When I started collecting kings of war in 2017, they had the forces of good, forces neutral, and forces of evil. Honestly it was a breath of fresh air as of the last 10-20 years have been almost nothing but morally grey in stories and in fantasy in general. I think that does both a disservice to hero armies, AND evil armies. Let’s talk shop for a hot minute.
In Warhammer fantasy battles where a lot of this fandom is from; we knew the darker take on that setting. Warhammer was a story of a grim universe where it took down the idea of being heroes or good people, that if fantasy wars actually happened in like what were described in Tolkien, Martin, or Moorcock they would be cataclysmic and terrible. It was an original take, at the time. In the 80s it was far more new and fresh, but since that time in the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s; all we’ve had was grimmer and darker stories in most fantasy.
Your hero can have flaws, but having flaws isn’t the same thing as equating to a villain from another perspective is just kind of laughable. Sure, the Baseilans can be repressive as a religious structure, dwarves are under a dubious empire with a current high king that’s more than politically devious and as a whole they can be stoic unempathetic and mistrusting, and the elves can be seclusive and melancholic, relenting constantly about how they once almost caused the apocalypse; but at the end of the day they’re playing on the same team trying to keep their people and nations from dying out against a tide of literal evil. You can have flaws and still be good, your armies can be flawed and still fight for the right things which is why these were “the forces of good” under the first green 3rd edition rulebook. Now let’s look at what armies they’re usually pitted against.
The forces of good often are mostly dealing with the literal forces of Satan, hordes of the risen dead, an army of Egyptians hell bent on annihilating all life in existence, and monsters, orcs, goblins, and literal living killer nightmares that are creations of the god of fear. Are you going to tell me that the nightstalkers have some sympathetic past? or that there is some moral justification about the Empire of Dust trying to murder kill everyone who’s ever existed? The abyssal dwarves were cool because they were an evil version of the dwarves. If you make them sympathetic and misunderstood that kind of undoes what makes the army attractive to collect and play. When people want to play a villain, let us play villains. the undead bloodsucking zombies shouldn’t have some deep tragic backstory, they should be a scary army of zombies.
This also lands me at our last major party the neutral forces. They were an interesting faction brought about neither being the bad guy nor the good guy. If the player wanted to pick a neutral faction there was a ton of options from the forces of nature, the trident realms, leagues of rhodia, kom, salamanders, the herd, halfings, etc. This was a great choice for people who didn’t want to be good guys or bad guys. Having these 3 options of good, neutral, or evil kind of solved things between having grey morality and black and white morality in the story.
I didn’t switch to kings of war from warhammer just because it was cheaper. It was also about how different the two settings were. I hope mantic doesn’t go off in a direction that makes the interesting world of Pannithor too similar to warhammer. I like it’s identity as is. I know that was a really spicy take and i’m pretty sure i’ll be the odd one out, but let me hear what you all think.
In your text you describe some ‘grey morality’ that exists and you seem to be fine with it or like it even.