Easter Eggs - Things I Like About KoW - #7 No Established Canon

When you move to a new game system there is so much to learn.

Normally to kickstart this process you have the benefit of some form of established canon to access. Typically this will be from forums or in blog posts where you can read about other people's experiences with the army and various set ups.

However it is quite noticeable that this is missing for KOW. Why? Well I think it does show the size of the player base vs. the GW systems (of the past). Within a day of a book being released it was dissected and the most efficient army established - of course this relied on exploiting the lack of internal balance in the GW books. You didn't need to be Einstein to know that Doomfire Warlocks were a steal for their points cost!

For KoW this is so different. I think that there are a number of reasons. Firstly, internal balance is better due to the templated nature of unit choices. Secondly, Mantic release all the armies in waves so the Rulebook armies dropped in July and Expansion armies in November. Individual races don't get the same detailed scrutiny that GW army releases got. Essentially the focus is on entirety rather than narrow. Third reason is the player base size. There are far less blogs, less events and less forum traffic. Each GW race had its own forum while there is a Mantic forum and a group of regional sections.

What this means is that there currently is less detailed analysis of individual races. Podcast reviews are on a unit by unit basis and have not really dove deep into the intricacies of competitive list building. There is a start but currently I would say "netlist" only applies to Elves and Undead with Ogres and Kingdoms of Men the next most evolved.

This is great because you need to discover stuff for yourself. I go onto the Mantic forum - Seerlord Morskitta btw - and the Ratkin sub-forum is pretty devoid of any detailed analysis. My list evolution posts and battle reports encompass a lot of the Ratkin "knowledge" available. And thus you learn by experience. I'm seeing the same with other locals. We have two Empire of Dust players and although they speak to each other regularly about list design they have completely different takes on a competitive build. This makes it interesting to play against as you are seeing different philosophies tested.

So for me another Easter Egg on the KoW journey.

Posted with Blogsy