Last month I set about writing a thoughtful article about good sportsiness to provide the KoW world my entirely biased view about playing KoW well. This article is decidedly not that. This article is a list of the things that just frankly annoy me. Without further ado, here is an entirely-non-thoughtful list of things that annoy me about competitive Kings of War.
Special Nerve Dice
I get it. You like your special dice. You think they “roll good”. They are really cool. It adds to the drama. They match your army’s color scheme. I don’t care – they are stupid and if you think they “roll good”, maybe it is because they actually roll good. Not saying you are cheating – but the lizard part of my brain does think you are cheating and as evolved as I am (ed. note – he is not evolved) this makes me mad. Don’t bring your good luck charm dice to my table. Grab whatever two dice are closest to you and get it over with.
Dodecahedrons
On the topic of dice – get your non-six-sided dice out of my face. Whether they are normal dodecahedrons or two six-sided pyramids mushed together, I loathe twelve-sided dice. Are they statistically the same as six-sided dice? Probably – but I don’t care. Twelve-sided dice make me want to flip the table. Can you imagine the reaction of an 8 year old if you sat down at a Monopoly game with twelve-sided dice? That’s basically what you are inspiring in me.
Multi-Colored-Gobbly-Gook Dice
[Ok, somehow this turned into me yelling about dice…hmm] If your dice are so colorful that I can’t read them quickly – see above – you can get that crap out of here.
Stitch Counters
You may not know what I am talking about here (finally not dice-related), but if so, count (pun intended) yourself lucky. These abominations are little clicky-bobbers that people who like sewing use to count stitches. While they are easy to use and effectively count stuff (like damage) they sure as hell aren’t easy to read from six feet away. I don’t care what you use, but if I have to reach over the table and pick up some doohickey to see how much damage your unit has under my time – get out of here.
Oversized Monsters
This trend has thankfully largely left the game, but if you have ever had to play against an 8” x 10” picture frame with a “terror” on it, you know what I am talking about. This is dumb – get off my table.
Dice Trays
Is it flat? Probably not. Does it have high sides where I can’t see your dice – probably. Is there plenty of space somewhere on the table that you can roll not in your tray? Yes. Leave your tray in your car or on your cart and off the table.
Blaming (or Crediting) Dice
This one is trickier admittedly, because we all know luck is a function in this game. But – we also all know (or should know) when dice helped or hurt ourselves and our opponents. I’ll be the first one to tell you when my dice win me a game (though I try my darndest never to blame my dice). But when an opponent says, I only lost that because of my dice or you only won because of your dice – that better be freaking true. If it’s not – you can f&*k right off with that shit.
This is a rare occurrence in KoW, but I have a clear memory from my Warhammer Fantasy Battles days of an opponent, talking to a friend in front of me after our game while packing up, saying he had everything but the third-leg of the stool in our game. I was confused and genially interjected and asked what that meant. He, sheepishly realizing I overhead their convo, said that in WFB there are three legs to the stool of victory, tactics, list-building, and luck. I less genially responded that I didn’t realize that the only reason I won was through luck.
Point is – do your best to lose well and win well. I’m not saying hide your emotions – but if you always blame luck for winning and losing, you’ll never improve – and that might be the most frustrating thing of all.
That’s it for now – hit me with your unfounded pet peeves (especially if you’ve seen me do them!) and I will commit to irrationally arguing about them ad nauseum.
I agree with almost everything in this article, except for the wound counters. In the 10 years I’ve been playing Kings, I have yet to see wound counters that are clear from 4′ away across the table. Cards get stacked on each other, or in the way of models. Dice get moved/rolled. I understand that knitting counters can’t be seen – so ASK your opponent.
I would have a VERY hard time if ANYONE is picking up ANY of my dice/counters/models during a game – for any reason other than I asked them to (or possible carefully moving them out of the way).
I would like to add having an opponent who does not have a printed copy of their list – sitting there scrolling up and down on their phone during the game. Not that I’ve ever played games where people “mis-remembered” defense values or any other value during a game – but having something you can easily hand your opponent so they can see what you are playing is a simple courtesy.
Great article. I agree with everything you’ve said. I’d like to add that I hate when people simultaneously roll different colored dice to represent different units fighting in the same combat. ” The blue dice will be on 4s with elite, wounding on 5s. The green dice will be 3s (no elite), wounding on 4s with vicious.” Then it is done very quickly because of the clock. It’s hard to keep track of what’s going on while trying to color code different combat units at the same time while also checking the stats of your list. Please roll the units separately 😊