Warmachine / Hordes General - /wmhg/

I agree with the mkiii roll-out was straight up awful.

I also think the game is just less complex in general, especially after the errata. The ability to target your guys with charges really added a lot of depth and now you cant even slam your own dudes

>The ability to target your guys with charges really added a lot of depth

Right, +3" movement due to what was clearly a rules oversight, so much depth.

Circle has a new battlebox? About fucking time. Is she any good? and do we still have a shitty Argus in the box?

The bigger investment was in units that got special rules or attacks at the end of charges. If a unit got Pathfinder on a charge, you could use it to retreat back to a point by charging your own objectives or units, or you could use it to slam your own models in order to open or empty out a lane.

Take a look at units like the Silver Shield Stormguard; You could run a model up to them, then charge that model and still get to be able to act in their faces. Now, you just can't do anything to them, greatly changing what they're worth and how powerful their ability is, because they've made the rules simpler and with fewer options.

Sometimes, that means good things, like no +3 movement or whatnot, but just as often it's taking away a tactical option that is, effectively, a nerf to many units and factions.

The only depth it added was making sure you couldn't deny assassination casters their own threat ranges and letting fragile casters hang out even farther back safely while still getting a ballbusting feat.

Removal of charging friendly models was only a good thing.

I'm all for having more options, and I do wish they'd at least leave throwing your own models in, because at least that kinda made sense, like I could see someone like Butcher commanding his 'jacks to throw him at the enemy. And I do hope they never take out attacking your own models, because there's some legitimately interesting/clever stuff you can do with it.

But charging your own models for extra movement has always felt extremely exploitative, much like "measuring your control range/command bubble" before premeasuring was properly introduced, and I'm glad it's gone.

>Silver Line Stormguard
Dude, they're still utter shit. Their only saving grace is the fact that they can't be charged, and even that isn't enough to make them worthwhile.

Yes, god forbid that a unit's ability not be trivially negated a hole in the rules.

There's more to argue about the friendly Power Attacks issue, but all it means now is that high DEF stuff actually has a purpose, and if you want to counter it, you need to bring your actual anti DEF shit. This serves to widen out list building and actually(slightly) prevent skewing.

Every main faction has a new battlebox.

And yeah, Argus is still there, but I'm not sure about him being shitty.

Get your bullshit high def argument out of here. Knockdown was meant to deal with shit like admonition and enable hurting impossible to touch stuff instead of relaying purely on dice rolls to give you all sixes.

new argus is really good since the animus is assassination tool now

Every faction has some sort of answer to high DEF models, acting like there should be a universal answer every single army has access to is hilarious.

It's like wanting a +5 to damage rolls for any model you wanted in every single army.

>mfw when I play trolls

yes, being able to make anything have a good damage curve was one of the best aspect of the faction. Now we are stuck with Madrak 2 or Ragnor 1 or bust.

Now fix our fucking animi PP.

>Every faction has some sort of answer to high DEF models
Wow this guy clearly hasn't played Skorne.

>CRA in faction on a 10 man unit
>CMA in faction
>MAT9 solo that can boost his attacks
>MAT8 solos that can boost their attacks
>Several casters with -DEF spells or feats
>You can still throw or slam enemy models
>Several casters give MAT buffs or ways to boost any melee attacks

As someone who's played exclusively Warmachine for years now and only ever looked at Hordes from a distance:

Is it just me or are your factions on average weaker than WMs? Whenever I look at your shit, I think to myself "Wow, I'd never pay that many points for this", even when it comes to the supposedly 'better' models. What gives?

>still using Skorne in conversation

Yes, we all know Skorne is fucked, we get it. Stop using it as an example until after the errata.

Pre-Mk3? Hordes was better than Warmachine

Now? Warmachine is better than Hordes.

>CRA in faction on a 10 man unit
That's RAT5 at base when everyone else's ranged units are RAT6, and we have no models that support gunlines.
>CMA in faction
CMA is a joke and you know it.
>MAT9 solo that can boost his attacks
Yeah and he's SPD4 and needs souls
>MAT8 solos that can boost their attacks
Yeah and they're SPD4 and need souls
>Several casters with -DEF spells or feats
Rasheth's feat, Xekaar's Mortality, and Hexxy2's Black Spot are the only DEF debuffs in faction. 2 of those casters suck dick, and the other needs his feat
>You can still throw or slam enemy models
Sure but you ain't throwing your own shit anymore. Yet another mark against the Titan Sentry
>Several casters give MAT buffs or ways to boost any melee attacks
Rasheth has a buff against living models, Zaadesh2 has his feat, Makeda1 (see: garbage) has Carnage, Hexxy1 (see: garbage) has Death March, and Makeda2 has feat

You're pretty much either playing a bad caster, or you're on feat turn. Rasheth isn't really part of the conversation because he's Skorne's only GOOD caster.

This nigger made claims.

>Pre-Mk3? Hordes was better than Warmachine
Wow, so Cryx used to be a Hordes faction?

I'm sorry, I think you made a mistake here. You assumed that current meta definitions of shit are universally applied. Just because some shit is bad now, it will be bad forever.

Oh look, a comedian. I'm talking about general trends, not set in stone laws.

Hordes was better than Warmachine in MK2. More open fists, transferring damage, and you could outspend warmachines with fury/focus by a ton.

MK3 added:
+ one free focus for all warjacks each turn
+ warcaster focus negates five damage outright
+ (sub-buff) warcasters don't need to hoard all their focus to survive anymore
+ warjacks are no longer disabled if knocked down in water
+ frenzy thresholds were reduced across the board
+ most warlock spells have either been increased in cost or are no longer upkeeps

Overall MK3's edge gives it to Warmachine factions.

>+ warcaster focus negates five damage outright
You understand this was a nerf, right?

>+ warcaster focus negates five damage outright
As opposed to negating 7+ per hit without expending any because all you do is camp focus every turn while your cheap weaponmasters kill everything?
>+ frenzy thresholds were reduced across the board
Factually false.

The big things that Mk3 added were free focus on jacks, and jack stats being MASSIVELY buffed.

Overall, it really wasn't. Squishy casters didn't benefit all that much from the ARM-bonus, and all casters can now be way more generous about spending their Focus.

>Caine2, Haley2, Denny2 and other assorted casters camping to ARM20+ on the turns where they were most vulnerable.
>Not benefiting

Casters are more generous about spending focus because they actually have something to spend it on. No one even brought warjacks in the first place because they were so much worse than weaponmaster spam.

Warbeasts are costed above warjacks across the board. Before power up, hordes had the much stronger battlegroup mechanic and beasts can still flexibly out damage jacks.

For example: a juggernaut had a pow 19 initial at mat 7, can buy one more pr charge, and now takes resources from your caster in order to buy attacks.

A Skorne gladiator, on about any turn within 9 inches of a beast handler, can charge has two pow 18 and a 16 initial, and can buy 3 more attacks at 18 without pulling any resources from a caster.

In a vacuum, warbeasts outperform warjacks on paper, and only need to heal one box per aspect to be at full capability, whereas a jack you might have to choose an arm to bring back, and if your cortex is out you've already lost your ability to give it resources to perform beyond advance and make initial attacks.

All that being said, they missed some marks with hordes in terms of caster power, what they can bring to the table, etc. In other areas, they completely disregarded the changes to recursion with the sentry stones and hellmouth. Both of these are hordes units, and the other options in their respective factions are considered not nearly as good as those options.

Overall the game is in a pretty good state, but there are some intangibles hordes is missing. Skorne is the most obvious example where they're individually costed like premium models with no regard to the high cost of their support. Circle retained a large stable of obviously powerful casters and is being carried by them Cryx mk 2 style. It's stuff like the hellmouth, sentry stones, and high reclaimer ignoring the new recursion mechanics, rulings on their rules forum being refuted in the next official statement or errata, unnecessarily nuking things likw cryx and mad dogs, and nonexistent nerfs to power options (storm lances buy buy buy) that piss people off.

> rulings on their rules forum being refuted in the next official statement or errata

To be fair, having their rules stay consistent until they make an official change isn't a bad thing.

They just need to be very clear that that's why the decision is being made, instead of just saying "Working as Intended"

If they'd have said "Flank is clearly broken, we're going to fix it, but we don't want to create a situation where the published rules are wrong", I don't think people would have been nearly as angry.

>storm lances

Not really to the point, but they couldn't have nerfed Storm Lances. If they did, Cygnar would lose one of their 2 good units. The existence of Storm Lances as a good, largely caster independent unit alone makes more casters viable and keeps the meta at least somewhat fresh. Without them you'd just hamstring the entire faction.

And then PP would have to face the fact that despite great tournament performance, Cygnar is really a faction filled with underperforming crap units, which would mean a lot more work for them. It's just smarter to leave Lances as they are.

What was broken about flank anyway? English isn't my first language, so most of the errata looked like the same sentences to me, before and after

What can I say, I'm very concervative with my casters. It enabled my playstyle and now its gone

Originally Flank didn't work on enemy models that were knocked down.

ok, because KD'd models don't have a melee range and as such don't engage or what?

>cucks bitching about Mk3 release balance
>forgetting the bullshit of Iron Flesh Kayazy at the beginning of Mk2
>forgetting that Gaspy2 was almost impossible to beat at the beginning of Mk2 before an errata
>forgetting about the rampant Mk2 bullshit like Wold War/Krueger2 pairing, pre-nerf Haley2 and Body and Soul
>forgetting about Mk1

You have no idea how good you Mk3 babies have it. If lists like Wurmwood, Una2, Karchev Mad Dog spam, and High Reclaimer are the worst we get in Mk3, then it's in a good place.

My only gripe is the obvious lack of proof reading in the main rulebook. The main rules are more solid than they've ever been but holy fuck does PP look dumb with some of the stuff they have had to clarify in the Rules forum and Erratas

The only thing that's for sure gotten worse are these threads. We used to be able to talk about lists, lore, and try to force funny/unfunny memes. The worst we ever got it was having to ignore some Warhammer shitposters. Veeky Forums used to be the place to go for spoilers too, you could always reliably find stats and pictures easier than any other site here.

I used to actually look forward to talk about shit on the /wmhg/. Now we just have a bunch of fags that probably don't even play the game rile shit up with stale memes and pushing a game like Guild Ball even though GB Generals can barely stand on their own without the same three guys circle jerking until they get bored after 20 posts.

More specifically, because they couldn't be engaged.

Game is boring as fuck now.

They're slowly sandpapering all of the neat little niche items that made Warmachine Warmachine.

LGS is about dead on the game. I walk in and see Age of Fucking Sigmar and Infinity.

What a fucking shame.

Sorry to hear that. My local community is actually growing.

I like talking about Cryx's lore. The other thing that kind of sucks about mkiii is that they aren't putting out the lore with the books anymore. It is all going to be in novels and shorts put out by skull island. This is kind of lame because there is no guarantee that they will put out lore equally for all factions, not that they did before necessarily. With GW it is almost all Marine wank. I don't want it to turn into the Cygnar show featuring some cryx.

getting really poorly written novellas is not my idea of fun either, I mean Venethrax almost lost to a literal anthill. I mean come on.

>pairing, pre-nerf Haley2 and Body and Soul
Oh early Iron Gauntlet, you will not be missed

Actually if you looked at tournament results from MK2, you usually had more Warmachine factions at the top with some Legion, Circle, or Trolls (closer to the end) occasionally there.

I play the game almost every week and I can tell you it's very stale now.
List construction has become stale because a lot of the solos and niche units are overcosted, the game is less three dimensional with the loss of a lot of the non-linear threats (usually via throws), and playing against Khador jack spam is even more aggravating than playing against MMM back in MK2.
Yet I still play, I try to make list innovations, I try to put the solos that are rarely used in my lists, etc. because I really want to like the game.

I mean, if the game feels stale after an errata that shook up most of the boogieman lists in the game, then I don't really know what to tell you.

>playing against Khador jack spam is even more aggravating

I don't know what Khador jack spam list could possibly give you fits after the Mad Dog/Karchev nerf.

Our local players never used Mad Dogs and while Karchev was used he is not the only viable jack spam caster.

I assume by "jack spam" he means, "take more than two warjacks".

Usually 4+ at ARM20

It's because 75 in Mark 3 is like 35 in Mark 2.

Take your caster
Take your Beasts/jacks
Take one unit
Take one support unit

All of the solos just waive bye and sit on the shelf.

Man they fucked this game up.

Yeah that's the general feeling that I have as well. Taking anything situational (for example, Viktor Pendrake) feels like a mistake because of how expensive it is.

>jack stats MASSIVELY buffed
Fucking where? I know Cygnar jacks got some stat increases but not "MASSIVELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!".

Uhh no. 75 points in Mk3 is quite close to 50 points in Mk2, just a couple points smaller so that you can't fill up on support pieces anymore.

It only feels smaller because Warmachine armies are forced to take bigger battlegroups now.

"I can't handle that I actually have to bring anti-def to games and that Khador is a real faction now, what a bad game"

>playing against Khador jack spam is even more aggravating than playing against MMM back in MK2
>not talking about Mad Dogs
>just 4+ khador heavies

What the fuck are you talking about?

Taking 4-6 ARM 20 30+ boxes jacks off the board is not an easy task for all factions.
I play Hordes so I usually have to put 1-2 beasts into a jack to take it down.

>Skorne
on the brink of being fixed
>Cryx
got some love and was always viable. Ever heard of Raiders and Coven?
>Power Throws
Yeah, DEF is finally a useful stat, what a stupid change.
>caster x is op
learn how 2 counter?

This game is what happens when you go out of your way to appeal to WAAC tourney fags.

In a way, you all created this mess yourselves.

See I know what you're trying to get at with bitching about "infantry-machine", but everyone took at least one jack. You'd be an idiot not to use literal free points.

Objectively false. Most of our units aren't all that worse than they were in Mk II, hell Trenchers actually are close to viable. Except we have the objectively better option of 'lances. That said, I'd like to see a minor nerf to 'lances but a buff to some of our other shit.

They still haven't done fuck all about Haley 2. Bitch is still half the reason Cygnar even makes it to tournaments.

Don't forget turn one kill lists. You could do that for a few years depending on faction. What I'm salty about with Mk III is the simple fact that we shouldn't be having these issues. We had Mk I, PP learned and had the field tests and everything. Then we had Mk II and PP learned more. Now we get to Mk III and I'm still seeing glaringly unbalanced shit running around without a peep from PP. They should have learned by now.

Are you actually that dumb? Khador's stick is to be hard to kill, but in return they are butt-fuck slow and expensive.

You're supposed to outmaneuver them (which is really easy) and take out as many as you can, prioritizing the ones that are the most annoying to your victory condition.

This kind of playstyle is new to people, because they're used to Khador being the worst faction in the game.

>I try to trade cheap warjacks with typically more expensive beasts

I've held this off the entire time, but git gud

>They still haven't done fuck all about Haley 2

As long as she has her current feat, TK, and Domination, she will be among the best casters in the game. Losing Decel for Force Field, and having Time Bomb apply the debuff to only the target directly hit is objectively a nerf though. So saying that "they still haven't done fuck all about Haley 2" when this is the third nerf she's gotten in a year is asinine.

>I'm still seeing glaringly unbalanced shit running around without a peep from PP.

Putting aside how balanced/unbalanced Mk3 is, to say that there's not a "peep from PP" is just not fucking true. Whether or not you agree with how they reacted to things, they've publicly acknowledged the issues people are having with the game balance right now, and they are plugging in the holes in the game quicker than they ever have before.

>inb4 PP shill

Fine, but you're still wrong.

They are not slow (most of their casters speed them up) and they are very inexpensive now. Have you looked at their jacks?
You can't not trade if you want them out of the scenario. You either have to take them off the board of kill them in order to actually score in most live scenarios.

Yes, so you're saying your Battlegroup is a larger percentage of your army? Like a 35 point force feels?

>You can't not trade if you want them out of the scenario. You either have to take them off the board of kill them in order to actually score in most live scenarios.

You know there are plenty of options to, push, slam, place models out of the zone right? I think your problem is that you're too caught up on beating Khador at it's own game when you should be capitalizing on their weaknesses.

The other user is right, Khador jacks ARE slow, and though the caster can speed them up, that's resources they are spending to make them like that. Consider options that will force your opponent to play conservatively with his focus or risk getting assassinated. Also Khador jack speed buffs is commonly something like Boundless Charge, so anything that can prevent them from charging can really fuck with them.

This would be better if you just told us which Hordes faction you play.

You read like pure autism

>Haley 2
What I'm getting at is that they haven't done enough. I don't want her nerfed into fucking oblivion, I just don't want every tournament list to start out "Alright Haley 2, season to taste, now who do I want to experiment with?".

>PP response
Yeah, haven't heard much out of them. Maybe the last couple weeks they've spoken up more, but they haven't had near the presence on the forums like they used to. Plus the whole never mentioning why they ignore shit like 'lances or other fucked stuff. Would be pretty damn nice just to hear "well we weren't sure how to balance but didn't want to fuck tournament viability". I just want to know that they are actually aware of the various issues.

Speeding them up to a 10" threat range. Wow, call the errata police, that's broken.

A 12 point juggernaut is still 2 points over a 10 point battlebox heavy beast.

Furthermore, keep in mind that Khador jacks can't piece trade unless you fill them up (and depending on how heavy the target is, spending a focus for a charge ruins the math even further).

In case you didn't know, it's not great/possible to fill up your entire 4-6 jack battlegroup in order to trade with your opponents 5-7 beasts battlegroup.

Have you ever actually tried building a 35 point list in Mk2?

I've been around since Mark 2 autist.

It's funny you are arguing against this. I've heard it also said on two different podcasts, both Muse and Hand Cannon.

Guess all those tourney players must be wrong too? What's your credentials so you can tell me to 'git gud'?

Typo
>I've been around since Mark 1 when Vlad could top of 1 you and two units of Bane Knights fighting each other was hell on earth

>What I'm getting at is that they haven't done enough. I don't want her nerfed into fucking oblivion, I just don't want every tournament list to start out "Alright Haley 2, season to taste, now who do I want to experiment with?".

You know you could easily just not take Haley2 if you don't want to? If they just nerfed Haley2 to a B- caster tomorrow, it wouldn't change the pool of other casters that you can take.

You're the worst kind of fucking tryhard. You bitch and moan that you can't take the casters you want to play and so resign yourself to taking the "obligatory" tournament caster in order to feel like you can compete. If Haley2 was nerfed you would just take the next best thing anyway because you're too much of a pussy to just play the type of toy soldiers that you actually like for fear of losing some games in your tiny pond meta that no one gives a shit about.

Changing Decel for Force Field is a pretty big nerf for her. She doesn't protect her army on the way in now, and more importantly, she doesn't protect her arc node anymore. And she super needs her arc node.

>listening to Muse and Hand Cannon

kek

Oh, I'm talking to a literal retard. Okay.

List construction now is vastly different from anything in Mk2. The main difference is that you actually have to take jacks now and can't just spam whatever busted infantry unit your faction has. This is a good thing. Nobody wants to play against Cryx with 60 dudes

It's a new game, your playstyle and lists need to adjust

Not the user you're replying to, just want to point out he's right dude. Play whatever you want user and get good with that.

Disregarding the meta and forums is the best way to actually have fun with this game

This.

I saw this one guy at a small local tournament play Strakhov recently and watching him do nonsense was the greatest thing.

Oh I have plenty of fun when experimenting after new releases or errata. I've found some pretty fun combos that way. But are they good enough for when we hold tournaments? Fuck no. It's a vicious cycle of everyone having to bring their A game and there is no way to "break it" outside of diversifying viable options. Which PP hasn't done and I expect much better of them when they've gone onto their 3rd edition of rules.

Your meta sounds like a shit hole user. If it's all serious business no wonder no one has fun.

The ironic answer here is litterally play what you want and actually get good playing it. You can win any local Steamroller with pretty much any caster on the game, even current Skorne, if you're good enough.

If you only pay whatever the current broken meta list is you're never going to actually improve your game

Obviously we need to go back to Mk1 rules where warjacks shut down as soon as they have 3 crippled systems.

>Nobody wants to play against Cryx with 60 dudes
I was actually fine against it because I played Legion. With tools like Ravagores, the Vault, Saeryn, etc. we really didn't have much problems with them.

You know unless you're Tom Guan traveling to every single major con, I can say with confidence that it absolutely doesn't matter if you play the absolute best casters your faction has to offer. If you practice what you like then you'll be able to chalk out more wins against the people in your meta who just band wagon hop on to the latest fad.

You said it yourself, it's a vicious cycle of everyone having to bring their A game. Nothing PP does is going to change that. In every game that has ever been made or will be made, you will have options that are straight up just going to be better than others. You will have people taking those options in order to get every edge they can on their opponent. If you want to be one of those people, then more power to you. Just don't try acting like you're some poor victim that can't take the stuff he wants to tournaments because the only person stopping you from doing that is yourself.

Honestly, there's even real merit to the Darkhorse element as well.

If you play shit no one knows how to deal with because they never see it, you're going to get wins on your opponent not knowing your shit.

You have no idea how many people I just smoked with arkadius when I would just show up to local tournaments with pigs in mk2

While that might be true in your area the only time we aren't going serious is when we're teaching, running leagues, or seeing how new models/errata affect the game.

Like I said, with better balance they can diversify the viable options. Will it magically make every single option perfectly viable? No, I doubt we'll ever get to that level of balance. Could we reach a point where every faction is facing very difficult choices as to what they will bring? Absolutely. Right now we don't have that.

I liked Carver more. 5d6 charge on feat turn with Slaughterhousers, as long as the target was damaged. Which wasn't that hard to do. Set it up right and you'd clear a board pretty easily.

>While that might be true in your area
I live in one of the most competitive metas in the US. You can absolutely play whatever you want, but you have to actually be good at the game and be good with the units you put on the table.

Same here

Look man, I like in a 50+ player, hyper competitive meta. People still play and win with jank, because even with all the shit, a large portion of this game is player skill and knowing what your army does.

Except mk3's problems stem from the fact that they went for a larger audience.

Khador jacks are NOT expensive. Juggernauts are still insane at 12 points. If I want a MAT7 heavy I have to pay 18 points.

Speed 4, DEF 10 and does nothing else save for crit freeze.

Compare to the Slayer, Crusader, Ironclad and so forth. They are either cheaper to balance their shortcomings or have more (and better) special rules.

>Compare to the Slayer

A worthless piece of junk that loses its arms as soon as someone waves a boosted POW12 in its direction?

You mean the boosted POW 12 that misses, because the shooter was debuffed to RAT -15?