Warmachine/Hordes General

Yes, it's Malekus character Jack, the Eye of Truth. Got some kind of fire eye laser, can grant blessed weapons and I think it even had built in Oracular Vision

It's almost like public opinion isn't objective truth. Wait, tell the press! This is fucking huge!

Officially, according to PP, they are entirely their own race. They existed alongside the Elves for a long time but, ultimately, they are just "Skorne."

What their actual history is however isn't really known. They have no Gods and lived a harsh life before coming fully into being a civilized people, other than that we got no clue where they came from.

And why are they so pissed at Cygnar even after Vinter kicked the bucket?

He looks like Anson's Jack.

Because Vinter was able to unify them for, really, the first time in their history. Now that Makeda is in charge they want to try taking over other peoples instead of fighting each other.

They aren't. They went after Cygnar because of Vinter but after they figured out that Vinter was sabatoging their conquest because he was planning on taking the throne and then wiping them out afterwards, they got rid of him and shifted their focus towards going after Ios to settle some old grudges.

They only stick around in the iron kingdoms for general "conquest." They are just trying to take more land and fuck shit up really. Their real beef is with the elves.

If you play with some tournament level players instead of whiny bitches, they will show you that Cryx are still fine (we have a guy in our meta that plays Cryx and he defeated a Caine2 list the other day down to just having Caine2 alive)

Really sick of PP's shit. Next week's theme force batch won't have any Mercenaries themes because they already have Cephalyx, Kingmaker's and Rhul, but Pirates are literally impossible to play right now. Doesn't PP understand that Pirates needed a theme force the most because even in Mk2 there was only one way of playing them (A Pirate's Life)?

Most of us don't care about pirate bruh, don't play mercs and use only 20% of the faction.

Coven and Satyxis are really fucking good.

They aren't impossible to play, man.You can run them just fine.

And beyond that, welcome to Mercs. If they'd done pirates and now Dwarves, there'd be people bitching about that instead. You've gotten three lists in the time most factions have gotten one, simmer down.

I don't get this. Is your meta ultra competitive? Is it Haley2/3, Wurmwood, Tuna, HR and shit all day? Don't people play subpar casters and field subpar units? Why aren't there people that want to play some games with their jank units or maybe dusts some stuff off and finally put it on the table again?

No one actually plays these lists, we just complain about them.

Assholes in my game group do, its annoying, and then when they play something else and its a bad matchup they decree they "have" to only play the good casters

> Protectorate spoilers!!
For some reason I read that as Protectorate yourself !!, which is really fitting since this guy seems to have triple plating and a ribbed loincloth

They're the IK's version of hobgoblins.

They have the same ears and forehead ridges of gobbers, they're just human-sized.

Huh, you're right. Weird I didn't notice it earlier.

We're late. The Trollblood stuff got leaked Friday night before release.

You gotta check yourself before you Protectorate yourself.

B-but I wrack from there, Scrutator-sama....

I'm thinking of getting into Gatormen as my first Hordes list, what's viable and what's not? I'm a CoC player, so I don't have a lot of experience with mercs or minions.

What can I do with three goraxes?

Play three Circle lists simultaneously.

Behold pic related, today's scenario, the one with two big circle objectives. Basically, on turn 1 I can get a Gladiator, aka. the yardstick to Skorne heavies, 17" up the table. Now with my 10" charge range, I can threaten something that's 27" up the table on turn 2. The problem? If my opponent just toes the zone with his shit, there is NOTHING I can do about it. I cannot clear a zone on turn 2, and if his threat range is bigger than 10", I just can't do anything at all. It's like on this scenario, Skorne is at a huge mathematical disadvantage because of the size of the circles.

I played this scenario today against Amon using Rasheth, and honestly it wasn't even close. Mobility is absolute fucking horseshit on its own but holy shit he has Synergy on top of that? If I come up against a Menoth player at the Steamroller coming up in a few weeks which I'm likely to, I am using Makeda3, choosing to go 2nd, slapping my army smack bang in front of his, and going for a hardcore assassination. Like nigger my assassination will be a thing of legend. Because it's not like Skorne can win any other way. Don't even get me started on Dervishes.

Or two circle lists and one Arkadius list. That means he could play with himself!

I really don't get the hate mark 3 got. In my opinion it fixed all the major problems mark 2 had such as all of the cheap weapon master infantry spam or the fact that only menoth could effectively run jack heavy. All in all I think Mark 3 was a huge success other than killing off Vinter.

You may have heard of the 89 changes in the Skorne errata coming this month?

Mark 3 is shit, because premeasuring is stupid when it's not from the caster's control range and being unable to circumvent the DEF stat by throwing things at it ruined the game forever.

>Soon™

Mk3 would be fine if certain models weren't glaringly weak while others go around crushing people.

So you're saying MK3 is just like MK2 except Jacks are better now?

The relative buff to war jacks and the nerf to beasts makes hordes wayyyyy weaker then warmachine.

Mk2 power lvls:
Cryx

Legion, Circle, Cygnar
Menoth, Trollbloods,
Skorne, Khador,
Ret

Minions/Mercs

Now it's :
4 lists are S tier

Warmachine
Hordes.

Allow me to fix your lists.

>Mk2 Top tier
Cryx, Cygnar
>Mk2 Mid tier
Everyone else
>Mk2 Shit tier
Minions

But yeah, Mk3 is being dominated by specific lists, not factions. Wurmwood didn't crush because he was a Circle caster, he crushed because he had a stupid feat and some insane spells. Amon doesn't crush because he's a Menoth caster, he crushes because he has 2 of the best spells in the game and a strong feat.

So that troll book, where's the PDF?

Yeah. I do agree with that.

I think it's reached a point where Fury isn't that huge of an upgrade from Focus. So they need to start bringing the price of Warbeast heavies down across the board and maybe increasing the cost of some very cheap heavy warjacks.

A 1 to 2 point drop on probably 2/3rds of heavy Warbeasts actually seems appropriate.

As for your ranking, I actually don't think it's "just 4 lists." People haven't really even explored what they can do yet and there are people out there using different stuff. We just have limited info right now. They've already started hitting the worst stuff as well.

As for "Warmachine > Hordes." What about Circle and Cryx? Legion and Trolls remain fairly competitive and Circle is top tier where as Cryx is pretty near the bottom. It's really just a matter of cost changes that will make Trolls and Legion fine. Skorne is getting a rework which could go either way.

Right now the worst thing going is Cryx. Everything else doesn't actually seem that bad except for the extreme examples which are already starting to go down in stock.

Hell, even Minions/Mercs are pretty good right now. Just wish they would get some new casters.

Plus, it's not like most of MK2 didn't have a small handful of S-Tier casters that showed up constantly. The difference is that, for all it's faults, PP has made an actual effort to not let it be that way for 5 or 6 years without much change.

I am just not really as salty as everyone else seems to be I guess.

>where as Cryx is pretty near the bottom

Circle is only top tier with Wurmwood.

I rank the factions not on their ability to field a competitive steamroller pairing, rather on the quality of choice in the faction.

Cryx took the biggest hit because no one owns the models that are good right now, they may have gotten a nerf hammer rather then the bat, but i think PP will fix that.

For Example PoM is my faction and for the most part is always a mid tier faction say a B- Rating, but because PoM requires so many different parts to make the army work, you can always field a decent list baring a few casters and models.. Cryx in mk2 had 3 S tier casters that everyone played and played the same way, when the nerf in mk3 gutted those casters all the cryx players that play because cryx was good left.

Jacks are just so much better in mk3 then beasts IMHO Cryx still out performs most Hordes factions.

Um, have you heard of Una2?

I knew I was forgetting someone, I've never played una2.

Tanith, Krueger2, Kaya2, Morvahna1 and 2 all still exist. Plus Wurmwood only changed his feat.

I'd say Circle is in a pretty good place honestly. They have a lot of good casters.

And internal balance scale is way too fucking all over the place.

It's so blatantly obvious what each faction's ideal pairings are that, matchups have become very stale. With more restrictions between model interactions being introduced, it's becoming harder and harder to take stuff that's objectively weak for jank success.

I like big fat and chunky units, like MMM and jackspam.

What faction should I go other than CoC?

Any faction with a MAT7 PS18-19 heavy that only costs 10-12 points.

Oh wait that's fucking all of them.

Menoth only has a Mat6 PS-18 heavy for 10-12
;) 21 with EoM and Chior for Psevy

Are memers'o'war finally viable?

You mean a MAT9 PS23 heavy because Amon is the only caster you should be running.

Shocktroopers are actually pretty strong. But then again you're talking to a Skorne player whose equivalent unit costs more for lower armour, less boxes, and less weapons. And our UA costs more.

My HR was a good answer to Una2. The Reclaimer knows a good receipie for hot fried griffon wings, sadly he wont tell you.

Does Flashing Blade target the models it hits?

Good!

conflictchamber.com/#b31b0f7w7u8t7Qgd7S7W7T8q

Khador Army - 75 / 75 points

(Old Witch 1) The Old Witch of Khador [+18]
- Scrapjack
- Behemoth [25]
- Spriggan [19]
Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich [4]
Man-O-War Shocktroopers (max) [16]
- Man-o-War Shocktrooper Officer [4]
Winter Guard Infantry (max) [10]
- Winter Guard Rocketeer (3) [6]
- Winter Guard Infantry Officer & Standard [4]
Man-O-War Kovnik [5]

Does this work more or less?

WinterGuard Death Star(still good?)+witch to eat small units, melee behemoth that gets there fast with apparition and same for spriggan to pop enemy cans, and Shocktroopers and kinda solo-ish for objective taking?

If you want the Spriggan to use against enemy heavies, he's generally overcosted. The Juggernaut is probably not beatable efficiency wise if you want to trade it into other heavies and even then the Spriggan is not that impressive stat-wise. Just take a quick look in the Khador pdf, it's in the trove (link in OP).
WGI has mostly been phased out for the Rifle Corps with Kovnik Joe added

Flashing blade makes an attack against every enemy in melee range. The attacks follow normal rules, and the first step is targeting.

>Does this work more or less?
>"you're talking to a Skorne player"
Frankly from what I've experienced in Mk3 so far, it doesn't work because you don't have enough heavies. Iron Fang Pikemen are strong because MAT7 PS13 is stupid, but otherwise you shouldn't really be bothering with Khador infantry when their heavies are nigh-impossible for some factions to deal with. It's that extra point of ARM you get for free just seriously please PP.

Bleurgh. I was hoping it would function the same way Magic functions. "Can't be hit by melee attacks and gets +4DEF against ranged and magic attacks" seriously whose stupid idea was that? Can't even throw a friendly directly away to land on them anymore. But hey, I can bring a beast with Spiny Growth as an animus, right? The Razor Worm and the Rhinodon are totally great beasts.

>I only parrot whatever I hear on /wmg/
Check this Irusk 2 list out:
discountgamesinc.com/tournaments/players/view/966

Irusk 2 [Armory]
Irusk 2
Torch
Juggernaut
Winter Guard Mortar Crew
Winter Guard Rifle Corps (max)
Winter Guard Rocketeer
Winter Guard Rocketeer
Winter Guard Rocketeer
Man-O-War Shocktroopers (max)
Man-O-War Shocktroopers Officer
Iron Fang Pikemen (max)
Iron Fang Pikemen UA
Jozef Grigorovich
Man-O-War Kovnik

It even has the MoW Shocktroopers. If you check Discount Games for like 2 minutes you will see quite a few Khador lists with 2-3 premium or simple quality jacks and then filled with infantry (mostly WGRC but whatever, as long as your meta not always mirrors high end tournaments, you're fine with MoWs)

Is this Una? Magic while in the same melee doesn't get the +4, sprays ignore it too.

Wait I was under the impression that spells cast into melee were the same as ranged attacks. Or do you mean say if you crowd my caster with birds and my caster throws spells, THEN there's no +4?

Nigger that's a WTC list from when Wurmwood was the big bad boogeyman. Irusk2 gunlines were THE counter to Wurmwood because Irusk2 doesn't actually care about a fuckhuge forest. That list is a heavy meta call from before the errata, so if you take it to your LGS you'll probably get your shit pushed in and feel bad for spending so much money on infantry in Mk3.

I used Cleansers with Hand of Fate and the Aim command. 20 Hp Arm 13/14 Models cant stand flamethrowers.

>Only caster
BOIIII If you don't

Amon is for sure a top 5 PoM caster but he's not the only one to run.

Then what about this crazy fucker here?
discountgamesinc.com/tournaments/players/view/1320
All three lists meta calls?
There's definitely infantry around (see Cryx lists that are also winning, despite bringing more infantry than jacks, but I guess that's because Cryx are just that much garbage).
If there's top lists with infantry around, why can't it be around at more casual levels?

He's a Skorne player, so his mad jealousy and inferiority complex will make him overestimate other stuff by a large shot.
Protectorate definitely seems like it has the most viable stuff. The only glaring problems seem to be Errants vs Idrians and heavy infantry being bad in general (not just Cinerators&Bastions).
Blessed be those that walk Caen in the name of the Creator.

Rush is considered a top tier animus. It's 2 for +2" and pathfinder. Meanwhile Amon can give his entire battlegroup +2SPD and pathfinder for 3. Mobility alone makes him strong as shit, but then he has Synergy on top of it. MAT10 PS18 Dervishes? Like nigger that's some Mk2 Molik Karn levels of stupid. Pop feat, upkeep Synergy, cast Mobility, bam you've got 2 Dervishes that can on average murder any yardstick heavy in a non-Khador faction that's within 12". And the cunts ignore free strikes. Amon is easily the best caster in Menoth, with the High Reclaimer not far behind.

>tfw your entire faction is so overcosted that making back your points requires too much butt clenching to have fun

Yeah I'm upsettii my Errants got shit on considering I don't like Idrians *Kreoss is my favorite Caster and K2 is my favorite variant.*

Have you tried killing the support models when fighting PoM?

>mk2 mid tier
>Khador

>Have you tried killing the support models when fighting PoM?
Honestly that's what I spent my entire last game trying to do. An arced Breath from Rasheth took out 2 Choir members and a Vassal because he bunched too hard, then my Shaman and Raider no but seriously if no one's using infantry these cunts are insane with Rasheth picked off the remaining 2 Choir from that side of the table, but the problem was the other side of the table where Amon and like 3 heavies were pushing into a zone. Everything had a bigger threat range, everything had huge damage output. Even if Orin could've gone anywhere near firing a bolt at his other Choir (his jacks couldn't be hit by spells all game), he knew to position in such a way that the lightning would just arc away into jacks after the first hit.

I couldn't have done more to take out his support, but taking out his support 1) costs time, and 2) requires me to come forwards. How do you beat an army that has bigger threat ranges and much higher damage output?

I play a lot of Amon. I don't think Dervishes are worth taking over 10 pt MAT 9 PS 23 Crusaders.

I love watching people pop a defensive feat and still have their colossal wrecked.

Dervishes are a cheap way to get Synergy maxed out, and with multiple initials, sidestep, and parry, can find themselves in weird situations killing things they really shouldn't be killing. Your opponent has to always bear the threat of assassination from them in mind. They might not seem like a lot, but MAT10 PS18 will kill a caster.

Assassination

Honestly that's already become my plan since that game today. My pairing is Rasheth / Makeda3. So I pick Makeda, go 2nd, dump my entire army in front of his caster, and run the pain train on his asshole. It's great having a caster that hits like a truck and has parry because everyone's terrified of triggering battle driven.

How do you beat any alpha strike armies? You have to eat the strike and either grind it out or break through to hit the key parts. Go for an assassination run if you can't fight it out.

What the fuck is wrong with Trolls. I bought into them as my first faction because the models look sweet but the numbers dont match. Big bubble of +2ARM and +1STR for 12 points sounds awesome, as long as you dont notice how every model in your army is 2ARM and 2 STR too low for its cost, so you effectively end up with -12pts. Shit sucks. Also, rage on a 15 pts beatstick. Awesome. If it wasnt for how all your heavies are >15pts and have 16 P+S on average.

Oh, and the only other damage buff available is primal on a 21pts character heavy and +2STR with beatback for one model from one warlock.

Skorne plays the opposite of mk2 menoth now,
mk2 menoth had to win on scenario most of the time, now skorne has to assassinate to win.

Example, I don't know all the troll stuff off the top of my head,

10 points for the Crusader
Speed 4
Mat 6
PS: 18/14
Arm 19
Def 10

>now skorne has to assassinate to win.

This is true. You have to make like you are obviously going for scenario and trying but failing to conceal your actual attention to win by attrition, and then kick in with your real plan of pulling off an assassination before you run out of guys.

Premeasuring has pretty much created a game of perfect threat ranges.You either need to be able to shoot, have a longer charge range than your opponent, have access to non-charge threat extemsion (i.e. Hellmouth) or be able to eat a charge and counterstrike. The first two options are available to nearly all factions (nearly, mind you), but the third is limited to only a few factions, and eating a charge is equally lacking unless you have huge numbers of boxes or single wound models with ARM of 20 or higher.

It was almost the exact same thing with command range measuring though. Yes, you would have to guess a bit and might've been off by an inch a few sometimes. But almost of the time, it was so easy to "cheat" your units into perfect distance anyway.

Cleaning that up was both better for newer players and fixed a loophole everyone needed to abuse in order to play the game.

I'm normally against pre-measuring (see; Warhammer 8th), but in a game in which it always existed anyway, I make an exception.

Basic geometry and command checking gave most players the tool to know the distance anyway now the game is streamlined

Trolls numbers look gank because if the enemy only buys into numbers he will find your army obnoxiously good at not dying.
Tough is easy to play around but they do still get milage out of it.
Also most troll models can eat most non warmachine models if I understand things correctly.
A troll heavy with a buff will trash most things you need to trash. Then again, in the short time I've played I feel like actually attacking a khador heavy jack is usually a bad idea. Slam it or something if you cannot go around.

Trollbloods are make up for being jank by conventional measure by being annoying to kill and being gaining buffs from each other.
They sorta rely on lots of jank shit piled together till it is unstoppable. Like a much less elegant protectorate.

This is if I understand things correctly on paper. I don't get to play often enough to ACTUALLY know what im talking about.

Hey, I was curious about how good you guys felt Fury was inherently vs Focus.

On the one hand, at their core Fury works better than Focus. Focus has to be allocated at the top of the round, and if the round for whatever reason fails to play out the way you expected, your focus is right where you left it. Fury can be generated in response to circumstances though. If your heavy's dice are hot he can use less fury than you expected freeing up space for others to go nuts.

That said, the generation/leeching game looks really hard. Especially because from the cards I've seen, warlock fury is usually lower than warcaster focus. This means unless you spam fury managers you will have trouble actually doing as much stuff as a fully operational Warmachine army (when their plan pulls through).

I'm pretty new, but I'm kinda looking to see whether or not I'm completely off base.

Basically.

Both are action economies, and have advantages and disadvantages. Fury lets you choose where to generate it on demand, and lets you run "hot" (with substantial risk) and go over your Fury management abilities by risking Frenzy checks.

Their defensive abilities are different -- Fury is (as long as you've got a battlegroup left) better at keeping your caster alive, but at the same time damage transferred from Fury goes somewhere, while (the typically smaller amount of) damage soaked by Focus just goes away. Focus does have an advantage here that you can camp (i.e., sit with more on your caster to use defensively as opposed to spending it) more without hamstringing your action economy on the next turn.

It mostly boils down to both Focus and Fury are "action points" of a sort, and Fury gives you more *maximum* "action points" to deal with, while Focus (thanks to Power Up) tends to give you more *safe* "action points" to deal with.

And then Warjacks (Focus-base) tend to be cheaper at similar levels of competence as compared to Warbeasts (Fury-based), so that while Fury is *probably* better as a mechanic than Focus, it doesn't make Hordes armies as a whole necessarily better than Warmachine armies.

Fury was undoubtedly more powerful than Focus in mk2, because Fury management was so good threshold so high, that it didn't involve any risks, hence the nerfs.

In mk3, I would still say that Fury is more powerful, but Warbeasts are worse than Jacks, so it doesn't seem that way.

Threshhold was never high. Frenzy just had a more forgiving version of "lose an activation" in mk2. Losing activations matters, and losing activations to no effect/own-goaling your own models is that and more.

*Gatecrashes Behind You* Nothing Personal, Kid

Who is this steam dream?

So, not to be a dick or to state the obvious or nothin, maybe use something other than a gladiator to get into the zone first?

I like keltarii for first wave into a zone, they tie them up really well.

Well warbeasts are more expensive than warjacks, but I do believe the mauler is well worth its point in comparison to the crusader

>spd 5
>mat 6
>p+s16
>arm 18(20)
>def 12, which is pretty relevant
>fury 5
>rage
I'm sure I've forgotten something since I don't have the cards on me

Hell the bomber probably compares favorably to the vanquisher for a really similar point investment.

I hate that I think he's cool. I even like his model. Fucker.

Two fists is super relevant.