Valley of Kings 4 - Elves - 2017/10/31

Greetings!

In the first game of the tournament I played against Mark and his Elves. I played against Mark several times already and he brought his favorite units with a smaller force too.  His army was more compact, very fast and more durable than mine. It is always very interesting to play against Mark because he has a different approach to the Elven forces. Hence, it creates an unique match up where opponents have good understanding of each other armies but due to different compositions it still feels as if two completely different forces were fighting.

Here are the details of Mark's list:

Elves - Army List

40 Archers, Heart-seeking Chant

- Army Standard, Lute, Hero

6 Drakon Riders, Horde

- Dragon Kindred Lord, Hero

 

6 Drakon Riders, Horde

Valley of Kings 4 - Introduction - 2017/10/29

Greetings!

After a month or so of a break in playing after the Edge of the Abyss campaign I was eager to get back to some games. Fortunately for me, local tournament organizers, Matt and Tas, planned another of their fantastic events in the series known as The Valley of Kings.  As usual, the great crew of Three D6 store hosted a group of 12 Kings of War enthusiasts.

This time things were a bit different. First of all, we played with 1200 points armies and that immediately looked a bit of a challenge for me as I have never played this size of the game. However, I managed to downsize my current 2000 points force and was set to participate. 

Second change, which was more of a consequence of the first one, is that we played on 4 x 4 feet tables. It is understandable and recommended for smaller battles but it also meant that the battle fields were narrower. To the player who needs space for maneuver it was another thing to quickly adapt to.

However, the most intriguing and discussed modification as compared to Clash of Kings standard for tournaments was an introduction of a new scoring system - BlackJack. For details, please, follow the link:

Black Jack - scoring system for Kings of War

In short, the aim is to shift the focus to the scenarios and decrease the impact of the attrition on the overall result the player can achieve. It means that under BlackJack system a player may earn more points if he can fulfill the scenario requirements in a more decisive way. For example, one may earn more points if he gets all the loot tokens rather than just one more than his opponent that is required to win the scenario. At the same time the brackets for getting a significant shift in the scoring due to attrition were increased and the player can no longer claim up to 5 extra points in this way. 

I must say I was intrigued but at the same time a little concerned that checking all these tables to get the result may be a bit time consuming. However, to help with that special score sheets were prepared for each player and it turned out to be faster than I expected. 

The aim for the organizers was to collect data about the new system and ask participants for the feedback. Did the new system affect their decision making at any stage (including army design)? Did it reward playing for the scenario conditions more and did it entourage them to do so? Did they like it (simple but important!)? etc.

I decided I am going to scale down my usual army without taking into account the new scoring system. What would be ideal is 2000 points size games with exactly the same army. I could then better assess what was the impact of the new system on my decisions during the games. However, with the army that had all the units I usually have in my 2000 force that was as close as I could get.

I also decided to approach the scenarios in a similar way as before. It means that I wanted to focus on the scenario conditions first. Destroying enemy units is important but my assumption was that if I were to make a decision between destroying more units or getting more scenario points I should go for the scenario. Unless destroying the enemy units allowed to do both and/or was the safest option. I would leave more detailed considerations on that matter for the battle reports :)

Here is the army list I brought to this event:

1200 version of the Outcasts.

Outcasts - Army List

3 Drakon Riders, Regiment - 175
- 5 Silverbreeze, Troop - 145
- 5 Silverbreeze, Troop - 145
- Drakon Rider Lord, Hero, Large Cavalry - 160

3 Drakon Riders, Regiment - 175
- 10 Palace Guard, Troop - 105

- 10 Palace Guard, Troop - 105

 - Army Standard, Hero - 50

3 War Chariots, Regiment  - 140
 

Kings of War - Past, Present and Future

Greetings!

I have recently listened to a new episode of the Counter Charge podcast. It was a big one to celebrate the fact at it was episode 200! If you haven't listened to it yet, I really recommend it to any Kings of War enthusiast, here is the link:

Counter Charge - Episode 200

Rob and Mark have been delivering fantastic episodes and 200th one was truly special. Congratulations once again! Such a great achievement for sure and it is great to know that they have plans for more! The episode contains some very interesting recollection of the KoW past, the way the game evolved in time and how did the hosts of the podcast participate in that process. It also had a discussion of the way people see that state of the game at the moment and continued with a very interesting discussion about ways the game could evolve in the future.

I have played quite a few games recently and I was more focused on the global campaign but after listening to the podcast I started thinking about the future of Kings of War again. There were some thought provoking ideas in the podcast. Initially I considered short feedback about these but the more I thought about the more it was obvious I may need a bit more space. Hence, I decided it may be a good option to write a post blog instead. :)

Edge of the Abyss - Summary

Greetings!

This first global Kings of War campaign, Edge of the Abyss, is over! While we don't know yet what is going to be the exact impact of the result for the world of Mantica, I would like to share my own experiences after participating in the campaign.

First of all, I was very happy the campaign was organized and the additional supplement was released. From my personal point of view, campaigns and supplements are perfect because I don't need any new miniatures at the moment. But spicing up the game with new stories and ability to take part in shaping up the future of the world - now that is temptation I don't even try to resist! I immediately ordered the supplement and was very lucky that there were a lot of local players who wanted to participate too.

I would like to stress out that this post is my feedback on the campaign. I do hope it will be of some use to game designers as I think the campaign was a fantastic idea. I would love if they had an annual event like that with more and more players participating and more and more exciting new releases accompanying the event.