Kings of War Big Red Book

I got my big red book in the mail this week and have been slowly paging through it. Even at a cursory glance, I am blown away. There is just so much stuff in here! In addition to the rules updates and armies all in one place (with the exception of the Twilight Kin I guess, who are getting the Halfling treatment and are excluded for now while being revamped), they've stuck a lot of additional things into the book which I am overall quite excited about!

Obligatory shot of the book.

Ambush - Introductory Games

This looks to be the "replacement" for Vanguard, at least for easing new players into Kings of War proper. Vanguard was a nice idea, but I never bought into it. It used different dice, rules, and stats, making the transition into actual Kings of War harder. Additionally, it focused on individual models, something not very Kings of War. If I ran a Vanguard army, it would be a separate army, and not something I could run in Kings of War without a lot of extra work, given the multibases I've embraced.

The new Ambush version is still Kings of War, but scaled down and aiming for 750-1000 point games, with limits on unit sizes and unit costs and many tweaks to how unlocking works in list-building. It's a little clunky, but its heart seems to be in the right place. Still, I already kind of did this in my own way with my own blabbering about Introductory Games. The Ambush rules are nice though, and seem like a decent way to kick off a learner league or somesuch with some official support. It's nice to have official rules to point to when starting something like that.

Siege Rules

The book also brings back siege games, with new upgrades and scenarios and war machines. The concept gripped me last time, but alas, I never got in a game, nor built any fortifications or siege machines. We'll see if I can do better this edition!

Additionally, they have added fortification rules, which is bittersweet. I want to get in some bigger games, to make use of my larger collections, and had come up with a few ideas for "Watchtowers" as stationary shooters with upgradable auras, as something I could introduce into the mega battles as a neat twist to hold or destroy, but Mantic has blown me out of the water here. There looks to be a lot of interactions for siege games and I will enjoy digging into those rules more. They even have a chart of armies and upgrades, so you can have more themed defenses and such. Very cool stuff!

Large and Legendary Games

As if the above wasn't enough already, Mantic also had a section with suggestions to to scale up the base game and add in crazier Rift magic. Part of the appeal for Kings of War for me is just how well it scales up, so I am not sure how much I'll use the suggestions they give, since they all increase the complexity of the games, but I have been a Dungeon Master for many years, and I know the worth of having stuff around to borrow from! There a probably a few ideas in there worth picking up for a mega battle.

Unit Calculator

Back in August I was excited after running my little event, and I started prepping for the larger mega battle games. Part of that was my fortifications and Watch Tower musings as discussed above, and part of that was looking into unit the unit formula for Kings of War. I figured another cool twist for any mega battles of mine would be to super-size some unusual units, like a Horde of Flamebearers or Hunters of the Wild, or a Legion of Archers. I figured these units could be assigned a few victory points, given up to the opponent upon routing, to help bring some catch-up mechanics and secondary objectives into my mega battles. To my credit, I did figure out the basic ratios for upscaling units myself. After asking in the forum, someone did produce something closer to an actual, detailed formula to help with some of the other stuff, like shifting stat values, in order to make unique units. The formula from the forum still does more than the stuff in the new book, but it is neat to see Mantic release this info officially.

All in all, this seems like a really great book. I am excited to dig in! More thoughts to come.