Warmachine/Hordes General - Swamp Hentai Edition

Hey, what do you guys think about my Ossyan list? It's for casual games and I really like the Battle engine, so I'm looking for feedback if the list is too brutal, even with the weird jacks and other models.
I'm mostly playing against Feora2 and Nemo3 with fire and electricity themed lists respectively.

conflictchamber.com/#b51b460w0w4leP3x3u3x3y3y3ybC

Retribution Army - 75 / 75 points

(Ossyan 1) Lord Arcanist Ossyan [+28]
- Hydra [15]
- Hydra [15]
- Hypnos [18]
- Moros [11]
Stormfall Archers [9]
- Soulless Escort (1) [1]
Stormfall Archers [9]
Arcanist Mechanik [2]
Arcanist Mechanik [2]
Arcanist Mechanik [2]
Arcantrik Force Generator [19]

What faction has your favorite aesthetics - overall flavor and individual model design? And is that the faction you play (or play the most, if you play multiples)?

I go back and forth between about four factions as my favorite aesthetically. I like the variety and modernity of Cygnar's guns, especially on its warjacks, plus the World War I flavor of Trenchers. I like Khador's huge stompy warjacks. Circle's druids, beasts, and wolds all look nice. And it might be easier to list the Trollbloods models that I don't like (although I suspect painting all that exposed skin would be really tough).

I like a few of Skorne's warbeasts and units, but not enough to overcome the awful overall aesthetic. I would like Legion a lot better if its beasts were scaly instead of leathery. I like Protectorate's fire and rocket themes, and I really appreciate that I wouldn't have to paint a lot of skin or faces with them. I could even dig the theocratic theme if the fanaticism and extremism weren't so bad. Cryx and Convergence just don't interest me. Retribution looks alright, but I would not want to try to paint their canon color scheme, with those huge smooth white surfaces - maybe if I was an airbrusher, but I'm not.

I don't play yet, still trying to pick a faction. There is a little bit of a Warmahordes community starting at my LGS.

>mk3 translation

If I can add 2 inches to my snake-throwing distance, my win rate will go up a cool 10%.

Is Raznik2 worth a damn? or does the size really kick him in the dick

There are a lot of things within Warmahordes that I enjoy aesthetically. Unfortunately, it tends to be a case of either I love it or hate it. For example, I like Cygnaran 'jacks, but I hate most of their heads (specifically the over-emphasized 'angry' look many have). I love Retribution infantry pieces, but I find myrmidons kind of dull. I love Cryxian spider-jacks, but I don't like the Slayer-chassis. Every faction has things you'll like and dislike, so it's typically best to go with the one that you find more positive than negative.

As for those specifics, on Legion in particular it's more of an unknown. They 'could' be scaly, but because of PP's artistic style, ultra-fine details aren't usually done. The smallest they can really achieve is relatively broad-scaled patterns, like with Gators.

As for Retribution, you do not necessarily have to go with the canon scheme. I painted mine based off the color scheme of Blood Elves from Warcraft: predominantly blood red/crimson, off-black and steel secondary colors, gold trimmings, and bright green for the crystals and glowing bits.

When did Warmachine become Hentai?

You can do ok with Knights, Crows and Cavalry. If your meta is Hordes heavy Venethrax loves both fighting Hordes and spamming jacks. Really depends on the kind of environment you're playing in, though it's useful to remember that anything below national level and most likely anything you read on the internet is completely irrelevant to you. Most WMH balance discussion assumes you're playing at the WTC top table every game.

ded game ded thread

So weird. There's tons of people at my local store. Maybe it's just a NW thing?

He's unimpressive. And didn't get betting in Mk3.

>WTC
I'd say any balance discussion has you playing top tables at the country's largest conventions, like Lock and Load or Warmachine Weekend. Anyone talking balance would gladly bring up that, at the WTC, individuals build their pairing with specific intent to counter or dodge certain lists.

The Lumberjack is a laborjack used in the logging industry, occasionally conscripted into combat service. One of the oldest laborjack designs still in use, it is a design from Cygnar. One arm ends in a chainsaw used to cut through tree trunks and logs, the other in an open fist used lift and move logs.

In game terms, it would be a mercenary heavy warjack. Just OK MAT, abysmal RAT, average health for a heavy but ARM more like a light jack. Good STR, good POW and (is the rule called Sustained Attack?) with the saw. The open fist is an open fist.

If you could add 2" to the effective threat of your snek I bet you would too...

So what Battle Engines got notable buffs or nerfs in MK3?

Gun Carriage in Khador is fucking amazeballs. Seriously. Try a pair with Butcher 3, Uhlans w/ the solo, Ruin, and a Kodiak. Shit all over everything forever.

TEP got better, which is hilarious beyond belief.

God, if infantry meta was still a thing, the TEP would be a fucking monster.

Poor Convergence. I wonder why they aren't screaming fit to drown out Skorne.

the Wraith Engine is now useable but I wouldn't call it optimal, at least you can now use the damn thing.

Prime Axiom got better too. In the age of d3 ROF, it's got a flat ROF5, on a RNG13 gun.

What was wrong with it before?

textuploader com / d5jh2

Are you too fucking lazy or stupid to post the right pastie?

I'd imagine the same things wrong with it now. It's like a big expensive slayer without any of the support you can give a slayer. It's fine, I guess, but why would you want to pay for this thing?

a bunch of little things that added up. it could be controlled by the others in certain circumstances, it could only become incorporeal every other turn and being a battle engine it was easy to hit and easy to break, its point cost was absurd for being a fragile heavy that would have a target on its back, it had no ranged options, still doesn't but at least now its more survivable, it had an overreliance on use of souls that really didn't do anything expet place clouds and screw up the soul economy because he had such a large base insuring he would get them first most of the time when another jack or warcaster needed them, etc,etc.

aside from it being cool looking you by it because its a melee heavy with incopreal, which isn't super great anyways since you hit the nail on the head in that its like a big expensive slayer without any of the support you can give a slayer. but hey it can make machine wraiths now.

>screw up the soul economy because he had such a large base insuring he would get them first most of the time when another jack or warcaster needed them, etc,etc.

I'd hate to see what that'd do to some Cryx Caster feats.

lets put it this way you wouldn't take the Wraith Engine in a Terminus list even if he does give the engine tough.

They're doing slightly better than Skorne at the current time by nature of working as designed aren't they?

That would be really cool as a Toro variant.

Thanks. I really like the idea of laborjacks being commandeered for combat use. They may not be specifically designed for killing, but they're still giant robots.

It was just the first major tournament that came to mind, but yeah the WTC format doesn't exactly make for the best general example. Point was and is that players not playing at a national level can generally play whatever the fuck they want and do just fine, this isn't 40k.

So is all the anti-infantry stuff in the game not all that useful now?

He's joking about the fact that Convergence outside of a couple of stuff basically just got buffs.

They lost their recursion mechanic though, which was one of their like, three playstyles.

It's actually more complicated than that.

Cortexes in Laborjacks are far inferior in terms of their ability to think and reason, as well as remember and operate. They're clumsier, dumber, and far more easily distracted and confused.

Like, a warjack can generally be told to do something and it will do it. It might not be the smartest thing around, but if you say "guard this spot against enemies" the jack can reason out friendies from enemies decently well, is smart enough to tell someone else enemies have shown up, and can take proper steps based on the kind of enemy it's facing.

A laborjack can't be trusted with "Move this to there." unless there is right in it's vision, and if you gave it a weapon, it'd likely just drop it the minute a fight starts because it's got no clue what to do with it. Hell, it might not even fight unless it's cortex has picked up some more aggressive quirks.

It's precisely because all the anti-infantry stuff is so useful that we're not seeing infantry.

WTC is likely to show more skewed results, yea, but I think that speaks in it's favor in terms of balance concerns.

Like, the insane win rates of Wurmwood can be pointed to, at least in part, the fact that he's got certain very specific bad matchups that the format allowed him to avoid.

Yeah, saying a 'jack is a 'jack in this context is the same as saying a horse is a horse, then being surprised when your horse freaks the fuck out the moment something out of the ordinary happens while the other horses don't give a shit about anything because they're proper warhorses.

Except your horse is also retarded.

The exception is, of course, Rhulic 'jacks, which are used for working but have good enough cortices and armor to be used in war.

I mean, it's all over the place. Some laborjacks need more complicated cortexes for more involved work, and thus can be adapted better to warfare.

But Rhulic basically just uses warjack quality cores in all their jacks, which is incredibly expensive but Dwarves are incredibly wealthy and have no real enemies.

Warjacks can absolutely be used as laborjacks, provided they don't get pissed off about it.

I always loved the jack growth in the RPG, you offset this incredibly powerful machine by the fact that it's quirks could end up making it do weird shit, and a lot of times wiping the core was far, far too expensive.

I'm going to go dig that chart up now.

I don't know about that, in the RPG you can have your starting laborjack start with a gun arm or something and it does just fine. And the laborjack in the Butcher novel has no problems being directed to kill people.

I am sucker for Alexia Ciannor.
Can any of you guys tell if she is worth picking in her Alexia+Risen version and do a list for that? Pretty uncertain about her.

That's because the new RPG is fucking terrible.

And Warcasters are a whole different bag, because they can directly control a jack.

Didn't say anything about warcasters.

If I'm remembering the scene right, didn't Butcher have control of it?

Beyond that, even laborjacks can pick up some aggressive behaviors. I can't find the good chart, but I think I remember that naval laborjacks were especially prone to it, since they see so many fights, and they end up being short tempered and always itching to scrap.

There's also the point that unless the jack has picked up a quirk to avoid it, they've got no problem with killing shit. They're just retarded about it.

Like,a jack will kill someone just fine, but trying to teach them to use a weapon is usually an exercise in frustration unless you can directly reprogram the cortex.

No, it was a Laika laborjack that got sicced on him and killed most of Butcher's crew. The fight ended with him manifesting his warcaster talent to take control of the laika and make it stop killing everyone.

Also, as a note, once they got the codes to marshal that Laika and before Butcher could control warjacks at will, Lola was Laika's axe that Butcher later took for himself.

>the new RPG is fucking terrible

Only the jacks suck.

Speaking of the new RPG, anyone have any thoughts on the Ironhead career?

I don't know anything about it mechanically. I mean, the original IK is 3.5, so I'm not sure it can be much worse.

But the old books have such better fluff. Some of the changes they made in the new books is really annoying.

Which book?

What did they change in the fluff? And isn't the fluff the same as the stuff in the wargame?

NQ 52

Mostly changed some history events around, and removed some of the dark humor that was so great.

Like, for example, the new stuff doesn't include jacking, which I always found to be amazing.

Another big change, I think, was the whole issue of the divinity of Morrow.

Basically, Menites refused to accept him as a god, and spent centuries hunting any Morrowans they could find. Finally, they agreed to a peace treaty, and the Menites sent a Scrutator to talk to the Morrowan high priest.

And this is where the fluff divides. In the old book, the Menites intended to have the Scrutator assassinate the priest, which he absolutely did. However, one of Morrow's angels showed up and immediately slayed the killer. Of course, tensions were running pretty high at this point, but shit got really awkward for the Menites when one of Thamar's angels showed up to claim the Scrutator's soul, as it turns out they were a secret cultist.

The Menite priesthood ended up having a bit of a problem on their hands, what with one of their interrogator priests responsible for the ferreting out of heretics being a heretic, and combined with the whole aspect of Morrow showing up to claim the soul of their high priest, had to back down on the whole issue.

In the new fluff, the Menites intended to negotiate in good faith, but the Scurtator was ambushed and murdered by a Tharamite, who pretended to be the priest to kill the Morrowan.

I just think the new stuff doesn't really give the Menites a reason to back off, especially considering that while they regard Morrow as a (lesser) god now, they're still royally pissed off about him and his followers.

The relevant entry.

If you dont take any at all infantrymachine will still roll right over you. Kara sloan maxing out on hunters and defenders will get utterly raped by Terminus undeadspam, despite meta-wise Kara being in a much stronger place given her abilities and synergies. If she takes a couple of infantry removal tools like a unit of stormlances/tempest blazers/cyclones to back up her anti-arm jacks then its an altogether different story.

>WTC is likely to show more skewed results
In fact, due to the format, WTC will show more balanced results when it comes to faction comparisons.

Wait, there are angels in Warmahordes fluff? I don't remember them

What is jacking.

I couldn't remember what they were called.

They're not angels, per say, but Ascendants. Basically, they're humans who embodied a specific virtue(or in the Scion's of Thamar, a vice) that were granted a sort of pseudo divinity in order to continue their work.

They're basically lesser gods, forming a pantheon. I think Menoth has some as well, to be honest.

...

I thought Terminus's special rule trumped everything else's because he's the caster.

I want to do something with the Basher chassis, but I can't think of anything new for it to do beyond giving it an obvious ramming spike or something.

Be wary of man-sized tunnels and hallways. Our gm liked to use that shit as a way to deprive us of the 'jack we had spent so long earning.

No, I was wrong, just Morrow and Thamar.

Some of the Scions are really fun though. Stacia is really interesting in that she's commonly worshiped by non-Thamarites.

Unless specifically stated otherwise a soul token goes to the closest eligible model that isnt at capacity, Big T doesn't override that either normally or on feat turn.

conflictchamber.com/#b90O6QeG6A5G6r5V6a6v6w

Skorne Army - 50 / 50 points

(Hexeris 2) Lord Arbiter Hexeris [+27]
- Aradus Sentinel [16]
- Titan Sentry [15]
- Titan Gladiator [14]
- Agonizer [7]
Paingiver Beast Handlers (max) [7]
Praetorian Karax (max) [11]
Extoller Soulward [3]
Paingiver Bloodrunner Master Tormentor [4]

Doing a 50 point spell draft, thinking of taking this list.

Gives me a solid baseline of heavies with an agonizer to use. If they bring any infantry, then my stuff heals itself as I kill them. If I can draft a nice offensive spell then he'll be able to make use of his fury 7 and field marshal channeler to make great use of it, especially with his feat refilling his fury.

The guy that gives me most trouble locally is a Circle player, usually plays one of the Kayas, sometimes Kromac or Baldur. But I'm also likely to face cygnar. Sentinel should help against both, it'll put a lot of hurt on a warpwolf with its gun and also survive shooting pretty well. Other likely opponents are menoth, trolls, and khador. Since the sentinel and sentry already don't have much in the way of animi, drafting animi isn't a big deal for them and might help. The troll, cygnar, and khador players all play pretty infantry heavy here, with menoth and circle running just battlegroup + support (though menoth sometimes throws in some idrians or errants, and likes using vengers). Also have a convergence guy that might show up, he always plays syntherion. There's one Ret player in the meta but I don't think she's shown up to a single mk3 event so far, she just gets odd games in on weekdays.

Holy shit thats brutal

you had to ask didn't you?

so build an entire force around her and her little gaggle of spoopies?
>snow white and the several zeds

um, you might want recursion of some type. and either buffs/spells that are not faction - or an attachment to make them faction.

what faction? or are you going to buy an army around her from scratch?

>Solid baseline of heavies
>Sentinel
>Sentry
Senpai just swap them for a Cannoneer and another Gladiator.

(Morghoul 1) Master Tormentor Morghoul [+30]
- Titan Cannoneer [17]
- Titan Gladiator [14]
- Titan Gladiator [14]
Tyrant Zaadesh [4]
- Cyclops Savage [8]
- Cyclops Brute [8]
Nihilators (max) [15]
Paingiver Beast Handlers (max) [7]
Extoller Soulward [3]
Extoller Soulward [3]
Void Spirit [4]
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor [5]
Swamp Gobbers Bellows Crew [2]

Got a game against the local Legion player in an hour, taking this. Should be FUN. I know, Cyclops are shit, but when they have +6 to damage rolls, they can lay it on pretty well.

Okay, so I am seriously considering giving Skorne another chance. I like this Mak3 list in theory, but have yet to play it. So I should probably get on Vassal. What do you guys think? The core concept is that Brutes with Starcrossed should be able to shrug off an alpha reasonably well and can with Makeda's help kill whatever engages them so I can keep my heavies for the late game. And Snapjaw is just a giant middle finger to the current meta, especially with Vortex.

What I am not entirely certain of is Tiberion+Agonizer+MaxHandlers. It should make for one solid late game brick and an excellent HoD target, but is just crazy expensive (~31p).

(Makeda 3) Makeda & the Exalted Court [+24]
- the Exalted Court
- Tiberion [22]
- Agonizer [7]
- Titan Gladiator [14]
- Cyclops Brute [8]
Tyrant Zaadesh [4]
- Cyclops Brute [8]
- Cyclops Brute [8]
Wrong Eye [17]
- Snapjaw
Paingiver Beast Handlers (max) [7]

>I can't think of anything new for it to do beyond giving it an obvious ramming spike
youtube.com/watch?v=kwBc3sLHG_Y

So I just go back to the game and apparently there are no more wreck markers? What the fuck PP, I bought an extra Kraken just to turn it into a wreck marker and now that money is wasted. Fuck this shit, I'm selling my army.

That's some wird shit to get riled up about. Just play a double-Kraken list. Maybe with Lich3 or Skarre2.

The second Kraken is in pieces, it can't be used as it is.

>giant wreck marker covered in colossal parts
That must have been horrific to deal with in a game.

Well have you tried assembling it?

I don't even have all the remaining parts anymore, and I cut off pieces from the parts I used in the wreck marker to make it look more wrecked.

Then just use it as rubble.

Sounds like you fucked up then.

I can only assume that the best factions for her are cryx or khador.
And currently i am thinking if i should or should not pick one of those.

Just letting user know. A heap of the NQ issues have had their upload link expire.

What kind of a list would be a noobie friendly for menoth?

user, why would you buy a whole other Kraken just to cut it into pieces? They give you a 2d wreck marker for Colossals.

Because some people like their terrain and markers in three dimensions rather than on a piece of paper.

On the one hand, it's still fine as a beautiful piece of terrain. But if you were looking to use it exclusively as an actual wreck marker, yeah, you're fucked.

I don't think she can be taken in Cryx. She's pretty much trash tho, spell ward was the dumbest thing they could have given that unit.

Cygnar, Khador, and Mercs.
Cygnar and Khador have the RO to jank upkeeps onto the unit, at least. Because of that, Alexia1's probably better in those two factions.

It's not like the upkeeps are that important, anyways. The risen have such crap stats that +3 to whatever (fury for damage, AS for arm, Blur for def, etc.) Only brings them up to slightly below average.

The risen are used to fill space on the board, gum up movement lanes, jam lines, and empower Alexia herself.

Alexia, though, is a magic immune small base model with decent to high damage output, high survivability, and can crap out weaponmaster solos. She's probably worth 5 or 6 points on her own. That puts the risen at a half a point a piece. They're probably worth a half a point a piece just for making your opponent waste activations to kill them.

Tiberion really doesn't do enough for the points. For 22 points you could bring a unit of Nihilators, an Extoller, and a Void Spirit. Nihilators are amazing with Mak3 on the sly. She can only give Overtake to one model, but if that model is a Nihilator, it can clear out a lot of infantry on its own. I also just plain don't like not running Karn with Makeda. Karn with Overtake is pretty good too for those 3" sidesteps and the still-weaker-than-Mk2 Fate Walker.

From personal experience I also recommend swapping a Brute for a Savage. Having another animus is great, and he's more accurate and harder hitting. It doesn't seem like much, but it's like +7 damage on a Brute instead of +6.

just convert it to be one of those "this jack is half submerged!" gimmicks. Hell I could make an all-new crabjack by just using the spare frontplate, head and arms I have left over from putting my Harrower together.

If you really wrecked it good you might need to do some small creative conversionwork though.