Mantic Kings of War Rules go Beta

Posted by BobbieTheDamned on Sep 10, 2010; 7:59pm
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/Mantic-Kings-of-War-Rules-go-Beta-tp5519702.html

Today Mantic have released their Kings of War rules as a free download to those subscribed to their newsletter. I thought I'd share my first impressions.

At first glance the stats seem similar to those of the Lord of the Rings skirmish game which is unsurprising as both rules sets were written by the same guy: Alessio Cavatore.

Units are formed up in blocks a-la WFB, but can move sideways and backwards (at half speed) which will certainly add some interesting tactics. Most the rules are as you'd expect really, fairly simple with  no lookup tables; nothing like comparing strength to toughness to determine 'to wound' dice rolls its all in the unit stats. It appears that it'll be a very quick playing game, the rules only take up a 12 page PDF and that's with diagrams and some artwork.

An interesting feature they've added into the rules is the idea of 'timed turns' so each player gets the same amount of game time. I know I've been frustrated by people spending 20mins umming and arring about moving a unit or not, well now they wont get the time to. Both players agree to a total time limit for the game and if you run out of time in your turn you loose the game!

Included with the rules are army lists for the elves, undead and dwarves. An interesting point is that you don't have the option to compose an army with odd numbered units, you can only buy units in the sized chunks Mantic sells them in.