God of Battles

This is by far my favourite fantasy wargame. It makes for very fast and simple gameplay, since units are standard sized, and very easy to balance points-wise.

A brilliant game - has the elegance of Kings of War with an old hammer feel. Slick and simple rules; like KOW there’s one roll to attack and one roll to defend, but there’s a lot more:

Alternate activation, with one “stratagem” played per turn which messes with this, eg same unit can activate again/opponents unit becomes activated. There’s only 4, so you’re always second guessing your opponent.

Magic takes the form of calling to the gods, and is similar to 40k 2nd edition where you draw “power” to cast and stop spells.

The battlefield is interactive depending on who’s attacking and defending, so you may encounter a river troll, bears, or angry peasants!

Some great races, such as sea elves - in the battle report in the rule book their unit “ambassadors of the deep”, basically tentacled sea creatures, do great havoc! There are war orcs, undead, “free cities” (think Empire), high elves, dwarfs, beastmen, barbarians, weird insectoids... The races feel really different.

There are skirmishing and formed units, so feels like Warhammer. Armies aren’t huge, nor are they tiny.

If Warhammer was the original, flawed prototype; and if Kings Of War / Oathmark are the clipped, corporate model with no flaws yet a dose of bland you can’t quite put your finger on, God Of Battles is the brilliant young upstart that deserves greater recognition.

It didn’t catch on due to a lack of marketing. Worse for us, for it is a work of beauty.

“I designed the type of tabletop rules that I always wanted to play” - Jake Thornton

Pick it up and you’ll see why. It’s different, it’s exciting, it’s easy to learn. This might just hit the nail on the head.