The Elements of Harmony: A My Little Pony army list for Kings of War

[scarletsquig]

Mantic is very open about the use of miniatures made by other manufacturers, so I decided to create a set of rules which are suitable for a range of pre-painted plastic miniatures produced by Hasbro for use in the fantasy setting of Equestria.

The general idea is to create a light-hearted way of making the game appeal to friends, family members or significant others who may have been turned away by the themes of war and violence inherent to the fantasy genre.

This is my first fan-made army list, so any thoughts on design or balance would be greatly appreciated! If successful, I could look at creating an opposing list to represent antagonists such as the chaos god Discord, along with the various mythological creatures that appear in the show (everything from hydras to cockatrice).

Overall, the list is intended to function as a 1500-point list comprised of the mane 6 ponies, with each individually mounted on whatever base is suitable for the miniatures.

Army Special Rule: Friendship is Magic

Ponies within 6" of any other pony benefit from
the Inspiring! special rule.

Units

Twilight Sparkle (Cavalry, 250 points)
Good variety of magic attacks.

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De At  Ne
    1     8  6+ -  5+ 10 15/17

Special Rules: Individual, Zap! (20), Breath Attack (30)

Rarity (Cavalry, 250 points)
Less magical, more fabulous.

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De At  Ne
    1     8  6+ -  5+ 10 15/17

Special Rules: Individual, Zap! (15), Elite, Very Inspiring

Rainbow Dash (Cavalry, 250 points)
Fast, with a sonic rainboom ranged attack.

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De At  Ne
    1     12 5+ 3+ 4+ 10 14/16

Special Rules: Individual, Fly, 
Blast (d6), Range 12", Headstrong

Fluttershy (Cavalry, 250 points)
Non-combatant healer.

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De At  Ne
    1     8  -  -  3+  - 11/13

Special Rules: Individual, Fly, Heal (20), Yellow-bellied

Applejack (Cavalry, 250 points)
Sturdy, strong melee attacks, can rapid-fire apples.

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De At  Ne
    1     8  4+ 5+ 5+ 20 17/19

Special Rules: Individual, Crushing Strength (2), 
Range 24", Reload!

Pinkie Pie (Cavalry, 250 points)
Utter psycho with a surprise attack.

Unit Size Sp Me Ra De At  Ne
    1     8  4+  - 5+ 30 16/18

Special Rules: Individual, Vicious, Hidden

As for miniatures, I would recommend the mini-pony figures with sculpted hair, as can be seen here. These can be bought from any major UK or US supermarket for around £2 each, with multipacks available.

[therisnosaurus]

I stand in shame before your genius

[Tonny]

Brilliant

[Hellebore]

Overall, the list is intended to function as a 1500-point list comprised of the mane 6 ponies, with each individually mounted on whatever base is suitable for the miniatures.

Was that deliberate?

The only real comment I have is on Rainbow Dash. 12 Speed is I think probably out of the speed range of KoW (I can't think of anything with that high a speed, but if there is no problem), ostensibly 10 being the limit.

However it's Dash's sonic rainbow attack that I think is a tad .... awesome.

If I understand it correctly, Dash has 10 12" ranged Blast attacks that hit on a 3+.

What this means is that at 12" Dash is going to be doing on average (assuming -1 for long range only) 5 hits that do 5d6 damage for an average of 17 damage. That's.... a lot. I'm not sure that many of the other ponies stack up in comparison.

The fact that it's so fast and flies means that the short range won't be much of a problem. It should be able to get in range in a flank (as an individual) every turn and blast a unit to bits.

Hellebore

[sasheep]

Truely amazing.

[mattjgilbert]

Way off on points values but inspired genius nonetheless

[scarletsquig]

Rainbow Dash was tricky to create using the KoW statline, which doesn't cater too well for units that have a big difference between their ranged and melee capabilities.

On the one hand, you have the sonic rainboom, which in the show is roughly equivalent to a tactical nuke, and on the other you have parts where she's doing stuff like kicking a dragon in the face.

Ideally, the rainboom would be represented with an attacks value of 1 and blast (5d6) or whatever, but this would lead to her melee abilities being under-represented.. so I kept the attacks value at 10 and opted for a series of smaller blasts. Still not an ideal solution, but I'm not sure how else to go about doing it without resorting to custom rules.

I should probably check out the damage though...

17 damage isn't quite accurate since you have to both hit and damage with a Blast attack before the d6 roll gets made. So, against a De 5+ unit, that would be about 6 damage. Powerful, but roughly in line with the other ponies. Pinkie Pie was the only one that I suspected might be too powerful, had to tone down her attacks down from 40.

Oh, and I think you might be right that speed caps out at 10 in existing KoW units, but I'm fine with rainbow dash being 20% faster, for fluff reasons.

Way off on points values but inspired genius nonetheless

Aww, I was aiming for balance! Specifically, I tried to compare the units to existing ones where possible... Pinkie Pie was compared to Brock Rider regiments (both are 250 points, statline nearly identical - Pinkie has higher De, and Hidden, but 4 less nerve), and Fluttershy was based on the Green Lady.

If there's anything in particular that I could change to make them more balanced, let me know! Aiming for 250 points on each and would rather balance out their rules rather than raise or lower the points. It's a work in progress!

One thing I have been considering is removing Individual and replacing it with Nimble.

[mattjgilbert]

Zap! (20) is insane for only 250 points. And as already pointed out Rainbow Dash with the ranged attacks needs a rethink too. Your combined pony magic will be taking out a couple of units per turn while fluttershy sits behind them and auto-heals which ever one is picked on in return. I guess the possible downside of the army is the limited number of units. However if they stay together as a group of individuals they are going to be pretty tough to catch and beat.

They might struggle in an objective capturing scenario though

comprised of the mane 6 ponies

I like what you did there

[Darsc Zacal]

My brain just melted a little.

[lord marcus]

And so 4chan has infected us all. long live /B/

[BobtheInquisitor]

Somepony forgot Celestia.

I would love to see this army played at a serious tournament or convention.

[darkPrince010]

So a question on scale: Do these only have the same base as a mounted Hero/Monster (~40x40mm iirc, which would be about right for a ~2" tall plastic model), or is there an option to form them into regiments of some kind?

I imagine the option for a "Friendship Formation [1]," a Regiment of Large Cav made up of specific ponies with an approximation of their combined abilities. Not real familiar with the show, but is there a place for the dragon-kid-thing in the army as well, or regiments of generic ponies?

[scarletsquig]

@matt: Yeah, when you put it like that, it is a tough list to play, since it can ignore its own melee ability and just run around nuking stuff at range. I think I might need to tone down the ranged stuff and boost the melee a little just to make things a little less broken and a little less geared towards forming a battery of ranged firepower.

How about:

- Reduce Twilight's Zap! to (12), and Breath Attack to (20), increase AT to 15.
- Reduce Rarity's Zap! to (8), increase AT to 15.
- Reduce Rainbow Dash's Blast to (d3), increase AT to 15.
- Reduce Fluttershy's heal to (12).

So, small nerf to Rainbow, and a major nerf to the Zapping Unicorns of Doom? I think I'm quite happy with where Applejack and Pinkie Pie are right now, they don't seem especially broken.

@marcus: I don't visit or like 4chan. MLP:FiM is a cool TV show, not a meme, and I enjoy it non-ironically.

@darkprince: Yep, there is! I've been considering adding units to make it a proper list, keeping the named ponies for characters. Large Cav unit types for generic Earth Ponies, Pegasi and Unicorns (the 3 races in the show) could be a good starting point since it would give melee, ranged, and flying units.
I'm not sure if spike or the other pets would fit as individual units, but they could work well as upgrades to the ponies, like the rest of the pets in KoW.

They're currently individuals, so any base (including 40x40) would be fine. Units would go on the same base size as large cavalry, naturally.

Here's a pic I found on another forum to give an idea of scale, they're being used as a warmachine army.. the pinkie pie and rainbow dash models are part of the range that would be best to use, smaller in size, with well-sculpted manes:



@Bob: Celestia seems to be a bigger fan of getting everyone else to do her work for her. I'm not sure where I'd begin with her stats, she'd be about dreadnought-sized compared to the other ponies, and we're talking about a pony with the ability to control the rotation/orbit of her home planet here!

Luna could be more workable, she seems to be much less powerful, and her royal voice definitely counts as a breath attack! There is a suitable model, too.. would have to repaint celestia, but that's no big deal, there's a big community of custom repainters and re-sculptors for the MLP stuff I can use for reference, like this one of luna. It's a hobby which is very similar to our own, there are even people who sell resin casts of their custom mane sculpts as conversion kits for the official models.

And yeah, I'd love to personally take ponies to a tourney, although it would probably have to use counts-as rather than fan-made rules.

[Hellebore]

For a tournament force perhaps an elf force? Using stormwind cavalry for regiments (maybe 6 ponies per regiment, just make the regiment base the right size) and the characters for special charcter ponies (the green lady, lord on dragon for an uber pony etc).

Hellebore

[Sylass]

After more than 10 years here I really thought I've seen it all. Could I have been more wrong?!

[lord marcus]

@ scarlet = I figured, however /B/ has made it into a semi meme.

[jackel]

This reminds me of the smurf army list someone made for Netepic. Scarlet this make me laugh, but I mean no offence. I think it's cool. I just can't show this list to my 5 year old. In my playtest with my 14 year old my 5 yearold HAD to move my knights. I must say this as well, I will print off this army list and it will stay with my KOW rules forever.

[pigasuspig]

A friend added Rainbow Dash (from the OP: 10 attacks, blast d6) to her Elf force to great effect: the Atomic Rainboom destroyed an entire regiment of trolls in a single attack. But Rainbow is fragile in combat and was chased off near the end by a single charge from a Fleabag Rider regiment.

Thanks for the great list! I don't think we will resist playing with ponies in the future.

[imm0rtal reaper]

Heal (12) is still too high as you can only use it on one unit a turn (to my immediate knowledge) so you'd be just wiping all the damage off every turn.

[scarletsquig]

A friend added Rainbow Dash (from the OP: 10 attacks, blast d6) to her Elf force to great effect: the Atomic Rainboom destroyed an entire regiment of trolls in a single attack. But Rainbow is fragile in combat and was chased off near the end by a single charge from a Fleabag Rider regiment.

Thanks for the great list! I don't think we will resist playing with ponies in the future.

Awesome, glad to hear from people playing with the list.