I painted up the TK set this month (photos here!) in preparation for my trip to the UK last week, where I’d be playing my first games with my family at my brother’s wedding. Everything arrived safely and I managed to squeak in games against all the armies we dragged out to the English countryside:
Twilight Kin vs Forces of the Abyss (The Patrol)
The Berserkers are fairly easily dispatched by Impalers (lowest Nv in the army and ironically not very fighty), but the Nagarri tanks the Mutants thanks to 4+ regen and the Lower Abyssals dominate everything they fight with a combination of many CS1 attaks, a decent Nv, and amazing regen dice. The Cardinal and the Lower Abyssals combo-charge my boat to death and mulch the Mutants and my early lead falls away when my nephew drops the Impaler with the Cardinal (one of the rare CS2 attakers in the game) and only Lathiel is left. Loss for the TK.
Twilight Kin vs Goblins (Lion’s Den)
Grunk opens the game by blasting 8 damage into Lathiel (!!), forcing me to hide her and keep the -1 to shooting command on all game. My dice are utter garbage in return and I kill nothing all game, while the Mincer’s huge Nv (14 +1 for each Goblin within 6") keeps it plowing into the Impalers until its CS2 gets the job done. Meanwhile the Mutants and boat are dragged down by Goblins with higher Nv (and regen!) and far better dice. Loss for the TK.
Twilight Kin vs Basileans (The Patrol)
The Basileans shock me with their raw defensive tech (De 4-5+ across the board, can add +1 De on command, and high Nv on everybody, including 16 on the cavalry), against which my severely mediocre offensive stats have nothing. I manage to remove the horrific shooting of the Crossbows with a janky 10 into 10 rout from Lathiel, but otherwise the spooky elves are once again dismantled. I eventually pour everything into the cav (who are also US3!!) but get absolutely nowhere. Loss for the TK.
So! Despite all the losing, I was impressed with the game, in how different it is from Kings and how assertive you need to be, with progressive scoring happening Round 1 and armies only 14" apart from each other. I actually think all my Kings experience was a real detriment - nothing at all is chaff, and combats that you don’t win result in the chargee being pushed back 2", leading to flank after flank after flank for me (especially my boat, which died to a flank in every game).
I’m sure there are some factions who are better than others (Goblins seem quite good but are also hampered depending on if you want to shoot with Grunk or have him support the army; Basileans were extremely tough for me defense-wise; Abyssals seemed like the worst of the three but the Lower Abyssals were far better than my KOW bias told me) but I’m not ready to put my loses down to imbalance. TK are ultimately elves, so overall weak defensively, however my dice were truely garbage (I did 1-2 damage every combat, always, forever, no matter how many dice on 3+ with elite I had) and in a skirmish game (or I guess small scale RNF?) there’s not much room for dice variance before it’s lights out. Especially when sticking a combat means no reform, means getting flanked and decimated.
Would I play it a game? I mean, sure, I painted a crew and don’t expect to paint a KOW army of TK! But I do think my experience with Kings makes me actively bad at Champs 