The new(ish) kid on the block – The d6 of why you should try Kings of War

So inspired by the lovely folks over at Beasts of War I wanted to put up a blog post about Kings of War. This was an interesting article to try and write – I had fulling intednedn to write about the Vassel League of Malifuax that I have been playing about this week but I felt like I wanted to a challenge. Full disclaimers - Mantic are one of my favourite companies out in the market, I just like the way that they do business!

Mantic have a few games on the market now – the leading game by some distance is DreadBall which despite outwards appearances is not Blood Ball in space. Yes it’s a sports miniatures game with fantasy races but it’s at that point that the two games agree to go their separate ways. Mantic recently finished a hugely successful kick-starter of Dead Zone which will hit the stores at the end of 2013 and they hope will see a similar pick up of interest. Seeing as there is already one fan pod cast out for the game they are probably not likely to be proved wrong!

However it all started with Kings of War. Both the first range of miniature’s that the put out (as you can see from the now slightly dated looking elves) and the first kick starter (which I backed despite already having a massive Mantic Undead army).

You can scoot over to Beasts of War to see some wonderful coverage about the models, background and see a 1^st game in progress (which proves just how fast and fun the game can be). If you’re not sure about looking at it here are 6 great reasons that you should give Kings of War a look:

1.       Growing from good to great – it’s a new system and has had a few supporting books realised for it already adding new item and armies to the growing world. The way that Mantic are building the game it will continue to grow and offer challenges building to be one of the best games available in the market today. Mantic are demonstrating a “build it and they will come attitude” and are keeping building to game to bring people on board.

2.       Values for money – just take a look at the basic purchase to see that you get a good return for your price. In a market that is increasingly pushing towards treating the plastic crack that we all know and love to be a luxury item it’s nice to know that when my son wants to start an army I won’t need to sell an organ to finance it. 

3.       An open modelling system – due to the fact that the size of all the units have a “foot print” you can really make each unit look very dynamic. I’ve seen some wonderful “counts as” armies as well as being able to work with other companies models (such as Avatars or War). It’s a lovely mass battle system to try out if you would like to combine models from multiple manufactures into an army.

4.       Tournament play – I don’t have enough time to speak about the pros and cons of tournament play today, however the fact Kings of War is aimed for tournament play offers 2 advantages for any gamer. Firstly it tries to make all of the armies balanced so you don’t need to worry about your mate turning up with the newest army list and smashing you into the ground because the company wants to sell more plastic. Secondly it’s built to play in under two hours, so that you can get a game in an evening and then kick back and discuss the battle with your mate.

5.       Easy to learn, tough to master – the game is pretty easy to pick up and learn. With the way units operate with each other – such as moving through units and special rules there is still a lot of space for tactics. There are some areas Mantic could help the community with such as unit cards and developing some more characterful rules but with luck these will come in time.

6.       Initial Investment - You don’t need to invest any money into the game to start. The rules are free from the Mantic website as are the army lists. Happen to have a fantasy army sitting around that isn’t seen as much play as it used to due to a new rule set? Then why not fit it into the KoW rules and see how it plays!

So there are my d6 points of why to give Kings of War a try – at some point I would like to put up my d6 things I hope to see from the system in the future.