Is Kings of War 'Warhammer light' after all!?

[Wolflord Havoc]

In the games of KOW we have played I have seen Tactics used that would never work in WHFB.

Me and my opponents have used feints, kept units in reserve (and I mean behind the main defensive line not off board), Columns of units in the attack, cheap screening units to disrupt the enemy advance. Stuff you would dare not use in WHFB as the game mechanics were too complicated and clunky!

In all games we have played generally the better tactics have paid off, although outrageous dice rolls have changed the fortunes in some games (but thats true for any game involving dice).

I have not lost or won a game of KOW due to 'technicalities' (i.e. I thought I could make a manouver or an attack and it turned out I couldn't) sadly the same is not true of WHFB.

[Dav0r]

I've been lucky enough to recently play a KoW tournament with a lot of games. My first tought after that was this game is very densely tactical.
To play well, you have to master the placement of all your units, how they will interact with others, and so on.
Since those games I'm also convinced that only a 'light' (this term is not very appropriate but you know the idea) ruleset allows that : the place not taken by the rules is now available for true tactics (and therefore, a game strategy according to the objectives).

[pierowmaniac]

Personally I don't think Warhammers any more tactical than KOW or for that matter Chess.
The Warhammer tactics the OP mentions are mainly discussions on army choice and combos.
In real battles the general usually has to win with what he's got and the real tactical geniuses of history are those that generally understood when to fight and when to manoeuvre away from the enemy to pick a battle field that suited the units they had, whilst giving the enemy some sort of disadvantage.
And has someone else mentioned, the core goal of any attack is to turn a flank, thats true from the times of Egypt v Hittites right up till at least the American civil war, I've no real knowledge of WW1 or WW2 battles but would guess not much changed either.

So in a nutshell you have a rule system that does what it needs too and your tactics are no different from any other good wargame.

[Hellebore]

I think that's only true if the game allows you to actually use those tactics.

8th ed reduced any manoeuvre tactics you could use and the increased number of powerful spells and creatures means that tactics around those are simple - use them on something and kill it.

Powerful units require little tactical acumen because they have a much wider usable range. eg that tomb king monster can be used effectively against most units in the game, so it requires very little tactical thought to use, you just point it at a unit and let it go. The only time choice comes in is when there are other uber units around that could hurt the monster.

Hellebore

[Idle Scholar]

Also bear in mind that a lot of rules were removed by describing units as single objects rather than a collection of individual models.

[kyussinchains]

I'll echo the majority and say that tactics wise, KoW is very deep, there is still a list building element, however the streamlined lists typically mean that fewer decisions need to be made as each unit has a typical niche on the field and a defined role to play, there is far less overlap which means there doesn't need to be the same level of discussion over unit selection in KoW as there is in WFB.

most of the general gameplay principles are the same, you still want to attack flanks, you still want to draw charges, you still want to take lone characters out where possible, you still want to gang up and break units quickly..... but who discusses those tactics for WFB? perhaps the forum should be renamed 'tricks of the trade' where players can share their latest unit, magic item and spell combos and other tricks.....

[The Salmon Lord]

To me it feels much closer the warhammer I played as a kid in the 80s than modern Warhammer. No stupid magic weapon combos, no special mega rules or characters, you dont know about unless you buy the specific army book. But most of all the tactics take place ON THE TABLE, not with a pen and paper at army selection time, or reading the rule book.

Essentially it it suits two types of play modern Warhammer doesnt.

1. Just grab some toy soldiers and have a game with your mate. "Here borrow my dwarves its about the same points as my undead" You cant do that with Warhammer really.

2. Big spectacles that you can actually play in two days. Look at the amazing picture at the back of the new Warhammer book of the Battle of Volganof. Sorry but you just cant play that battle with GW rules. It would take weeks. The actual tactics of a large scale battle such as having whole groups of regiments in reserve, having multiple theatres etc gets totally lost in the minutiae of combat.

[Commissar Vaughn]

2. Big spectacles that you can actually play in two days. Look at the amazing picture at the back of the new Warhammer book of the Battle of Volganof. Sorry but you just cant play that battle with GW rules. It would take weeks. The actual tactics of a large scale battle such as having whole groups of regiments in reserve, having multiple theatres etc gets totally lost in the minutiae of combat.

QFT > GW gets BIG GAMES so utterly wrong it beggers belief (ok, slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean) . They insist on having more rules and more gimmicks and more useless junk to remember when really you want less becouse so theres so much ordinary stuff to remember. Im convinced that rules like 40k Apocalypse arent designed for big games : theyre designed for ordinary sized games using big models.
The first and only time I played apocalypse my ally and I deployed our Imperial Guard: a proper army of about 5-600 infantry and aprox 50 tanks. Not a single flyer, superheavy or titan or "apocalypse rule heavy gimmick" in sight. Our opponent deployed an army that was its polar opposite: Tricked out "super hero squads" made entirely of Space Marine chapter masters and the like. Despite the huge disparity in numbers we actually had several thousand points less and were allowed "strategems" (i.e more rules to remember) to make up for it. We were allowed even more of these gimmicks simply for having lots of infantry and tanks (one for every three units!). We perused the list of Guard gimmicks and decided they were a waste of time though we did note that we could have fortified the entirety of our 18foot wide board....twice.
Now, our turns took a long time for obvious reasons, but despite having a vastly smaller army our opponents took nearly as long, simply becouse of all the extra rules that had to be dealt with. Fortunatly we only had to play 3 turns becouse after that we ran out of targets .

1 game: 2 morals:-

1) When it comes to rules, especially "special" rules, less is more.
2) Gimmicks and toys are all very well but there is no substitute for outgunning your opponent 6 to 1.

8th ed reduced any manoeuvre tactics you could use and the increased number of powerful spells and creatures means that tactics around those are simple - use them on something and kill it.

Not quite convinced of this: I doubt that KOW is any deeper, tactically than
warhammer, even in 8th. Ive played numerous wargames and to be honest theyre all at the same level in that respect: This is becouse the basic element of the wargame (i.e Units that can move and manouver themsleves) are present in all wargames.

What differs is execution: In warhammer you can forget about feigned flights, refused flanks and reverse slope defences (despite the fact thats its all dooable ) simply becouse you can "deathstar" [insert similar list and selection based gimmick here as appropriate] on some level. It suddenly makes the other stuff pretty unneccessary and eventually ignored, except by those of us who refuse to deathstar and need to work our "real" tactics very hard to make up for it.

Stuff you would dare not use in WHFB as the game mechanics were too complicated and clunky!

And theres the rub: In WH for some bizzare reason the plodding infantryman is often unable to walk the width of his own unit in a single turn. Same in 40k (though not as obvious with the loose formations) and in deed all WH based games: I dont know how this works in KOW but I bet its more like Hail Ceaser or Black Powder or Warmaster: Where a model can get around a hell of a lot quicker, anything up to 18" a turn with HC. And this is playing a game on the same table as WH, using the same sized models in similar settings (ancient/medieval).

Its like night and day, it really is. And this added speed makes such a difference: It suddenly makes a huge swathe of things possible. You can misdirect your enemy, redeploying suddenly, or making swift flank marches to surprise him, and you can now execute those strategys and you wont die of old age before you get to see the result!

Me and my opponents have used feints, kept units in reserve (and I mean behind the main defensive line not off board), Columns of units in the attack, cheap screening units to disrupt the enemy advance.

Thats exactly how I play wh8th, and am the advocate of the reserve ("you'll wish you had one later!") and I would argue that 8th has made things a little easier than in the past, but its still horrendously slow:
An attempt to turn the flank takes 2-3 turns to come into contact: another 1-2 turns to actually break through, then you can finally turn to face the next unit along and prepare to roll the line...only you cant, becouse that was turn 6 and the game just ended.

I believe warhammer doesnt need endless rewrites to its magic and gimmicks and stuff: it needs one good change to its movement phase, a proper command and control mechanism, becouse as it stands at the moment my romano british spearmen can manouver twice as fast as my Bretonnian Knights...

[mattjgilbert]

Every year we try and have a big day-long game of either 40K or WHFB using the full 12x4 table in my games room. With 40K we just about manage to get a vague conclusion. With WHFB we have no chance.

This year we decided on a 5000 point per side KoW game. We played about 7 or 8 turns (per side) and came to a conclusion in about 5 hours of actual game play (excluding breaks for lunch etc.). It felt great to go from a table swamped with models and massive armies through to a conclusion in so little time compared to what we experienced before. We had a blast and didn't feel we'd missed out on anything - on the contrary, the game was far more fulfilling than other we have played. We'll certainly be doing this again!

[scarletsquig]

@Salmon Lord - Great post, that sums up te main things I like about KoW too... big games, good tactics, no messing around for hours trying to figure out magic item combos, optimal unit sizes etc.

[The Devourer]

There is a lack of tactics for 2 reasons:
Less people play KoW.
Tactics aren't so set.

In a game of WHFB you can tell what tactics will be useful before they even deploy just by looking at which armies are being used. This isn't the case in KoW, the tactics depend more on the situation as much as the armies. In Warhammer there is a lot of Rock/Paper/Scissors. You use one type of unit to beat another e.g. fast small cc on warmachines or big cheap units to tarpit small elite units. You can't do this in KoW. You can't take unit X in the knowledge that it will be certain to kill horde units ect.. Nothing is immune to damage from another unit. A lot of warhammer tactic articles are just guides on how to build a list that includes a unit to cover each role. This wouldn't work in KoW. While unit X may be good against horde units you have to plan what you will do or the horde unit will win.

[Verm1s]

@Salmon Lord - Great post, that sums up te main things I like about KoW too... big games, good tactics, no messing around for hours trying to figure out magic item combos, optimal unit sizes etc.

I've been lurking about this board for the last couple of weeks, and those are the reasons I'm getting interested in KoW too. Today I realised most of 'em added up to one great, joyous, liberating point:

No Mathammer.

[Dread_Kennedy]

Its neat to see that Kings of War is still building the consensus of how the game is played, house rules, and other little bumps that we forgive smaller companies for. Warhammer has 30 some years of people discussing it, playing it and changing the game from its RPG roots. KOW has the advantage of being able to define itself without causing friction with the player base, as it is still developing. GWs interactions with fans can seem like a battleship running into a pier.

[bert n ernie]

You know, I don't think Warhammer is as bad as is being implied here.
40k on the other hand...

I think that while warhammer isn't balanced, the variety of armies meant that you needed to build an army that could cope with such variety. I think a reason that KoW hasn't got as much tactical discussion is that (from my experience) the variety of armies is only beginning to grow.
I haven't heard of players bringing almost purely cav armies (or other themes). Perhaps this is in recognition of the rock paper scissors nature of such armies. That nature in warhammer means that there is more room for discussing tactics in the context of 'how does this army beat that army?'
I think that warhammer is a good fun game, and the addition of the magic phase (despite it's drawbacks) brings an additional element to it.

Personally I think KoW is a better game for tournament play, or large games. I like both of them though. I don't think I can completely give up my customisable characters.
However it seems that with the Warpath rules mantic might be heading that route.

[Dread_Kennedy]

Your point about themed armies is very true, I hadn't thought of that. Most armies I've seen so far have taken a broad selection of choices, and most have been fairly conventional undead armies. Dwarf and Elf armies seem less prevalent (at least in project logs and such... undead seem much more popular).

The army lists and their diversity in Warhammer do lend to a lot of room for modelling, experimenting and such. It makes for a lot of other images to bring to an army, rather than the stock models. I look forward to having that kind of choice when I pick a Kings of War army... perhaps even moreso. Example: take an orc army, and take a contingent of ghouls as "half orcs" using the allies rules. "Allies" is a feature I want to make full use of.

[Demetrio]

People on the internet hate on the Elves models for some reason. I quite like them.


And I feel people are not taking the advantage that differently from Warhammer Fantasy, there is more support for mixed armies. I intend doing a Dwarf/Elven/Human alliance.

[lord marcus]

People on the internet hate on the Elves models for some reason. I quite like them.


And I feel people are not taking the advantage that differently from Warhammer Fantasy, there is more support for mixed armies. I intend doing a Dwarf/Elven/Human alliance.

+1 for the elf sentiments

[Neldoreth]

In all games we have played generally the better tactics have paid off, although outrageous dice rolls have changed the fortunes in some games (but thats true for any game involving dice).

I would agree strongly with this. For me, especially, tactics are more important than dice, rule technicalities, and especially list building! No longer can someone with the time and audacity to build an outrageous list simply win a game because of their army composition!

n.

[dominic_star]

I like that the elves are slender and proportioned well but not the armour aesthetic. I very much look forward to some wood elves.

[Marlow]

I would agree strongly with this. For me, especially, tactics are more important than dice, rule technicalities, and especially list building! No longer can someone with the time and audacity to build an outrageous list simply win a game because of their army composition!

n.

I agree. WHFB just seems too random. I am working on getting friends to try KoW and see what they think.