So I have hundreds of perfectly good 28mm figures for large Elf, Orc and Undead armies, but a friend mentioned we should try Kings of War in 6mm. Initially, I scoffed at the idea, remembering how hard it was to collect 15mm 10 years ago (armies now traded away for 28mm Elves, and never played once!)

But he pointed me at Microworld, and well. I never really looked back. I'm planning on picking up an Undead army (with some supplemental Irregular figs, and perhaps a few others) and a Demon army (exclusively Microworld - they have pretty much every figure I need for that army!)

I also want to build an Ogre army (this is addicting!), and have pinged Mr. Microworld to hear if the Ogre release is imminent. Depending on the look and style, I'll likely pick up most/all of those figures!

So this is mostly just a confessional posting. But what rules do you play for 6mm? I was interested in NetEpic *years* ago, and funnily enough, when I tried to register for "Tactical Command" I find that I used to hang out here! Sure enough, look at all those NetEpic subforums when you scroll down! How are the Fantasy rules here? I love KoW for its simplicity and, well, because it's just crazy fun.

Right. Are those Ogres released yet????

I'd be really interested to hear more on KoW II at 6mm. someone mentioned KoW for 6mm on here a while ago and after looking into it I wasn't convinced.

How would you be baseing things?

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it's not 6mm, but I'm a huge fan of warmaster which could quite easily work at 6mm, if you've never given it a go I suggest trying it out

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An excellent question, Apocolocyntosis (and an excellent forum name too!).

Below is a pasting of my "rosetta stone" for 6mm basing, with mostly interpretable formatting. Here's a link to view the google doc that my game group is working on.

All those base sizes are available on 1.5mm or 0.8 (cheaper!) mm plywood bases at http://www.litko.net/. I love Litko, and can't get enough of their bases. Well. Maybe not literally, but you get the idea.

i've not yet played, but my buddies have (orcs vs. dwarfs). The rules are excellent, and the game plays in about an hour. It's awesome - despite having so many 28mm figs, I'm a stoked at the easy set up and play of having all my dudes based and ready to go. The 2nd ed of KoW does away with weird base sizes, so for your infantry, the 20mm infantry troop base (for example) is the building block for all of your troop sizes. They've explicitly made it easy to base large units (many folks just base all their 28mm guys on a single 100x40mm base - I can't bring myself to do that yet, but 6mm is a breeze!)

Maybe I'll post more here as my orders come in, and this gets underway in earnest.

I read the KoW 2e rules the other day, I'm kind of surprised it's a 28mm game. 6/10mm would be a better fit for how abstract it is, and could be achieved by halving all the measurements (the basic unit would be very close in size to a WM base).

I liked that it was well written and presented, I didn't like the simplistic rules. In a nutshell you effectively move your units up, shoot and then attack (opponents don't get to strike back in their turn). You just roll your attacks, whatever hits you pick up again and try to wound with. You then take the number of wounds and add it to a 2d6 roll. If that score beats the enemy unit's Wavering morale, they waver, if it beats their Break morale they break and you remove the unit.

Beyond that:

There's no fog of war or battlefield friction, troops more where you want them to when you want them to. Given that, it's more a game of resource allocation than mass battles.

A unit has a number of attacks (either melee or ranged) and separate to-hit values for each. That struck me as odd, especially when they could have easily separated the # of attacks into melee and ranged.

A unit stays on the battlefield until it's broken, fighting with its full # of attacks and to-hit value regardless of the number of wounds it has accumulated. D&D did that 40 years ago, it was a poor abstraction then and it's a poor one now.

So I won't be giving up Warmaster anytime soon.

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Dave

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Squats 2019-10-17

I like the looks of KoW - going to try it out with Warmaster minis. I'm thinking a WM base is a standard infantry troop, cavalvry/monsters only come in regiments/hordes, which is three WM bases based along the short edge. Don't know how it will affect the game when the only frontages are 40mm, 60mm and 80mm (infantry horde), but hopefully it won't matter too much.

But the big draw of KoW is that lots of people are taking a look at it as an alternative to Age of Sigmar. I'd have to get a 28mm army, but I could then play big tournaments with an element-based ruleset.

I've never tried Warmaster, but with a pile of 6mm figs, that might be something I'll try. I remember reading the rules years ago, and being annoyed at one aspect - you had to roll a die to attempt to get your units to do stuff. Am I remembering that right? I guess that's supposed to represent poor command and fog of war, but that would drive me crazy. I think I remember putting down the rules right there, thinking the game wouldn't be fun. But convince me! Why is Warmaster the bomb?

Yea. Age of Sigmar. I saw this, and was done with it before I even started. Are they kidding? Is this some kind of bad joke? OK, I don't mean to trash on AoS, but sheesh...

It's been open season on AoS ever since it came out, go for it


recon i might have a little play through KoW II with some microworld games 6mm this evening vs myself. My basing doesn't match yours (i've got inf on 12*40 and cav on warmmaster bases) but I can just double up the inf. Not many monsters in the KoW rules though …

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haha, poor Sigmar. His whole Age is going down the toilet!

But wow, I really can't imagine designing a game and game release to better drive players to Kings of War. AoS seems like it was aimed to independently wealthy 10 and 12 year olds. That's a pretty darn small audience...!

One thing about Age of Sigmar - kids (or teens, rather) will often like complex but shallow games. They're good at learning new stuff and memorizing, and not that good at thinking far ahead. A simple but deep game, like chess, will often be a better match for older people. It's too early to tell, but my gut instinct is that AoS is a simple and shallow game that adds complexity in the warscrolls, while KoW is definetly simple, but may be deep.

Yep, you are. Characters issue orders to units or brigades (four units touching each other) by rolling equal to or under their command value (a number between 6 and 10) on a 2D6. Modifiers are applied, -1 for:

• each order the unit's been given
• every 20cm the unit is from the character
• every stand lost
• enemies within 20cm
• being in rough terrain

If they succeed, the unit moves once and you can order it again with the same character or move on to another unit and/or character. No going back to unit's or characters once they've failed or you're done with them.

This is the system's fog of war, so if you're not a fan of these concepts in a game I don't know what I can say to convince you. In my opinion, they make games better as they add to the immersion, atmosphere and tension by mitigating the omnipresence of the player. Otherwise it's like I said, what should be a wargame is an exercise in resource and risk management.

Beyond that I like the level of abstractness in Warmaster's rules. It doesn't come down to what a unit is armed with or what's in your army, but rather how you execute your battle plan. Plus there's some good flavor imbued thanks to unit/army list special rules.

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Dave

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Squats 2019-10-17

I'm using Mighty Armies (2.0 with the old 1.0 unofficial build system) for 6mm. I'm doing an overly ambitious set of armies for the Warhammer setting (love the fluff, no interest in the official figures or rules). The armies will also work for Tolkien or pretty much any other typical fantasy setting, though Micro World is making me branch out with some of their releases (the Wildlands have me improvising wildly!).

I like MA as it's a fairly light game (comparable maybe to Hordes of The Things in many ways) but with a very flexible build system. There are other rules I may look to if I ever want to get meatier than MA, like Mayhem or Rally Round the King.

Ok just tried KoW 2 at 6mm and not overly impressed, hopefully i've just missed things.

Did ~1400pts dwarves vs elves. 1400 just because that looked about right for 6mm fantasy armies, for dwarves that meant:
Ironbreakers (regular warriors) horde
Shieldbreakers regiment
Rifles regiment
Rifles regiment
Berzerker troop
Berzerker troop
Bear riding berzerker regiment (these had some other name in KoW)
Bear riding berzerker regiment
Standard bearer
Berzerker lord on a bear

which looks like this:



The terrain rules seem pretty weak and are poorly set out (there is a terrain section to the book, but the key factors for terrain are explained in other section and not the terrains section …). Can't see much incentive to use terrain except to block LoS unless your unit can ignore terrain when moving.

Since your opponent cannot retaliate when you charge them, but must wait until their turn, alpha striking stuff to death immediately on charge seems the way to go? You start 24 inches apart and horseback cav can charge 18–20 inches. So anything that moves out of its own deployment area is asking to get smashed.

Why would you take anything that isn't thunderous charge cavalry in this game?

Shooting is pretty limited as you move charges before you shoot and cannot then fire in to combat. So no means of softening things up before a charge.

Magic system is nice and simple (big positive for me) and I liked the magic item/wargear selection.

By the time id drawn the lists up I was really looking forward to it and was prepared to give no casualty removal a chance … but this just seemed poor. Can only assume i've missed something key, or that playing it vs another person somehow fixes it. I'm all for abstracting and simplicity, but i've got to admit this is lost on me.

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One point we found is that the initial charge almost never eliminates a unit (never in any games I've played, though I bet a good roll or a bad unit match up could change that), so the other player usually (again, always in games I've played) gets to retaliate and possibly take advantage if you've over extended yourself or something.

I need to play more to get a better feel for it, but the few games I've played have been fun, but largely about smashing your line into your opponent's line, with some shenanigans happening on the flanks as your cavalry / chariots and whatnot do their thing

I may be being too reactionary, I actually stopped after three turns due to the chunkiness. I'm sure playing it more would help, didn't feel like it this evnening.

I did most of the charges with combined units, as there seemed to be so much incentive to just alpha a formation to death. For example: drakkon riders (MWG war hawk riders!) and tree shambler guys (vanguard'd forwards at start) charge berzerker rides and wipe them, for no casualties. Afterwards, more berszerker bears and berserker lord charge the drakkons and wipe them out, again for no losses. Seems to be very little middle ground.

There are some nice ideas, but in most areas I felt the rules could be easily improved without adding much complexity.

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