Yes, you can play using all those fantastic models. I was trying out the new Vanagur list. There was absolutely no difference between my knights and my Opponent's 'good guy' knights. None. The infantry were all pretty much the same. I had a Warlord on something called a direbeast. Could have been a Hero on a Charger. My mage cast a lightning bolt. His mages healed wounds. I had a cave dweller. It was just something with more attacks and a better chance of wounding. I pointed out that we could have been using Spartans and Egyptians.
I made a post ages ago (probably on another forum) when the old Chaos 40K codex dropped. It was stripped bare, the first codex the studio applied their 'minimalist' approach to (I think Dark Angels was the other one before they did before they abandoned that approach) and everyone was losing their minds.
The point of that post, and the one I'm making now, is that theme and difference should come (IMO) primarily from the modelling and painting aspect of the game, not the rules. For instance, your hero on a direbeast COULD be a hero on a charger. Or on a palanquin. Or on a flying carpet, or a monster boar or anything else your heart desires because the rules simply function as a way to represent what you want your model to be. I'm using my Mortis Engine model as a Revenant King on Flying Undead Wyrm, because the things achieved by the rules (fast movement that ignores terrain, inspiring and provides magical support to nearby undead, is pretty good in combat as well) fit the things the model can achieve on the table top.
The rules in Warhammer represented every tiny nuance of difference between the models. And frankly, it caused the game to get really bogged down in minutia. I remember many instances of counting individual rows of skeleton spearmen to see which enemy model each row could attack. What a bore! It's insignificant detail that has no meaningful impact on the result of the game.
The magic rules are the perfect example, IMO.
In Kings of War, you roll some dice, and take off some models. There are even two different ways to do this (Fireball and Lightning bolt). But the name of the rule is simply an abstraction. It used to just be called Zap! It could be opening a crack in the earth and swallowing the enemies in it, destroying them with bolts of lightning, having angels fly down from the heaves and drag them away, aging them a hundred years in a few seconds, or any other way of killing enemies with magic that you can think of. The point is that none of those are so significantly different from the others that they need different rules. The end result is the same, regardless of the 'fluff' happening in our minds, so the mechanics can be the same as well.
And to be entirely fair, your mounted Chaos Knights should have had more attacks and better nerve than the Kingdoms of Men knights.
In Warhammer your monster had all sorts of nice fantasy stuff. Flying...breath fire...berserk rage...extra armor or regeneration. Stomps and thunder stomps. Caused fear or terror. The Cave Dweller in KoW just didn't feel like a monster. It didn't feel 'fantastic'. That was my point.
Monsters in KoW still have stuff. Werewolves have Regeneration, Dragons have Fly and Breath Attacks, stomp and thunderstomp is replaced by Crushing Strength (a much better rule, IMO since it isn't so random), etc.
I just had a thought: Were you playing with the free download rules? A lot of the monsters, all of the magic items and the game scenarios were left out of the free download rules as an incentive to get people to buy the rulebook. I expect the download rules to be updated to the full version soon, but if that's all you're running off then I can see how you're missing some 'sizzle' as it's not in the rules that you're using!
The whole game revolves around tray size. Really doesn't matter what you stick in the actual tray. :rolleyes:
I know, it's great isn't it? :) Free reign for counts-as, no need for unit fillers, you can do multi-basing if you want (I'm keeping my models on their individual bases in case I want to play some legacy WHFB), and use any model from any range that fits the rules!