KOW - Opportunity Knocked

New Zealand has always had a relatively small Fantast tournament scene. At its height I’d guess that there were probably no more than 200 active (2 or more tournaments per year) participants. This was probably around the time of late 7^th/early 8^th Ed Warhammer Fantasy….so 2008-11. In the later years of 8^th, participation was dropping and I suspect the numbers had halved from their peak.

At that time I was running 4-5 events a year and getting 16-30 people at each. I also ran the NZ Team Champs where we had 64 people competing.

With the schism of the Warhammer World post-End Times, the community fragmented. Effectively it fell into five separate camps – in Fantasy there were those that played Age of Sigmar, those playing 9^th Age and the Kings of War players. There were also people who went to other games and finally those that seemed to stop playing.

In Wellington I switched my focus to KOW and started to organise events. The first of these attracted 24 players. It never got better. For the last year the local tournaments have failed to attract more than 8-10 players, two being players “new” to the scene. The nadir has been reached this weekend where Call to Arms – previously a flagship Fantasy event – has only 6 KOW entrants.

At the same time T9A has also struggled to gain traction. Events, largely based in Auckland – a city of 1.5 million – are struggling to get more than 12-16 people. At the same time there appears to be a thriving AoS tournament scene, this week’s CTA attracting 38 people. In the battle for the Fantasy genre here in New Zealand, round bases and a skirmish ruleset has quite clearly won.

From my point of view it has been a very frustrating two years. My background is in historical gaming so I like ranks and flanks. I also really enjoy the KOW rules which are very clean and which get regular support from the Rules Committee.

Unfortunately it is time to admit defeat in terms of KOW being the basis of a viable local Fantasy tournament scene. The number of participants can’t really support standalone events – rental cost, trophies etc. However more than that, having the same 6-8 people at every event gets old very quickly and leads to stagnation.

While we can try and grow the number of players I feel as though it has been an uphill battle. In this I think Mantic has been at fault. Little has been done since Uncharted Empires to grow the source material that would attract more players. Now 21 months after that book we get the next piece of material with the campaign book. However for a lot of smaller communities – basically anywhere outside the UK/US – it is too little, too late.

There was a wonderful opportunity presented by the launch of AoS. In the first twelve months if Mantic had pushed the source material – which a lot of people needed to engage with the game – and backed this up with more releases then I think KOW might have flourished here. The fact that it survives in the UK and thrives in the US is probably enough for Mantic. However I’d be surprised whether there is any area outside those two (perhaps Brisbane) where the game is thriving.

I understand it. Attention has been directed to the Kickstarter programme and especially “The Walking Dead” and it has probably kept the lights on. However the global opportunity that was KOW has probably now gone. Now with the 40k steamroller now rebooted I suspect that any forays into sci-fi are wasted effort.

Their main competitor has now completely changed their interaction model and as a result companies like Mantic will be starved of air.

As a result locally I can never see KOW getting a foothold. And that’s a shame as the game and the RC support deserved it.