Phew… we’ve just recovered from the madness of GenCon but the excitement isn’t close to stopping! Last month we announced that Kings of War Third Edition is due for release this October and now we’re delving deeper into this hugely anticipated launch.

The Third Edition is the perfect opportunity for us to make sure Kings of War is the absolute best mass fantasy battle game ever. Mantic, alongside the rules committee and playtesters, have been working extremely hard to make sure this edition evolves and develops the groundwork laid by Second Edition and the subsequent Clash of Kings supplements.

There’s already a great deal of excitement about the new edition but over the next week, we’ll be turning that excitement up to 11! Each day we’ll be revealing one of the new products that will be coming out as part of the Third Edition release, before pre-orders go live with our retailer partners and Mantic website from Friday. Anyway, enough of that, let’s crack on with the first spotlight…

KINGS OF WAR THIRD
EDITION HARDBACK RULEBOOK

Well, it seems like a good idea to start with the rulebook! The
first print of Third Edition will be a limited-edition hardback rulebook – and we’re
expecting it to sell out pretty fast. So, if you want to prove your dedication
to KoW, this is the book for you.

This mighty tome is almost double the size of Second Edition
and clocks in at around 400 pages! Now, don’t worry, that doesn’t mean we’ve made
the rules twice as complicated. Instead, you’ll find around 200 pages of background
on the world of Pannithor and the many races that inhabit it.

RULE THEM ALL

Our designer Duncan has been very busy laying out all the
pages and making sure the new book looks amazing. It should still feel familiar
to Kings of War fans but has been given a glossy makeover.

A little like Second Edition, the army lists begin with a
brief introduction about the background of the faction. Unlike Second Edition
though, this introductory fluff gives details about each unit – rather than
being included alongside the unit listing itself. This cleans things up nicely
when it comes to army lists.

ARMY LISTS

The unit entries have had a major overhaul, particularly when it comes to units that can be taken as troops, regiments, hordes or legions. Now the shared stats for these unit sizes (Sp, Me, Ra and De) are shown to the left, while stats that change due to the unit size are shown to the right.

Underneath you’ll see any Special Rules and something else new for Third Edition, keywords. Some Special Rules only affect a unit with a particular Keyword.

What’s more, we’ve made Unit Strength much clearer and it’s now included alongside the unit entry (under the heading US).

Of course, we’ll have more information on what’s changed
stats-wise for each army as we near the launch. The Army Lists included in the rulebook
are (drum roll please):

• Basileans
• Dwarfs
• Elves
• Northern Alliance
• Forces of Nature
• Ogres
• The Trident Realm
• Abyssal Dwarfs
• Forces of the Abyss
• Empire of Dust
• Goblins
• Nightstalkers
• Orcs
• Undead

But where is [x] army? Fret not dear reader. Armies of Pannithor (the Third Edition equivalent of Uncharted Empires) will be released just six weeks after the launch of Third Edition. So, you’ve got time to digest the new rules before cracking on with stuff like Ratkin. We’ll be covering the armies included in this supplement in a future blog.

BACKGROUND

There’s an entire section dedicated to giving more background on the world of Pannithor (previously known as Mantica). Pannithor is in fact the wider world, while Mantica was the area of the map we previously focused on.

Alongside the history of Pannithor there are more details on
each faction too. Perfect, if you want to delve into your favourite army, or
choose a theme for a new one.

Well, there’s plenty of information to digest there. Tomorrow we’ll be talking about the brand-new two-player starter set, Shadows in the North.

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