Bad Games

This past weekend I played a game of Kings of War. For the most part, I have found KoW to be a fairly well balanced game. Even when things looked bleak for one side, they could normally come back and make it close. That had been my experience so far.

Then I had what can only be described as my first bad game of kings of war. We were playing 1000pts, and this was for the new summer campaign they had started. I was asked to bring an "evil" army, so I brought an undead force. I opted for what I thought was a well rounded, fun to play against, army. I had a troop of vampire cav, a troop of werewolves, a regiment of skeleton spears, and a regiment of revenants. To top it off, a lich king, a necro, and a catapult.

I faced off against an ogre army. He had a horde of beserkers, a horde of normal ogres, a regiment of flamethrower guys, a giant, a boom wagon, a bsb and a goblin hero. Now I have already gone off on my issue with Large Infantry for KoW2. The smaller footprints they are allowed to have compared to other armies, to me, is unbalanced. But I was ready to see how my army fared against his.

What did strike me odd was the fact that he had nothing but regiments and hordes, while I had troops and regiments. That meant stat wise, he had the advantage (this is what I thought at the time). So I was a bit confused how our armies were even.

Well the game made it all the way until round two. In round two, I failed to route his berzerkers with my cav (he had been hit by his own exploding wagon previously, and his bsb saved them). His guys then counter charged my cav, and despite needing 5+ to wound, put 10 wounds on the unit. He then sent them on their merry way. Next his ogre horde charged the spearmen and routed them as well. His giant then hit my werewolves (whom were guarding the flank of the cav) and waivered them. So in one round, he decimated my previously unhurt army. The game was over. His giant and berzerkers would finish off the werewolves. My revs would charge and bounce off his ogre horde, who would then charge into them and most likely send them off. We were playing a control point game, and he was going to wipe me from the board.

So again, I had to go back to the armies and look at how this was such a total and complete thrashing. I did make mistakes. Perhaps I was too quick to charge into his berzerkers, but the table was getting smaller and I didn't want to give him first charges. I did fail to realize my liche king was inspiring, so he could have backed up the cav and might have saved them. And granted, he got really lucky with his berzerkers. Average roll should have given him 5 wounds and he doubled that.

What got stuck in my head though was the fact that he had the same number of units that I did, but his were hordes and regiments, while mine were regiments and troops. Of course, now that I've had time to go over the armies and such, I do see that the Large Infantry stats are appropriate based on cost. They still get the army selection advantage from their unit sizes, but points wise, their hordes are equal to other units regiments, their regiments are equal to troops....

It took me days though to digest everything. At the time I was convinced that ogres were just broke. In the end, it was just a bad game. And those happen. Unfortunately it soured the experience for me and really put me off of Kings of War for several days. Hopefully this will teach me to keep my cool a little bit better and roll with the bad times because like it or not, it's going to happen.