Why do Warmachine/Hordes games always look so depressing?

The thing that makes that statement retarded is that miniature wargames are just objectively shittier at being games than boardgames or videogames are.

If you want a battle of skill, play something on a hexboard or play starcraft.

"Competitive" miniature wargaming is just people pretending they didn't pick the kind of game that lets them buy a win by getting the latest op thing.

Don't get me wrong, I love miniature wargaming, but the most popular ones seem to be imbalanced crapheaps that really, desperately want you to buy the newest thing. How can you possibly play that and act like you're doing it for the gameplay?

If you only cared about gameplay and not about building, painting or converting shit, you'd get pic related, and be set for life, but you're not going to because you want to be able to buy a tryhard army and stomp kids who thought painting miniatures sounded neat.

If wargames have shrunk at all, it's probably because of video games. The only thing wargames without a huge name like Star Wars attached to them have to offer that video games don't is lore and the painting/modeling aspect.

The issue is that Everblight (And to a much lesser degree, circle) exist.

Up until very recently, the vast majority of terrain did absolutely nothing to Everblight forces as they could ignore it for shooting, charging and moving. Circle players didn't get quite as much but they had a lot of units that benefited heavily from turning as much of the map as possible into forest.

This led to very standardized terrain because wanting to add more was a massive advantage to any Everblight players in the area.

It might get better in the new edition, with Everblight's ability to just ignore everything taking a massive kick to the balls.

The other issue though is that Warmachine is very much a strategic game. Your battle plan is more or less set by the time your army list is built and armies tend to have issues if forced outside that area. Combined with 'Assassination is always a win', battleplans tend to be static save where your enemy impacts it and a lot of players don't like having it messed up by different terrain than they expected.

>Listbuilding: the game

Which is why playing them for the gameplay is so dumb. The only strength of miniature wargaming is the miniature part of it, the collecting and hobby aspect.

That's why anyone who claims they're playing them competitively or just for the rules should be viewed with suspicion and if possible avoided.

Does this mean we shouldn't care about gameplay at all? Of course not, good rules are important. But at the end of the day, the rules are the excuse for building armies and collecting the miniatures, if you view the collecting and painting aspect as an inconvenience that you have to go through to get to the playing, you're in the wrong hobby.

In all games you buy a win. In risk you win because you have more friends or are a better friend then someone else, or people are just scared to win vs you.

I do not know what you mean by imbalanced. sure w40k, has fewer viable factions then other games, but warmachine or infinity have a ton of armies and ways to play them.
the thing is a board game does not show your status. On the other hand an eldar or warmachine army with models you can't buy in stores, not only let you win, but also let you show that you have more money to spend on stuff. Not to mention the fact that to play a board game you would have to go to someones house, and people generaly dislike having non family members at home.

> The only strength of miniature wargaming is the miniature part of it
> good rules are important
> the rules are the excuse for building armies and collecting the miniatures

Good god, you're an idiot. You contradict yourself in your own fucking post, then follow it up with the earthshattering statement that "you shouldn't play a tabletop wargame if you view collecting as an inconvenience"?

Well no fucking shit. But some people prefer rules that are clearly spelled out rather than depending on your opponent to shrug their shoulders and say "ok, sure you can beat me" - or force you to randomize every goddamn thing on the earth, which makes everything take 4x as long and sucks all the fun out of every possible "good decision" you could make.

What's your point here? He is saying a balanced game is important, but the real big deal is the cool minis, and you are...agreeing with him? Angrily? Is puberty a hard time for you? Fucking summer.

>Status
Do you play exclusively with 13 year olds?
Wargames are cheap compared to many grown up hobbies. I can go on ebay and get whatever limited miniature I want, that doesn't make me want to run out and play a Warmachine tournament to stick it to the other nerds.

>In all games you buy a win. In risk you win because you have more friends or are a better friend then someone else, or people are just scared to win vs you.

On top of being a really silly point of view (scared to win vs you, really?) it ignores that none of that is a factor in other forms of gaming like online games.

How are you buying a win in starcraft? You're not, because you're both starting off equal.

None of that is contradictory. The collecting aspect IS the only strength of miniature wargaming, when you compare it to other forms of gaming. That doesn't mean we should ignore all the secondary characteristics, but it does mean that anyone who plays them exclusively for the secondary characteristics is a moron. If we chose to play miniature wargames, of course every aspect of the game is important, but none of it is as important as the reason we chose the hobby to begin with, and that HAS to be the hobby aspect of it, since anything else would be retarded.

Only that is not true. "cool" models with bad rules do not sell. Butt ugly models with good or great rules are always sold out. And this goes for all games. Sure sometimes there are hoarders, who buy everything, but that is a psycho condition, how many of such people can there be in a country with money enough to actualy buy models. 1-2 per every few milions of population. Personaly I only met one dude that did such things, and he was born in UK and only moved back home when he was in his late teens, and that was not the only odd thing he found ok.

Verticality is shitty to play with, most of the time, and especially at 28mm Squad Level games. Boards can have little to none verticallity and still look visually stunning, Warmahordes has no excuse.

Unless you mean vericallity not in the sense of "Three story buildings you can place miniatures at every level", but as "Forests with actual trees and buildings that block LoS". Warmahordes has even less excuse in that regard.

The problem is simply that Warmachine was marketed as the HARDCORE GAME for HARDCORE PLAYERS at the beginning. That was at a time when only tournament players were really dissatisfied with 40k and WHFB, so those guys formed the core and base of the community. Everyone else is just following their conventions.

Well here to buy stuff online you need to have a permit to do so, and even then they check everything that comes from outside of country. And cheap compering to what hobby. Only other one I can think is drinking. much cheaper 50L of pure alcohol cost less then a starter box of most games, or a single book from GW. Sports, are cheaper because if you want to do them for real you will join a goverment run club. Sure there are other hobbies like drugs, sports cars etc But aside for those people who have super rich parants or have access to huge bribes to boost their salary, who does that? No on normal. And even if someone would save up, there is a huge chance that militia or mob will just take his money as soon as he arrives in Moscov. Fuck he can even be in the wrong suburbs for that to happen .

>>How are you buying a win in starcraft? You're not, because you're both starting off equal.

By paying someone realy good to play your account or paying someone to throw a game to get a better ranking. More or less the same thing any one does in sports.

because you only post scrub level Warmachine boards, you fuckwit. Better Warmachine boards exist, but since most people don't have space for shit like pic related, they're content to use forest & trench templates.

Rules needing 2D terrain instead of 3D, and being built for competitive powergaming from the get go. That's honestly it.

The Iron Kingdoms lore, miniatures aesthetic, and most of the units and rules are quite nice. It's the stupid "play like you got a pair" mindset combined with stupid shit like chess clocks and ugly paper terrain that ruin it.

>all the nice looking bits are basically just a frame for an empty battlefield

lel

I mean it's not like shit like this doesn't exist.

Honestly this is more of a shop or a game group issue. If there isn't a wide variety of nice looking terrain around then your board is just going to look boring.

You could make a Steamroller compliant board with beautiful, well crafted terrain just as easily as any other game. PP even has some neat articles in No Quarter to making terrain.

You can't convert or customize your models at all. For a demographic that spends it's time complaining about GW, Warmahordes players get cucked harder by Privateer.

Or this.

Don't shift goalposts mate. Is it a fun board? you bet your fucking ass it is. Just like this one.

>primer only models

Kind of works against your argument there.

And another. Good boards are out there man. Frankly though, 40k and Fantasy didn't have any better terrain than OP's image at my local store. It's not about what game you're playing it's about how cheap you are and how difficult terrain with real verticality is to store and transport.

>Don't shift goalposts mate

How do you shift a goalpost when you've only made a single post in a thread?

HURRR. I'm not even OP you stupid fuck.

>those ripped-off chimneys
That fucking hurts.

So, like 99% of 40k games?

Not his whole force, don't care. Board is still sweet as fuck.

Yeah whatever, keep shitting on Warmachine for shit that literally every single game does - use as cheap and easy to store terrain as you can get away with.

Fancy boards are fucking sweet, but I have no idea where I'd even keep something like this that was one level, much less two.

Honestly only reason I considered picking up Warmahordes over Warhammer is because it's so much more reasonably priced in the states.

And there's no Daemons of Tzeentch starter set

>Russia
I was going to vehemently disagree with your other posts, but yeah, fair enough.
Different cultures have different perspectives to gaming, I guess.

I just like the look of the models and it's cheaper. I'm learning to paint. I just finished my "test" model today. I feel like it could be much better. Baby steps. My happy little accident.

>Only that is not true. "cool" models with bad rules do not sell. Butt ugly models with good or great rules are always sold out.

Jesus, this is awful. Remind me never to leave Yorkshire ever again.

How do you get models between the two levels?

>It's made for the kind of people who always played Warhammer with unpainted minis, and the kind of people who play pen and paper role-playing games and make angry forum posts about game balance, all wrapped up in visuals designed to people who play World of Warcraft.

Yes, that's exactly what it is. I don't think that's a good thing or a bad thing, just different games for different tastes.

If you want to play narrative games or campaigns primarily and focus on modeling & painting, warmachine is not ideally suited to your tastes. I'd probably toss out Malifaux as an example of a game with a much more narrative focus.

Warmachine is a game that was designed by-and-for competitive gamers who were fed up with GW's sloppy rules and imbalanced armies. Privateer wanted a game with very tightly written rules, minimal ambiguity and good balance. Track down the original Page 5 in Prime mk1 if you want to read their mission statement, it's pretty clear. That priority set attracted a like-minded community.

Personally I find WM more interesting than most other wargames in the 28mm +/- scale, assuming no roleplaying aspect. If you're looking for something light and fluffy, there are better systems for that.

>Which is why playing them for the gameplay is so dumb. The only strength of miniature wargaming is the miniature part of it, the collecting and hobby aspect.

I play for the social aspect. I go out and actually meet people instead of playing online matches, and my schedule is to erratic to regularly meet up for D&D or other RPGs.

I do enjoy board games too, but I haven't really found one or a specific group that I really prefer playing overall.

...

hate painting and the hobby aspect...love malifaux infinity warmahordes and guildball as games.. no there is no boardgame that scratches that itch..pre-assembled miniatures when???

>players are generally worse

I find they're a mixed bag. A lot of genuinely chill and bro tier players, and a lot of arrogant douchebags who think they're better than you are. And from what I've seen, even some PP staff fall in that category.

Ideally never.

Not that I'm trying to bully you or anything, since your stance is pretty reasonable. It's just that prepainted minis usually are a death knell for whoever makes them.

That being said, Malifaux has a couple of crews in colored clear plastic that still look nice unpainted.

Warhammer has always been about your dudes and your dudes primarily. Warmachine has nothing like that, everyone is named and models only exist to be played.

X-Wing and Heroclix

Mage Knight and Age of Ragnarok used to exist, but they died for a good reason

So much this
Making up your own county or Dwarven hold and its iconography ect. was my favorite part of Warhammer. That didn't change the fact that as Dwarves I would always lose, but it made the attachment to the models much greater.

OP you are not wrong

WM should just go to pre-painted.

Most of the miniatures are shit already quality-wise but this way I wouldn't have to face the grey/silver tide every time I play.

>hobby that's really just an excuse for painting and building little soldier dudes
YMMV. For me it's wargame first, hobby third

whats worse? rules lawyering That Guys or people who scoff at playing against unpainted armies?

Jokes on you, they now come as color-coded spures.

Can you pay someone to paint/assemble them for you? Most shops have a guy who is in it for the modelling aspect first, ask them. I'm that guy for my store. I often do it for free if I'm at the store, especially if it's a model or unit I haven't done before.

>The sparse terrain though is seemingly a result of such competitiveness and possibly PP not writing or making available rules for the use of terrain.
It is a side effect of the competitive core of the game, but not an anticipated one. If you look at PP's own boards they are often very nice and somewhat denser than average. The rest of us have to carry our terrain to stores, many of which don't have terrain that works very well for WM/H.

Portable terrain is minimalist terrain.

Rules lawyers are never bad. They don't cheat, and they only make you play better as they will tell you exactly how a rule should be played.

the people that scoff at unpainted armies are cunts. I paint my shit to 90% completion with a model or two here or there in 80% done state, and I never scoff at unpainted shit.

If I like to paint shit, it doesn't mean everybody should.

Rules Lawyers are a scourge on *Role Playing Games*, but are a necessary part of miniatures gaming.

>mfw people tell me warmachine is a good game
>mfw you look at those mold line placements on the models.
>mfw people tell me Guildball is a good alternative to better miniature games

All these low model count skirmish games are pathetic

good game =/= good models.

I like a lot of the mechanics surrounding Warmachine but it really should choose what it wants to be. Does it want to focus on the Mecha or the Infantry?

>Rules Lawyers are a necessary part of miniatures gaming.
A few of them even volunteer as judges. And I wouldn't want to attend a major tournament without a few of them. Not because I don't generally trust my opponents, but because ambiguities just happen.

>Does it want to focus on the Mecha or the Infantry?
Why exactly not both?

It wants to focus on the machines who are backed up by infantry. Every edition has introduced changes intended to increase the sizes of battlegroups and effectiveness of robots.

through the levelator of course

Because making the Mecha too strong makes infantry irrelevant, while making them balanced or too weak removes the advantages of having them in the battlefield and just makes them Tanks with legs with nothing else unique about them.

>GW not making competitiveness the be all end all.

desu senpai the main critique I see of GW is that their ruleset is around three hundred pages of pure insanity, not that it's uncompetitive. Looking for rules is not cinematic.

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand and support the idea that if you're into miniature wargaming, you want good rules. I just don't understand why someone would choose miniature gaming to begin with, if they're not that stoked about miniatures.

I respect that mindset. In your place I'd probably just buy cool boardgames and bring them to stores and play with people though. If I wasn't psyched about building and painting miniatures I'd never ever play miniature wargames.

I am genuinely curious, why would you play a miniature wargame if you're mostly into the game side of it? I can name more boardgames that are tighter and more competitive than Warmachine than you can count on your fingers and toes, simply because none of them ever end up being decided by listbuilding.

Because list building is absolutely a skill, and something people enjoy doing.

praise adeptus elevatus for providing ways to transport our battlebrothers!

Holy shit, that's a picture of me playing Mercs at Lock N Load back in 2011/2

Sure, it's a "skill" just like brushing your teeth or tying your shoes, but once that's done, you can end up with playing out a game that's already decided, which is a bit retarded. You might as well play rock paper scissors.

You can't say that you're into a game for tight game play, and at the same time accept that you can show up to fights that you've already won or lost unless the dice rolling is astronomically off-average.

Add to that the fact that list building is never difficult. It's third grade math and meta choices, not exactly something you should pat yourself on the back for.

>Hey, look guys, I can disconnect my humanity while making armies for toy soldier games, I must be a genius because you guys aren't doing it, what do you mean cheese, you guys are a bunch of faggots!

Actually answering the question posted here. That table really freaking sucks and could be set up far better. Terrain is really important in Warmahordes but players are all really bad at setting it up for whatever reason

YMMV depending on location but it's genuinely a fun game with good rules. Of course any game is going to suck if your local community is full of jackasses

If you think list building is that cut and dry in Warmahordes, then you are making a mistake.

This isn't 40k, where your choice in list instantly determines a win. Hell, the whole two list pairing requires you to pair lists to deal with specific problems, so ensuring you know what each list does, and how each list can fight effectively into other kinds of lists, is a big thing.

You very rarely get the whole "My list wins at the start" unless your opponent doesn't know what your list does.

>The game is only rarely already decided before you play.

Oh, well that's alright then, it's not like that would be completely unacceptable in basically every type of game except collectible card games. I can see how you'd want to play that for the tight, skilled game play.

Picking a wargame for the rules is good, it's logical. But picking the HOBBY for the rules is still completely retarded.

So you have to buy even more horrendously(seriously a SINGLE heavy chunky fugly resin robot is 28 eur?) Expensive miniature? Sounds like a trap to me.

Different strokes for different folks user. If you don't like the aesthetic of the game it probably isn't for.you.

Nothing wrong with that

Not him, but they go hand in hand together. I want good rules so that I know that when I put down the models I put a lot of time and care into they aren't just going to be brushed off the board by 1st turn gimmicks and such. Or that they'll carry their weight through out the game and not be absolutely useless. At the same time I don't want it to be so overpowered or broken that its the p2w piece.

To be fair, their plastics have gotten better, and going more battle group heavy is technically a cheaper army in terms of money.

In my area Warmachine players are kind of assholes.

>We want new players!
>Teach new player
>New player lost due to him not knowing the game that well.
>Laugh and mock the new player for loosing.

Have this guys play any other wargame or boardgame they are chill dudes.
Have them play warmachine and they turn into assholes.

Something about that game changes people into dick.

But guild ball is really fun though

>Privateer Press dropped the wrong game

Because it's a competitive game rather than a narrative driven one.

I would play it if the models didn't look so shit. The feeling of playing 40k and knowing that you're just making your own fun that costs thousands of dollars is so depressing.

MonPoc was hilariously fun, don't get me wrong, but randomized distribution is shit. SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIT

>accuses others of tribalism
>by calling him a faggot
Nigga get your stupid euro self some self-awareness

The irony here is, that NoQuarter has more fluff and terrain building and conversion tutorials than White Dwarf had in 10 years.

Someone post the page from the rules talking about HOW EXTREME AND MANLY the game is.

At first its just cringy as fuck but then you realize maybe the reason Warmahordes has the confirmed #1 cocksucker playerbase is because its what they advertised themselves as.

Good luck finding it in the new rulebook.

They couldn't include it anymore since it was an eternal reminder that they sold out and started making plastic models

user, that should be called open plains: the board.

In this we have two useless terrain pieces and a gigantic open space. The primed miniatures on one side and the black bases on the other are a plus though. Is this from a tournament?

>tfw you play Oldhammer

Have you just tried playing better versions?

They started to fix the issue of that pure randomization with DMZ, and might have graduated to a more preconstructed army system had the game gone beyond that.

which is sad, but I guess anything looks weird when you compare it to Games Workshop stuff

>at our current rate, we'll deplete the world of pewter by 2006

>end up depleting the world of pewter and having to switch to plastic

orbital kek

>doesn't understand funny wordplays
wow we already know you're american, no need to underline it

This. I went to Warmachine/Hordes partially because Wood Elves had just been shat on and Circle sang a siren song of terrain manipulation shenanigans back to me, and partially because I was sick of putting a bunch of effort into reposing, scratch building and kitbashing shit for my army, and then playing a game where we had to argue about Necron WBB and Deffrollas and Psychic powers vs. people in transports and blast rules.

I like playing Warmachine, the problem is that some community members treat it like dropping into a deathmatch instead of playing fun scenarios. I don't mean those dry as toast Steamroller scenarios, I mean shit like the Domination release event scenario. And good lord have I played some fun and interesting scenarios with the MkII ruleset. The one mountain pass strewn with boulders you could chuck at each other, the carnival where drunk zombies stumbled out of the tents, multiple caster only games. And that's just special shit.

I mean, for gods sake there are rules in MkII for punching down walls to get into buildings and how much damage a structure can take before it collapses and how much damage models inside take when it collapses. Except for some reason nobody ever used those rules, and I know because everyone who played against Mohsar just kind of looked stupefied when told that his pillars of salt were structures. Like they had no idea what that meant.

It's posts like this that make me really glad that I live in a country where I can stomp an autistic 15 year old who's parents spent thousands on his army and not have to worry about the secret police busting down my door

That's only because WD have been shit for 10 years.

Before that, WD was even better than NQ is now.

From my experience as an American, most skirmish game players play a flat table with a patch of trees and a hill partially out of the fact that terrain does take up a lot of space (and gets costly), but partially because a lot of them flat out dislike using it.

Even when I'm at a shop with plenty of terrain on hand, more often than not my opponents refuse to use more than half a handful of elements. Excuses range from 'balance' to 'set-up and play time' to 'fairness'. It just goes on and on.Playing a terrain-heavy table changes how people have to approach combat, and it can screw someone over if they play the same way they would on an 'open field' table. I honestly think a lot of them just don't like leaving their comfort zone.