Greetings, and welcome back to another Kings of War Beginner’s Guide! These guides are part of an article series focused on beginner information. If you are looking for additional beginner-focused information, you can find our other articles here, where we have tips for choosing an army, info on hobby basics, and tactics basics, as well as what gaming traits Kings of War does well, and what it does poorly.
In this article, I am going to cover the basics of how to build a legal and competent list, with the emphasis being on balance and an ability to take on all comers. Hopefully this is helpful as you begin planning your first lists and armies!
List Building Rules
Before going into the actual tactical choices when building a list, we need to understand the basics of how an army can be made. Luckily for Kings of War, this is pretty easy and has a lot of flexibility.
For list building in Kings of War, we have a free resource, Easy Army, which is excellent and I strongly recommend using: https://mantic.easyarmy.com/KingsOfWar.
Army selection is laid out on pages 39-44 (in the big rulebook). Here is a summary, though I recommend checking the exact wording in your rulebook.
- Pick a Points Value: For new players I recommend 1250-1500 (enough to feel like a full game, but also easier to collect and learn with). The tournament standard seems to be primarily 2,300 points, though some events use 1,995 and 2,000 points.
- Unlocking Units: Troops, Irregular Units, War Engines, Characters, and Monsters all need to be unlocked by regular regiments and hordes.
- Unlocking Troops
- Regiments of Infantry, Cavalry, and Chariots unlock two troops each
- Hordes and Legions of Infantry, Chariots, Cavalry Hordes, Large Infantry, Large Cavalry, etc. unlock four troops each
- Unlocking Monsters, War Engines, Heroes
- Regiments (Except Large Infantry and Large Cav) each unlock either a Hero, Monster, Titan, or War Engine
- Hordes of most things unlock up to one hero, up to one monster/titan, and up to one War Engine
- Hordes of Large Infantry, Monstrous Infantry, or Large Cav unlock two choices from Hero, Monster, Titan, and War Engine
- Unlocking Troops
Rules to Keep In Mind
Duplicate Choices: Points levels determine how many duplicates of Heroes, War Engines, Monsters, and Titans can be taken. 0-1,499 allows only one, 1,500-1,999 allows up to two, and 2,000-2,999 allows up to three.
Irregular: Irregular units, marked by units with an asterisk by their name, do not unlock anything and must be unlocked like troops no matter the size.
Limited Units: If a unit has a [1] by its name, only one can be taken per army.
Allies: You can choose up to 25% of your total points to be from another list. You can’t take Irregular or Limited units as allies, and you can only take one of each choice of War Engine, Hero, Monster, and Titan. Allies can’t take magic items or unique spells. What can ally with what is based on alignment — Good can ally with Good and Neutral, Evil with Evil and Neutral, and Neutral can ally with everything.
Theme Lists: Basically specialized versions of another list, these lists cannot be taken as allies.
Magical Artifacts: Units and Heroes may take magical artifacts. Each artifact can only be taken once, and allies cannot take them.
Right, so those are the basics of list building! Now, lets get into the strategies and choices you will make when designing lists.
List Building Concepts
List building has a great deal of flexibility in Kings of War, meaning that you can really develop a list to lean into units and styles of play you like. When starting out, I often think a balanced playstyle is the way to go. It lets you learn the various components of the game and lets you face all other styles of lists pretty well.
The Battle Line
For a balanced list, I generally build for a couple of things. First, you want a decent battle line. These are the units that are going to help grab objectives, tank hits, and create openings for your hammers.
A solid starting point for any battle line is to grab one unit to be the center. This unit should have the ability to take a hit from a single opposing unit and have good chances to survive. Look for units with nerve values of 19/21 and up for this role. The better their defense, the better they are at tanking a hit. The damage output for this unit doesn’t matter a lot, so when given the choice between more nerve or more damage, pick the higher nerve.
You will then need to support this battle line core. My personal go-to is two units, one to cover each flank. I like regiments of infantry or hordes of large infantry for this role. These flanking units are great to potentially hit flanks of units fighting your core unit, to grab objectives, or to fight other enemy units so that your core unit doesn’t get overwhelmed.
For my flankers, I want units with decent survivability, at least nerve 15/17, and with some damage output. Otherwise, they can’t really threaten enemy units. Usually, this means at least one point of Crushing Strength and/or Melee 3+.
Once you have these three units, you need a couple of options to support them. A big component of Kings of War tactics is sacrificing smaller units into the enemy’s scary unit to hold them in place for a turn. These units are generally referred to as “chaff.” For a battle line, chaff isn’t a must, but I personally like to come to the table with two pieces of chaff. The way I pick my chaff is based on points — it needs to be cheap, like under 100 points. If it is fast or Nimble, even better! These units will either deploy behind my battle line to avoid shooting, and then jump out when needed (remember you can move through your own units, not charge, but move through), or out in front if the enemy doesn’t have shooting.
*Please note, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the existence of “Thicc Chaff” essential slightly more expensive chaff that has a deeper pool of Nerve. These units are still cheap enough to throw away when need be, but tough enough often to take on opposing chaff no problem, Forest Shambler regiments are an excellent example of this. For my purposes I’m ignoring these choices, but they are worth keeping in mind if you want some hardier chaff*
Finally, your battle line needs some character support. You want whatever you pick to have Inspiring to help keep your units in the game longer. I also find that taking a hero that has Bane Chant, either through an item or a spell, is a big help in making your battle line more threatening.
Here is an example of a Kingdoms of Men battle line using this building method. It’s not optimized, but the Core is the Pole-Arm Horde, which has a solid Nerve, making up for its terrible Defense. I could have taken a Shield Wall to get Defense 4, but Pole-Arms have Crushing Strength 1, allowing them to kill things on counter hits, which is important.
The two Flanking units are Fanatics Regiments, which get a decent amount of attacks, hitting on 3s, with Crushing Strength 1. If they hit the flanks of an enemy, they can do some great damage. If they need to charge opposing smaller units, they are a decent threat. They won’t survive long, but since they are Fearless, as long as they are on the board, they will be fighting.
Then to support everything I have two Militia Mob Troops — dirt-cheap sacrificial units. They are regiments so they don’t maneuver as easily as a troop, but their extra Nerve and Unit Strength should come in handy. Finally, we have a Wizard with the Inspiring Talisman to hold the line together. The Wizard has Bane Chant to boost the damage of any unit, and he has Lightning Bolt so it can shoot enemies in the turns it isn’t Bane Chanting. The Pegasus gives the Wizard some great maneuverability as well as 1 Unit Strength for objectives!
This is one method of building a battle line. You could also take two hordes and some support units for those, or several regiments (known as checkerboarding). Whatever you take, it’s important to keep in mind that your battle line first and foremost needs to have objectives in mind — killing enemy units is a secondary priority.
Hammers
Hammers are your killing units. These are the units that, when the moment is right, you jam into your opponent, cackling with glee as you remove unit after unit (assuming everything goes well). These units emphasize damage and, to a lesser degree, speed. Some armies have a ton of hammers to choose from, while others struggle to get reliable hammers; what hammers you have access to in an army helps define how the army plays. Slow hammers need a lot of support units as a delivery system to get them into the combats you choose; fast hammers often need less support, but they do need units to off-balance the enemy or to block opposing fast hammers.
Generally in any list, you want at least two units as designated damage dealers, ideally three, particularly for games of 2,000-2,300 points. Hammer units need to be able to kill opposing units quickly with the goal to remove a unit in one turn. This means they need at least one point in Crushing Strength, preferably at least two points to take care of high-defense enemies. They also need enough attacks, with a reliable Melee value, to do this. I tend to only think of Melee 3+ units as hammers; I have found Melee 4+ to be too swingy to reliably put out the damage I want. Cavalry, Large Cavalry, and Large Infantry are common hammer choices, though Infantry can also fill the role.
Hammers, more than the battle line, need a delivery method to hit the enemy units you want. This means chaff, supporting characters, and sometimes shooting. With proper support, units like Drakon Riders can wreck unit after unit; however, if sent on their own, they will often get bogged down and be taken out. When planning out your hammers, you need to plan whether they are going to work together, independently, support the battle line, etc. Thinking about where and how your hammers will act will decide what kind of support they need.
Battle line hammers don’t need as much support, because your battle line already has it built-in. Maybe add one to two more units of chaff to help screen the hammer, but that is about it. Fast hammers that work together, like two cavalry regiments, can make use of the same support, so you don’t need to double up. But hammers that work independently will each need their own support choices. Generally, if you want your hammers to work together, you need similar speeds, and you want support to be equally fast or faster!
Heroes can be an excellent form of support for a hammer, helping add vital damage to a charge to break an enemy, Inspiring your hammer acting out on the flanks, or healing/boosting your hammers. Whatever the role, make sure your supporting characters are mounted on something to keep up.
Returning to our Kingdoms of Men example, here are the hammers I decided to add. First, I wanted my main battle line to have more damage output and support, so I added a horde of Foot Guard. Because I really want these to focus on damage I traded their shields for two-handed weapons and gave them Brew of Strength for an impressive 25 attacks, hitting on 3s, with Crushing Strength 2. If they get Bane Chant, that goes up to Crushing Strength 3!! Now they are extremely slow at Speed 5, so even though my battle line has some tools to deliver them into combats of choice, I wanted, even more, adding two troops of Fanatics. The Fanatic troops are great because they are Fearless, so they won’t bog your line down, and they are under 100 points but still have 12 attacks hitting on 3s with Crushing Strength 1 and Wild Charge, so they can be a little bit of a threat too.
In many ways, Kings of War is a game won by movement, so getting some speed into my list is essential. I decided my other two hammers would be two regiments of Knights. These are solid units, though with 16 attacks they are going to struggle to break enemy units in one turn. With that in mind, I added a General on a Pegasus, who can Inspire the group and combo charge in to add some damage. Finally, I need a way to help deliver the Knights into the combats I want, so I took two troops of Mounted Sergeants, which are nice and fast. If my opponent ignores them, their Speed 9 and Nimble means they may get some flank charges in and do some damage.
The Left Overs
At this point, my list is up to 1910 points, and I have my two most important components for my army — a battle line and hammers. Assuming I am playing 2,300 points I have 390 more points to play with, and I have a few options. I can add to my hammers and battle line if I want, or I can start stacking in some fun support options. A lot depends on my own personal tastes and the army I am playing. Kingdoms of Men have several really fun shooting options, and I know the list could use some more damage output, whereas I think my battle line is fine, so I am going to focus on those concepts.
This is also a good time to start looking at potential items and upgrades for units. Kingdoms of Men have access to the excellent Indomitable Will, which I am going to add to both Knight Regiments, the Footmen Horde, and the Pole Arm Horde, for a total of 40 points. I also know I need my knights to keep their damage output up, even when charging in terrain, so I am adding Potion of the Caterpillar to one and Jesse’s Boots of Striding to the other.
With the remaining points, I added two Cannons, which give some excellent long-range damage output but don’t hit reliably, hence why I wanted two. Finally, I took a second Wizard on Pegasus with Bane Chant and Lightning Bolt. This will improve the ranged damage output of the list, give a bit more Unit Strength for objectives, and give a second fast source of Bane Chant that can either help the hammers or the battle line.
Here we have our completed list:
Takeaways and Common Pitfalls
Hopefully walking you through the basics of how I think about list design, and some core concepts to keep in mind, is helpful. Generally, I find when I am drawn to an army it is because of one to two units that I really want to use. If you are the same, consider starting by thinking about what role these units serve and then building the list up around the unit.
When thinking about your army, try to figure out its specific strengths and weaknesses and build accordingly.
Finally, while building your army think about deployment and movement. How and where the components will work together is essential to getting the most use out of them.
A few common problems I see in beginners’ lists to keep in mind:
- Too many magic items! Not every unit needs items, more bodies on the field is almost always better
- Bane Chant is often the difference between winning or losing combats, make sure you take at least one source of it
- You can never have too much chaff
- Always, always build a delivery system for your hammers, the best hammers in the game can be blocked and then removed
- Find your own style, it’s more important to play with units you are comfortable with and fit your own style and preferences than it is to use optimized units, if you want to do well in Kings of War
Additional Resources
If you are looking for alternative perspectives on list building or more in-depth examinations, consider some of these resources:
- How to Operate the Canoe: Pat Zoro Allen’s amazing reflection on how he builds tournament-winning lists
- Just the Tips Alpha Strike: Alex Chaves’ masterful breakdown of how to build and play Alpha Strike lists
- Killing With Trash: Nick William’s reflections on using his Scarecrow army which floods the board with cheap units
- Counter Charge List Builder Studio: In-depth interviews with excellent players on how they build their army lists
- Build Me an Army Worthy of Mike Rossi: Unplugged Radio crew break down how they would dust off and update their co-host’s Vampire Counts army to make a competent Undead List, including tactical and hobby discussion
