Welcome back to my mini-series on the smaller skirmish form of Conquest: First Blood. Through this I’m going over how the game plays and each faction that you can place on the table, their strengths, weaknesses, and how to field them. This week we will be diving into the vast and numerous Hundred Kingdoms and their mysterious Order who protects the humanity.
One of the two original factions, the One Hundred Kingdoms (100K), are the bog-standard human faction that each fantasy setting has. In most tropes, they represent a core of brave humans fighting against insurmountable odds. Conquest does it a little bit differently in that they still are, but with an ancient order of supernatural knights that fights alongside the kingdoms against their enemies.
So how does the Hundred Kingdoms play? Do they play like a traditionally swarm option with a bunch of cheap and expendable footmen backed alongside a core of heavy cavalry and powerful ranged options? Or perhaps they play completely different from what their aesthetics suggest? Let’s take a look at the vast options that the kingdom has and see how we can equip you in order to fully utilize all entries that the kingdom has.
Strengths:
- Flexibility: Having access to the largest number of models in the range means that you can go full horde, elite, or somewhere in the middle.
- Strongest cavalry options in the game: Looking at you Order of the Crimson Tower.
- Imperial Academies (see below).
Weaknesses:
- Average stat-line for most of the main options.
- No ‘skirmish’ options. The mounted components are all melee.
Army Abilities
Imperial Academies
Free officer. That’s it. A free up to 30 points by just playing the faction. Add a drillmaster for a free Flurry to any of your Infantry Regiments, give one of your shield infantry +1 defense from a seasoned veteran, or maybe add a Neophyte to make your militia that much braver. The combination of these armies’ abilities is endless and rewards experimentation.
Chain of Command
So you get a free officer, and that said regiment now extends the command range of your character by their own? This ensures that the character can operate in a certain way and they can potentially influence two sides of the battlefield
The Last Casualty of the Fall
The tale of Cleon and its role to protect humanity against the fall of the Dominion is popular within the Hundred Kingdoms. This army’s ability represents the two facets of the different stories that popularized Cleon’s myth: their sacrifice or betrayal. This founding principle influences the order of knights that traces their lineage back to the gods themselves.
This particular ability only affects Order of the Ashen Dawn and Priory Commander – and this army ability ensures that those two are some of the scariest models in the game. Keep in mind that this particular army’s abilities nullify the free officer army rules, but oh dear, the advantage is enormous.
Free blessed to your Ashen Dawn, Priory Commander, and Crimson Tower, or counting as six models for the purpose of seizing objectives. The correct option is always blessed. Not only are they tanky, hits hard, and now with re-rolls on top of that.
Characters
Like many traditionally human factions, the Hundred Kingdoms have a wide variety of playstyle. Most of their infantry characters fall into more of a support role, which is often tricky to use properly in First Blood; thus, they require a bit more planning to ensure you are able to get the most out of them during the window where you can waste an activation buffing a unit instead of activating your big hitters to cripple enemy units before they can do the same to you.
Then there’s the cavalry characters. These equestrian bruisers came from a different genre entirely. They’re humans, yes, but you’d be forgiven if you thought otherwise. The Hundred Kingdoms cavalry characters range in power level from semi-historical to Tolkien-esque in what they can do. Many people lament the fact that the Hundred Kingdoms don’t have the option to field monster units, but in reality, they do. They just come on cavalry bases.
Chapter Mage
The classical wizard character, a chapter mage, is capable of impacting the battlefield greatly from afar but just straight up dies whenever exposed to combat. Arcane Excellence is the most crucial of her kit, allowing the character to cast two of her many useful spells. To take advantage of this, you should spend the first turn getting her into position, generally within 8 inches of your objective holders, so you can heal them using Ninuah’s Caress. The offensive spell, Flame Burst, is rather short ranged with only a 10 inch maximum range, but being a spell, it can shoot into combat, which you will be doing a lot if you space out your infantry just a bit. The other two spells are highly situational; you will rarely use them, though you might be glad you have them every now and then.
In very rare situations, you might just be able to use a barrage action followed by a spellcasting action with them, but this would mean that they are within 10 inches of an unengaged enemy unit, a place no wizard should be.
Imperial Officer
Slightly less squishy than the chapter mage, the Imperial officer has an average defensive statistic but horrible offensive ones. His biggest strength is his access to powerful commands such as Press the Advance!, which provides flurry, a powerful ability on any of the elite cavalry units of the faction. Hold your Ground! allows you to swing an objective from being your enemy’s into yours, a powerful ability to use late in the round. To the Colours remove broken, and Tactical Retreat sometimes allows you to retreat without downsides. All of these commands are decent, and Tactician allows the Imperial Officer to give a command anywhere on the table without needing an officer model for the Chain of Command faction ability. The big downside is that the Imperial Officer is only able to use one command per round, unlike some of the more powerful commanders. This combined with his less than stellar statline makes it very hard for him to be a high-impact unit compared to some other character options.
Mounted Noble Lord
The Noble Lord, like Batman, is just a regular human with the advantage of being rich. This affords him very good equipment and education, both of which put him firmly above working-class characters such as the Imperial Officer who had to keep two jobs just to put himself through his training. To his credit, the Mounted Lord used his trust fund quite well, getting one of three Weapon Arts, all of which are quite useful, though Brawler is the one that will be relevant more times than the other two. All in all, the Noble Lord (like Batman) can punch impressively hard for someone in his income bracket!
Like many nepo-babies, the Noble Lord keeps a group of underlings to help him with the boring things in life, like claiming objectives. The Knightly Entourage ability causes each Mounted Squire unit to count as three models for the purpose of claiming objective, allowing them to keep up with infantry units in terms of model counts. His last ability, House Colors allows him to bring a mounted squire at a discount as a retinue, a rarity for mounted characters! This mounted squire (like Robin) primarily serves as a mascot and meat shield, but he is able to bring a banner, though considering how squishy he is, this may not always be a good idea.
The Mounted Noble’s command options both support an alpha strike playstyle, whether by providing unstoppable through the Onwards command (likely for himself considering most 100k units already have banners) or ensuring a unit of heavy cavalry can break enemy lines more reliably through Wedge, allowing them to reroll impact hit attack rolls.
Noble Lord
For the exact same cost as the Mounted Noble Lord, the non-mounted version gives you the same statline but with none of the abilities that made the Mounted Noble Lord a solid choice. If the mounted version is Christian’s Bale Batman, solid, reliable, and with a lot of substance, the non-mounted version is more like George Clooney’s Batman. A straight downgrade best enjoyed ironically. This version comes with a set of different commands than the mounted version, but none of them are worth the loss of shield and abilities.
Order of the Ashen Dawn
A very interesting commander with a unique rule that allows you to bring multiple copies of them. Order of the Ashen Dawn gives you an experience akin to Dark Souls, in that you’re going to die a lot, and it will either be glorious or downright depressing. The Order of the Ashen Dawn has a statline that will make most other factions jealous. Blessed by Cleon allows you to reroll their already high Resolve and prevent them from being broken (something that is not likely to happen considering they’re solo units). Legends Amongst Legends is their only way of buffing their army, allowing friendly infantry unit in the same objective zone to always be inspired. Most of the time, your infantry unit will be able to inspire themselves without help, so don’t go out of your way to do this.
When an Order of the Ashen Dawn unit activates, you have a choice of two commands. Shard of Cleon gives it +1 attack and relentless blow at the cost of one wound, and
Shard of Hazlia, which is the ramped-up version, gives +4 attacks and dread but costs 4 wounds and disqualifies the Order of the Ashen Dawn from scoring objectives. 4 wounds out of 6 is a heavy price to pay, so only use Shard of Hazlia when things are desperate and you really need to kill an enemy unit.
Priory Commander
The golden standard of mounted characters. The Priory Commander has an even better statline than his already impressive colleagues. He’s tanky, he hits hard, and he buffs your Knights of the Crimson order. If you are considering an all-cavalry list, this is the character to lead it. Crimson Order gives him dread when he’s charging, making it absurdly difficult to harm him. Then, you have Descendants of the Legendary Legions, which not only ups his damage potential by giving him terrifying charges or around objectives, it also causes this monster to auto pass all resolve and morale tests along with giving it immunity to the broken status. These combination of hurdles overlap to make it not worth the effort to even try and kill the priory commander unless the enemy has a super elite unit in place.
The Priory Commander also provides buffs for your Order of the Crimson Tower units, giving them +1 attack in place of the Imperial Academy rules through Martial Traditions as well as giving them the ability to give morale and attack rerolls on a dice result of 6 for infantry. But do you really plan to bring many infantries with this guy?
The Priory Commander also has two very useful commands. Breakthrough! gives your Crimson Order units unstoppable when charging a targeted command zone, pushing them to a charge distance of 10, which allows you to set up charges comfortably against most army. The second order, Secure! turns one unit with the Crimson Order rule into a highly efficient objective scorer, causing each model to count as 5 (FIVE!) models for the purpose of scoring.
Theist Priest
The Theist Priest has an okay statline for a caster, with defense 3 and fearless, though he really shouldn’t be trying to get into combat if you can help it. He comes with Devout, which combos with Heavenly Blessings which turns every casting attempt at devout units into an automatic success. March of the Faithful allows you to leverage your model counts for claiming objective by causing the theist priest, officers, standard Bearers, and leaders in your army to count as two models, so position them properly in your unit and prevent them from dying early.
Fortitude of Faith provides a unit with Oblivious, halving damage from failed morale checks, perfect for big infantry blocks. Divine Purpose turns the theist priest from a mediocre combat unit to a slightly above-mediocre one; normally this is a waste of action, but rules as written on the app, the ability has no time limit, so always ask your opponent if they think it makes sense first to prevent arguments. Finally, Burst of Faith is a powerful offensive spell, that can be cast in combat, so if you ever get stuck in combat, use clash first, followed by this spell.
Infantry
Militia
So you rolled the unfortunate dice of life and landed yourself in the many castes of the peasantry that make up the most lives in the Kingdoms. You till the lands, feed your livestock, and occasionally—most of the time in Eä—those very lands get besieged by monsters whose names you can’t even pronounce.
Now you find yourself among your blighted peers, poor souls armed with bare-bone weaponry and armor and minimum training, accompanied only by a prayer in your heart while some nepo-babies shout empty words of encouragement. And so you march into the fray, and maybe… just maybe you can return home to Dear Betsie.
At least you have a shield, so that you have defense 2.
Militia Bowman
Same as above, but thank the gods above that you are armed with a bow. Actually a decent ranged unit at Barrage 2 at 15”. Take aim, then pray and hope that the cavalry is on the way.
Men-at-Arms
The good news is you are being paid; the bad news is if anyone’s going to die or be sacrificed first, it’s going to be you. Sporting the true definition of average statsline, what men-at-arms has is the advantage of numbers, and you can bring twelve of them for only 210 points.
Household Guard
The halberd-wielding guards of wealthier households and establishments; in all, finally a proper fighting infantry for the Hundred Kingdoms. Having access to support means longer engagement range and having Cleave 1 to break armor.
Gilded Legion
The first of the two heavy infantry options for the Hundred Kingdoms. Unfortunately, their role as the protector of the coin mint and the cries of people whose income is being taxed to fund the war effort make them less famous than the Steel Legion. The Gilded Legion boasts the highest Resolve status for a 100K infantry at 4. The higher engagement range is also useful to circumvent their average movement stats
Steel Legion
This group trace their origin back to the very first professional armies that the Emperor fielded—whose name was the storied legion of the Old Dominion. Staying true to that reputation, the legion has a statline that makes them hit way above any normal human (other than the orders). With Cleave 2 and Relentless Blow, they are better designed to take down heavier targets. While their ability Legacy of Glory inspires the other regiments with bravery and the option to re-roll failed morale tests of 6.
Missile Troops
Due to the many options of ranged units, there is a special section that will detail each of the different missile options that a commander has. Other than militia bowman, which is the cheapest and most basic missile unit that the Hundred Kingdoms have, the rest of the missile options have a bit of a different flavor profile.
Mercenary Crossbowmen
The vast income of the Hundred Kingdoms allow them to regularly field mercenaries to boost their ranks. While their motives can be questionable at times, their efficiency is quite decent. Costing the second cheapest at 110 points, the Crossbowman has the advantage of having an extra point in volley compared to the militia. Their crossbow bolts also have the advantage of having cleave 1.
Hunter Cadre
A specialized ranged attacker that is very accurate against brutes, cavalry, and monsters thanks to the Fiend Hunter special rule. Even when they are in melee against them, they also have fearless, which can lower any resolve damage to this unit when taking damage as well as having decent clash stats at 3 and cleave 1.
Imperial Ranger Corps
The once-expert woodsmen that were tasked to explore, catalog, and safeguard the sprawling woodlands, the role of these rangers has been integrated into the military of the Hundred Kingdoms. Bringing into the table the ability of Fluid Formation so that they can maneuver in any kind of terrain, alongside a higher volley stats at 3. They cost the same points as the Mercenary Crossbowmen but without the armor-piercing power of the crossbow bolts. A commander should ask themselves whether they value accuracy or power.
Longbowmen
True to their names, the Longbowmen wield the longbow. Compared to their other missile brethren, the longbow represents a longer threat range at 20” alongside the same stopping power of a crossbow bolt. When push comes to shove, these longbowmen can also perform the melee attack with their cleave 1. All this package at only just 20 points more compared to the crossbowmen and ranger corps
Cavalry/Brute
Mounted Squire
Every brave knight often starts out as a lowly squire. Preparing their weapons, ensuring that the horses are well fed—these squires act as a personal assistant and errand boys to the knights. Cheap and fast—these are the two things that the squire have for themselves in terms of the battlefield. Take advantage of their march stats of 9 to threaten seizing an objective on the enemy side of the battlefield.
Household Knights
If the Orders are the delicious flavors of ice cream that make up the wonderful assortments of mounted options that the Hundred Kingdoms have access to, then the Household Knights are the vanilla ones, dependable and straightforward. Point them at the nearest enemy weak line, and the result will be as predictable as it is reliable. With the knights, you want to charge to take advantage of their Brutal Impact 2 to break through defense during the charge. While durable on its own thanks to having defense 4, the knights are awful when not charging, having only clash of 2 without any form of cleave.
Order of the Crimson Tower
The premier shock cavalry of the Hundred Kingdoms, and costed appropriately, the Order of the Crimson Tower can deal with almost any enemy unit that has a resolve value. On the charge, they have very good impact attacks, and their Terrifying value goes up from 1 to 2. Always keep them just on the edge of their charge range (8 by default, or 10 with buffs from Priory Commander).
Order of the Sealed Temple
Things with defense 4 normally don’t move so fast, and they certainly almost never have Fluid Formation. No one remembered to tell this to the Order of the Sealed Temple, and because of it, they have heavy cavalry survivability but light cavalry maneuverability. Put them inside terrain to protect them, then charge out and take advantage of your Impact 4 without suffering any penalty. Their clash value is high enough that they can hit reliably, but without cleave, they won’t break through armor.
Officers
Armsmaster
A duelist officer! This officer can declare duel against an enemy character model and they receive a penalty if they refuse said duel. The man is no slouch in combat either; with five attacks, re-roll on attack, and cleave 1, he can threaten to put the hurt in a squishy enemy character.
Drillmaster
Most infantry regiments of the Hundred Kingdoms lack a crucial ability that the Drillmaster happily provides: an ability to re-roll their attacks. This ensures that a block of infantry can have an elite statsline without paying for the cost. Just add 20 points.
Errant of the Order of the Shield
Back during the founding years of the Hundred Kingdoms, the Order of the Shield stood to protect man from dangerous predators. Now they are few and far between but have retained the role of protectors of citizens—especially from the nobility. The Order can bring any militia under their command into a proper fighting force. Jury makes him hit harder and gives extra +1 defense thanks to shield plus re-roll of clash and volley of “6” within his command range. Executioner turns this officer into a character hunter with Cleave 2 and rerolls on his own attack against the character model.
Neophyte
Often the best way to motivate militia is the promise that they serve a greater purpose. This ability is represented by having the spell that gives Oblivious, so they will take less resolve damage from failing tests.
Null Mage
An interesting officer that brings the unique ability of Arcane Interference. This ability has the potential to harm spellcasters near this officer. Though limited in application, this might provide an option to those facing an army with plenty of spellcasters like Old Dominion or Dweghom.
Seasoned Veteran
The defense to the drillmaster’s offense. The command Interlocking Shields gives target infantry regiment with a shield +1 defense. Suddenly those humble men-at-arms are at defense 4, matching even the knights.
Servite
Another interesting support to the militia spam playstyle. The unique ability To the Frontlines! gives +1 march and unstoppable (additional charge distance) to Militia or Militia bowmen within the command range.
Building a First Blood Hundred Kingdoms List
There are certainly two flavors of army building when it comes to a Hundred Kingdom. One can take you to a more ‘horde’ style of gameplay with plenty of units on the table and overwhelming the enemies with sheer numbers. On the other hand, you can also play the Order playstyle—smaller, more elite numbers. In actual reality, it’s always a bit of both. Some amount of cheap units to serve as an objective holder with your expensive units as the heavy hitters.
Consider the following as a ‘guideline’ for a Hundred Kingdoms list:
- 1-2 Objective holders: Household Guard, Gilded Legion
- 0-3 Chaffs: Militia, Men-at-arms
- 1-2 Missile Troops: Longbowmen, Mercenary Crossbowmen
- 2-3 Heavy Cavalries: Order (whichever ones)
Sample Hundred Kingdoms list:
=== First Blood ===
Combined Arms [995/1000]
The Hundred Kingdoms
* Imperial Officer [0]:
* Imperial Ranger Corps (6) [150]:
* Steel Legion (6) [230]:
* Order of the Sealed Temple (1) [140]:
* Order of the Sealed Temple (1) [140]:
* Order of the Sealed Temple (1) [140]:
* Men-At-Arms (11) [195]: Imperial Academies, Standard Bearer, Seasoned Veteran
We are using the Imperial Officer as mostly a flurry command generator. He wants to hang back behind the men-at-arms or steel legion while the Imperial Ranger Corps flanks to get into the best position to snipe enemy regiments. The three Order of the Sealed Temple act as a mobile force that can claim objective as well as to protect the flanking ranger corps.
Final Thoughts
Thank you for reading this very long article about Hundred Kingdoms!
While the Hundred Kingdoms can play like the traditional playstyle of fielding cheap infantries with heavy cavalry, the state of the game right now favors the playstyle of the order. Order of the crimson tower alongside priory commander remains to be one of the strongest build in the game. Having access to both offensive and defensive rerolls in a shell that’s already tough to kill makes this combination a very compelling reason to bring them.
There is a promise of a game rebalance happening within the next couple of months. Perhaps there will be a universal buff to the rest of the 100k options or toning down the commanders and crimson tower so the power level gap of the two options is not too jarring.
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