Ogres. I love em, and for damned good reason. Stompy, brutal and fantastic models. What’s not to love?

After the Kings of War Kickstarter I found myself in the possession of a sizeable force of the brand new Mantic Ogres. Beautiful models, and I decided to take them to the Kings of War Pathfinder Tournament in Stockport on the 20th October.

Now the Ogre army list is very much like the Orc army list. It is brutal and unending and concentrates on simply stomping the enemy into the ground rather than any delicate tactics. After trying my Ogres out with some test games, I decided that I wanted to up the ante with some shooting – and that meant allies.

Now the wonderful thing about the Kingdoms of Men army list is that not only is it one of the most flexible army lists in the game, it already includes Ogres! I decided to use the Kingdoms of Men list as my core, and ally it with the Ogre list to get the best of both worlds.

Taking the centre field I of course wanted some stompy units of Ogres. Two regiments and two troops to be precise. With 15/17 Nerve, Defence 5 and dishing out more pain on the charge than a horde of forty Orcs (not to mention being faster), Ogre Regiments are brutal. Ogre troops are more of a glass hammer with just 12/14 nerve, however their faster speed and still very considerable melee output means that they often get the first charge and can gang up on enemy units very effectively.

Next I needed some heavy cavalry. A Kingdoms of Men Knight Regiment makes for a very tough hammer to strike against my (still very painful) anvil. Taking just one meant that I had two problems – firstly that human knights don’t really fit very well into an Ogre army aesthetically, and secondly they would be target number one for enemy shooting and probably get wiped off the board before they got a chance to shine. The second problem is an easy fix using the magic item, “The Fog”. This is a 40 point upgrade which, while very pricey, gives the enemy a -1 to hit from shooting. With most artillery hitting on 5+, this knocks them down 6’s to hit (if not impossible for them to hit).

The first point was a bit tricky. Now one of the wonderful things about Kings of War is that it doesn’t matter what is actually on a units base in terms of models. All that matters is that the base size is correct, which for a Knight Regiment is 125x100mm. I decided to convert a couple of chariots to sit on the base to “count as” a Knights Regiment. They had to look faster than the regular Ogre Chariots (Knights are speed 8 while Ogre Chariots are speed 7) as well as hitting harder. I decided to use the new and beautiful horses from Mantic to pull the chariots, and to stick two crew members in each chariot rather than just the one. Perfect!

Now a single unit of heavy cavalry, as tough as Knight Regiments are, will very quickly get bogged down and chewed up by faster cavalry. The best defence against this is to take some light cavalry of your own! This is where the Ogre allies came in, since Ogres have units of Red Goblin Scouts – some of the best light cavalry in the game. I settled on three troops of 5 and a regiment of 10. The troops can go hunting warmachines and exposed flanks, while the regiment can support the Knights/Chariots in straightforward combat.

One of the big reasons why I wanted to stray away from using pure Ogres was artillery. Unfortunately Ogres don’t have much in the way of long ranged shooting and Kingdoms of Men has some very nice artillery options available. With five solid units in the Kingdoms of Men army (two Ogre troops, two Ogre Regiments and one Knights Regiment) this allowed me to take five units of artillery. I decided to take three Rocket Artillery and two Trebuchets. The rockets are slightly better against low defence units, while the trebuchets are slightly better against high defence units. Again because KoW doesn’t really care what your units are made out of, just the base sizes, I decided to crew the catapults with more red goblins.

Lastly, heroes. At this point I was rapidly running out of points and couldn’t fit in a big Ogre Captain (as awesome as he is), but the Kingdom of Men army standard bearers are fantastic value for points. With a huge 12” range for Inspiring and the option to take a horse for much better mobility for just 5 points, they are an absolute steal. I was able to take three of them on horses, and give one of them the Healing Charm magic item, which obviously heals units around it. Again, I decided to model these guys as Red Goblins rather than Men to better fit in with the armies theme.

All in all, I ended up with the following list:

Kingdoms of Men
2 x Ogre Regiments (380)
2 x Ogre Troops (230)
Knights Regiment w/The Fog (215)
3 x Rocket Artillery (180)
2 x Trebuchet (120)
2 x Army Standard Bearer on horse (70)
Army Standard Bearer on horse w/Healing Charm (65)

Ogres
3 x Red Goblin Scout Troop (210)
Red Goblin Scout Regiment (130)

On the day my army performed admirably, getting three wins and a loss. The first win was bang on the points needed for a win, being ahead of my opponent by 320 points on the dot at the end, while the loss was at the hands of my good friend Dan who then went on to win first place.

If you'd like to see some images from the event check them out above.

Nick Williams

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