Thursday, June 28, 2012

The Tides of War


Mantic Games has nibbling away at the heels of Warhammer Fantasy players for sometime now. A slow nibble but one, none the less. The success of the Mantic Kickstarter project is truly awesome. Over $350K from 1500+  backers and average of $230ish dollars a contributor which is roughly about half of what you'd pay for a GW army, your getting some amazing stretch goal pieces plus a great deal for your contribution.  I did not get in on this myself, given I have an Undead Army still in shrink wrap  but am lamenting I didnt even at the at lower level for at least  the rule book. The kickstarted funding has allowed all manner of new pieces to be added to the schedule and your looking at a big splash from Mantic in the next 12 months culminating in Grand Tourney at Adepticon 2013 with a $1000.00 1st place cash prize.

KoW has made the rounds here as well, we had our second KoW only outing Tuesday evening where and it was a big success with the guys liking the game even better on the second go. The rules, while simple have alot of nuance and the games reminds me of a stripped down version of  7th ed WFB with simple system for Magic and Artillery which is in no way as fluffy but plays way better. The affinity to Hail Caesar (the current game of choice for us), is obvious, if you have played both you'll see there is easily room for both games to co-exist side by side. It's easier for us without having to worry about delving into homebrew HC rules for Fantasy so Kings of War fits the bill nicely.  I expect big Fantasy wargaming will be returning to the tables around here a bit more often moving ahead, while I wont be playing in the Mantic Tourney next year ( as the current LotR US Champion, I must return to be unthroned!) I will certainly be checking it out. I am looking forward to building my Perry Bros Human army ASAP.

To quote one recentposter on our local WFB forum summing up Kings of War, he wrote:
"Alessio basically took all the garbage that makes Fantasy a joke and either threw it out, or replaced it with rules that don't suck."

Pretty much the opinion around here too.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think KoW is pretty great. I like how open, and sturdy it feels. There aren't many gotchas, or weird, gamey mechanics which give the impression that someone exploited a rule. This really does take me back to the early days of my exploration into WHFB 3rd ed in terms of scale, and vibe.

 

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