Clash of Kings 2022 – favourite units

With Clash of Kings 2022 shipping from today – and new stats starting to make their way into the wider world of Kings of War – we thought we’d catch up with some of the KoW-playing staff here at Mantic to see what’s caught their eye in the BIGGEST EVER Clash of Kings.

NICK – ABYSSAL DWARF NOOB

Hi there, I’m new to Kings of War and have only played Abyssal Dwarves so far. With that in mind, I’m going to talk about something from them. I’m also going to cheat and pick two units: Dravak Dalkan and Infernok! Ok, so these may have been introduced in Halpi’s Rift but now they’re all official.

For this, you get a named Ironcaster with Surge(12), Fireball(12) and Heal(3) that can use his pet Greater Obsidian Golem for line of sight. This means that you can spread your obsidian golems over more of the battlefield and still threaten to surge any of them. With the changes to the Tome of Darkness and Diadem of Dragonkind, this means these are some of the highest values for those spells in the game. Not to mention that fireballs are even scarier than before, thanks to the addition of Shattering.

Add to this that Infernok is even meaner than the average Greater Obsidian Golem with Crushing Strength (4) and Brutal and you have a very scary combo. I’m looking forward to playing with these in my army and crushing some pesky halflings under some giant animated rocks!

MARTIN – LIFELONG ABYSSAL DWARF RATKIN NIGHTSTALKER RIFTFORGED ORC PLAYER

The unit I am most looking forward to is the Stormforged Shrine for the Riftforged Orcs. The amount of buffs that can be potentially dished out using ‘Anvil of the Rift’ and ‘Power of the Rift’ is amazing! On one hand you can use the Shrine to pop multiple Bane Chant spells around your army, without needing Line of Sight (after the initial success), or use Lightning Bolt to do some chip damage. You can even cast Host Shadow Beast on the ‘individuals’ in your army to boost their attacks. Just remember to keep the shrine close to your core units, as each Riftforged unit within 6” of the Shrine increases the dice rolled for those spells by a maximum of 3. And, as if that wasn’t already exciting enough, having the Fury Aura keeps you in the fight, even when Wavered.

The Stormforged Shrine is a real tool box and one of the main foundations of the Riftforged Orc force. I can’t wait to get one and give it a delicious paint job, once it’s available next year – the wait is already killing me.

KYLE – RULES COMMITTEE SPY LIAISON

I sort of feel like I could talk about dozens of things that I love from this book. Having just played a game against my good friend Caleb, who took Hrimm the Legendary Frost Giant, I can’t overstate how much of a threat the addition of Slayer and Rampage add to the units that can benefit from them. When such a great centrepiece model becomes an absolute threat, everything just feels right with the world.

Hrimm was averaging 18 attacks on a CRUSHING STRENGTH FOUR GIANT. It was just exactly the kind of thing those units needed. What’s even better is, it’s not even an auto-pilot choice. With Slayer, he has to match it up against the appropriate unit type to gain the advantage. What made it a challenge for me was, the units I wanted to get into Hrimm to take him out were exactly those unit types. So with each of these new rules finding themselves nestled gently beneath a plethora of profiles, suddenly how you engage these units and shut them down is completely different than before. I love it when simple changes lead to a breadth of new tactical gameplay options. I’m not sure many other things can say they accomplish that as well as these two new special rules.

CLIVE – ACTUALLY KNOWS THE RULES

Having thought long and hard about this, I can’t truly decide on one.  I guess the one that stood out the most to me was the undead formation – which appealed because undead was my first ever Kings of War!  So, I set out to buy lots of zombies, made a ton more regiments up and then created another legion to make my formation ready to play.

Happy to say it worked a treat, if you combine those legions with a couple of good items (like Hammer and Elite) they become a real threat and great tarpit.  Keep the Goreblight nearby too and he can tackle any flank chargers that pop up with the help a friendly necromancer nearby to surge it.

Secondly, I think are all the changes to elves, which made me want to refresh my dragon-themed army – lots of Drakons, dragon swarms, combined with a few archer regiments and lightning bolting mages! Nasty.

ROB – GOBLIN OVERLORD

After getting over the initial disappointment that there wasn’t a Winggit Squadron included as a new unit (BOO!) – my eye quickly wandered to the new Groany Snark upgrade for a King. I mean, who doesn’t like the idea of a Blast (D3) King flying around the tabletop and potentially rolling a bucket load of attacks with Thunderous Charge (2). Yeah, I’ll ignore the fact that the suit may explode if I roll a 1 when moving. That will absolutely never happen. NEVER! Also, it’s quite handy to have some Inspiring near my Winggits, which typically tend to zoom off down a flank – so now Groany can keep up.

In fact, I like this new option so much, I’ve already kit-bashed a model using the body of a halfling Ej Grenadier and some goblin parts from the hard plastic sprue. Nice to see the bits combine so well… perhaps we need an actual unit of goblins with mini-winggit flight suits in Clash of Kings 2023? Hope you’re taking notes RC.

Oh yeah, and seeing as most other people have picked two units – that luggit horde! Mmm… chef’s kiss. I’m meant to be painting salamanders… not 40 luggits.

CLASH OF KINGS 2022 IS SHIPPING THIS WEEK. THE DIGITAL EDITION WILL BE AVAILABLE FROM THE MANTIC WEBSITE ON NOVEMBER 12TH.