Between Frank, Ben, David and KK (that's me), only Frank had played WK before, so he started by filling us out with the rules. About 45 minutes later, we've got our cards sorted out, the cities placed and some razed. Frank mentions that we'll be playing to 60 Influence Points (15 Influence Points each), as recommended in the game designer's website. I'd been randomly chosen as "Head of the Church", while Dave got the gavel of the "Head of the Assembly".

We started placing our strongholds and knights down on the main board. Starting first, I decided that choke-points were the key to controlling movement in the game, so I placed my stronghold down on a cross-roads near the top-right corner of the board.

A withering look from Frank, "That's not a good idea."
"Why not?"
"It makes your Stronghold too easy to attack. Everyone can just ride up and hit it."

Right; make that Lesson One.

I shift my Stronghold to a more "protected" location off the road. Frank goes next and places his Stronghold in the middle of a cluster of three 100-point cities near the bottom-left of the board which incidentally is well-protected by mountains and the coast. Dave throws up his hands and accuses him for picking the best spot, "Look at that! He's already won the game!"

Lesson Two: Don't forget about the mountains and river - they block out armies.

After a few more accusations at Frank of "newbie-thrashing", we finally get the rest of the knights down on the board. First round, Frank flips up "Serve the Church", gains a Faith and picks the "Head of the Church" office off from me. More accusations of newbie-thrashing follow.

We'd all placed our knights on neutral cities to attack, and "Mobilize Forces" came up for me. Frank quickly lists my options again: Attack or Siege.

"If you Attack, you might get some casualties or breech/damage the city, but you pretty much get the city straightaway. If you Siege, you place one of these 'Siege' tokens on the city, and when you attack the city again in the next Round, it becomes yours. It's a bloodless way to gain a city, but it takes longer."

I decided that Sieging sounded good this early in the game (getting damaged didn't sound promising), so I opted for that. Ben and David followed suit and Sieged their cities. Frank got a couple of "Mobilize Forces" and he promptly smacked down 2 100-point cities one after the other. By the end of the round, Frank is the only one who collects Influence.

Lesson Three: Grab as many low-defense cities as quickly as possible for the first Influence Point count.

A Special Event turns up and as the new "Head of the Church", Frank gives a "bad event" to Ben. It turns out to be a "Broken Line" event and it gets randomly assigned to Ben's Circle-dude.

"Broken Line? What the hell does that mean?"
"It means that if he gets killed, he doesn't come back again next round. Like he's got no heirs or something."
"What!? Why!?"
"Maybe he's gay."

Lesson Four: Keep lots of Faith, or better yet - be the Head of the Church.

It was the start of an inevitable war between Ben and Frank. An hour or so later, Ben moves in with his Square-guy and attacks Frank's Star-man at a port city. And then, Dave moves in menacingly with his Triangle-bloke, but Frank convinces him to attack the city instead of attacking his knight.

Ben objected. "Why didn't you attack Frank instead!? This isn't like one of your poofy Euros, David, this is a wargame!!"
"Warrior Knights IS a Euro. It's a Faidutti."
"It's a re-worked old Games Workshop game. It's not an Euro."

Which led to a short, but interesting discussion. As the game progressed, I started accumulating Faith points and finally managed to wrest the "Head of the Church" into my own hands. When the next "bad event" came up, I then offered to lay the first "bad" event on anyone who doesn't pay me to do so. Ben immediately offers 3 Gold to lay it on Frank.

"Why is everyone bashing me?" Frank complained. "I don't even have the largest army!"
"Have you got more Influence Points?"
"Yeah, but-"
"Then you're winning. Case closed."

Lesson Five: Never forget the Victory condition. Doesn't matter who's got the largest army, the guy with the most Influence points is winning.

Despite being "Banned from Office", having a knight with a "Broken Line", having Rebellions at his cities, being constantly harangued by three other (albeit, newbie) players and dashing his own army to pieces against a 500-point city, Frank still maintained the Influence Point lead on everyone else. The end of the game came up suddenly, just as his armies were about to be decimated by our larger armies.

Lessons Six: Always watch the Victory point leader, even if he's ahead by 1 point.

Looking back at the game, most of our first rounds were spent taking over neutral cities and menacing each other, but not actually attacking each other. Aside from that one conflict between Frank and Ben, and the series of last-minute battles in the last round, the whole game was a cold war between all of us (I've got a big army, you've got a big army, so we'll just ignore each other till we both go away, okay?) Next time, I'm attacking early.