Exploring a return to the Brotherhood – start of a journey

The Brotherhood army was a favourite of mine during Kings of War 2nd edition. Since the start of 3rd, I haven’t left my Basilean army, so the Brotherhood army was ignored.

The reason for that is -frankly- that the first glance of the army in the Uncharted Empires book disappointed me. First off, was the infamous split between Order of the Green Lady (which I had no interest in playing at the time) and the Order of the Brothermark. Furthermore, the Brothermark was a theme list of my main army -Basilea- with a huge overlap.

Now, almost a year later, I might be willing to give the Brothermark (and maybe even the Green lady) a retry. I own plenty models to try it and am willing to do something new. In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting my thoughts about this process in two (or maybe more) blog posts.

As the game has changed, the KoW 2nd edition army posted in the header of this article is no longer valid or effective. A prevallence of phalanx in some armies will make short work of an all-mounted force, so we’ll have to look at all options. Fortunately, my model collection is large enough to try whatever I want.

First impressions

As posted before, my first impressions were not favourable for the knights. Shortly after receiving my Uncharted Empires book, I posted on the Kings of War forum my first impressions. Since this post quite clearly shows where my doubts are, I thought it prudent to repost it.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be taking time to rethink my original ideas, build a couple of army lists and maybe even trying them out!

So below is the orignal post on the Kings of War forum:

(….)

I do like the Uncharted Empires theme lists for the armies that I play: League of Rhordia and Kingdoms of Men. I also do like the UE lists for several armies that I don’t play, such as free dwarves and Tkin. That said, I do not like the Order of the Brothermark theme list. I’ll try to explain here why.

The order of the Brothermark list seems not meaningful different from its main list – Basilea. I could literealy port over my Basliean army with only very minor changes (Lancers -> Skirmishers, Arbalest ->Siege artillery) without it playing differently.

My gut feeling (as I haven’t played Brothermark yet) is that it plays exactly the same as the Basilean list. The new additions (Slightly cheaper and more versatile bowmen, slightly better and more expensive knights, other light cavalry) fill the same roles as their Basilean counterparts. Indeed, the army loses one major tactical option – Elohi.

If you compare this to the League of Rhordia theme lists, the differences become apparent. The league list adds several very powerful tools to the parent list (war altar, honour guard) in exchange for other units. League plays differently that it’s parrent list, while Brothermark seems not to.

Furthermore, the inclusion of some very Basilean items such as the Phoenix and the Palace guard to the Brothermark list feel wrong. These models are one of the defining features of the parrent list, adding them to theme lists makes them more similar.

The order of the green lady does not suffer from this. The list (inclusion of heavy cavalry and heavy infantry to Forces of Nature) plays and feels different than the original.

The blog post finishes off with ideas to combat these perceived problems – in hindsight, it’s a bit silly to give feedback on army composition without ever playing it.

As I’ll be reviewing the army coming the next few weeks, at the end of the road, I might take a 2nd round.