Mantic KoW Tournament pack thoughts

[mattjgilbert]

The Mantic KoW tournament pack is available (via the latest newsletter). Generally it looks OK but a couple of things jumped out at me. Bear in mind I missed the first KoW tournament Mantic ran so my observations are based on gut feel and not experience.

1. Games are 2 hours. However, each player only gets 45 minutes INCLUDING set-up. That leaves 30 mins for other "stuff". Forcing people to use their time for set-up as well as playing nudges people even more to use armies with lower unit counts and penalises players who have gone for horde armies (which seems against the Mantic mantra of big armies!). Those extra 30 minutes are easily enough of a buffer to allow for set-up that isn't included in the time allocation for each player.

2. The game length is random. There could be 6 or 7 turns. I don't see how this is really fair if you are also limiting people on time. It's too much of a random factor to have people reasonably account for in their time management during the game (especially if they also lost time for set-up).

3. Starting and stopping the timer as players alternate placing units or moving Vanguard units seems a bit of a clunky mechanic at first glance. It might not be, I don't know.

4. The last bullet on working out the winner needs to be amended to say "If the players never met in the tournament or the game they played was a draw, the tournament ends with a joint victory and the players share the first prize. "



Can't wait to try it out though. I'm trying to get my hands on a chess clock to give it a go


The KoW tournament says 1750 points but the pack says 1500. I'm assuming the pack is a generic one and the KoW tournament in Feb has changed the points.


What are other people's thoughts on the pack?

[scarletsquig]

Well, chess clock play favours small armies over large ones anyway, but I can't think of a good way around that, short of determining the time each player gets based on the number of units they have.

Including set-up in the playing time makes things.. interesting.

For example, players with magnetised movement trays will have an advantage, unless of course set-up actually means "position your units", and not "get your units out on to the table and ranked up".

[mattjgilbert]

It means position your units in this case, stating and stopping your clocks as you do so.

[Maccwar]

Last time out I was the only person to lose by a time out and that only happened when the game length was trimmed down to 1 hour (30 minutes each).

[Baragash]

Forcing people to use their time for set-up as well as playing nudges people even more to use armies with lower unit counts and penalises players who have gone for horde armies (which seems against the Mantic mantra of big armies!).

It's a case of where you pick your disadvantage. I've been doing some detailed analysis on the army lists and I'm convinced that taking the highest number of smaller units possible is substantially superior due to the points value "pattern" making no sense.

[scarletsquig]

It's a case of where you pick your disadvantage. I've been doing some detailed analysis on the army lists and I'm convinced that taking the highest number of smaller units possible is substantially superior due to the points value "pattern" making no sense.

MSU works if you use it right, flank and rear attacks are downright deadly in KoW, a bunch of troops used aggressively can really hurt... still need at least a couple of regiments in there to unlock characters though.

On the flip side, troops are quite vulnerable to shooting, it's very easy to settle for putting 1-2 points of damage on them and hope for a lucky Nerve test. As an aside, this is another reason why blast warmachines suck, their blast is often overkill, what you really want from a shooting unit is a steady and reliable small amount of damage output each turn to get a chance to roll as many Nerve tests as possible.

[mattjgilbert]

Well that's certainly true for something like Elves where you can spam Bowmen troops.

[SneakyChris]

Picked up my tickets on Saturday, read through the pack on the email, and Im looking forward to it.

I think the chess timers are fantastic, Ive played 2 games of KOW, first game I was soo nervous of running out of time I only used 15 minutes!!!!!!!

Spaming the small units I suppose gives you bang for buck, but I kinda like feilding a few war machines and characters.

[mattjgilbert]

I just picked my test list and will trial it tomorrow against the pesky elves. Chess clock obtained too so it will be under tournament conditions!

[Baragash]

I was thinking 1 Regiment of Spearmen, 1 Army Standard, 1 Bolt Thrower, max on 10 man Bowmen and 5 man Palace Guard.

Troops vulnerability is much of a muchness, you pay double the price for an extra 1-2 points of nerve going from a Troop to a Regiment, but that actually loses you nerve because you''re actually taking 1 unit that needs 6-7* damage to be reduced to 7+ removing it, instead of 2 units that need 4-5* damage each to reduce them to 7+ removing them.

*from memory, KoW book upstairs atm

[JP1138]

I'm looking forward to the tournament (my first ever!) but had already made an army to 1500 points and now it seems I need to find another 250. What. A. Shame! More zombies it is then! plus a couple more necromancers for more Zap!py fun.

Really looking forward to this

[mattjgilbert]

We played our first timed game last night - my trial 1750 Undead tournament army v dwarfs. The chess-clock had not arrived so we used our phones.

Great fun and 6 turns took us 35 minutes each so we'd have had plenty of time left had it gone to a 7th turn.

Things we took away from the game:
- Know your army
- Have it printed out on one side of paper to lookup stuff quickly
- Have piles of dice ready to go in known colours/numbers. (e.g. 10 red dice, 5 black dice) so you are not counting them out all the time.
- Do your thinking in your opponent's turn!
- Don't panic - a 20 second pause is fine to consider something if you have to.
- turn off the lock screen on your phone!

I won 1 objective to none BTW Hope fully by next week I'll have a chess-clock to work with.