Kings of War gets a skirmish game spin-off, Vanguard

The world of fantasy wargame Kings of War is expanding with a new spin-off focused on smaller, skirmish-focused battles.

Kings of War: Vanguard is set in the same world of Mantica as its namesake, and is framed around the exploits of scouting parties sent out ahead of Kings of War’s larger armies.

This will extend to the objective-driven scenarios of each encounter, with players attempting to light beacons or assassinate key characters to aid their side, for example.

These goals will be more than just atmospheric dressing, too, with Mantic revealing that the outcome of Vanguard battles will be able to serve as preludes to larger-scale Kings of War clashes. For instance, successfully lighting beacons could allow the winning player to deploy their troops in a more beneficial position. Similarly, Vanguard missions could take place on a former Kings of War battlefield, with characters able to loot the corpses left by the previous encounter.

Outside of its links to Kings of War and one-off skirmishes, Vanguard will include a campaign mode with character progression and sustained injury states.

Vanguard also draws from Mantic’s other games, utilising an evolved version of the dice systems in Deadzone and The Walking Dead: All Out War that allow players to cash in rolls to activate extra models, deal with the concept of fatigue and execute group actions. All Out War also lends its use of character cards to Vanguard, which offer up a quick stats and abilities reference sheet.

Despite this, Vanguard is said to use far fewer dice than Kings of War, with a small pool of d8s driving the resolution of combat, with the chance to explode for extra rolls.

Vanguard figures will be set on the same 28mm square bases as Kings of War models, allowing characters from either game to cross over.

Mantic will be releasing an alpha set of rules for Kings of War: Vanguard this Friday, October 27th, ahead of the game’s launch on Kickstarter next Wednesday, November 1st.