Kings of War Data Analysis: My First Tournament Experience – Interstate Doubles 2024

This past weekend I had the pleasure of playing in my first-ever Kings of War event, crossing off one of my 2024 new year’s resolutions to attend an event. Our Wisconsin scene has ballooned from essentially two players to about a dozen over the past 6-8 months. Our local pathfinder, Brian from The Nerd’s Tale worked with Jeff Schiltgen from Minnesota to set up a Minnesota-Wisconsin doubles tournament for 16 players. Each team had one player from each state, bringing a 1k list. Many of the MN players are more experienced, while the WI team is much newer, so it was a fun way to pair things off and build a scene.

Lists

I paired up with Alexandre, an absolute gentleman and all-around good guy. I brought an anvilly Northern Alliance list discussed here. The summary: two regiments of dwarf clansmen, a horde of ice naiads, two regiments of pack hunters with bows, a thegn on frostfang, and a snow troll prime with tricker’s wand. It’s 7 units with 16 US. Not much offensive output other than the pack hunters, but a lot of nerve to chew through.

My partner brought 1k of Ogres, including two siegebreaker hordes and some warriors to do some damage. The format involved three games with swiss pairing and some picked scenarios from a small group.

Outcomes

Round 1 we faced Kyle Pietsch with an Ogre chariot list and then Joe with a large block of def 6 dwarfs playing control (which we picked because we had a big drop/US advantage). The packhunters picked off one of Kyle’s boomer sergeants early, the naiads ate a double charge from two chariot hordes, and we started rolling up the flank. We had enough unit strength to score and were able to secure a close victory.

Round 2 faced off against Lief and Brian (from the highly recommended Regnum Aeternum) playing invade. Both were playing the Forces of the Abyss. Brian brought a large number of fast tortured souls, while Lief had a set of lower abyssals that could take a punch. This game was very swingy: I managed to shoot off three units of tortured souls, each failing their nerve by 1 pip. Meanwhile, we lost both siegebreaker hordes early to some bounced charges that gave up flanks. Furious combat and positioning ensued (which I’m certain Brian will cover in his blog), but the long and short of it is that my dwarf clansmen marched across and contributed 6 US in our 10-7 victory in invade–which is fitting, because I ended up going with a variation of a list he suggested. You can read Brian’s detailed write-up here. (As an aside, I play the majority of my games of KoW against him, so it was a bit ironic that we traveled across the state to a tournament only to be matched up against each other again.).

This put my partner and I at 2-0 and on the top table heading into the final round, which sounds like good news, but in reality was not. Unfortunately, like Icarus, we flew too close to the sun. We were paired against Jeff Schiltgen (filling in for a dropped player), running KoM, and Rob, running halflings. The scenario was Plunder. From the moment we deployed, it was clear that this was going to be a loss. One of the nice things about Kings of War is that while the rules are simple, there’s a high skill cap, and talented players win. A lot. That was clear because, as nice as Jeff was, he quickly dissected our positioning and brutally curbstomped us, tabling me by turn 4. We ended up with one unit of retreating siegebreakers hiding in the corner.

As scoring came in, we ended up finishing 2-1, good enough for 4th, not a bad showing for my first outing, and one I’ll take. Our round 2 opponents Brian and Lief also ended up 2-1 and took 2nd overall.

Performance

How did my list perform? For each game, I tracked (as I always do), a subjective 0-5 rating for the unit, along with the damage done and received. Here’s how the units did:

My list didn’t put out much damage, but it did a nice job taking up space and absorbing charges for my partner to then capitalize on. On the whole, I don’t think I’d change it but will give it some thought before the next tournament.

Final Thoughts

In general, my list synergized well with Alexandre’s ogres. I absorbed charges, both with the ice naiads and the dwarfs, and anything that didn’t break immediately got hit back hard by him. We also had a bunch of 50mm scoring characters that contributed to scenario play. The final round was a shellacking, but it was fun to see someone as talented as Jeff playing. He narrated many of his decisions throughout the round to help us learn, which was helpful for me. A number of people stuck around to get dinner after, but unfortunately I needed to get back home for a family thing and couldn’t stick around. Still, this was a fun event, and I’m thrilled to have participated.