.

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Ah, netlisting makes sense. I can dig that term. But agreed, there are so many decisions to be made that a list alone doesn’t cut it. Nothing beats experience, but that’s been my experience with most games.

And yeah, while Rob and I are pretty far apart on the competitive gradient, we had a good chat ahead of the game to get the most out of the it for us, and I was able to give Rob and his Halflings a good game, which was gratifying. We should have one more practice game coming up next weekend.

Battle 132
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…but as practice for the practice game, I managed to sneak in one game this last weekend, so I could refamiliarize myself with the Kingdoms of Men.

Battle 132 was Kingdoms of Men (flying characters and combined arms) vs Northern Alliance (Ice Elementals and Frostclaws) in Protect and Raze.

This match-up goes all the way back to our first games of 3rd Edition together, and both armies have gotten new toys and come a very long way since. The Ice Elementals traumatized me way way back, showing me the perils of just checkerboarding infantry, and the more recent Frostclaws have proven equally powerful and versatile as well. I resolved to deploy back and play conservatively.

  • Wizards on Pegasi were indeed very strong for scenario play, and were particularly strong here as my opponent couldn’t really prioritize targeting them with anything. A la carte spells are nice and while the damage they dealt was minimal, Lightning Bolt worked with all the shooting in this list , and had some clutch results too. Wind Blast could be fun as well for this style of combined arms list, though probably harder to use well.
  • Triple flying Generals was strong as well, as multiple fliers tend to be. I didn’t really get to use them as hammers with crazy multi-charges, but they worked well to pressure and instigate and had a decent time of it.
  • I ran a Knight horde with the Brew of Strength, which was very expensive for my tastes, but really performed well and even earned its points back. It was a great pressure piece to slow things down so my shooting elements could play the odds and eventually removes some units.
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Great game! Especially for the Mans :wink:

Strong Mans list, without being the usual beast cav spam I’ll probably run into at Masters in a couple weeks :stuck_out_tongue:

A Thing: Isn’t that a chariot regiment, base-wise? Chariot hordes are awkwardly wide and that little guy looks downright usable!

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Well… boogers.

You are totally correct – I did not have the right-sized unit and we completely missed that. Probably a good thing for karma that I got a little gummed up and delayed out there! Chariots are weird. Reading your comment I was like, oops, yeah, they should have another rank, but nope, I’m somehow even doubly wrong here, and hordes are still just one rank, but a stunning 200mm across with 4 Chariot models. I hobbied them all up a while back, but I guess I have mostly just run troops so far, and never actually tested the unit out at all the unit sizes. Alright, adding Chariots back on my list to test out some more! Thanks for pointing this out!

Yeah, I’m intrigued to see what Trevor distills for lists for US Masters. The flying Beast Cavalry seem rather popular these days. They are a little too competitive and flashy for my tastes, but I have one more Masters practice game scheduled with Rob this coming weekend, with me proxying some. I won’t have an optimized list, but we’ll see how it goes. Looks like the KoM can field a nice strong list, but at a glance the Order of the Green Lady has a lot of strong flying options as well.

And since we often highlight design ideas in this thread… I wish Mantic was a little braver when messing around with Fly. I definitely like that some units don’t get Nimble, but messing around with Speed is definitely something they could be adjusting. To my (limited) knowledge just about everything that has Fly is Speed 10 except the Undead Wights, who lag behind at Speed 7. I feel like there is plenty of design space to be exploring here…

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Ask, and you shall receive: US Masters 2025 Meta Preview: Dwarf Surge, Abyss Rise, and Artefacts Rewritten - Kings of War Data Analytics | Data & Dice Blog

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