Friday 22 May 2015

Lord Of The Rings army lists for Kings of War 2.0

As some of you may or may not be aware Mantic has been polishing up the KOW rules and army lists in preparation of a new rule book which is coming later in the year.  So to go hand in hand with this I have overhauled the LOTR army lists I created to play with KOW so that they are compatible with the new 2.0 version.

Quite a bit has changed on the lists, points costs are totally revamped as is magic use and some stat lines have been updated.  You'll also notice some new unit entries, I was contacted by Andrew Sharp who had enjoyed playing mass battle games of LOTR using my lists but he wanted to use some of the units he had in his collection which I hadn't yet added so he created his own and sent them on to me.  I've tweaked them slightly and have now brought them in line with KOW 2.0 so you can now have fun playing with the Sons of Eorl et al!
I'd also like to mention the 'special' characters in the lists.  For KOW players these stat lines will look overpowered and too 'Hero Hammer' and I admit for a standard game of KOW they are, however these characters are only for use in massive battles and are used to represent some of the epic action we saw them perform on the big screen (shield surfing Legolas I'm looking at you).

I hope you have fun using these lists and I'd love to hear any feedback you have, remember these lists are a constant work in progress and I'll undoubtedly be tweaking them once they've seen some more action on the tabletop.

5 comments:

  1. Hi! Just found your lists :) Couple of comments:

    - How do you place 4 cavalrymen on a troop base? We found 3 cavalrymen on a single base is enough, and since it's 12.5cms wide, 4 would be too much. Infantry troops with 4 figures are 1cm longer, and if the matter is 1cm, it doesn't really matter at all.
    - Shouldn't Gondor archers have 4+ armor? They wear the same kind of plate armor as the other type of infantry, and they are certainly better armoured than the rangers.
    - Maybe a separate option for ranger Faramir?
    - A generic Captain of Gondor or something is really needed.
    - I'd add Throwing Weapons for the Rohirrim, as they use that everywhere.
    - Generic Captain/Hero stands for the Rohirrim too (and I guess for all lists)
    - Shouldn't Rivendell Spearmen have 5+ De? They have shields afterall.
    - I'd either make Mirkwood Archers Ra 3+, or give them some kind of "Ranged Elite" skill.
    - Dwarven Ballista's d6+3 blast is a bit much - I'd bring it more in-line with the other Ballistas.
    - I don't know why Aragorn should get CS(3) - he's no superhuman, and while I know heroes should be emphasized more, but this is a bit too much.
    - Mordor Orcs have Def5+, but Uruks get Def 4+? Erm...what?
    - I guess you'll add Blackshields and Prowlers later, but just a note.

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    1. Thank you for looking over the lists I hope you enjoyed them.

      I'll try to answer some of your comments here:

      - We use the LOTR War of the Ring movement trays and place two 2x1 cavalry bases next to each other (as we all do this it works fine).
      - The Def doesn't just indicate how much armour they have but how well they can defend themselves in general, a soldier with a sword and shield is in a much better position to defend himself then one with a bow regardless of the armour.
      - A ranger Faramir would be good (especially as my wife has him in her army)
      - Agreed but we've just used the Gamling/Faramir stat line for generic captains which has worked well enough for now.
      - Throwing weapons would be in keeping with what we saw in the films but difficult in game as it's something that's not really covered much in KOW (other than bows etc). The way I saw it is that they're so close up when they throw the spears it would just be counted in as melee.
      - The Elves for Def 4+ across the line so I've left it as is, not forgetting Spearmen get Phalanx.
      - The Mirkwood Archers are the way they are due to balance issues (the KOW team testing ranged units a lot and found the right balance for them after much to-ing and fro-ing so I didn't want to adjust that)
      - Dwarven engineering counts for a lot!
      - The Aragorn I've stated up is King Elessar wielding the sword that was once broken and now reforged. Aragorn is a classic example of how I could have done multiple stat lines for a single character but choice to go with this one as the leader of all men.
      - Again this is more down to how the units work, and I had Mordor Uruks in mind. These tend to be less armoured with no shields and prefer to wade in with no fear, weapon held with two hands where as the standard Orc is armoured with a shield and more concerned about keeping his head on his neck when he can.
      - There are quite a few units I haven't covered but with a new KOW army book being released in a matter of weeks I may decide to add a few more to the lists (though this larger depends on my free time). As an example of how I work things out take the Blackshields, I'd start with the normal orc stat line and definitely add Def and LD, as a starting point see how much it would cost to add these to a regiment using the Magic Items in the KOW book as a basis then cross reference them to other similar units to fine tune them. Then after you've played a few games you'll know if the points or stats need adjusting.

      Again these lists started off as straight proxy lists with a bit of added flavour for our group and steadily grew to what they are but as they were only really written for our group in mind some things won't feel right to others so if that's the case just give them a tweak and see how they play and let me know how you get on.

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  2. is tis list the most updated?

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  3. looks good. I will give these a try soon and let you know.

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    1. The most up to date list is here:

      https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4buE9ICgBv2SE5jTWE1ckcwSVU/view?usp=sharing

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