Warmahordes General Thread

May I have a link to them please

Question for the WMH thread:
Is Quirk from MWG a good WMH player? Or shit like a lot of his 40k/30k work. Don't know any players to ask IRL.

I saw her spell list and was unimpressed- her upkeeps don't seem to do as much as other casters, and offensive nuke spells on low-fury casters are rarely useful for more than taking out one or two guys if you have extra fury.

She has an unimpressive/weak spell list but a solid feat. Her low defensive stats are kinda worrying also. Def 14 with no tenacity is very bleh. at least there's a nephilim protector to guard her ass.

That said- she does have some tricks-

I think she wants a unit like legionnaires so she can give them that extra 3" move to make a super fast jamming unit.

Ashen veil could go on a high defense unit or a unit with prowl- hexblades or swordsmen come to mind. Def- 16 infantry are definitely resistant to most forms of shooting.

he's actually pretty good, he's placed well in tournaments before. He often dumbs himself down for people who come in, due to them being scrub tier.

I am looking at Kozlov's rules right now and I don't really know what to make of him. He seems very middle of the road. Decent weapon, decent stats, decent focus, decent spell selection, decent feat. Nothing about the guy really seems to stand out.

she's no Helynna, or Kozlov, or Tanith, or even Maddox/Agathea, that's for sure

no point crying over spilt tenacity tho, but i was surprised to not see *some* higher stats to account for it.

OK then. I just watch him consistently fuck up at 40k/30k, to the level of God Damn DAVE, and wonder wtf. When he first started I was excited because I thought a WMH player would be all over this shit (40k is a lot less tactics, etc or so other seems to me) but he really fell off fast.

He's a decent player but I think the channel makes him come off as sort of bad because he always runs sub-tier lists for the channel. A lot of their content is more about showing off nicely painted terrain/miniatures than it is showing off good gameplay.

One could say that about a lot of the BB casters. Except Helynna, christ. Kozlov Khadors Harder though. Side step is pretty good. so is even moar arm for IFP/MOW and base 20 jacks. Tac Sup is great on IFP/MOW or something like a reach jack to jam in more.

Definitely in the bottom few for battlebox casters- maybe even THE bottom. The way I see it- the Nephilim Protectyor is the new shredder- you take it just for shield guard and guard dog. Your caster will be weaker VS ranged attacks but +2 def, no back strikes, and parry are solid. Kinda sucks that we went from paying 2 points minimum for caster defensive buffs to 10 (5) points. though it's not too much worse than 2 shredders so it's not the end of the world.

It's definitely odd though that we're seeing a battlebox caster who prefers infantry- what is this, trollbloods' MK II battlebox with Madrak?

the skorne one is the worst. agathea is pretty bad, her feat is pure delivery, but she has the saving grace of handing out ghost walk, Hellwrought, and parasite. kryssa...really i get back to the FURY 6 at the end of the day. you have to build for the feat, which i dislike, and around tactical supremacy, which is likely multiple things will want. spell martyrs for the spray spell aren't bad but that's more for opportunity, not as a main tactic

I agree a lot with this. Mk2 was relatively balanced, they only needed to do the double point thing (and balance models' point costs accordingly), the increased warjack point thing, and potentially add more jack support and the game would've been fine. I don't know what the fuck they were thinking with half these changes.

i actually agree with a lot of the changes, but for every three times they crow "design space!!!!!!' maybe once is it actually meaningful. like changing battle was valid and understandable. what they did to Gaspy2 or demo corps or legionnaires, i have no fucking clue what "roles" those are supposed to play.

The actual balance could have been there so easily. I'm a Cryx player so I can speak mostly from the perspective.
Shit units got worse.
Mediocre units got worse.
Some of the good units became mediocre or shit.
Jacks are a bit better, but few problems are fixed. There is still a clear choice of what to pick with even the situational choices like the reaper being the same cost as Seether or Inflictor, which are better in 90% of situations.
Buffs to Venny are insane, with counter charging Inflictors with boosted attacks against Hordes... You get a caster which will make any beast heavy list cry, 4-5 Inflictors with the guy are something you can easily see. 13 points for a jack with Reach and 19 armour and a crit weapon master vs living, he's insane.
While on the other side of the spectrum we have eDenny and eLich.
eLich is easily the worst caster in Cryx who does almost nothing for the army, if you roll badly has a pathetic feat and everything he used to do too good now cannot do at all, leaving you with a completely useless caster who has Parasyte, a generic spell.
eDenny has no feat. They could have made it a simple -3 def feat which would have been solid. Instead you get a feat which does almost nothing.

I actually think Agathia is a decent if somewhat boring caster. Her spell list is solid and so is her feat- she just adds nothing new to the faction- she is merely like a powered down deneghra 1.

Fury 6 really handicaps Kryssa though she will likely have fewer beasts than other legion casters. Tac supremacy at least gets you a jamming unit that moves 8" per turn out of the legionnaires. I do fear that she will be a one trick pony without even a really great gimmick.

Agathia is the caster you have no reason to bring because she only gives Parasyte and Stealth feat.
I don't understand why they gave that kind of a feat instead of something which won't be wasted on half the units.

Yeah I get how Denny2 directly resulted in the errata to Shadow Bind (no dev should need a "does X caster break this scenario" widget but Denny2 had one for years). That needs to be toned back but they used hammers instead of scalpels with this stuff, generally.

Sweet sweet Cryx tears

I don't play Cryx. I play Mercs and Minions.
There's some stupid shit going on in this new edition.
Are you excited for the 300 HP khador lists? I'm certainly not.

Circle Insider is up privateerpress.com/community/privateer-insider/insider-05-31-2016

So can we now dispense with the "the leaks aren't final" and commence with the tears of the various tryhards desperately wishing that they aren't?

Yay? Tells us exactly nothing we didn't know. Every spoiler is identical to the leaked cards. Soles is still a terribad writer.

not til June 12 apparently

khador insider made it clear that the leaks were 95% final if not more and that shit's still been going on since then

That's kinda the point of BB casters. Good all round middle of the road guys that supports most of the faction's playstyles.

the issue is more - how many of them can stand on their own merits once newbs are not playing BB games. some certainly can. others don't seem like they'll be able to as easy (Kozlov is the former, really)

More beautiful, beautiful tears.

I'm 100% sure that given PP's stance on the leaks and unwillingness to admit they're real, if they *weren't*, one of the Insiders since then would have showcased a card that was different from the leaks.

But they can't, because the leaks are what's going to be in the card decks. War Room will have errataed cards when it's updated on the 11th, though.

Keep in mind BB casters included both pDenny and pKaya. There's no guarantee which end of the power spectrum they'll be on.

Seeing as how eMags can run Jack spam at higher ARM and with more speed than Khador, yes you should look forward to it.

what crying? there was one difference between an insider and a cards (Ravagore POW) but I think that was more Schick being totally unaware of the values on the card, than the card being wrong. and i say 95% to hedge my bets. i won't be surprised if it was 100%. high-end players were leaking accurate shit for weeks before the actual card leak to boot.

cryx tears are a nice break after the years of endless "Cygnar, mweh!"

Not so much in this thread, but I've run into many people holding out hope that they aren't final after some favorite tchotchke got nerfed.

I'm betting 100% just because PP hasn't shown us any differences, which would be the obvious thing to do to keep up the mystique.

I think it'd be a disservice to omit the fact that she has ghost walk- one of the few spells that was actually BUFFED in Cryx with the MK 3 changes. It's too early to tell for certain right now, but if the amount of terrain is increasing then that spell will be worth it's weight in gold. An armor buff is now actually relevant since we have the inflictor- though I suppose the crabjacks might be equally receptive to becoming ARM 20.

Also, while I dislike nuke spells- hellfire is not something I'd immediately discount. In a faction with easy access to cheap and fast arc nodes, a fully boostable pow 14 that you cannot shield guard is sometimes exactly what you need to scalpel out annoying solos.

I actually like her feat a LOT because it gives free ghostly to everyone which allows easy access to rear arcs, and it gives everyone stealth- which Bane Warriors desperately need. They get one turn to run up the board and not worry about ranged attacks. The Vanish part of her feat synergizes well with Scavenger Bonejacks- they can rush in, eat something, and then place themselves 10" away with a combination of the feat and sprint.

I don't think Agathia is bad, she just takes a lot of generic Cryx stuff and synthesizes it into one caster. She is a better battlebox caster than Deneghra 1 in that she is significantly less likely to provide absurdly negative play experiences.

Not to say that she's an all-star caster- she's a pale shadow of good MK II casters, but I'm looking to give her a spin before pass judgment.

It's great too because he mentions all the slight nerfs and changes without mentioning a single one of the fairly big buffs that a lot of models received in Circle.

Kruger2 has rebuke? Nah

Changed Woldwrath from spell Ward to holy Ward and buff it's gun? Nah just mention it has hyper regen

Yeah consistently placing in the top 5 at all major events was just awful for swan players

lol, yeah -- I ordered a Woldwrath after getting my hands on the leaks. Soles points out... the one benefit I never even noticed on the cards, it's so insignificant compared to his new gun, Sacred Ward, and Earth Shaker changes.

it's even sadder that this never stopped their bitching then

I suppose Helynna could always be an outlier, but she really doesn't match that description.

how was it buffed? 1 cost less and friendly faction only is strictly worse considering 99% of the time the caster didn't actually pay to cast it.

it's true that she's a better BB option from deneghra, because someone was a real sadist to put her and 3 arc nodes in a battle box.

Helynna more creates new play styles for Ret than she does enable existing ones. Then again there's not a strong common thread among Ret casters (where, say, Cryx's strong thread is debuffs) aside from being combined-arms, which most casters are now anyway

She isn't bad, it's just the "why would I take this caster" question you always need to keep in mind when designing casters.
The answer is Stealth feat, since Hellfire/Parasyte/Ghost Walk spells are the generic Cryx spells.

Also, holy shit is the Woldwrath going to be fun with eKromac. Also fun with pMorv, but not as good as eKromie.

haha, I love how pp tries to the bitter end to justify the stuff they do.

Confirmed for 8 boxed Skinwalkers, all orboros are of course onboard with this idea as it is obvious they are halfway to warbeasts. While the rest of the community sits in question if it hadn't been better to then make them a warbeast unit perhaps?
The other great part is when someone mention that these fur-clad hillbillies has the same arm value as someone wielding a Volkswagen beetle as shoulder pads, not to mention the rest of the armor, you get a "well... I'm a registered scientist and am currently working on a theory that fur is indeed as strong as steel!".
I don't play trolls, skorne or protectorate, but I can seriously see the frustration from the rest of the community. After this blunder I wouldn't even be surprised if they are cheaper than said units by default as well.

>Skorne one is the worst

What? The Skorne caster is likely the best, just tied to trap shit

Amazing spell list, and the best defensive feat in the game.

It's not a bad feat to pop on approach, or for repositioning. Just a shame it's redundant with banes, but would be great for say Satyxis, Blackbanes (if tangled with stuff with magical weapons) and jacks like the stalker.

A great spell list on a fury 6 without an arc node and with some of the shittiest defensive stats in the game.

Any Legion players theory crafting some new lists based off of whats been released?

Just because Cryx is no longer the best faction in the game doesn't mean PP has no idea what they're doing balance wise.

And no, they didn't need to just leave things alone and tweak some point costs.

The general trend of lowering army sizes and the downturn of super powerful, super fast, super accurate damage is overall good for the game.

Your problem is that you wanted Mk3 to simply be Mk2 again, and now that it's not, you've decided it's shit. Yea, there's been some questionable decisions, but Cryx hasn't really seen the worst of it anyways.

>8 boxed Skinwalkers
bullshit
PP is completely incompetent when it comes to balancing circle to the rest of the factions
what happened to man o wars being the only guys with 8 boxes

I want one.

hellmouths. hellmouths everywhere.

(i got some other stuff but seriously. hellmouths.)

the Cryx changes don't show that PP doesn't know what they're doing.

the Cygnar changes definitively prove that they don't, though.

They're +1 ARM to stormblades and the same ARM as naked feral warp wolves. They're also wearing full plate. It's not exactly ridiculous that it would take some guy in power armor to match that.

>but muh cetrati

Top kek

Didn't you notice how ALL the Warcasters defensive stats in ALL the starters where generally better than ALL the Warlocks in the starters?
How did you miss this?
The thing is, nerfing the Warcasters way of shielding themselves with hogging FOCUS made them realize that all Warcasters need better defensive stats, they also stated this in the original insider.
I think this is but a taste on how the game will look. Warlocks have the ability to transfer all damage to a beast, and it is by privateer standard a far greater skill than removing 5 damage once per blow struck.
Thus, Warlocks will most certainly have less def stats overall, as the starter boxes suggests.

I know its just a theory, but Ill stick with it until I'm proven wrong.

it's fair for coc heavy infantry to keep it, because robots. but skinwalkers? realllllly?

>tanky heavy infantry loses second attack for gang, pathfinder for relentless assault, relentless advance for dick
>keeps 8 boxes
>this is somehow bullshit

Um... sure.

They said from the start that MoWs were one of the few units to keep 8 boxes, not the only.

People have been curious as to which ones kept it since.

Marketh is his arc node.

And Skorne's got plenty to fix his stats, never mind his feat.

I think terrain is where we're going to see Cyngar nerfs.

Like, if they can't get LoS on your army with their shooting shit easy, then shit like Sloan and Caine aren't going to be nearly as powerful as they seem.

>what happened to man o wars being the only guys with 8 boxes

there was a "*some conditions may apply" rider on that and they even pointed that out

Skinwalkers are man-sized warpwolves, is probably the justification.

The concept of them is more like a warbeast unit than heavy infantry. PP is designing more on fluff than on game balance. That's why cataphracts lost a point of def for having heavy looking armor, despite having less armor than many higher arm infantry.

Im thinking, anybody have an idea of how to mass run Warjacks with Kharchev?

Im just thinking about the maths involved and matchups against beasts.

Contrary to popular opinion, except for a few rare exceptions (The Satyrs and Flying Legion Beasts), most heavy beasts have 30 HP. With Defense and Armor comparable to that of a Jack (Average 12/18). A point less, a point more, or different arrangement (14/16 instead of 12/18), you effectively have to one shot them to get them out of the commission, and Im just thinking of how to do enough damage to one-shot them, outside of just feat turn.

Beasts can still Oneshot warjacks in return, or at least mainly cripple them. Im just thinking Maths wise how to kill a beast with still limited focus. A Jugger can one shot a 18 Armor 30 HP beast with about 3 focus (using 1 up on the charge) but just barely.

Against infantry I can do some tricks, but Im just thinking about the ways to just flat out kill beasts if the situation calls for it.

And Skinwalkers are half way to Warpwolves, fluff wise. They're basically baby warbeasts.

*than many higher def infantry

What about troll infantry being man sized dire trolls?

Adding to this, the process to make warp wolves and skinwalkers is similar, it's just a matter of degrees. Skinwalkers are still fairly normal while human while warp wolves are typically gibbering insane people even while human

Xekaar from skorne stands out, his playstyle is very abnormal for skorne. Debuffing things is something only fatty really did and even then his debuff game wasnt that great until MK3 buffs

I get it, when the CoC drooped the bomb on 8 boxed robots, there was a lot of whining. But the excuse being "come on guys, the are ROBOTS!" Which was eventually bought, still grumpy but the crowd gave in.

Now these guys comes along, and Ill admit it, they would have fitted the bill for a warbeast unit instead, not only having 8 boxes but also insane arm.

Let me explain this to you since you seem to have a hard time reading and comprehending things. I don't play any of the above team, as mentioned, but don't you see it strange that privateer press makes it clear that "these guys are literally clad in full plate armor so heavy we HAD to drop their defense stat, it would be ridiculous otherwise!". Now, I give it to you, you seem to have a fair amount of arm, on selected parts, but having the typical armor cracks of your average old armor. On top of this, they don't even bother wielding that chainmail all the way around, so both arms and legs are extremely less protective! Now granted, they wear armor for a better armor value, but they don't wear THAT armor value.

If privateer press wants to bring in model esthetics to the rules, they sure are selective when using this type of power don't you think?

They're not. Trollkin are absolutely different, if related, to full blood Trolls, much less Dire Trolls.

Yes, which is EXACTLY why they should have become a Warbeast unit!

There's more of an emphasis on debuffs in Skorne in general right now, to be fair.

Just a question of how good it is.

Some of Skorne's shit I think will turn out better once people start playing it.

Like, Mord's ability to increase the cost of every animus you cast is going to be a pretty huge fucker for Hordes armies now, especially with so many of them going SELF, but I think that's hard to really visualize on paper.

hes fury 6.5, he has maltreatment so he'll be on 7 fury every turn. Skorne also has a spell slave that can cast his two best spells (Mortality and Deadweight)

agreed on Cygnar. and sloan got better but all the dumb screaming over her is, well, dumb. go ahead and take 8 hunters, you'll lose on scenario, or they'll get engaged and shredded pretty quick.

My Lylyth2 list is, oddly enough, not much different from what it was like in Mk II, except without Zuriel and now has the obligatory Bolt Thrower. I'm very interested to see what Raptors with Gunfighter and a second attack can do. Archers might see a comeback with her given that they'll be able to shit out an absurd number of shots.
Abby2 is in the same boat, pretty close to my old list for her, and I figure her list will transition well into the new predicted Mk III meta. I'm tempted to do the same for Vayl1, but I feel like she needs a stronger infantry game now. Not just because of the change to Incite, but also because she might need more bodies on the table between her and the enemy.

Bethayne's probably going to be the sleeper hit of the faction, but I can't decide what combination of beasts and infantry will work best with her.

If they changed from Ghostly to Apparition, she would have been much more interesting. 3" on jacks and 2" on dudes and you've got yourself a fine caster used to diliver your dudes into the enemy.
>Just because Cryx is no longer the best faction in the game doesn't mean PP has no idea what they're doing balance wise.
Of course. But the internal balance getting worse with less viable units and some casters being nerfed into oblivion, reaching eMorhgul levels of trash. Also, the actual nerfs to already bad or mediocre/situational units.
>And no, they didn't need to just leave things alone and tweak some point costs.
Indeed, they needed to remove excarnate from eLich as well as the soul cloud and remove the movement penalty of eDenny and many other completely sane choices compared to utter nonsense of the balance they are doing right now.
>The general trend of lowering army sizes and the downturn of super powerful, super fast, super accurate damage is overall good for the game.
Army size went up, more jacks and Bane Knights being more spammable then ever. 17 points for these guys will mean the Zen spam lists will still be there, still outshining many choices which would have made the game more interesting.
That, and all the nerfs to cool units like McThralls, Bane Warriors, Bane Riders, Bloodgorgeors and even fucking Black mother fucking Ogrun. Who the fuck nerfs Black fucking Ogrun???????
>Yea, there's been some questionable decisions, but Cryx hasn't really seen the worst of it anyways.
As I have stated before, I cannot speak for other factions as not all are represented in the local meta and as I don't play them so my knowledge is not first hand playing.
And it isn't just some, it's a lot of them.
With all the terrain in the world, those two are still insane.

you'll get about 1 turn of that spell slaving before they kill him.

Skinwalkers do wear chainmail and have gauntlets though. Cetrati are just regular dudes in archaic armor. The +1 ARM and DEF can easily come from the fact that the creature inside the armor is tougher to damage, which is exactly how it works with trolls.

The extra boxes come from the fact that they're 10 feet tall insane animals that have to be euthenized if you want them to stop.

thats funny, L2 is about the only place i really like zuriel. gunfighter is what he needs to make his quick work better, and it's yet another free spray to boot.

archers with lyl2 = 3 RNG 12 POW 21 arcing fire CRAs on feat turn. that seems ok.

Ghost walk is not an upkeep spell so Skarlock Thralls can still cast it and now it costs 1 focus less. Cryx was a lot less dependent on mercenaries than most other factions, so I'd call that a buff.

Parasite, Hellfire, and Ghost Walk ARE pretty basic spells and they are the strongest ones she has to offer. Her +2 ARM spell seems like a solid addition to bolster some of our already tough jacks- though I doubt it'll do much of anything for the slayer chassis-jacks. Vanish definitely seems like a trap option. a 3" move isn't enough to put you out of reach of enemies without some additional movement shenanigans. I expect her feat to be incredibly useful on some of the more clogged boards though.

not every list is capable of killing him when hes sitting 8-10" from where the battle used to be, since he ususally wants to go early to throw down the debuff. especially against all of skorne's shield guards or if you just bring Orin as a double protector for Xekaar and marketh, good luck enemy spell slingers

Im sorry but we can debate fluff all day:

"Well the protectorate has armor powered by GOD, and therefore have 8 damage boxes"
"The Skorne people are immune to pain, so we represented that with 3 more damage boxes"
"Trolls are thick, and are Beast blooded by nature so deserve 8 boxes"
"COC heavy infantry, though robots are also very delicate clockwork systems so deserve 5 boxes"
"MOW armor though tough has been established as unstable, so therefore deserves 5 boxes only"

Its just how flippant PP is about awarding the boxes.

>Of course. But the internal balance getting worse with less viable units and some casters being nerfed into oblivion, reaching eMorhgul levels of trash.
Horseshit. even Gaspy2 isn't that fucking bad. The only major complaint is his feat, and it's not that fucking bad.

The die roll doesn't change your plan with the feat, it just changes how much attrition you get out of it.

>Indeed, they needed to remove excarnate from eLich as well as the soul cloud and remove the movement penalty of eDenny and many other completely sane choices compared to utter nonsense of the balance they are doing right now.

And what changes in Cryx have really been that insane?

>Army size went up
No it didn't, army size went down in points about 1-4 Mk2 points, even accounting for point cost reductions.

Even all jack armies are having fewer models in them then in Mk2. Only 1, really, but that's still a thing.

>17 points for these guys will mean the Zen spam lists will still be there, still outshining many choices which would have made the game more interesting.

And how are they more spammable? You lost most of the shit that made them worth spamming.

Well no matter the opinion, its not going to change. We will simply have to accept that while privateer will "remove" all 8 box meat mountains, and all dispel spells from the game, we will in the meantime have to be satisfied with over half the game teams getting just those things but with other names.
There will always be a reason behind it, I just find it silly. I would personally be happy with only Khador 8 boxes, and thats it. This to me is a sight of "what do we do with these guys?", the lazy road so to speak, from privateers part. Ether they couldn't agree, or they simply couldn't balance them enough with 5 boxes and still keeping them as the tanky unit, until someone in charge said "fuck it, let them keep the 8 boxes".

>That's why cataphracts lost a point of def for having heavy looking armor
And lost a point of armour for having heavy looking armour.

And the rest of it is just Cryx bitching. McThralls were stupid powerful, Bane Warriors were stupid powerful(and are still plenty good, they just don't deliver themselves anymore, which was stupid), Riders were stupid.

>With all the terrain in the world, those two are still insane.

All of Sloans insanity relies on having clear LoS to the opponents army. Most of Caine's insanity relies on having LoS to most of their army.

Mk3 terrain should prevent easy LoS to the opponents army.

cryx doesn't use a lot of mercs, but for the mercs it does use (i.e. boom howler tarpit or DSM in Denny1 gunline), that is a solid nerf since they cannot benefit from it. again 1 focus less doesn't really matter since the caster will virtually never cast it, they'll have a skarlock or WSC do it for free. it's somewhat of a benefit if you need to put it on multiple arc nodes or something, sure.

>"COC heavy infantry, though robots are also very delicate clockwork systems so deserve 5 boxes"
Bullshit, CoC clockwork is by any measure tougher than anything should realistically be.

Their shit is fucking insane.

>so Skarlock Thralls can still cast it and now it costs 1 focus less
Making the -1 cost not as good as it seems, since your Skarlock is in many cases only a Ghost Walk dispenser.
But on the other hand, a Skarlock is a shitty choice for most casters now, fighting with WSC who do the same thing with more dudes and free upkeeps.
Vanish is cheap and can help you get an assasination vector if necessary, it's also if I'm not mistaken within, not completely within. +2 armour says DeathJack/Nightmare, colossal is a waste with her for the most part.
She's just too generic. If I can get someone to split the two player box with me, I'll play her a bit. If not, I don't see a reason to actually buy her.

>Horseshit. even Gaspy2 isn't that fucking bad. The only major complaint is his feat, and it's not that fucking bad.

horseshit yourself.

1. Excarnate change - the model can't act in same activation, completely within, etc
2. Hellbound is no longer an upkeep and eats almost half the stack every turn to defend.
3. Caustic Mist is no longer an upkeep. bye cloud wall.
4. Teleport distance reduced 2"
5. Feat is unreliable - probably the worst thing to be unreliable about any caster
6. Less SPD

it's not that fucking hard to understand that some of these changes would be fine (let's say they did 1 bc its largely a general rule change, 3, 4, and 6) - that would be reasonable in combination but still leave some defensive tech that was signature to the playstyle. doing ALL of them is caving to whiny babies who screamed about cryx for 10 years.

Protectorate are still just dudes in big armor

Cataphractii are just big dudes in armor

Trollkin are just big dudes in general with varying degrees of armor that are much closer to their human counterparts than their full blood troll beasts.

Ogryn are just big dudes with varying degrees of facial hair. Props to bokur though.

Man o Wars are halfway to light warjacks with pilots

CoC medium are halfway to light warjacks and have souls

Skinwalkers are warp wolves who had the processed stop early to retain their sanity

Skorne tears are delicious, let the salt flats grow

As the man said, we can debate this all day....
The point being, its all up to the fanboy´s at privateer press hq to decide, with the trusty help from the marketing division of course.

Or that CoC can fire sawblades with the strength of a cannon shot using purely mechanical force and no gun powder. That requires absolutely ridiculous metallurgy

No my point was that Privateer press could justify whatever they wanted with fluff.

They say that in THAT specific case The gears are more vulnerable? They are so. In some other case they say the gears are less vulnerable? Works just as well.

And they shouldn't use fluff to justify mechanical changes. At least the way they do it here.