This article came about by another one of our team members, Sam Moore, reflecting on getting into Kings of War less than a year ago and wishing there were more resources for new players trying to figure out the best and easiest way to get into Kings of War. While there is not a clear cut answer below or a unified list, this is intended to allow players to form their opinions based on what things they value and to help them avoid pitfalls when it comes to things that could burn a new player when starting an army for the first time. If you’re new and reading this, we hope it’s helpful and please reach out with any other questions!
Models Needed
Nate Glowacki
Best: Forces of Nature. It would be a heavily slanted elemental list, but you could also pick up rocks and sticks and put them on cardboard bases and have an army on the table in a few hours. More seriously, elemental models typically are also very textured and “made of that element”, so realistically 1 color with a wash and/or dry brush and they’re done. Add any flock/sand/gravel to the bases, there’s your army.
Honorable Mention: Ogres. You need 20-30 models, all of which can be large infantry so they’ll be very easy to paint. 3 colors, a wash and a dry brush, you’re done.
Worst: Ratkin. Fairly self explanatory. Get ready to paint 100 rats and then wonder where the rest of your army is.
Sam Kula
Best: Ogres are the premier “get an army to the table quick” army. Most ogre armies are 30ish models and while some armies offer low model count choices, none have as many flavors as ogres.
Honorable mention: Forces of Nature can do an all elemental army pretty easily and with very few models but with the new book, the viability of that could be changed and seems to be shifting more towards the infantry-heavy herd side for synergies. My FoN tournament list at the end of 3rd was 34 models.
Worst: Twilight Kin are not only one of the handful of armies with only infantry core options, but their special slots are mostly infantry and the infantry units aren’t terribly expensive. Rats at least have options to not field piles of infantry but TK do not.
Dishonorable mention: Ratkin because wretch hordes exist.
Trentin Priebe
Best: Ogres. Large Infantry is how you get an army on the table quickly and Ogres are all large infantry.
Honorable Mention: Xirkaali. Xirkaali have a lot of large infantry and large cavalry unit options that you could get on the table quickly.
Worst: Ratkin, Goblins - Sooooo many models to paint. Both armies are about a lot of drops and a lot of models.
Models
Nate Glowacki
Best: Xirkaali. The Mantic sculpts are great, they’re still selling combo army boxes, and they give a flavor that does feel unique from pretty much anything else on the market.
Honorable Mention: ‘Generic Fantasy Races’. Dwarves, elves, orcs, men, orcs, all very easy to source anywhere from ‘old school from the 90s’ to hyper realism that will keep you occupied forever.
Worst: Halflings. Most of your options are either LotR Hobbits or super cartoony. If that’s your style, great, but if not you’re going to have a hard time.
Sam Kula
Best: Salamanders are the first Kings of War army to not only have a complete model range for all datasheets but is also fully digital with STLs available. On top of that the models are anywhere from acceptable to good! Who doesn’t like reptiles? There are also TONs of non-mantic options like One Page Rules Lizardmen, Games Workshop Seraphon, and other reptilian STL sets and models.
Honorable mention: Nightstalkers were a recent and large Mantic release with dual purpose kits and cool models as well as a great army to use 3rd party sculpts for weird eldritchian things.
Worst: This might be a personal thing but why on earth when getting into a fantasy wargame would you choose to play regular humans? On top of that Kingdoms of Men have no mantic models and likely never will. I find the whole concept of KoM from a hobby perspective painfully boring even though I have seen some people make beautiful armies.
Dishonorable Mention: The stability of Forces of Nature datasheets and cost of some of the new models should give you pause.
Trentin Priebe
Best: Salamanders have their full line as STLs and the models are quite good. There are also great sculpts by One Page Rules and GW’s Seraphon. Lizards, Dinos, and Lizards riding Dinos. What’s not to like?
Worst: Mantic: Elves. They’re just bad
Elsewhere: Forces of Nature can be tough to find models. Halflings are also a tough one.
COOL SHIT
Nate Glowacki
Best: Forces of the Abyss. Large range of units, covering pretty much all available from cheap/elite infantry, large infantry, cavalry, chariots, monsters, etc.. Only thing the army lacks is war machines. The units themselves are also highly up to interpretation. Cultists & corrupted mortals could form your battle line, backed up by ‘classic’ demons. You could lean into a specific ‘god’ like GW’s chaos pantheon, you could do a more DnD style approach, or maybe you love old school Runescape demons? A plethora of big, scary, fantastic demon models are available for your hobby pleasure. Also, with the newly released command orders, you could flavor your units to reflect those. Maybe your horde of cultists is doing rituals to infuse themselves with dark power to regenerate their wounds?
Honorable Mention: Nightstalkers. Eldritch horrors beyond human comprehension? Neat! Pretty much any unit in this army has endless possibilities for what model represents them. The only downside in my eyes is possible issues with consistency between units if you can’t find a sculptor that has enough models available. Also, your opponent could very easily be confused by your giant masses of tentacles and eyes.
Worst: Ogres. Ogres loses points for the same reason it is my honorable mention for Models Needed. You’re going to paint 20-30 big dudes, of which the difference between units is mostly what weapon they’re carrying. You can be creative, but at the end of the day it’s likely your units will blend together.
Sam Kula
Best: Abyssal Dwarves have a wealth of cool and odd things of different flavors. Dragons, abominations, grotesque horrors, and so many flavors of infantry give you a mountain of hobby choices to focus on or just try out. I think even at an infantry level it’s an army that is just cool to see on the table.
Honorable Mention: Nightstalkers have weird freakish models and every nightstalker army looks awesome in most combinations.
Worst: Most Ogre armies consist of 30 slight variations of a big human and a handful of goblins. Even when the Big Deal wasn’t terrible it was never an army that wowed you to see on the table.
Dishonorable Mention: Some of the only cool things in the Northern Alliance range are also some of the most unplayable units in the game right now.
Trentin Priebe
Best: Trident Realms - Kraken, Trident King, Knucker, Coral Giant are all great options for a big impressive center piece model
Worst: Ogres are fun but their range is pretty boring. It’s almost all just Large Infantry. There is no real centerpiece in the army.
Learning Curve
Nate Glowacki
Best: Kingdoms of Men. They’re easy to start: infantry regiments in the center, spears on the flanks, maybe some archers in the woods, and some knights on the board edges. Easy peasy. If you’ve ever watched a fantasy/history movie with a big battle, copy that and you’re on your way.
Honorable Mention: Orcs. Same general idea as Kingdoms of Men, but your units are wider and often hit harder. Deploy your units in a line, walk forwards, hit whatever is in front of you. ‘Good tactics’ is a phrase made up by nerds who lose fist fights. The only reason I give Kingdoms of Men the edge is that orc units are slightly less straightforward to figure out their more advanced use cases in comparison. Also, the wider bases means you’ll need to quickly learn positioning to avoid being hindered all the time.
Worst: Goblins. A truly talented goblin player will have you wondering how you killed so many units and still lost the game. A beginner goblin player will wonder how they put so many units on the board and still got tabled by turn 4. Goblins require finesse to not get in your own way, understanding of unit synergies, and a keen eye for setting traps & ’trading up’ in fights.
Sam Kula
Best: Columbus does not look kindly upon shooting but wow does 4 Komodons allow a LOT of breathing room for a new player while also being immediately obvious how they are used. You will not instantly be as good as Andy Patton but fielding a few hordes and some gekkos to go with 4 komodons will give you the easiest entry into not getting tabled at Kings of War while learning the game while still having a ceiling to shoot for in terms of list tweaks and gameplay.
Honorable Mention: Similar to the Salamander sentiment, if you field a pile of trash and indirect war engines, you will be able to successfully do things with goblins even while taking heavy casualties.
Worst: Dwarves are uniquely situated in Kings in that there are few to no situations where you begin on the front foot or get the first call on battleline engagement. Setting up your battleline to absorb the crash is critically important as well as one of the last skills Kings of War players usually pick up because it’s so difficult to do while getting value out of
Dishonorable Mention: Trident Realms is a veteran player’s favorite army to play for fun but a new player will fall face first into an endless bag of tricks they cannot execute properly.
Trentin Priebe
Best: Easiest Army to pick up and understand what this does is by far Ogres. They punch things hard. That said I do think they have a fairly high skill ceiling still but they are certainly not the deepest of armies from a tactical standpoint.
Worst: On the opposite end of the spectrum is Goblins. The skill floor is quite high. Where you can give an ogre list to someone quite new to the game and they immediately know how to play it; give a goblin list to someone with experience in armies other than goblins and they will flail about helpless trying to understand how to pilot 20+ drops of garbage and win. If you give it to a goblin player they will pick you apart piece by piece until you are left looking at an empty table on your side not understanding how this garbage just tabled you.
Competitive Viability
Nate Glowacki
Best: Ratkin. It just won masters, it has several truly terrifying ways to play, and your opponent will have to be both good & lucky to survive.
Honorable Mention: Forces of Nature. Tools for everything, unexpected play styles, and the ability to recover from mistakes/oversights. This also may just be due to playing Sam Kula so often, so grain of salt there.
Worst: Empire of Dust. The Surge mechanic in 4th edition is currently in a very bad place. It is overcosted and with the changes to movement (everyone else getting an extra pivot), it is much harder to set traps and capitalize on them with surge. Guess what mechanic the entire EoDust army relies on?
Sam Kula
Best: The most competitively viable army in kings right now is Ratkin in my estimation and even with rumored changes they will remain strong. What sets them apart from other strong armies is how forgiving they are to mistakes compared to the other strong armies.
Honorable mention: Goblins are best suited at exploiting listbuilding restrictions right now and can field absurd amounts of war engines and heroes (This is not a category about viability of making friends at the store).
Worst: Easily the worst army in Kings of War right now is Empire of Dust and with no new book in sight to save them I don’t think that changes soon. They had one build that I believed in with Deadeye hordes and that somehow took a sizable nerf with the change to the command.
Dishonorable mention: Halflings are somewhere between awful and stagnant and have already gotten their book for the edition so be wary of playing the army with anything other than rifles.
Trentin Priebe
Best: Ratkin. Ratkin are good and also pretty straightforward to understand the playstyle. They have big blocks of nerve to force people to chew through and you can put ensnaring on a number of them.
Honorable Mention: FoN, though the Fracture book changes this a bit. I still think Forces is a really good and viable army though but the easy elemental hobbying version is less so.
Worst: EoD, hands down. EoD are a shambling/surge focused army and those particular rules are not very strong in 4th edition right now.
Fun
Nate Glowacki
Best: Nightstalkers. They’ve got a bunch of fun rules, Stealthy means you’ll be less sad when your opponent brings a gunline army, and Mindthirst means you don’t have to concern yourself with boring things like ‘keeping your inspiring units safe’. They’re fast & hit hard, so just pick your target and start rolling dice.
Honorable Mention: Salamanders. If I have to explain why an army of dinosaurs, several of which are ALSO RIDING OTHER DINOSAURS, is fun, then I don’t think we’ll get along.
Worst: Empire of Dust. Partially due to their current competitive viability issues, as well as heavy reliance on Surge. EoDust is really hard to have a fun ‘beer and pretzels’ style game where you can relax and have fun instead of thinking 3 steps ahead.
Sam Kula
Best: Nightstalkers are the most fun army to play with in Kings of War! Want to not care about getting shot? Want to not care about inspiring your stuff? Nightstalkers have a pile of cool and diverse melee units and builds that work and commands that are usable. No army in the game does what they do and they do it well.
Honorable Mention: Undead have a command that removes shambling, piles and piles of flesh, and diverse builds that work well making them very engaging to play with.
Worst: If you don’t care if you ever win a game of Kings of War, Xirkaali might be the most fun army in the game. The winning part is what changes it. If there isn’t a lot of shooting in your local meta, then you can have a ton of fun with these guys but not every meta can be as HONEST as Columbus…
Dishonorable Mention: Halflings have a ton of anti-synergies and weak units and the only way to field a non-terrible list is with a pile of rifles which is fun for nobody.
Trentin Priebe
Best: Trident Realms. You can play trident realms in like 4 different ways and they are all rewarding. You can use movement manipulation, shooting, or just lineup and punch if you want.
Worst: Elves for me. Shooting is boring and elves are massed shooting at the moment.
Forgiving
Nate Glowacki
Best: Undead. Easily accessible & cheap blocks of high defense nerve (revenants, my beloved), plenty of ways to mitigate & heal damage, and Surge to help smooth out bad deployment & movement. Several fast units to help protect flanks and ‘keep your opponent honest’. Undead lets a new player start learning more advanced tactics while still having a safety net.
Honorable Mention: Ratkin. Who cares if you make mistakes and some units die horrible deaths when you have approximately 20,000 more rats ready to give their lives for the cause? Ratkin’s access to laughable cheap hordes of infantry allows you to overcome things like ‘flanks’ with pure weight of numbers.
Worst: Xirkaali. Moderately pricey units with decent defense and nerve which usually will out-speed your opponent which means you need to know what to charge and when. Auras & synergies are major factors of the army, so you need to know which units to keep together in order to get the most out of them. If you don’t have a plan to support your alpha strike, your army might be going home with its tail between its legs.
Sam Kula
Best: Nightstalkers alleviate two of the trickier facets in kings to master- Getting shot and inspiring your stuff. All you have to do is focus on positioning and mission and that often gives you a huge mental leg up on your opponent. The army still requires skill like all the other armies but Nightstalkers hand you two less things to worry about out of the gate.
Honorable Mention: Undead can field obscene amounts of nerve for very cheap and there’s no better way to get bailed out of a mistake on the table than having your chaff be revenant regiments or zombie hordes.
Worst: Dwarves are uniquely situated in Kings in that there are few to no situations where you begin on the front foot or get the first call on battleline engagement. Setting up your battleline to absorb the crash is critically important as well as one of the last skills Kings of War players usually pick up because it’s so difficult to do while getting value out of.
Dishonorable Mention: If your “Go” turn doesn’t work with your Xirkaali army, you lose.
Trentin Priebe
Best: Ratkin. With the sheer weight of numbers you can field, mistakes are usually not crushing to your plan. There is always another unit of rats that you can plug the hole or hold the flank.
Honorable Mention: Orcs. You can run orcs with just lots of units and play kill. It is a very forgiving approach to the game.
Worst: Force of Nature. You have low drops and low US. You need to make every piece work for you and do its job. It’s a high-wire act of an army. Can be very good but is the definition of not forgiving.