/WMG/ Warmachine & Hordes General

What truly amazes me of MK3 is how it´s basically MK2 remix. Such a huge lack of ambition and risk taking. I was convinced they would try pushing 2 caster games to be the norm for example since currently, most factions have a ludicrous amount of warcasters and half of those will probably never see table time on their own. That's why it doesn't generate much of an emotion after the hype died down. It's the same game people have been playing for years, but where the meta changed to using jacks, the same way it was all high defense for a while and then when antiinfantry was everywhere, changed to armor skew. It´s just another meta change.

It's not a "meta change", it's a deliberate "meta imbalance" that punishes factions that can't match up to the new expectations. Any faction under Mk 2 could field massed infantry or armor skew or whatever and stand a chance against another army; not every faction in Mk 3 can field a competitive gunline or a counter to one to compensate. Mk 3 fucked over whole factions just to play to the inbuilt strengths of others, which makes it a bad fucking game.

I never said it was a good meta what is currently out there. I don't think it is intended, but I do consider that the playtesting process was VERY VERY lacking. I mean, I see no difference with the current situation and a book which happens to release 3 amazing ranged warcasters and a new ranged unit that makes everything look like crap. Anyway, my point wasn't about the quality of MK2 compared to MK3 (core rules are better now, but balance is definitely worse, not much else to add), my point was of how little ambition the whole thing had and how putting so much hubub about a new edition seems pointless after the smoke cleared since it's pretty much still MK2 with a bow on top.

Towards the end of mark 2 we started playing small two caster games and it was actually a lot of fun. I think even three warcaster games could be fun if you prohibited multiple feats per turn.

Where can you find the rules for the new warlocks and warcasters? Specifically the Ret and Circle.

I appreciate your clarification, and I have to agree with most of your points. I do, however, fully believe they played favorites and the screwing over of some factions in favor of others was absolutely intentional because it's improbable they could have "accidentally" boned at least two factions into unplayability against the others unless that "accident" was planned from the start. It's too perfect an "accident" that the new meta favors factions that already had strong play in that flavor.

There's just some pure fuck-ups in the game right now. Probably the worst one is Stormlances. The Hellmouth would be another if it wasn't tied to a faction that's struggling to figure itself out, and will definitely become one if they ever do.

Whats fucked up about Storm Lances?

Someone will have to explain me why Everblight, a faction that has always been oriented towards aggression, assassination, alpha strike and generally being effective glass cannons in melee, has lost speed. What the fuck.

Not that guy, nor have I ever read the card for Storm Lances before, but a built in 13" threat range, PS13WM charge, and the ability to kill infantry/solos that just happen to be nearby to the target seems kind of dumb to me. And then on top of that ridiculous melee they've got a gun with pseudo 11" range because of reposition, that ALSO has the electro leap ability. The 5 of these guys could quite easily kill an entire unit from range in one activation.

Is it worth starting an army for warmahordes then? I'm looking to get away from the 40k cancer but I take it it's just as bad here?

The game is fine, people in this thread are just faggots. At the highest levels of competition there might be a skew towards Cygnar/Ret/Khador, but if you're just building an army and playing at your LGS, it won't make the slightest bit of difference. I have the best win rate in Mk3 at my LGS and I play the faction everyone considers to be the worst. The rules of Warmahordes are very robust, that's the main thing.

WarmaHorde still have hope.

The fact is that Core Rulebook is solid. They took MKII and made them better. Who was waiting for a more drastic change was a fool. When you have a solid set of rules you just make some small changes so that the system can become better thanks to the feedback you had with the previous edition.

What PP messed up are the Factions. Some have terrible internal balance while some received some undeserved nerf. Add unit rules badly writen (Gang for example) and you start to ask yourself why.

Now we are in a situation where we don't know everything, the few spoiled Theme Force hint that they are a big deal, possibly more than MKII. So it's not to exclude that some unit are balanced around that (PP is not new to make balance decision that will have sense one year after release) Example Circles stone beast maybe will have a sense on the Circle Stone Theme Force.

Another topic are the balance Errata. I don't think we will see a lot of problems solved with the first release. Remember that for how bad the balance state of the game can be in January MKIII will have 6 month and not Theme Force so for PP is hard to make a round of solid Errata.

If PP start to do things right in term of new release and fix we won't see a game improvement before June.

Do you have any pointers to starting? I'm leaning towards the convergence but I'm unsure about where to start

Don't forget they've also got a retarded defensive statline at 13/17, with +3 ARM on demand because lolCygnar making it effectively 13/20. Maybe 15/20 vs shooting if Rhupert is in the mix. Plus also maybe Decel from Haley2 because why the fuck not.

They kill all of the everything and unless you're packing long range, high pow, boostable guns you'll basically never kill them until your opponent chooses to let you.

All factions have a starter box known as a battlebox. You get a warlock and some warnouns to start you off. From there you just get whatever. You'll also need to get a faction deck which has the stat cards for everything in your faction inside. After I got my battlebox I just looked into the more commonly played things in my faction and got some of those, slowly building up the points of my army. In the meantime I just played smaller point games with guys at my LGS because everyone is a cool dude who'll play small if you ask.

Sadly I don't know a thing about Convergence so can't give direct help. From what I hear, they're very tricky to play, so might not be the best faction for a new starter.

Oh so they're like my Cetrati, but with higher defense, no weakness to chain weapons, more speed, more damage on the charge, a weapon that hits two things, and a gun that also hits two things, as well as reposition?

Well alright then.

Thanks user, I'll look into getting one of those.

For the same points!

>;

I'm an Occam's Razor kind of guy, so although I agree that favoritism was played, I don't believe the others got shafted out of spite, just out of not caring and giving lower priority. Hell, Skorne lost it's identity after MKI and since then it's always felt "kind of there" even though it's one of the flagships of the setting.

The battleboxes are great value. Pretty much every faction has a must have unit, fir support or otherwise. None of these are a rule, but they're more or less what they're designed around.

Trolls: kriel stone
Skorne: beast handlers
Legion: hell mouth
Circle: sentry stones and teleport stones

Cygnar: squire?
Khador: tend not to be support heavy
Protectorate: choir of menoth
Cryx: also not support heavy, although you will want arc node light warjacks
Retribution: arcanist (x3)

Also, very important note, Convergence of Cyriss are basically a "one release faction", meaning they got a huge initial release and nothing since then since they didn't want them to have them in the eternal cycle of expansion other factions are in. This has the pro that the Convergence is very tightly designed and balanced with a very nice layer of synergies and probably only a couple of dud units in the whole faction, the con is that if you are the type that likes to get excited for new toys, you will get them at a MUCH MUCH MUCH slower rate than all the other factions. If you are fine with that, I do believe they are in a good place.

I don't think they even tried to put equivalent models or point costs side to side in development. Just look at the Cetrati and Storm Lance comparison from a few posts up. When you put them side by side it honestly beggars belief. They're like Cetrati, but faster, harder hitting, harder to hit, hit two things at once, and fuck it because it's Cygnar, they can just have a free gun on top of everything else. Oh and it can hit two things too.

Put Storm Lances and Ferox next to each other. It's a complete joke.

>The fact is that Core Rulebook is solid
>can't charge knocked down models

We kinda need to put the skorne thing to bed, we all get it.

But it's definitely not intentional. They just, well, fucked it up. We can all pretty much see that now. At some point before release they got into a head space where they thought "yeah, this is good." I don't know who was doing the Skorne piece or what, but man. The rhinodon? Archidon? Compared to a juggernaut? What baffles me the most is the huge losses of def and arm across the faction. I honestly would like to hear how they got to now in a detailed, not emotionally charged discussion.

And if the answer is theme forces, they fucked that up too.

You can though. You just fail the charge.

I imagine a lot of the Skorne changes revolved around the Agonizer.

>Well if the Agonizer gives -2STR to things within 8", that's basically an ARM buff to your guys, so we can take away titan DEF and it's fine because the ARM skew is worth it

And then they forgot that the Agonizer costs 7 points and does nothing against gunlines. The fact that the more heavily armoured infantry got the DEF nerfs really makes me think they always had the Agonizer in mind.

To say nothing that all these models aren't sitting ideally on a 0-dimension point, assigned a "distance from agonizer" number. Using it really warps play on-table, and not in a good way.

Yeah, and now it's official.

They broke Skorne.

Fuck you too, Soles.

Wait, is this just a general fuck-you or did he act like a smug cunt again recently and I missed it?

Ya did I miss something?

Everyone took the ama as gospel for error admission, but I haven't heard anything since.

Nothing that hasn't been already fixxed by a simple RAW errata like Gang ect.

The problem of MKIII lies in Faction balance not rules.

That's some good marauder and siege rules against structures that doesn't exist.
thanks for the terrain that disappears at end of turn rather than the start like any other effects that you roll for.

That's rose tinted glasses, man.

There were plenty of factions in Mk2 that suffered really badly in the meta that evolved, just as badly as some factions are suffering now.

>Yeah, and now it's official.
Oh?

Skorne is suffering worse. At least in Mk2 we could pull off assassinations with Karn out of nowhere.

Yes, Skorne is the exception, we all know. I don't think it needs to be said every single time that Skorne needs help, it's kind of a given at this point.

But I want to complain.

My only complaint with Skorne online is people's lists being "spam this one beast/unit and hope for a miracle." They're in a shit spot for sure but people are being very lazy with list building and testing.

Nigger you gotta spam Gladiators because they're good for their points, which is more than you can say for the rest of the faction.

>That's some good marauder and siege rules against structures that doesn't exist.

Nothing that can't be released in the future.

>thanks for the terrain that disappears at end of turn rather than the start like any other effects that you roll for.

Terrain that no one costrict you to use. If you want to play with classic you can.

>FUTURE RELEASES WILL FIX IT
Having a game in a broken state is never acceptable.

One Storm Lance can kill a lot of dudes.

Threat 13", assault shot with electoleap, then the charge is P&S 15 and electoleap.

Conceivably, one horse dude can kill 4 single wound guys on a charge, not including impact attacks and unbuffed.

>one horse dude can kill 4 single wound guys
But electro leap only jumps once. That's 3 guys.

Wait wait they have assault? What the fuck?

It electroleaps twice, once for the assault shot, once for the charge attack.

Another aspect of Storm Lances is that they're p+s 12 on impact attacks which means that 6 models killed by a storm lance (2 via impact, 2 via assault shot, 2 via charge attack) is not out of the ordinary.

But according to WHAC they don't have assault.

They have assault. I have the card.

My WHAC has it. It's and icon now.

Reminder that Storm Lances cost less points than Ferox.

but Skorne is the counterpunch faction and gets better the more models you lose. You should be happy that your feroxes get killed by Storm Lances. It makes your army better.

Not AS bad, but curretly pretty busted.

>If PP start to do things right in term of new release and fix we won't see a game improvement before June.
I certainly hope for PP that it happens sooner.

They also don't have lance rule on their lances so permanent reach

Since the steamroller is one of the cancer factors right now, there's no hope until June

That's just Cataphracts being shit though.

>and now it's official
>now
How is it now more official than before?

Can someone tell me what the Arcane Tempest Riflemans abilities are, it's not in WHAC or apparently anywhere on the internet.

>Everyone's going crazy about Stormlances
They barely got better in Mk3 and "the Internet" hated them in Mk2. Funny that people just now notice how crazy good they are.

3 damage or +4 rng or blessed.

They remove shields and arc nodes.

Hey, here in Europe we've been using them for ages.

The American meta is just a circle-jerk of what incorrect conclusions people come to on the forums. Probably why they get their asses kicked in the last two years at the WTC.

Cheers. Is it worth running two of them?

When everything else gets worse, yeah being identical is a buff.

>Hey, here in Europe we've been using them for ages.
Yeah, I am one of those people in fact.

>The American meta is just a circle-jerk of what incorrect conclusions people come to on the forums.
Yeah, pretty much my point and quite a funny one.

I'd say if you're running one, you should probably run a second.

Hardly anything in Cygnar got worse. Nothing that filled the same niche as Storm Lances anyway.

I can only speak of how some things are where I'm at in the states, but it's pretty true. Guess a lot of players just don't want to risk a game/purchase going bad.

I completely invested into Skorne mid Mk2 and own at least one of everything, and back then had plenty of people telling me I wasted my time or money because I wasn't rolling what's been topping.

But the few foreign players I've met? They were just happy to play and liked I was playing Skorne since back home they didn't see it much.

>I completely invested into Skorne mid Mk2 and own at least one of everything, and back then had plenty of people telling me I wasted my time or money
They were time travellers.

I'm not talking cygnar. Best cavs got worse and anti cav worthy infantry got worse.

So...

The only faction at the WTC with a

Look, guys. The last thing we need is European players thinking they're allowed to have opinions.

Or that any little cute thing they do is worth actually considering.

You let America down, Trevor you fuck

You say that like a majority of the US players didn't fall at the first hurdle this weekend.

Yeah, cause fuck results.

Oh I see. Though guns and Sentinels can still fuck with Lances quite handily.

To be fair, while halfway through mk2 it started to sink in that Skorne was a little bit behind the curve at best, it was a pretty common view that things would be improving over time. Pessimists figured they'd be cruising where they were forever.

NOBODY guessed "PP succumbs to night-blindness, second-guesses the instrument readings, spirals in, high-speed impact, no survivors".

>Having a game in a broken state is never acceptable.

Yeah because a rule that give you boosted damage against something that doesn't exist ruin the gameplay.

Sorry I didn't understand you have autism.

Hey, Trevor Attridge went 5-1!

>oh, you mean Trevor Christensen
>Of course, he WAS the guy that came up with the plan "sign up a Cygnar and a Retribution tourney-fiend and see how far they can drag your donkey-carcass", which was the best plan a US Team Captain had this year by a fair margin.

If there's a rule, it should be applicable. Paying points for something that doesn't work is garbage.

> compares units, one with faction buffs, the other in a bubble

No their not the fucking same. Cetrati are probably overcosted esp. with the nerf to their health boxes, but their weapon masters with natraul ARM 20 (last i saw chain weapons weren't spammed i the meta).

Throw in the faction buffs then duh both units get stupid real fast.
Agonizer + 2 ARM in melee
Krea +2 def from ranged, immunity blast (I play against khador a lot so see a shit ton of blast).
Swamp gobbers - concealment
Willbreaer - tough.
Vorkesh- steady + protection from enemy spells
Lets add Xerxis- +2 def, +2 arm, +2 spd or pathfinder, w/ feat +1 damage dice and another +2 arm.

Storm lances are there to splat infantry, and they do it to damn fucking well, with the added potential to hurt high armor on the charge. All that elecro-leap hate means jack shit to high armor targets though (like the cetrati).

Cetrati are there to hurt high armor targets and take a decently heavy hit, their crippling weakness is still gonna be the nerf to their health boxes. Throwing everything in their favor that's P+S 12 + 5D6, def 17 to ranged (13 otherwise), ARM 26 (24 to ranged).

The 2 are different beasts completely, and intended for different targets.

I don't agree with the gun part. The arcane shield makes shooting through that pretty tough. Also def 13 mean some kind of rat augmentation required since most guns lie at rat 5. It gets worse with perma reach and engagements or assault

7. 7. 2. 4. 6. And yet more demands on poor Xerxis1, who just can't carry the faction on his back.

>give it up
>the dream is dead.

>Throw in the faction buffs then duh both units get stupid real fast.
The problem being that Skorne's faction buffs costs points, whereas other faction buffs are simply on the caster.
>Agonizer + 2 ARM in melee
7 points
>Krea +2 def from ranged, immunity blast (I play against khador a lot so see a shit ton of blast).
7 points. The def bonus is a spit in the face considering Cetrati just lost def
>Swamp gobbers - concealment
2 points
>Willbreaer - tough.
4 points
>Vorkesh- steady + protection from enemy spells
6 points

That Cetrati brick has now cost you 46 points, and they can't kill 2 models from 11" away. You sure showed those 20 point Storm Lances who's boss.

And Steady is fucking awful. It's a complete waste of an ability on a card. But PP loves putting useless words on Skorne cards, or giving us 2 mediocre options instead of 1 good option.

Oh and the Krea prevents blast damage to those 20ARM Cetrati? Oh my fucking god FINALLY, a solution to all of that blast damage that keeps killing my 20ARM Cetrati!

Xerxis being thematically the Cataphract warlock, it's not that amazing that he works well with them.

jfc, not advocating you buy every fucking boon for them, just listing them for completeness. The argument is, it's a fucking SHIT comparison, the 2 units do completely different things. Most all cavalry is shit at armor cracking, and cetrati aren't there to clear cheap troop fodder.

(YOU) there you go, it was mentioned for completeness but since you think your a clever little cunt here have another (YOU)

Cataphracts don't do armor cracking

>Xerxis being thematically the Cataphract warlock, it's not that amazing that he works well with them.

I meant in that specific match, user. Xerxis tries to carry his army; gives of his fury and of his spells to his army, then Xerxis gets himself killed. This is the sad, sad story of Xerxis1.

Oh right, 4D6 on the charge is obviously meant for single wound infantry.

Ah sorry , was wondering what those #'s were for.

Then you aren't shield-walling, and are anyones to clean up.

Consistent 4d6 Cetrati is Zaal2 tech. Otherwise it's sometimes Xerxis1 (however it ends up happening), a finishing-move, or a serious misallocation of resources.

So how is this for a Skorne list?

75/75(?)

Dominar Rasheth
- Agonizer
- Bronzeback Titan
- Titan Cannoneer
- Titan Gladiator
- Titan Gladiator
- Titan Sentry
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Max)
Nihilators (Max)
Nihilators (Max)
Mortitheurge Willbreaker
Extoler Soulward
Siege Animantarax

Just got the game, bought into Menoth purely for aesthetic reasons (kind of link Cryx too but i'm a terribad painter so i'm afraid to attempt them until i get better).

Guy at the shop recommended this as a starting purchase (i asked for help buying enough for a 25 point list):

*Mk 3 Battlebox
*Choir of Menoth
*Daughters of the Flame
*Paladin of the Order of the Wall
*Nicia, Tear of Vengeance

He said there were probably some better options to synergize with my battle box (of course i forget them) but they weren't in stock in the store and i was hasty to empty my wallet so he said this would be a good start. How'd i do?

>We kinda need to put the skorne thing to bed, we all get it.

Won't happen soon. Everybody that still plays Skorne is now in the position of understanding that if they ever *stop* complaining, PP will think the problem fixed itself, or it was never a problem on their end of things.

When it stops, it'll be because the last Skorne player gave up on the faction, not gave up on bitching about it.