During the great cataclysm when it was announced that Warhammer Fantasy Battles (WFB) would no longer be supported by Games Workshop, enter Mantic Games and Kings of War, a mass battle game (also colloquially referred to as Rank and Flank). Like WFB and other systems before it, Kings of War required a player to have at least scores, but more often hundreds of units on the table for truly grand encounters. In November of 2018 Mantic announced a new offering and successfully Kickstarted Kings of War: Vanguard.
Quick Overview:
- 2+ Players
- 5+ Models per side
- Terrain is an important aspect of the game
I backed KoW: Vanguard at the urging of a friend of mine who is a competitive Kings of War player. We both received our games on time (a feat for a Kickstarter of that size). I was able to try the game at GenCon 2019 (alas, time conspired to keep my friend and I from learning the game ourselves). For people who like being taught the rules instead of reading alone, sessions like these are great ways to get a quick overview. While it took about 20 or so minutes to explain, we were able to get underway with our games and finish them within the 2 hour block.
Vanguard is set in Mantica, the same universe as Kings of War. The basic stats and mechanics will be familiar to anyone who has even a passing familiarity with KoW. Vanguard is a skirmish game where instead of multiple troops moving as a block each model moves independently. Contrasting it with Lion Rampant, each troop can move where it is able without having to keep cohesion with its fellows.
A typical warband has a leader, usually a model with more wounds than other models in the warband to denote its status. There is some kind of caster, grunts, archers, and for my Basilean force, a panther. A player would only need to collect between 10 and 30 units for a typical game, much more manageable for a new player than the near one hundred needed for a basic KoW army.
The basic stats follow the Kings of War stat block. There are movement, shooting, melee, nerve, and armor stats. A notable addition is the Wound stat for models that can take more hits over less expensive grunts. Stats are also displayed on cards rather than in a rule book. Players now have an easy reference in front of them instead of needing to bookmark pages.
There are some notable differences. The first is that Vanguard is an eight sided dice (d8) versus a six sided dice (d6) system. There is a wider range of thresholds to play with to denote ability with d8s. The second is the power dice. At the start of a turn each player rolls power dice. The number of squares gives a pool a leader can use to use additional effects in the game, effects like healing fatigue or pushing models further past their limits.
Activating a model means using two ‘short’ or one ‘long’ action. Short actions are easy actions like moving or shooting a model can do, while running and other strenuous actions denote more effort. As mentioned above a model can be pushed past its limit through power dice, though as a trade off the model can only take a short action a turn until the fatigue is removed.
Players also trade model activations. Instead of one player moving all their models then the other player moving, a player activates a single model. The other player then does the same with one of their own models, creating a more fluid game than mass movement per side allows for.
A new expansion is now available, Ice and Iron, that also provides more scenarios and campaign rules, as well as adding weather conditions and supplies. The creators of Vanguard see the system as integrating with larger Kings of War battles. For more narrative play, the smaller force could be involved in scouting and sabotage missions. Depending on success or failure the larger army could then receive bonuses or detrimental effects. Because the stat blocks are so similar and the world setting is the same I think the link is fairly clear between the different scales.
Kings of War: Vanguard would be a good starting point for someone looking for a fantasy wargame. There is a potential to scale up into a mass battle game, but plenty of forces for someone to collect and field several different warbands.
Ross Blythe is a Chicago based gamer interested in all things tabletop. He enjoys reading history as well as fiction, and so has a soft spot for historical wargames like Pike & Shotte. For the campaigns he runs as a DM he often looks to history for inspiration, for the lessons of the past to challenge the players at his table.