After an action packed 2025, it’s time to lay out the route map for 2026 that I suspect I will instantaneously deviate from. But for the next few minutes please indulge me.
Kings of War has been my main gaming system for a number of years, and I don’t see that changing. Having now read through the new fourth edition books I’m really looking forward to getting my first games in. Many people have already played it by now, and there seems to be a consensus that it’s change for the better, although I get the impression there are some murmurs of discontent around the revised army lists.
Personally, I don’t have any, at least none that would make me walk away from the game. My collections feel transferable, and change is always a great opportunity to try something a bit different. I really want to dive into Basileans, but the call of the rat is proving too much, and I’m currently playing around with a 2,000 point list for my first tournament of the new rules in February.
The one consistency around the changes is that my beloved Scurriers (rat skirmishing infantry) have taken something of a kicking on their stat line. This seems to be a thing that happens at edition changes now. Playing them for the last eight months has been massively fun, now they’ve changed I’ve got to get used to them again (and remember that they’re no way near as good in a fight).
Ratkin have had a lot of mechanics changes, although I think their core value remains very similar, so I’m not expecting the feeling of playing them to change. That’s not a discussion for now though. I’ll be doing something a bit more detailed in the coming weeks. Yesterday we saw third edition off with a final hurrah tournament in Bristol, and it was absolutely brilliant, a great start to the year and a great way to round off the edition – also more on that later.
Something I do want to address this year is my growing discontent with the handful (!!?) of models I don’t really use. Over the past year in particular I feel I’ve matured a bit into my hobby and know exactly the sort of games I want to play, and so what I need. I have a habit of being a bit of a hoarder and this is something I really want to change. I might do a couple of posts on this if I can make a success of it, and if I can find a decent angle to consider it from.
Finally, I’ll be playing more Burrows and Badgers, Silver Bayonet, and hopefully getting around to painting a few more models up. I also want to get back into doing occasional book reviews. I’m hoping to run another narrative Kings of War day later in the year, although that feels a long way off at the moment. It’s just a quick one today because the start of the year has been considerably more hectic than I’d hoped!
Happy new year people.
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