G’day Goonhammer readers! Kings of War has been growing and evolving over the last decade, and there’s something on the wind that speaks of incoming change, whether it be in another Clash of Kings book, or a whole new edition. Since the third edition of Kings of War was released, Mantic has released a number of other games, all with unique wargaming innovations.

Whether it’s the simplicity of Deadzone, the smooth gameplay of Firefight, or the streamlining in Kings of War Champions, there’s a lot of reasons to think that Kings of War has some exciting developments in the near-ish future! Read on, dear reader, for our conjecture regarding our top picks for the future of Kings of War.

Professional Army Building

The current system of army building is based on the ability of units to “unlock” access to other units. Take regiments, hordes and legions of one unit to then add a certain number of specific types of units that otherwise cannot be taken – titans, monsters, war engines, and heroes for example. The size (regiment, horde, legion) versus type (infantry, large infantry, chariots, cavalry) all dictates how many of these “locked” units are “unlocked”.

It is a system that is both simple and complex. Take a few hordes of something and unlock nearly all the units you need! But it’s an all or nothing approach. When a unit is really good in an army, there’s only a few ways to restrict access to it. Either the unit is limited to being a Living Legend, in which case only one can be taken, or it is made Irregular (denoted by an asterisk in the army builder and army lists). Irregular units come under the umbrella of units requiring unlocking, which isn’t that much of a hindrance. Pop in a few hordes of infantry and you can fill up on nearly anything in the army list.

Why all this fuss about how armies should be built? Don’t we all just want to build armies how we like? If you want an army of 100% Elohi (the vengeful angels of Pannithor), should you not be entitled to do so? 

Everyone will have a different opinion on this, but when it comes to rank and flank gaming specifically, many (including us) will argue that armies need to incorporate certain elements to evoke the feeling of a mass battle. This, at a bare minimum, means that infantry need to feature in the army. 

This isn’t a problem unique to Kings of War, there are mechanisms in all rank and flank games that incentivize the use of “core” units, and none are perfect. We hope that for the next versions of Kings of War this concept is revisited to give more nuance to the system. 

We have a few ideas that certainly weren’t stolen from anyone else:

• Certain heroes unlock certain powerful units. One Ur-Elohi to get up to two hordes of Elohi, one Lich King to get up to two hordes of Wights. It’s a thematic tax to get the spicy stuff, although it still feels a bit clunky.

• Army list building from Mantic’s Firefight. While Kings of War Core units can unlock more stuff if they’re bigger, Firefight requires at least one Troop unit to unlock each Command or Specialist unit, and two Troop units to unlock a Support unit. This innately pushes Troops to be the main part of the army.

• Percentages on Unit Types. It’s not very elegant, but a minimum percentage of the army having to be Core will work. It’s worked to varying degrees in Warhammer, so why not here?

What to Do with Withdraw

A quirk in base sizes, whereby unit bases are measured in metric and actual distances in game in imperial, gives some units an extremely powerful option. If a unit meets the following criteria in terms of base size:

1 inch > (Base Width – Base Depth) 2

Then that unit can Withdraw from combat one inch, turn 90°, and its base doesn’t overlap the opponent’s unit, it can charge off into another unit, provided it still meets the usual requirements for a charge. If the unit is Nimble, it can do this to completely bypass one unit and charge another behind, even without the one inch Withdraw move. If not Nimble, then units can still do this to charge enemy units next to them, potentially hitting an unforeseen flank.

This is a very powerful ability, letting you free up room for a fresh charge, hit a unit the opponent thought was safe, or block line of sight for another of your opponents units. In fact, this ability is strong enough that Withdraw is an optional advanced rule, and is not even used in some parts of the world. There’s arguments for and against its implementation in the game, some insist it adds tactical depth, others say that it was never accounted for.

Given this ability’s strength, it was likely due to a quirk in the metric to imperial conversions, not a deliberate part of the game’s design. The points costing for units doesn’t appear to take into account units that can and cannot do this, so should it stay at all? Yet, there is something fun about getting around the opponent with particularly nimble units.

The real issue is that for new players to the game, this is more often than not a dissuading mechanic of the game. If we’re going into a new phase of Kings of War, we want to bring new people in, and we have to think about how some things might just not be fun. Sure, new players can learn about this facet of the game and get better at working with it, but if they don’t persist in playing it won’t matter anyway.

Here are our rather compromising suggestions:

• Only the square-based units can do it. Square shaped units such as 50 x 50 mm can do this without Withdraw, if Withdraw is gone then it will be the super-power solely of the squares.

• Replace Withdraw with the pushing back of the enemy unit. Like how Kings of War once was in earlier editions, and Kings of War Champions is now, the pushing back of units by an inch is almost the same thing as a Withdraw. The difference is, it’s more thematic and instantly obvious in the rules as to what it can do.

• Make Withdraw a Command Order. Whether or not Command Orders are here to stay, Withdraw could be an ability that can only come about when a unit is directly ordered to do so.

• Make Withdraw a Special Rule. The Withdraw mechanic could be something only select units can do, those with the martial aptitude or an innate evasiveness, such as Reborn Legionaries or Knuckers, respectively.

  

Time for a D8?

Now the next thing on our wishlist is D8’s as the maindice in Kings. For those that don’t play Mantic’s other games, the eight-sided die (D8) is the main die used in Firefight and Deadzone, and a new edition would be the perfect time to bring them into Kings.

It’s always hard to get a realistic representation of unit statistics with just a D6, especially in a game that features such a wide variety of unit types. When you’ve got everything from literal squirrels, to knights, to angels, demons, elementals and more, and you have to try to fit those stat blocks on a D6 in a way that feels natural, it’s just not happening. Take almost all the Elf units and tell us how they are only one point more defensive than Woodland Critters!

The nuance of the D8 system doesn’t just affect stats of units, but also the impact of modifiers. It can mean taking a single -1 penalty for cover doesn’t represent such a huge drop off in accuracy. Similarly, the Brew of Sharpness’ granting of +1 Melee is no longer as powerful, but still useful.

Now, it’s probably not perfect on D8’s either, but any addition of granularity to stat blocks is welcome. And switching dice doesn’t mean everything has to make a perfect crossover, in terms of number of dice. A new edition would be the perfect time to revamp unit statistics, so we can decide to not give some units 30+ attacks, and save our comrades with small hands the pain of cramming too many pointy dice in such a small place.

The likelihood of this happening in the immediate future is low, as it would require a complete reset of the game’s numbers. Firefight could do it because there were less than ten factions, whereas Kings of War is pushing 28 factions (Noble Undead don’t count), making such sweeping changes to the whole system laborious to implement in a timely manner. Don’t believe us? Read on.

Armies, Armies Everywhere

Kings of War has one of the largest arrays of factions to choose from of any wargame, and while the staggering variety can be a veritable playground for some hobbyists, for others it can be just needless filler. While the identities and playstyles of many factions overlap, some would argue that keeping this many factions doesn’t cost anything, just space on the Mantic Companion or a few pages in a book. We would argue that there is a cost, and it is at the expense of future innovation in Kings of War.

The identities of many of these factions overlap, as do their playstyles, building in a level of redundancy that perhaps isn’t helpful when it makes the maintenance of the game so taxing on a volunteer rules committee. Something like changing the whole game over to D8s would require a huge effort to not only figure out the new stats for every unit in the game across 28 factions, but then to test these new stats in a meaningful way would be impossible.

There’s 28 factions with a total of 799 units. If the whole ruleset were to be changed and it would take 30 minutes to change each unit, it would take just under 400 hours of work. A rules committee of 5 members working full-time on this would take 10 days just to do that. That’s a bit of a tall order for a team of volunteers.

Additionally, there are only so many times you can make a unit that is “Trolls, but with special rule X”. While it is a great shorthand to both new and old players, easing the raw amount of stats that players need to know, it can come at a cost in flavor. 

Now, we both quite like the Troll example. Having Trolls, Forest Trolls, Snow Trolls and Zombie Trolls, as well as the other “not-quite Trolls” (Butchers as Nightstalker Trolls, Nightmares as Ratkin Trolls). Having many similarly styled units makes it easy to internalize how they work, and if you don’t get many games in, this can be a huge blessing, and it contributes to the “simple to learn, hard to master” reputation of Kings of War. But how many Trolls is too many? On the board, the answer is up to you. In the game as a whole, when does fun and flavourful slip into generic and bland?

Finally, there’s the growth of the Kings of War brand. A game needs new stuff to be exciting, and while all us old gamers get grumpy at change, its the new stuff that draws completely new people in. At this point, a new faction has very little design space in which to differentiate itself. Less factions means more room for new things.

How can we ease up on the sheer size of the roster? Here’s some ideas:

• Remove some factions. Just straight up get rid of them, no replacements, no nothing. Focus developer time on the important ones. This would make a lot of people very angry, and would be widely regarded as a bad move (apologies to Douglas Adams).
• Formalize how Allies work. There’s no need for Ratkin Slaves if Ratkin and Abyssal Dwarfs could ally. Ideally, this would involve certain army building restrictions and maybe even lead to certain buffs (such as the whole Abyssal Dwarfs charging through Ratkin units!).
• Certain heroes unlock subfactions. You want to play Varangur? Well, you’ll have to take Kruufnir or Magnilde in a Northern Alliance list if you want access to Varangur units. We’re not too far off this now, as this is how Noble Undead functions. 

Reorder Command Orders

Command Dice were introduced to Kings of War a little controversially last Clash of Kings update. Since then we’ve all had a bit of time to play around with Command Orders, but the controversy has stuck around. Mainly, some people don’t like adding more randomness to the game, some people don’t like the balance between Faction-specific Command Orders, others don’t like the flavor of the current Command Orders, and some feel that the whole command system feels tacked on.

Well, what if we told you Mantic has another game system, built to include commands from the ground up, that won “Best Miniature Wargame Of 2022” from the OnTableTop Industry Awards.

Yes, it’s Firefight. Guys, just bring over the Command System from Firefight, and theme it to Kings of War. That’s all that needs to happen here.

For those unfamiliar with Firefight, there are already a lot of similarities with Kings of War’s Command Orders mechanic. At the start of each round of Firefight, players roll their three generic Command Dice, plus extra dice generated by their units. The pips you get can be spent on orders. But there are some important differences. Your heroes (Command units) are stuck with the dice they generate, there’s no buying extra dice. If you want more dice, bring more heroes. Each hero also brings its own Command Order, which is the only way to access that ability. The real important part here, is that the unit receiving commands has to be within range of a unit that gives commands to actually use it.

So what does this mean for Kings of War?

• Faction-specific Command Orders come from heroes. If you want to give Thunderous Charge (+1) to your Halflings, then the Muster Captain has to be within 6” to shout it at them. If he routs, the order is gone.

• Dice only come from heroes. Heroes generate the extra dice. That’s it. Can be used to help buff more “useless” heroes by giving them a higher value Command Dice and an interesting Command Order.

• Commands feel less like magic and more like tactical orders. When a buff can be implemented to any unit on the battlefield, it feels more like some magic than a general assigning some profound order. Centering the whole system on the heroes separates the mechanic from the magic system that is already present.

Obviously such a change requires a complete reworking of the game, as all the heroes would be different in their value. This is likely only going to happen with an edition change, but if Command Orders are to stick around, this is how we would like to see them implemented.

A Bright Future

Regardless of the accuracy of our predictions, or if any of our suggestions will be taken up (Mantic reads this, right?), we are confident that the game is only going to get better. Kings of War Champions has opened up a completely new way to get into rank and flank wargaming. If the game is successful, it will no doubt influence the wider Kings of War game. A lot has happened in the wargaming world since Kings of War third edition was launched, so an update is definitely due. Until then, we will be polishing off our armies and waiting to see the lay of the lend towards the end of this year.

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