The Hundred Kingdoms are in one sense an extremely middle of the road faction. They’re baseline humans, with average human stats, average human armour, and average human force organisation. There are no surprises here, no weird units that you’ll struggle to figure out or make work.
In another sense they’re an extremely coherent faction. Their subfactions are immediately distinguishable and legible. Their characters have extremely clear gameplans. Their force organisation structure is readily apparent and the balance of units you’ll want with them makes intuitive sense.
Unfortunately they’re also a faction that has spent a long period of time in design stasis. Other factions have evolved and come into their own while the Hundred Kingdoms have been battered wildly by core rule changes that affected them far more than most. This results in a faction that is somewhat incoherent within the current ruleset; many of the modules and combos that they used to rely on are gone, whereas several other things had their weaknesses or limitations removed in passing. The result is a faction that is kind of broken in its current state; some stuff is too strong, some stuff is too weak.
Ultimately it feels like there’s a lack of vision for where the faction stands in 2024. They’re the children of neglect, bandaged but not repaired and in need of a fundamental rethink from their army rules on up. In the meantime, we at Goonhammer are here to help you get the most out of them in their current state.
For a look at their models specifically, check out this post
Strengths:
– Powerful impact attacks
– Cheap, practical and focused units
– Easy access to large quantities of cheap ranged firepower
– Discount banners on everything
Weaknesses:
– Limited ability to score early
– Very vulnerable to Cleave
– Impact attacks are unreliable – a full article on the topic is here
Army Abilities
Relentless Drill
Relentless Drill is the simplest and most effective rule for any infantry-based Hundred Kingdoms formation. Going to Support 3 with all of your spear infantry is a huge deal and turns things like the Gilded Legion and Household Guard into world beaters. Choose this unless you have an extremely good reason otherwise.
Veterans
You have to go so far and work so hard to scrape value out of this. It favours large unit sizes due to the increase in flat costs, but you know what else gets a lot of value out of large unit sizes? Moving everything to support 3.
Options for Veteran buffs are Men at Arms, Hunter Cadre, Militia and Militia Archers, Household Guard (expensive and with an armsmaster they’re already close to the clash 4 breakpoint where you go to rerolling 6’s rather than +1 clash, which reduces the value a lot), mounted squires (legit good), and household knights (going to clash 3 is good, especially as it also affects impacts, but it’s 25 points for the unit on top of a middling 25 point attachment). There are very few other units even capable of receiving the buff and those ones mostly don’t need it.
The best use case seems to be if you’re doing a Mounted Lord/Household Knights heavy list, just for use on the Mounted Squires. It also can’t be used on key units like Crossbows or any modern Order units for arbitrary reasons. It feels like an antiquated relic tied to the release of a bunch of wave one support characters rather than a coherently designed army rule.
Warbands
Hundred Kingdoms characters have some shockingly bad headline stats. An Imperial Officer has the stats of wizard and looking at the base stats of a Noble Lord side by side with the infantry characters of any other human faction will make you weep bitter tears of envy. The silver lining here is that the Hundred Kingdoms has an extremely good suite of artifacts and masteries that can let you turn these jobber aristocrats into actual force multipliers for your army.
Noble Lord
The Noble Lord at a glance is a garbage nothing character with the statline of a Nord spellcaster. Looks can be deceiving, though, because with a small point investment she can be transformed into an absolute blender.
The secret is in the combination of Eccentric Fighting Style. Combined with Weapon Master and Graceful Combatant – and it should always be this exact combination – you have created a Clash 3, Cleave 1, 8 attacks with flurry mass murderer for 115 points. This module used to rely on Regalia of the Empire to avoid the downsides of declining duels, thus circumventing Eccentric’s downside, but now declining a duel does a Not-Quite-Broken effect that provides far less value than it did, so you can use the artifact slot more productively on the Standard of Steel or Armour of Dominion.
Her supremacy ability, The Best of Men is reliable value across the entire game – but it’s really hard to get anything like its full value. The 8 inch radius is a decent sized aura but it only applies to infantry and the new character positioning rules forcing the Noble Lord adjacent to the Command Stand means you have very little flexibility on how it’s positioned. This means a lot of the time it’ll be applying only to her Household Guard, which is fine but it’s firmly a ‘nice to have’.
Mounted Noble Lord
The Noble Lord on Horse’s biggest value proposition is getting Mounted Squires as mainstay. This gives her an extremely natural warband of two Squires and two Knights. There’s no halfway measures with her – if you’re taking one, you’re taking her for the full cavalry warband including with her as a Warlord.
Her main role is to carry Olefant’s Roar in your big unit of Knights, and there’s really no other artifact that makes sense. Household Knights are priced assuming that she’ll have it and if you’re investing in Knights you’re already putting all of your eggs in the Knights basket.
Warband
Household Guard
The core of the Noble Lord’s warband. With an Armsmaster and the Noble Lord’s presence they’re almost the peers of the Gilded Legion. Almost is the operative word, though – for 5 points a stand premium (and a one-off discount of 10 points by replacing the Armsmaster with a Drillmaster) and shift to Heavy you can get a variety of stat buffs, including Double Time which takes the edge off being Heavy. The reasons to take the Household Guard, then, are:
A) They can caddy a Noble Lord around, who adds effectively two stands worth of violence to the unit.
B) They arrive slightly faster than the Gilded Legion
C) They unlock Longbowmen
And together those do feel like a worthwhile package. Six to seven stands is about the right number.
Men at Arms
Cheap and tough, Men at Arms are great minimum sized objective holders. Their purpose is to stand on zones for 15 points cheaper than any other faction.
There is nothing more to say about them. They’re great, don’t get me wrong – any other faction would be delighted to have Men at Arms – but they’re great in that their job is to hold the flag and maybe take two turns to kill.
Mercenary Crossbowmen
Absolute core ranged unit, their ranged attack is extremely effective against a variety of targets and they’re cheap as chips. Don’t expect them to win a ranged duel against Marksmen Clones or anything, but they’re the bare minimum in terms of cost while also being good at their jobs.
The game also starts to distort interestingly once you’re four units deep into the crossbowmen, which is very easy to end up with – especially if your opponent has multiple size 2-3 units so they can level effective shots from behind the infantry line.
Militia Bowmen
If you need to fill out some mainstay slots to support household knights but don’t care if the unit gets literally nothing done turn to the Bowmen. They’re the cheapest unit with the worst statline in the game; they’ll maybe plink a wound off here and there, will eat a single charge, and will go away. That does not mean they’re useless, quite the contrary – never underestimate the power of ‘takes a turn to kill’ – just understand they’re there to be a screen for the knights.
Militia
They scale really well for a unit that can’t score.
And that’s kind of the story of militia. They’re an early game unit that you can’t do anything with. There’s no value proposition here; what kept them in the game at all was the ability to carry around a medium character but now that’s gone they’re profoundly mid.
Their use case is now to carry around a Theist Priest and the Elysium Fragment. Rules changes have broken the old timing limitation on this wombo-combo, making it hit like a freight train. This is an interaction that is likely not long for this world, though, so get it while it’s hot.
Restricted
Household Knights
There are two configurations for Household Knights: The big sledgehammer with all the trimmings that is the absolute core of your army, and the minimum sized efficient unit. There’s not really any middle ground.
At 140 points, a minimum sized unit of Household Knights is one of the most cost efficient pieces in the game. Doing anything from holding an objective to brawling with things in it’s weight class, they’re just good units that can plug holes in the line, flank, take down objective markers, or anything else that’s asked of them. Never go to war with empty Restricted slots.
The big unit is a daunting investment. For this you want 5-6, a Noble Lord with Ofelant’s Roar and maybe Wedge!, a Tourney Champion and Veterans. The unit is priced per stand that you’ll be including all of these buffs simultaneously. What this gets you is a back-breaker of a unit that can break the core of the enemy battleline with a direct frontal charge. It’s great – unless you get move-charged by some yahoos, or have to go through some Hindering terrain, at which point you’ve overpaid by 200 points for some Men at Arms.
Longbowmen
Longbowmen are extremely efficient and useful long ranged units and have come down enough in price to be a core strength of the faction. They pair admirably with a big unit of charge cavalry, pressuring an opponent into advancing to where they can get charged and smashed by the Knights, and that’s a role that is indispensable to the Hundred Kingdoms battleplan.
A neat trick you can do with two units of these is the staggered advance. Move 6 is enough for one unit standing immediately behind a second unit to cross the first unit’s base footprint and fire afterwards, this lets you effectively continuously advance and fire rather than using arcing shot, only pausing the fire and advance once you’ve reached an optimal firing position.
Mounted Squires
These are great and pretty much the main reason to take Veterans. They’re absolute workhorse units and provide the Hundred Kingdoms’ best native response to getting your shock cav getting tangled up in close combat – devastatingly effective flank charges into an overextended enemy.
The ideal use case for these is two units defending both flanks of the big Household Knights unit as it rolls up the centre. They can stall out small sacrificial units and screens, and if you lose a key Supremacy roll they can put a very reliable 11-13 hits into the flank which is a hell of a consolation to losing the charge.
Imperial Officer
The Imperial Officer, it must be clear, fights like a spellcaster. He doesn’t want to do it, he’s not good at it, don’t be getting in duels if you can help it.
There are two configurations, melee and ranged. Melee is a risk purely because you’re going to be tempted to load up on expensive artifacts and have them carried around by a character with no hope of defending himself. Ranged is uncomfortable because you’ll need 45 points to put a Barrage 5 Volley 2 gun into a unit, and that that point you almost might as well just buy another stand of crossbowmen. Flank on his unit is nice to have; it’s a 20 point ability on its own.
No matter what you do this character is a weak link in the formation; his value proposition is entirely in his warband. As such I’m persuaded by arguments to keep him cheap, use him as a source of Flank for a key unit, and if he gets dueled and dies, he dies.
As a warlord, Vanguard on two infantry units a turn is nice. It’s nice, definitely, yes, and I’m trying not to be so blinded by what it used to be that I can’t see that. In particular the restriction makes the Imperial Officer play a lot nicer with cavalry – previously it felt like you needed to go all in on infantry to maximize the value.
Warband
Imperial Rangers
These are good units. Fluid formation is great on archers and they’re a great mainstay add if you haven’t taken an Imperial Officer warlord because they have Vanguard natively. They’ll hustle up the table, set a reinforcement line, and then pester the enemy all game long. You’ll never go wrong with just taking more crossbowmen but there’s definitely room for a squad of these.
Restricted
Gilded Legion
The backbone of the Hundred Kingdoms, Relentless Drill Gilded Legion arguably scale better than any other unit in the game. A brick of 6-9 will blow through lesser units like they’re not even there. Iron Discipline makes them strategically autonomous; you can opt to leave their flanks unsupported and they’ll do fine. You have the choice of two excellent officers, though it will mostly be the Drillmaster because they can source Bastion from the Imperial Officer who leads them. If the Officer has the Standard of Steel the big Gilded Legion brick can cost effectively fight anything in the game. Double Time makes them weirdly mobile too, they’re just a fantastic all round unit.
Steel Legion
A bundle of really good stats and special rules. These guys are just chonkers, and with the Drillmaster they go up to a respectable 6 cleave 2 attacks. The natural size for these feels like 5 or 6; enough frontage to envelop a 3-front unit and demolish it while taking advantage of the flat costs of the drillmaster and initial regiment cost. One big Gilded Legion block and one Steel Legion block is a fantastic army core.
Hunter Cadre
This is a rough unit to recommend. A 10 point premium on top of +15 points per stand to make mercenary crossbowmen capable of fighting in melee, and also they’re competing for a precious restricted slot with your Legionnaires. Fiend Hunter is worthless against some entire army types. They can’t score. I honestly don’t see the point.
I’d write them off entirely if it wasn’t for the presence of the Null Mage. A Null Mage is a phenomenal add – she stands a fair chance of just outright killing the average spellcaster who dares to do magic inside her bubble on their first spell, and will likely get them on the second. The Cadre, then, find their best value in acting as Null Mage mules.
Chapter Mage
Sadly, there is only one configuration. The Water Mage Warlord with Focused is the second best healer in the entire game behind the Biomancer and is carrying the entire faction on her back. The Hundred Kingdoms are going through some ups and downs, but the Water Mage has returned to her original purpose of being a tiny goddess. She’ll put back 7 wounds a turn reliably while covering your entire army with Arcane Interference. If she casts her spell once on a unit of Ashen Dawn or Gilded Legion she’ll have almost paid for herself.
The choice between Men at Arms and Crossbowmen to caddy her around is surprisingly even. The crossbowmen mean she can contribute her ranged attack, but I actually favour men at arms instead – not because they’re expected to do anything, but because her healing is so much more important than any amount of damage that she could contribute that having a unit dedicated to moving around her 8′ spellcasting bubble is more important, and if they’re going to be spending that much time running danger close then they might as well be able to hold a central objective.
Theist Priest
Recent updates have been a blessing and a curse for the Theist Priest. The upside is that with the new character activation system, activating the Elsyium Fragment right before a charge is extremely easy to time and extremely potent in effect. This has also made getting value out of The Spirit Shines much easier – rather than forcing two dead activations as a pair of Theist Priests charge up these units can be engaging immediately.
The downside is massive though – the Theist Priest can’t score and can’t bring any units that do. Far worse, she can no longer leave a unit of Militia to join a more durable unit of Gilded Legion. Without the ability to move around priests the only Devoted units in the army will be one (1) character carrying a relic and a unit attachment to Men at Arms. This renders The Spirit Shines extremely limited as a supremacy ability, boiling down to perhaps 2-3 free spellcasting actions total, if you do everything right and pay a tax in points and artifact slots. Core rules changes have gutted the engine of this specific character as anything other than a blaster caster.
She’s a very good spellcaster though. With Focused, Holy Fire puts out 9 hits on average – that’s one of the best offensive spells in the game. And with the Elysium Fragment and a big unit of Militia she can hit like a cruise missile and destroy something significantly above her weight class.
Warband
Sicarii
I think the Hundred Kingdoms will be playing with one hand tied behind their back until the release of Sicarii. These are the faction’s only high resolve, high evasion cheap mainstays, with massive and cheap scaling and huge synergy with the Theist Priest. They deal with threats nothing else in the Hundred Kingdoms can and have Lethal Demise to carry them on the way down.
Priory Commanders
Sealed Temple
A very good character assassin attached to a highly mobile unit, the Sealed Temple commander launches 6 attacks with quicksilver strike and has 6 wounds in exchange – she’ll win fights against anyone but the most dedicated combat monsters. Notably she can take Eccentric Fighting Style which doubles down on her assassin role.
Crimson Tower
Probably the superior choice at this point – the ability to put Terrifying on a unit of Ashen Dawn is more than worth the price of admission. If you take Long Lineage you can unlock a heirloom, which means you can put Armour of Dominion on a unit of Ashen Dawn, eliminating their weakness to high Cleave attacks.
Sword
An up-armoured Noble Lord on foot. You can give her Eccentric Fighting Style, and probably should if you haven’t already taken it, but she doesn’t get as much value out of it as the foot Lord because she’s already going to be rerolling 6s from a Clash 4 starting point.
Warband
Order of the Sealed Temple
The Order of the Sealed Temple is proving a divisive unit internally at Goonhammer. We agree on their role, and that their role is a desirable one to have in the army: High mobility cavalry that can rapidly maneuver, flank, and reposition. That’s a rarity; most Hundred Kingdoms cav wants to trundle directly towards a frontal charge. The point of contention is if they’re worth their points.
My colleague is a big fan, taking advantage of the reforms to make long distance charges and clearing small outlying units before sharking around into rear areas, using fluid reform to reliably get them out of danger. My experience with units like this is that they’ll lose the priority roll, get march-charged by a unit of dwarves that they’re then unable to meaningfully damage, and eat half their unit strength in a botched retreat attempt.
Crimson Tower
The Crimson Tower arrived real bad. Over the years since they’ve picked up small buff after small buff and it’s finally reached the point where I’m forced to give it to them and change my stance. They’re good now, just an efficient bundle of quality stats that make them efficient shock cavalry. If you want cavalry in your army and don’t want to make the full warlord+big flying lance megablock then the Crimson Tower are your pick.
Order of the Sword
Expensive but it’s not as bad as it looks – 5 wounds per stand means that you’re getting 15 wounds worth of meat compared to 20 in points equivalent of men at arms, and that comes with cleave and counterattack, +2 clash, +2 resolve, defense that doesn’t need a shield and evasion 2. They’re solid frontline medium units and they’ll make a respectable core for the army once they are released.
Order of St. Lazarus
This is a fascinating unit. A phenomenal base statline and then 35 points per additional stand? Their defence is low but their resolve is sky high, they hit like trucks and they’re five wounds each. A block of 6 is 255 points compares to a block of 7 men at arms while hitting harder and being tougher.
They’re also fantastic at controlling territory and represent board control and objective pushers in Order lists.
Order of the Ashen Dawn
Absolute units, endgame superheavy cav who are basically all about having extremely good numbers. A unit of five with a full connection will perform better than the equivalent points in Gilded Legionnaires – though that full connection is the sticking point. Legionnaires can take weird engagements at odd angles between Iron Discipline and Support; if the Ashen Dawn gets engaged in the flank they’re very vulnerable in comparison. If you’re running these then do your best to ensure that they engage on their own terms, ideally in a 1v1 situation. If they’re flanked and surrounded then not only do they risk falling apart but they’ll also be forced to spread their Blessed ability too thinly.
With Crimson Tower no longer being a tax, and the Water Mage being back to full power, the Ashen Dawn are the centerpiece of the entire Hundred Kingdoms faction.
Example List
This is a sample list that’s designed to be easy for a new player to build, paint and pilot, taking advantage of the best and most efficient profiles in the faction while not having too much mental overhead. You can get this whole army built with 10 boxes of models – 9 if you cut that larger Ashen Dawn unit down in exchange for army-wide banners.
I understand that you’ll want to get into infantry pike squares eventually. I understand, I am of your people. But trust me and do it this way – some kits are older than others and you’d need to paint a *lot* of pike guys. This is for your protection, I promise.
=== The Last Argument of Kings ===
Smashking [2000/2000]
The Hundred Kingdoms
Relentless Drill
== (Warlord) Chapter Mage [105]: School of Water, Focused
* Men at Arms (3) [105]:
== (Warlord) Priory Commander (Crimson Tower) [165]: Armor of Dominion, Long Lineage
* Order of the Crimson Tower (3) [200]:
* Order of the Crimson Tower (3) [200]:
* Order of the Ashen Dawn (3) [240]:
* Order of the Ashen Dawn (4) [335]: Standard Bearer
== Imperial Officer [90]: Brace for Impact, On Your Feet
* Imperial Ranger Corps (3) [125]: Standard Bearer
* Mercenary Crossbowmen (3) [105]:
* Steel Legion (3) [165]:
* Steel Legion (3) [165]:
