Hi everyone! Today we’re bringing you a guest article from Page Neo, a Kings of War player, Mantic Pathfinder, and YouTube / podcast host from Singapore. A big thanks to Page for taking the time to write this tactics article for Dash28! Check out his YouTube channel, Newbie Dice, and the Newbie Dice Podcast for more content! Some light editing and all image captions provided by Dash28.
Hi everyone, Page Neo here, and after writing about “Evolution of the Piece Trading Game — The Rise of MMU,” I’m back with another article. This time I’m discussing the dreaded shooting list.
I know many people have negative reactions when talking about facing a shooting heavy army — it’s not fun, it’s not fair, the opponent is just being an a**hole — but what if I said shooting lists are a necessary component of the game?
An Ecosystem of Lists
In Kings of War, or any adversarial game, a diversity of viable builds and strategies encourage a more dynamic scene, where a rich ecosystem of lists thrive. If a shooting heavy list is not viable, an element of the game is removed. Not only that, but like an ecosystem, if an animal’s only predator no longer exists, its population will spiral out of control. Builds that are thought to be advantageous against most adversaries except shooting will be seen way more often. Even though we all agree that player skill is the biggest determining factor in this game, there are opinions on advantageous matchups.
Imagine a game of Rock Paper Scissors but there’s no paper. Everyone would bring rock, and no one would bring scissors. If there were no shooting, chaff wouldn’t have to worry about getting shot off before blocking things up, a hammer unit’s defense would be less important because with good positioning and chaff you could limit damage taken from charges. One could take the cheapest and fastest chaff and the hardest-hitting hammers without having to worry about surviving shooting.
Even with the existence of viable shooting, a community with shooting lists and a community without have very different metas. So, in conclusion to my first segment, viable shooting and shooting-heavy lists are a necessary component of our Kings of War ecosystem.
“Shooting is Easy Mode!”
Playing a shooting army is not as easy as it seems. Target priority is much more important, because there’s a wider choice of things to shoot at, but often there’re only a few correct answers. Shooting armies are often stronger in the early game, but their strength wanes in the late game. If a shooting army does not gain a big enough advantage in the early game, it will have a miserable late game and ultimately lose. Kings of War is also thankfully built with scenarios that often require you to control the middle of the battlefield, so you can’t sit back and shoot all game.
At Adepticon 2023, Travis Timm ran a melee-centric Northern Alliance list against shooty elves and won the game even though he only rolled three dice the whole game. By pushing up and pressuring the scenario while minimizing incoming ranged damage, Travis ensured that the shooting player couldn’t shoot off enough and couldn’t commit to the scenario without taking serious losses.
Shooting players have to decide what to shoot early game, and how much to give up in terms of scenario positioning, to delay the melee conflict. So, Kings of War isn’t as easy for shooting players as one might think; in fact, it often feels like a slippery slope as choosing the wrong target, backing up too much or not enough, or even a few bad rolls might easily cause the shooting player to lose. If winning with shooting were too easy, it would probably be addressed in the next Clash of Kings / edition, or even in an errata if it were too egregious.
“Playing against a Shooting List is Not Fun”
This is hard to address. Yes, there are some feel-bad moments when your cool melee unit gets taken off the board before it even does anything, but take it as part and parcel of this piece-trading game. Sometimes that same unit gets charged first by the enemy and dies, or it only kills a lowly chaff unit before meeting its doom. Take the challenge in stride and determine how to deliver your army effectively into a shooting army. If it’s your first time getting decimated by shooting, you’ll definitely learn a lot on how to deal with such lists better the next time, both in the list-building stage and when piloting your army.
And please don’t shame players who play shooting armies. Just like how some players prefer to play archers and wizards in RPGs rather than melee classes, some prefer to take shooting- or magic-focused armies, imagining a grand volley of arrows whizzing through the air in their head canon, or a massive volley of artillery with war engines, or a storm of lightning and fire. We are all playing a game, after all.
Despite the clickbait title of “a necessary evil,” I don’t think shooting lists are evil in the first place. Let’s treat these lists and players like any other. Have fun playing everybody.
If you need any tips on fighting shooting armies, you can check out my YouTube video on this exact topic.
