Kingdoms of Men: Tactics for All Comers

Hello everyone, today I bring you a guest article by Sam Nordberg, discussing his Kingdoms of Men all comers list. There is some great information here about playing KoM, and just list building in general, enjoy.

Why should you read this:

I see a lot of list-building and speculation about KoM online and wanted to find a way to contribute based on my experience. I thought about an army review, but I think there are enough of those. What I know best is how to play one army – this army. I’ve played about 40 or 50 games with this list, and I went undefeated at Best of the Rest with this list (counting one draw with Alex Kus). Granted, I wasn’t playing the Masters, but there were plenty of excellent players present – especially on the top tables. I played a variety of armies – undead, ratkin, elves, dwarves – with a variety of builds: strong shooting, mixed arms, elite combat, cavalry. None could topple this list and these tactics. 

This is a solid list, but it must be played with patience. You should read this if you like being competitive and you want to play Kingdoms of Men. We can be a top-tier army. 

Here’s the list:

225, Foot Guard Horde

— Two-Handed Weapons

225, Foot Guard Horde

— Two-Handed Weapons

140, Spear Phalanx Regiment

— Pikes

140, Spear Phalanx Regiment

— Pikes

140, Spear Phalanx Regiment

— Pikes

140, Spear Phalanx Regiment

— Pikes

140, Spear Phalanx Regiment

— Pikes

95, Fanatic Troop

95, Fanatic Troop

95, Fanatic Troop

195, General on Winged Beast

— Blade of Slashing

195, General on Winged Beast

— Mace of Crushing

205, General on Winged Beast

— Trickster’s Wand

65, Hero

— Horse

65, Hero

— Horse

65, Hero

— Horse

75, Army Standard Bearer

— Lute of Insatiable Darkness

Introduction

Kings of War Fundamentals

These have been covered well in other tactica, but are worth revisiting because you can’t play this list well without these fundamentals. 

1. Math is your friend. 

Know how to calculate average hits and wounds for your units. Know how to do the same for your opponent’s units. Everything about good lists is built on good math, whether players know it or not. In any game, you will roll hundreds of dice. Grab a cheat sheet, practice calculating, do what it takes to make sure you understand the likelihood of an event occurring. 

Shameless plug to this excellent Just the Tips article on luck and trying to predict breaking unit, found here

2. Movement is your frenemy

Let’s face it. Many armies have better movement than men. Understanding movement is vital to getting your force where it needs to be when it needs to be there. Don’t think you’ll ever get an infantry alpha charge off against M6 and a good player. You won’t. You have to earn your charges with KoM, and they usually come later in the game. This means you need to be able to plan your movement several turns ahead. You should have a pretty good idea of where your units need to be by turn 3 when you deploy. This is extra-important for your slower units. The slower they are, the less flexibility you have. 

Overall strategy:

This is not an army that tables opponents. In blackjack scoring, this is a 14-7 to 17-4 army. With this army, games are won by breaking through lines somewhere with one or more Generals on Winged Beasts, turning to face flanks and rears, and eliminating the right enemy units to achieve the scenario objective. That’s more or less it. There’s nuance, but at the start of every game, I am trying to think ahead to turn four and where my Generals will be. This may seem simple, but it is extremely hard to defend against while also pursuing scenario objectives. With three flying Generals, it is very difficult for an opponent to monitor all of the threats they pose. Mistakes get made. Playing this strategy, it’s not unusual for me to make my first charge in turn 3 or 4, after receiving many charges from the enemy. 

Against opponents who are excellent at guarding against flyers, my second-best strategy is to look for multi-charges to the front with either 2-3 of my generals, or one of the footguard hordes backed by a general or a fanatics troop. I try to choose combats where I have a very good chance of leaving the enemy with 5 wounds or less before breaking. That’s a 70% chance of breaking even an inspired unit. Playing this strategy, you should be charging one or two enemy units in turns 2-3, with the intent of overwhelming them and turning to hit flanks in later turns. 

There are a lot of my own units whose death I plan as part of my strategy. Unless they are holding an objective, none of the fanatics should survive a game. The Mounted Heroes should NEVER survive (but always seem to!). Pikes are disposable as long as I don’t need their unit strength. With 29 total US, I can afford to lose a bunch in exchange for advantageous combats. By the end of most games I win, I have 2-3 Generals, 1-2 footguard, 1-2 pikes, and little else left. 

Here, generally, is how my thoughts evolve throughout a game with this list:

Turns 1-2: Lock up enemy charge options so they can only hit things I want them to. Get my generals and at least one horde of footguard into positions for turn 3-4 charges. Choose the units I’m sacrificing and ensure they get charged by pushing them into an opponent’s face. Make them impossible to ignore.

The only real exception to this is in the case of fighting a gun-line or strong shooting. In that case, early turns are about flooding one section of the board with fast targets (all three generals, all three mounted heroes, fanatics) so that some will survive the first round of shooting and can tie up ranged units until the infantry arrives. 

Turns 3-4: These are usually the most critical turns, and when victory is determined. Work to flanks and rears with the Generals. Take first charges with FG hordes. Start moving any surviving Fanatics/Pikes to hold strategic areas.

Turns 5-6: by this point usually the moves are self-evident. Mop up. Secure objectives. Etc. 

Introduction Summary:

While there is nuance to tactics in every game, the overall strategy is not complex. It is, however, hard to do well – the patience required for this took the longest for me to develop. Waiting to launch a charge until turn 4 is hard! But there is such satisfaction in steadily surrounding an opponent while they delete your units in early turns, only to have a crushing turn 4 filled with flank and rear charges. It took me about 10 games with the same list to begin getting comfortable with the waiting. 

Movement is by far the most important thing to master here. My current practice is to envision where my slow units need to be in turn 2-3 and deploy accordingly. I don’t usually deploy in response to my opponent’s deployment (with two exceptions – shooting heavy armies and cavalry units – see below) but have my plan and deploy accordingly. Pikes are amazing for forcing your enemy to take charges they’d prefer to avoid. More on that below. 

In sum, before I get to details, this army relies on a straightforward envelopment strategy, which depends on the Generals. The only exception to executing that strategy is when an opponent has significant shooting. I’ll cover that below. If you can learn the patience to hold your charges and work around flanks, you’ll win most of your games. That’s because most scenarios HELP us by forcing opponents to advance. Most opponents are guarding against charges in the next turn, not in two or three turns. That’s why/how this can work. 

Unit Breakdown – Tactics:

Flyers – General on Winged Beast. 

I’m a huge fan. Flyers, for us, make up for some of what we lack in movement and elite hitting power. For my list, the three Generals on Winged Beasts are the keystone element. Without them, the list doesn’t work. Period. I’ve tried it. Here’s why:

1. Threat projection.

Most folks are familiar with this term, but I’ll say what I think it means, so we’re all on the same page. Threat projection means that you are able to threaten a certain part of the board with some kind of disincentive (3 organ guns, for example). The threat has to be significant enough that it gives an opponent pause, and may dictate some of their movement decisions. 

Tactically, threat projection is one way of trying to force your opponent to play your game, instead of you playing theirs. By creating zones on the board where adverse outcomes are threatened, you can cut off choices, or force difficult ones. 

In this list, the generals help to make up for the overall lack of movement and charge range by projecting threat. For example, in playing to a draw against Alex Kus, I desperately needed to keep his terrifying Rat Demon from closing on my scoring troops. By setting up zones of threat, where he knew he was guaranteed to be charged by one or more generals, I tried to make those choices I didn’t want him to take as painful as possible. He, of course, did the same. 

Three Winged Beasts are orders of magnitude better than one, or even two, I’ve found. This is because you can start to create overlapping threat areas where either a) your opponent will realize the threat and stay the hell away or b) your opponent won’t see the threat, and will mistakenly move into an area where you can charge them with two or even three generals. Against D5, three generals (where one has the mace of crushing and one the blade of slashing) will deliver about 15 hits and about 12 wounds on average. That’s enough to break a 15/17 threat 70% of the time. Goodbye Ogre horde or Soul Reaver Infantry. 

Threat projection is usually an early-game tactic. As you are jockeying for position, try to move elements with significant threat projection in such a way that you are setting up your own turn 3-4 charges and eliminating those same options for your opponent. If you develop the patience to do this well, it will pay off in the later game. 

2. Adaptability

In two of my games at BoTR, I totally screwed up on my right flank – putting too little there to hold against aggressive and well-planned offenses. In both cases, I was able to pivot my plans and redirect two generals across the board to shore up the center. This is a remarkably powerful ability. In fact, it is often so unexpected that it creates opportunities for flanks. 

In a UB game against Ogres, playing Push, my opponent sneakily out-deployed me and had a glide path to scoring his tokens and likely taking mine as well. I pulled all three generals from the opposite board edge – about 50 inches away – and was able to snatch victory from defeat in turn 6. Exclusively with the generals. 

These examples illustrate the power of being able to adapt to adversity and redirect your force concentration. However, this does not have to be entirely a reactive strategy. I’ve also started making battle plans that explicitly involve lulling an opponent into thinking an area is safe, committing and getting stuck in with my pikes, and suddenly being exposed to charges from generals who were 30 or 40 inches away just a turn ago. It takes practice to shield the generals from opponents’ threats, but when it works, it’s a thing of beauty. 

3. Scoring

This one is pretty obvious but worth stating – nothing is better at scoring distant objectives than a nimble flyer with M10. 

4. Elite offence

Generals are crush (2) thunderous (1). Against Dwarves, Undead, and other high defense armies, these are your can-openers. They do fine in the front and can grind a bit, but they are absolutely at their very best in the flank and rear. I sacrifice a LOT of units to buy time to get my generals in the right position. It’s usually worth it. 

My battle plans always involve these stages for my Generals: 

1. Threat projection in turns 1-2 as we jockey for position
2. Exploiting the chaos of battle to get to flanks and rears in turns 2-4
3. Killing all the things in turns 3-5
4. Scoring in turn 6 – which means that your turn 5 reforms have to be on-target for those distant objectives. 

Obviously, this means that the Generals have to survive. I usually know I’m in trouble when I’ve lost two generals. This happened at Best of the Rest in two games that were terrifyingly close. Typically, I try to only take combats with the Generals that I know I’m highly likely to win. I need them alive in turn 6. 

Chaff

This list has two types of chaff – hitty troops and mounted heroes. 

1. Hitty Troops

I used to think that fanatics and footguard troops were interchangeable, but I’m reconsidering. One reason: wild charge (d3). Man! What a difference this makes. Essentially, it means that fanatics project their threat out 13 inches 33% of the time. That means that all that M6 infantry out there MIGHT not get the charge off on your fanatics. It definitely either forces opponents to be more cautious in their approach or allows you to catch people off guard. 

I’ve used troops of footguard a lot, too. They absolutely have their merits. D4, crush(1) is more durable for sure. But, they have less offense, can waver, and have less movement. Right now, I’m finding it hard to justify using troops of them over the fanatics. 

2. Mounted Heroes

There are very few better ways to spend 65 points than to throw a heavily armored knight on a horse and go bonk things. These heroes are AMAZING! I know, because every opponent tells me how damn annoying they are. 

Offensively, they are not much to look at – three Me3 C1 attacks – but this is enough to do 1 wound to D5 on average. Disrupt-away with them, and don’t worry if they die – but they usually don’t. Why? Because your opponent is looking at wasting time killing this annoying fly while the main battle line is closing fast. It’s a terrible choice for an opponent to have, and one we want to force on them as often as possible. 

As chaff, one important thing to remember is that they are not mighty. You have to be cleverer with them than just placing them directly in front of enemy units – but with practice, they can massively gum things up. 

With M8, they have a good threat range, and, as individuals, they get the lovely 360 pivot. I try to task two of these to “escort” Mhorgoth every time I see him. Usually, good opponents are able to keep him away from a charge, BUT they have to keep moving him, and I can sometimes restrict where they put him. Sometimes. 

Lastly, these are a critical part of my answer to shooting. Heaven help you if you set up a battery somewhere. All three of them are coming at you, along with at least two of my Generals. Target saturation. This worked beautifully in game 2 against a dwarven gunline with three organ guns and 3 units of sharpshooters. 

The Line of Battle

The line of battle is one place where KoM can outdo most opponents. Swordsmen, spears, polearms, all have their place. But my list uses Footguard and pikes for some very specific reasons that I’ll try my best to explain. 

The purpose of the line of battle is to control territory. Whether I am blocking an opponent from taking objectives or pushing for them myself, the line of battle is the key element. There are a couple of critical elements to a battle line. 

1. How long should it hold? 

There are some battle lines that are designed to hold and grind indefinitely. My friend Mike Szedlmayer plays this beautifully with both Undead and Empire of Dust. Kingdoms of Men cannot play that kind of line. We don’t have enough D5 or enough heal. 

So, instead, my line of battle is designed to hold at least once. I want to avoid getting one-shotted at all costs. Every strategy I have depends on holding enemy charges. Usually, when we’re close enough for my opponent to be lining up multiple charges, we’re also close enough for one or more of my generals to hop over to the other side of the enemy line. Once I’ve made that hop, I need to hold enemy charges once. Then my general(s) are in the flank or rear. 

2. How do you avoid being double-charged? 

If the line is to hold, then we can’t get charged by too much stuff. Some things, like nimble 50mm bases, are really difficult to hold from double charges (that’s why I use three!). Anything regiment sized or larger should be manageable. Here’s the trick, which I learned from Mike S. If you angle your regiments slightly in an acute angle to one another, while they’re positioned close to each other, you deny the enemy enough room to line up multiple charging units against any one unit. Because the chargers hit the angled sides of other units, they can’t line up for multi-charges. Lots of folks know this trick, but it’s worth practicing a lot. It’s a line-saver (is that a term?). 

If you combine this tactic with judicious use of chaff, you should be able to keep your line units from getting multi-charged. Critical tactic. 

3. How to checkerboard

With five units of pikes, there are a lot of cool deployment opportunities. The one I like the most is to deploy closely as follows:

PIKE – FANATICS – PIKE – FANATICS- PIKE – FANATICS – PIKE

I put the fanatics a little bit behind the pikes and make sure that I leave less than 120mm of space between the pikes. That means that cavalry troops and regiments cannot fit between pike regiments to complete a charge against the fanatics; the same for large infantry, monsters, etc. With wild charge, I can still project threat out 12 inches in front of the pikes, while keeping the fanatics (relatively) safe. 

Then I shove that formation into the face of oncoming cavalry and large infantry. 

4. Layering

So, overall, I have enough battle line units that I can deploy board-edge to board-edge if I want to. But lately, I’ve been doing more of a layered deployment where my pike regiments and fanatic troops checkerboard in front and at least one unit of footguard follow up. There are a couple of reasons for this: (1) I can concentrate 10 US in one small area if I need to, but (2) those front units are really there to die while taking the brunt of the enemy charge – then I can hit with those footguard. Getting the first charge with them is critical to winning a protracted combat. 

Let’s discuss the two (three with chaff) units that form the battle line:

Footguard

These HIT. 17 hits on average with crush 1, they demand bane chant. With BC, they’re dropping 11-12 wounds on average vs. D5 and 15 vs. D4. Twelve wounds is enough to reliably break 15/17 units 70% of the time with inspire, or 85% without. That gives me a great chance of one-shotting a lot of what’s on the board. 

They can take 1 hit. At D4, even with 20/22, I find that opponents are lining up heavy hitters against them. At 15 wounds, I have better than a 75% chance of sticking around when inspired. There are very few single units that can generate more than that. This is where multi-charges are the real enemy and hordes are tough to protect against them. That, in part, is why I’ve started using the layered deployment approach against opponents where I need to kill things. 

In my list, footguard are rarely for capturing objectives. They are for killing things. Typically, with a layered approach, I want my fanatics in combat such that when the enemy kills them, my footguard have a clear charge afterward. That means that I’m either charging my fanatics out into enemies who let me get close enough, and marching footguard close behind, or I’m marching fanatics a few inches in front of the enemy and letting my footguard do the follow-up. I played this way, for example, against two terrifying hordes of palace guard. They devoured all of my fanatics, but I got charges off on him with my footguard, who are only slightly less terrifying. Against D4 palace guard, they were causing 15-16 wounds – not enough to break them alone but, since my fanatics do 5-6 wounds against D4, I already had some chip damage to help me. Both hordes were broken on the first charge from the footguard. 

Pikes

Pikes are probably the thing most opponents groan about. Yes, five regiments is a lot of pikes. They do nothing for damage, however, and are quite vulnerable to missile fire. I choose regiments over hordes for a number of reasons: regiments are more mobile and pivot more flexibly to take advantage of mistakenly offered flanks; regiments are harder to multi-charge; regiments are all disposable, and regiments actually allow you to concentrate more US in a small area than hordes (see #2 below). 

They are on the table to do two things – hold objectives and die slowly. Let’s look at some math:

1. Dying slowly

Phalanx got dead sexy in 3^rd edition. The -1 to hit is fantastic when combined with the ensnare from pikes. Take any dreaded flyers or cav – now they suck. Elohi in the front – 6 hits, 4 wounds. Frostfangs in the front – 5 hits, 4-5 wounds. When stacked against units that are designed to one-shot, reform, and charge again, pikes are a real pain. 

All your opponents will know this, which is why my strategy usually is to shove my pikes across the field as fast as possible. When you force an opponent to go through Pikes, they earn their keep.  That is also why I have five units. No matter how clever my opponent, they’re going to have a very hard time keeping the units I target away from my pikes. 

Make no mistake, however, they still die. Elite infantry will carve them up. Ensnare alone won’t protect against palace guard, soul reaver infantry, etc. So, you want to try to aggressively shove them against those units that really suffer vs. phalanx, and try to take advantage of hinder vs. elite infantry who avoid phalanx. Remember, the goal is for them to hold one turn. Just one. 

2. Hold Objectives

Two regiments are US 6 and occupy the same space as a hoard. What else is there to know?  

Summary:

That’s pretty much it. This list works. Against a variety of opposing lists and players, this is a solid and flexible force. The number one attribute you need to succeed with it is patience. You have to take it on the nose for turns 2-3 while you set up your charges. You have to see to turn 4 as you start turn 1 – not all the way, but you have to have a vision. Remember, your Generals can go 60 inches in 3 turns. There is no section of the board you cannot bring force to bear on if you have patience. 

My overall goal with this was to hopefully lay out a list type and strategy that has competed at a high level, both to dispel the notion that Kingdoms of Men cannot compete, and to give you some flavor as to what has worked for me.