/wmh/ Warmachine and Hordes General - UK Nationals Edition

What's Skorne got to do with it?

As someone else pointed out above, it's basically one of the easiest assassinations in the game, especially considering how much shit Circle has to move stuff around.

A point to consider - she may have kept Limited Battlegroup - thus only able to take warbeasts with Flight.

Which just makes even less sense.

Why would her spell give flight if all she's talking is flight models?

And the concept of a warcaster who can't take any sort of heavy warbeast seems really strange, she's restricted to lights and a single Garg.

But there's way too much shit in there that just doesn't make sense. Why have snipe on a BG forcused caster? Why give her a spell to make arc nodes when she has no spells she wants to arc?

the spell doesn't give flight - it gives 2 spd and parry

Oh hell, it's called take flight.

Even still, it just seems really wonky. It seriously limits her ability to do shit, and even with MD, she'd be pillowfisted as shit.

Look at the utterly confused C-list casters they made most of the journeymen into. Why would you expect the same designers to do better for the lesser warlocks?

Snipe is clearly for reeves, which are the other models with feathers on them (in their quivers) other than griffons.

The arcing spell lets her primal the griffon with long leash even if it is 28 inches away behind enemy lines.

The theme fits, but the caster does look a bit too strong.

If she can only take beasts with flight, she has no access to Primal. Or 90% of the animi in faction.

And the best target for snipe is the girls, but my point is that she seems to be a hugely BG focused caster that has this random non-BG spell that only really fits three units in the army, none of which really fit her theme.

Skorne has to do with it because -
all the factions seem to be given these new toys that enhance their core play style.

More news about giving one of the top 4 factions more things that fit perfectly makes me think that PP wants the game to be balanced for some factions, but not all.

But it's cool - Skorne will look at the Hellmouth and the Magic Stick Men with SPRAY SPRAY SPRAY and think how cool it must be to play that faction. We will keep playing with the 15 point taxes per list just to be not BTFO each match.

So please forgive John Merrick's descendants for complaining about your genteel factions. Why would a beast-heavy army want to have fun anyway? How crazy, sad, and pathetic is that?

Hungerford said straight up in an interview he wanted Skorne to be balanced against the other factions.

He told Jay "I hope in a year from now, you look up from your game of Skorne and give me a thumbs up"

Alright, well I guess I'm just going to play 9th age untill the theme lists come out. God

Even if that's established meta(And Europe has always been super fucking weird anyways), Warmachine's meta tended to shift pretty regularly.

Does Cryx have any way to not die to Sevvy2?

My Menoth buddy and I sat down after he destroyed me for like an hour and a half and couldn't come up with a single build that seems like it can even play a game into him.

What's his list?

Sevy2
2-3 Reckoners
The rest is irrelevant.

It's not even about countering one specific build, it's about finding a list that Sevy2's personal kit doesn't just shit all over.

eSevvy has the same issue he always had: the minute he gets shot at, he's dead.

I don't know a shitload about Cryx, but I feel like Colossal eSkarre could do work against him. The gun presents a real threat for him to keep him passive, and the Blacklash assassination is enough of a threat against him that he either needs to be careful with his jacks or call no spells on them.

If he calls no spells, you just shoot him. If he calls no shooting, backlash one of his jacks and then just plink the shit out of him.

Of course, I'm a Mother player, so I tend to think of Backlash as being better than it might be. But I do feel like if he gets up there, it's a real issue for him. And he can't kill your Colossal very easily, especially on feat turn.

It's very safe to assume he's going to have at least 2 shield guards, Rhoven & Co is a common pick with him for stealth removal.

Also remember his Field Marshall, his jacks get to flat out ignore one damage roll per turn as long as he leaves a focus on them, which isn't at all hard to with Reckoners.

>Fury 7
So TWO more than Zaadesh2? Whoa.

>Europe has always been super fucking weird
Why? Because people knew Storm Lances were good even before PP buffed the shit out of them?

Now that I think about it Skarre1 with a Kraken and a bunch of the fast angry light jacks might be ok, try to abuse Sevy's relatively low model count to pressure assassination with Stalkers and Shrikes while they're distracted by the +5ARM Kraken being rammed down their throat.

Fucking Pat Dunford mang. Glad he moved to England to go dominate their events and left Ireland alone.

Wait so where did Skorne finish? The faction only had 3 players but the highest winrate, so they must've all been in the top half of the event.

18th, 51st, and 80th, out of 110 participants.

That winrate is just a statistical anomaly created by the tiny sample size.

Please see

The only way PP has to save Skorne is going to be Tier Lists. They rushed Mark 3 out, and didn't complete whatever mechanic or balance issue they had with Skorne.

Hungerford will be getting two thumbs up .... his butt.

Hello wmhg I've got 2 questions
Has the Harrower's Mortifier weapon always been aoe 3(like in mk2)?
Are there any other leaks of the lesser warlock2s besides Una(of which I've seen both the model and the rules)?

Meant to say (like,in mk2?)

>The only way PP has to save Skorne is going to be Tier Lists.
That's not really saving the faction. That's putting it on life support. Again. The only thing that will save Skorne is a ground-up redesign. Like hell they'll do that. It'd require more than 5 minutes of work spent on not jacking off (pun intended) WM players instead.

>Reduce the point cost of all small infantry by 1, and all medium infantry by 2
BAM, Skorne fixed.

No. That wouldn't fix shit.

They're broken at their base tactics and mechanics man.

Skorne is a faction that by design is going to be either overpowered as shit or terrible.

What exactly do you want fixing? Titans are playable, and while lights are fucking ass, making infantry easier to field would be a big bonus.

>Skorne is a faction that by design is going to be either overpowered as shit or terrible.
People said that about Dhalsim in Street Fighter, but they did a decent job with him in 5. What exactly makes Skorne infantry so razor edge? Swordsmen are generic dudes, Keltarii are anti-shooting dudes, Karax are meatshields, Nihilators always fail tough rolls. There's nothing really busted about them.

Do you really want me to list what I want changed? Because I'm not typing down all of that for nothing.

No, I don't want to see you cry your eyes out on Veeky Forums. Just go put some fucking Aradus on the table and shut up.

You are implying some serious implications.

That Aradus are essential to Skorne gameplay? It's hardly rocket science; they're practically impervious to the shooting in this meme meta.

The implications I am refering to:
1) Every criticism of balance being equal to "crying out your eyes on Veeky Forums".
2) The Aradus Sentinel (=50% of all Aradus) being anywhere near acceptable.
3) That cost reductions to Infantry would fix the faction.

All of these are rather ridiculous. Aradus Soldier is good. Maybe a point too much, but that's it.

"Some" is the key word there. You need a wall of that shit, a battlegroup of that shit, nothing else is fit to be put on the table. Will Shick approved Skorne gameplay that, and for once a dev wasn't talking out their ass.

Get back here and take your beatings until we say we're done with you.

>The only way PP has to save Skorne is going to be Tier Lists.

What about the biannual errata?

Because Europe can see something that isn't the best and play with it.

US WMH is all about finding the best combination for a given gameplan with the highest skill cap and honing it to a razors edge. Thus power casters and egregious theme lists that trickle to non national metas.

and this cancer is spreading to Guild Ball because of it :(

>Also remember his Field Marshall, his jacks get to flat out ignore one damage roll per turn as long as he leaves a focus on them.

And Severius has it on himself too.

If he's got Rhoven and Co with him, as was already pointed out he often does, you're actually going to need 4+ non spray/scattered AoEs to take him down.

The Darkness was in ourselves all along, user.

>something that isn't the best
I don't know. I beg to differn on "not best". They are best at what they do. And that is melee/range hybrid on an extremely mobile platform and with reasonably high POW. They're the only Cygnar unit that does that, thus they are best at it, and were already in Mk2.

>cancer
Optimization in a competitive game is not cancer.

relying on the strength of pieces fielded to carry your poor tactics and gameplay mastery

is
>cancer

in the age of net-decking fucking every god-damned thing

and this place isn't even quite the full-blown aids. low t-cell for sure. but if you cough on some of the folks around here they should survive the winter.
unlike the PP forums. look at someone wrong over there and they will auto-immune themselves to death.

>tempted to start skorne because the internet says they're hopeless trash.

>tempted to start skorne because the internet says they're hopeless trash.

We'd be glad to have you!

(seriously, low faction participation is the one thing that anything can be done about; we're just sinners in the hands of an angry God outside of that)

They always got bogged down by massed infantry in MKII. There's less infantry on the table so ive found it easier to hit their intended targets.

So while they qere always good,they were not always optimal or necessary.

Optimization only becomes cancer when things start looking the same and builds becomes dominant. Our local Obby players decided to try out other factions temporarily and there is a storewide gentlemens agreement to not use Avarisse and Greede unless practicing for a tourney.

However the amount of influx from WMH lately has been getting out of hand and I keep on getting asked if anything is dominant in the game. I answer honestly mistake number one as a pundit and mention Morticians are seen as really strong in our area. They then proceed to buy their starter kit...with "only" 4 of them immediately gunning for Morticians. We had 6 more players join at least!

So just because WMH has been dealing with it for ages does not mean it's okay. At least we are getting true errata, come the new book for GB. I can only hope that balance errata actually achieves something in WMH.

>relying on the strength of pieces fielded to carry your poor tactics and gameplay mastery
That's like saying athletes should use rusted 20 year old bikes at the tour de france, because everything else is crutching on technology.

skornegy is a thing (to some extent)

but overall, looking across the faction... a bunch of stuff looks pretty decent.
>according to the leaked cards and their supposed accuracy

and where there isn't reasonable stats or rules, a number of things at least look fun.

Personally, I kind of like it when nobody else plays the same faction I do.

One thing I hate is going to play and having someone say, "I've played a couple games against X faction/caster. I'm tired of faction of playing against them."

Or showing up with a new model that you want to try out only to find that some other guy had it first and has run it into the ground in your meta.

Or when you're playing someone who's fielding models you're not particularly familiar with, but because they know your faction inside and out because they face them all the time (or it's their alt) they know how to better manage and counter to everything you've got.

And you always get inevitably compared to and associated with the other players for good or ill, whether it's warranted or not.

Plus, I wanna be a speshul snowflake dammit!

>They always got bogged down by massed infantry in MKII
Not at all. They could get rid of crazy amounts of infantry, especially with Deadeye. And with Ride By they could achieve silly levels of flexibility. But that of course scaled with player skill.

Now they got buffed from good to silly and the only thing stopping my from buying a second unit is that they will inevitably get nerfed. Well that and PP distribution being so shitty you can't get them anywhere in all of fucking Europe.

>Optimization only becomes cancer when things start looking the same and builds becomes dominant.
Yes. But even then that is a problem for PP to fix, not for the players.

>Implying that using non-overused or not net listed models is like riding a rusty bike.

>Not comparing net lists to electric-assist bicycles. The ones that add more watts per pedalstroke.

If your a strong cyclist, you go longer/faster. If you are a weak cyclist, you still get further than anyone with minimal sweat and effort involved.

And at top-level competition you are competing against the best of the best. And you better bring a bike with two fucking wheels or stay at home.

Yeah but GTFO out of my local meta Jeff. We don't play that shit here.

No seriously. We dont. It's the best. Except for Jeff,which no one likes.

Skorne's past saving. No, seriously. The established playerbase is now noticably fatalists, pessimists, outright hate-players, and is tiny. The mk3 improvements were off-mk2 meta sufficiently that it constituted a new faction buy, and a number of contented players of means... did that. With a different faction. A number of current players are just stuck and trying to keep pace by applying sheer brainpower to existing models, which is a frustrating experience and won't ever not be. The meta has gone toxic. Do you think they crapped the bed over Zaal2 (and technically they didn't- the moment he got pre-released players went out and got him, then started unlocking him, reporting findings. The moment the Immortal UA came out they unlocked him better, figuring out that if you only use 5 model types, cast one spell once, another spell if it expires, and pop feat, he was good- and reported findings.) You could drop mk2 Troll Warders into Skorne at this point and it wouldn't make a ripple. There's no way to progress from here. Adding people to it at this point just makes a larger swamp.

I'm starting Mercenaries and I need to get Trenchers. Design and size wise, are the metal grenadiers and the UA closer to the original metal sculpts or the metal resculpts?

>mk3 improvements
>mk3 improvements
>mk3 improvements

Venators, Ferox, (Karax). That's $250 in three words right there.

this ain't checkers.
>i want everyone using the exact same thing so i win because i'm better.

no thank you.

if i can whoop you in a bike race on a ten year old's bmx and you're on a boeing nanotech jobber, then yay.

and yes. i honestly think technology in sport is getting out of hand. nobody in hand egg can actually catch the ball because their gloves are so sticky.
>but its a level playing field because they all wear them.
>like that's a good thing.

fuck off and take your video replay reffing decisions with you.

each faction should be different. with limited access to pieces which help them fill gaps and achieve tasks which their faction strengths do not natively.
now maybe PP fucked up. and by maybe lets be real here. and maybe actually is spelled and pronounced s i g n i f i c a n t l y.

but winning with whack garbage over net deck 101 is way more fun.
>but but muh competitive gaem
if your fun is only in winning ha. ha ha. bwahahaha. i'm a loser and that's sad.

hell even tournaments are honestly whoopdidoo. who the fuck is gonna give even half a toss about your 6-0 convention result? please, please tell me.

I have said none of those things and will now leave you to your projections.

I guess you're right.

The Krea nerf decided it. Paralytic aura would have carried sub-optimal builds into the next release/rules cycle- a crutch, but if there was ever a time for a crutch this was it. Instead it was kicked out from under existing players at the moment of mk3 release, to make room for models that haven't been released yet and improvements on models they don't own. If PP thinks there is going to be anyone around to experience the new, better skorne of 2017 that doesn't FUCKING HATE THEM they're kidding themselves.

>they ought to have nerfed the krea in the 1st 2017 errata, if they were putting any kind of thought into it

Why do people think Thyra is good nowadays?
Where the hell is the Trolls deck leak?

...

>Thyra
Gained Stealth, also now can apply Carnage without dying immediately thanks to Gates of Death.

>relying on theme forces
Fuck off.

A fewdifferent PP workers have said that theme forces are the missing piece that we're playing without and that they balanced the game around people using them.

Thyra basically picked up all the tools to actually do the things that she wanted to do in Mk2 but couldn't. She now buffs survivability, threat range, accuracy AND hitting power. Gates of death lets her hit-and-run and/or buff-and-run. And she's finally got the stats and abilities to have a plausible personal assassination as well.

Yeah, they've been telling us to "wait for the next thing" for some time now. It was releases, full card set, official cards, blah blah blah. And it has been bullshit every single time. Fuck them.

The Daughters are the MUST HAVE for her now?
1 squad is enough i hope?

I can easily believe it; it would get support models on the table. Right now they can't justify robbing points from list chaff.

By Morrow, did the Skorne section of the forums just migrate itself to Veeky Forums? This is pathetic and disgusting.

Pathegusting.

We've been here all the time. We just never had a good reason for rage.

I don't think even trollblood players ever got this fucking bad.

Well, trollbloods never got this fucking bad. PP is finding a new bottom; an early new edition, a DESIGN SPACE! nuke, and a delayed release cycle is really helping out there.

>so why aren't you just pressuring them with your Venator Dakar?
>you haven't even put it on the release schedule yet faggot

>What exactly makes Skorne infantry so razor edge?

Skorne, by design, is a counter punch faction. This combines elements of denial and attrition.

Now, this is the hardest tactic to balance for, for a couple of reasons.

1. The tactic needs to be powerful enough that it's tactical issues can be overcome.

So the first problem with counterpunch is that by it's nature, it's inherently reactive. You are depending on your opponent to do things so that you can win. Skorne infantry were never meant to be elite troops in any way, shape, or form. You are, however, meant to benefit from their death. Either through Soul Collection, pZaal's feat, pMakeda's feat, etc, etc. You are supposed to benefit when your shit dies.

2. The tactic needs to be something you can force your opponent to act on.

pMakeda is a great example of this, with her worst feat in the game. Her feat is the very definition of counter punch: she has a shitload of infantry that you expend resources killing, and then she just brings them all back.

Of course, the feat sucks, for two reasons. The first one is the forfeit, which is the first balance decision they made. I'm sure that at some point the feat didn't require you to lose combat action, but that created the problem of simply not doing anything to your opponent for a turn. A bad player would shoot half of Makeda's army off the table, then have them come back next turn just fine, and proceed to hit back hard.

OTOH I don't see anything anyone could of done other than look around and say "Ok, we're doing this. But just so everyone understands, Skorne is going to spend the next six months being FUCKING TERRIBLE."

You don't exactly hold up a release or craft a limited time mini-release in the middle of a major release over something like that. You tank the damage and spin.

I say a bad player for the second, and more important part, of her feat.

The biggest problem with Makeda's feat is simply that it does nothing if you wipe out an entire unit, it requires a model to survive to get any benefit. This means that good players are specifically going to do that, and this is the real reason why the feat would suck, even if it didn't forfeit. Any anti-infantry list would be able to remove 1-2 units completely, which just nullifies her feat.

So let's ask what happens when her feat no longer has that restriction, a sort of gaspy feat except that they stick around afterwards.

Now, all of a sudden, the feat is bonkers good. Without mass RFP, you basically have an entire turn where you get to do absolutely nothing to the Skorne player, because his entire army is going to come back. Even worse, depending on placement effects, he mighteven benefit from you killing his shit, getting an alpha on you even if you alphaed him, getting to charge shit you were trying to protect, etc, etc.

So now the feat seems way too good, and has very little counterplay. And that's the main issue here: the balance between being too fucking good and being absolutely terrible is razor thin for counterpunch style tactics.

Even worse is that counterpunch is denial, so when it's good, people find it unfun to play against. I don't buy that argument, but fuck, I was a Permission player years and years ago, and this is sort of what this comes down too. You basically make your opponents actions not do shit, because you benefit even if he does them.

So that's a real issue, and that brings us to the final point.

3. If you have the tools to force your opponent to do shit, you are no longer a counter punch faction

So this is the real issue when PP says they don't want to alter Skorne's design, because it means giving them tools like this.

Even in Mk2, where Skorne has lists that could compete, It has the very distinct issue of only being able to bring answers to other lists.

Could only only ever attempt to answer questions, and never ask it's own questions in list building. It could never put an eHaley, a Cryx list, a Harby, or any sort of list that forced you to drop something into it. No one had a Skorne drop, but Skorne players needed to have lists that dropped into all sorts of shit.

And that's just going to be how counterpunch tactics work. They can never ask questions at list building, even if they're overpowered as shit. Their very nature of reactive play means that they need the opponent to do shit. And so long as they play against good opponents, those opponents won't do the shit they need for their list to do what it was designed to do.

This highlights the issue of why internal playtesting can be a problem, because the devs were likely playing as intended.

All the changes Skorne got were clearly meant to remove their alpha abilities, they didn't want the faction to be doing what it did in Mk2.

The problem is, of course, that the decision they've made for how the faction should work means that it will almost always be terrible, though it might occasionally be overpowered as fuck.

There are players that are most comfortable with a reactive playstyle, though. Might as well give them a faction to play.

So clearly Skorne doesn't work as a counter punch faction.

I always saw them as basically the Khador faction of hordes. Good infantry and good beasts so they should be building solid combined armed lists outside of a couple casters that favor one model type.

Building Skorne from the ground up I'd want to make their infantry actually playable and make a few tweaks to their beasts which are mostly fine. From there pretty much all of the current Warlock designs need to be tossed in the trash and rebuilt.

Would there be an issue with giving say... Swordsmen Weapon Master and a point bump? They'd be pretty good then and the other Skorne single wound infantry are all pretty good

The only positive to playing the least powerful faction is that it forces you to get good at the game if you want to do well.
There is also a certian satisfaction that comes with winning

There's a bunch of discussion about how it's difficult to balance Skorne as they are, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

Skorne's tactics absolutely fit their fluff, and should be kept. It's just on PP to make them actually work as they intend them too.

You can make shit like this work, and it's worked before. Hell, Lucant does the exact same shit, and he's fine as a caster. His shit was stupidly good in Mk2, but they gave him enough nerfs that he can still do the shit, but he isn't backbreaking, especially for players who haven't played against him before.

Yeah, I can't wait to rely on a theme to be competative/relevant
t. Skorne/cryx/trollkin

Why the fuck werent they released at LnL anyway?

What, tiers?

People are saying shit, but there is a lot of evidence that the edition got rushed, since they couldn't have all summer with no releases

rushed?
>"but we've been playtesting it for years!"

Imo, if skorne really is in such a bad way they should just release their theme lists now. I'm also morbidly excited for the skorne themes to be completely pointless

Not rushed in the sense from the start.

Rushed in the sense that they realized that they were going to have a huge dearth of releases in the summer, and had nothing to put there. People were already getting really annoyed with the lack of any news and shit, another 6 months could have seen the game start to die.

The lists are set to come with the book, and the books are likely not finished printing.

And Skorne's in a bad way, but by Warmachine standards. This isn't "Orks vs Tau/Eldar" bad or anything.

The thing to really make or break this shit is the living errata, whenever it drops. If they show a willingness to make changes to the game, like they said they would, then shit should get better.

A rough start forone faction (2 of you count Cryx) isn't that terrible for a massive reboot/tweak to your game. All things considered mk3 could have been significantly worse.

We'll have to wait and see if they can start to earn back done good will or if they'll totally fuck it up. I'm betting something in the middle that manages to change nothing relevant and disappoints everybody

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