Warmachine/Hordes General

Any rumours about Morghoul3?

looking for a photo of a Carnivean converted from the new Proteus resculpt

So I'm looking at getting into warmahordes and picking up some circle orboros. I have some questions before I really jump in:
1. How are circle in the meta right now? I've heard bad things about hordes right now and cygnar running roughshod over the game but how bad is it really? Am I staring down 40k Orks tier or is it at least manageable?
2. Is the new battlegroup worth picking up?
3. Are the command books worth picking up or should I just use the cards that come with the models?

Welcome to the game and on to your questions:

1) Circle is good. Aside from a few choices everything is viable and will only become more so with the proposed changes to the Battle Engine that might unlock Mohsar. Circle was crutching hard on Wormwood at the start of the edition but that is no longer necesary (though he's probably still the best answer to hard gunlines). And to relieve your fear, absolutely nothing in this game is as terribly balanced as 40k. To add to that, experience and tactical expertise trump strong lists 10 times out of 10. In turn that means, you will lose early on and you will lose a lot. if you enjoy learning from your mistakes and slowly unlocking a strategic puzzle, this is the game for you. This requires effort though and without it you will have a bad time.

2) Sure. Tannith is really good, the Pureblood is a staple, the Gorax is one of two models that grant you the valuable animus 'Primal'. I'm not sure about the Wild Argus. As a warning though: The battle box (and any soft resin models by PP) requires a lot of cleaning before you can start painting.

3) Screw the books. Fluff is in the Skull Island Expeditions novels, rules are on the cards or Warroom (and soon online for free) and you can find plenty guidance on painting online.

The first thing I'd tell you as a new player is to ignore the bigger meta and what people talk about being competitive.

Well, not entirely, it's good to ask about what models are good and what aren't, because Warmahorde's internal faction balance tends to be really, really bad. But every faction can win, player skill is a huge, huge factor in this game. So when people are talking about top tier shit, keep in mind that there's a lot of hidden assumptions about your skill at the game behind those.

But in general, models tend to fall into a couple sets

1. Auto include. For Circle, the best example of this would be Sentry Stones

2. Generally useful. Models and units that just about everyone can use well

3. Selectively useful. Warmahordes is a synergy based game, and because of that there is stuff that will be great in some lists but terrible in others

4. Generally bad. Models that are considered to not have a role in any but the most specific situations.

How viable is the Cygnar army box list? The one with Kara and a bunch of trenchers. Doesn't need to be tournament worthy or anything but while I'm learning the game I want to have a chance at winning.

1. Circle are really good. Warmachine dominance is a meme spewed by butthurt players who are mad that warjacks can now compete with warbeasts.

2. Yes. Tanny's a solid caster, the Pureblood is one of the staple offensive warbeasts of Circle, and the Gorax is super useful for its animus.

3. I like the command book, but, eh, if you want to read it for the fluff it's in the OP of this thread.

It's viable. But if you want to learn the game you should not play Sloan as she is 100% braindead.

IKRPG.

Outside of that, zero. Warmahordes simply isn't that kind of game.

Well, that's not exactly true.

Sloan is braindead in the sense of higher level tactics, but she's pretty damn good at teaching warcaster placement and protection.

She's also really good at cutting games short and making them incredibly polarizing. Either you win T2 or you lose T3.

Viable, certainly.

I wouldn't recommend starting the game with Kara Sloan if you're, like many people, picking up the game with a group of friends. Games with Kara tend to be short and seriously unfun for whichever side loses. It's hard to deal with her if you're new to the game.

>push lone Charger out of the way and charge melee bruisers across the otherwise empty flank and onto Kara, now engaged and at half health
>Cygnar player pops feat and guns down all three jacks covering my caster and ends them with max damage on the Stormwall's last two shots

All of my friends play 40k @ a games workshop and so I'd ditch them and go to another hobby store. Probably wouldn't make more friends with a Sloan list is what I'm reading though.

I played it 3 times. My group and I like it a lot, although it definitely changes the game. Journeymen were an advantage so you could hold your side's rectangle with a jack while your caster held your flag. Also ambushing was a huge deal in that mission.

I'm looking to start playing warmachine, because it's the only thing that seems to have any staying power at the local club. I've already got a passing familiarity with the rules from sitting in on games, but I'm not sure who to start with. I'd say Cryx/Khador are tied for first with Cygnar a distant second. Any recommendations?

I'd recommend a different game store where people play better games desu

I live in a remote town in the arctic. There is one LGS. They stock a whole slew of things, but the only event they run is friday night magic.

There is only one gaming club too. We were in the middle of campaigns for Firestorm Armada and Mercs when Warmahordes took off and killed both of them. If I want to get regular games in, it's pretty much Warmahordes or get maybe one or two games of something else a month.

So Cryx/Khador/Cygnar user?

Well if you like Khador you can't go wrong with the Khador battle box. Then play a few games and see where you want to go from there.

What game are you moving to now that PP are trying to ruin this one?

Guild Ball!

infinity hopefully

But it requires the guys to actually want to play instead of just being dead

The meme game where I shitpost in other games' threads to compensate my own butthurt.

Oh wait. That's you.

I think the only thing out of Morghoul3 has been the shitstorm about his titty skorne unit.

From his sales blurb it sounds like he has mirage.

Cool thing is that he's basically the most powerful man in the empire now. Paingivers control all beasts and slaves in the empire, and since Morghoul controls all Paingivers, Morghoul controls the empire. This is perfectly fine since his allegiance is to the Skorne ideal. It's like a competent man finally wormed his way into power.

It's interesting from Makeda's perspective. Morghoul might not be loyal to her personally but he is loyal to the Skorne empire. Putting him in charge of this house undermines people like Rasheth who is surely a thorn in her side. But on the other hand she just concentrated a large amount of the might of the Skorne empire into a single person whose heir might not be as sympathetic to her cause.

>Morghoul
>Heir
Closest he'll get is his prodigy, Xekaar.

Extremely unlikely we'll see custom warcasters. The closest that was even conceptual was in late Mk2 where there was some talk about how the new edition might scrap epic versions of characters in favor of a Malifaux-style upgrade system for casters. Like instead of having three different versions of Stryker, you'd have one, but with the option to buy "On A Horse" or "Angry Rage Armor" or whatever. But they would have still been characters from the fluff.

Worth noting that, for casual games, you can use the IKRPG rules to build a reasonably-balanced facsimile of a warcaster. Someone on the forums a while back worked out how many levels you'd need to make a typical warcaster, 4 pt solo, 6 pt solo, etc.

user, this is Skorne. In this empire, you gotta rack up a bodycount first.

Then when you get the bodycount, you get the Power.

Then when you get the power, THEN you get the Women.

Saw one of the old regulars at my store last night playing 40k. I told him I didn't know he played 40k and he told me "what's the point of playing warmachine when everything is gonna change in SR2017 and nothing I do now can be tournament practice. There's no point in playing Warmachine if it's not for tournaments."

What happened Veeky Forums? How did we get to the point where people are stating matter-of-factly that the game only matters if it's a tournament? This is the same store where people have told me that playing Warmachine cause I like the fluff and models is "doing it wrong". I don't think PP did this, did they? Was it the podcasts or something? I'm just ducking shocked that it's come to this.

He's an idiot. SR2017 is not even in CID.

In the last few years all traditional games have been invaded by people trying to "solve" them. Magic has been hit pretty hard by it too. One thing I'll say about Warmachine though is that some matchups are so fucking awful that not even playing for fluff can compensate. Mordikaar v Karchev will never be a fun match no matter how much fluff there is.

Which model should i assemble tonight, Scaverous or Venethrax?

Scaverous. He kicks ass.

>tfw building Praetorian Swordsmen
Did anyone actually use Swoosemen before the big Skorne errata? Looking at their Mk2 card, they were garbage who just clogged the board up in a much worse way than Nihilators. Then at the start of Mk3 they increased their posts cost but didn't actually make them any better apart from their RNG going from 0.5 to 1. I just don't see why anyone would use them without MAT7 and mini feat WM. Just like holy shit man, MAT6 on your faction's bread and butter melee infantry, in a melee focused faction?

Warmachine is old now, the casuals have moved onto other games. The people play warmachine for the competitive nature.

What are the casually played games?

What does that even mean? There are dozens of games older than warmachine that people play casually. What does age age have to do with it?

Warmachines core market is competitive players unlike say 40k which is entirely based on casual players. After about 10 years competitive games fall away unless their entire deal is a constant rerolling of their stuff (i.e. Magic)

>40k
>Entirely casual

Are you sure about that?

40k's balance is based on casuals. You can play a casual game competitively but that doesn't make it a competitive game.

I'm just trying to find out what the criteria for a competitive game is. It can't be balance because PP is as atrociously bad at it as most other miniatures games.

Speaking of which, what's the odds that the Grymkin will be any good? I've got my fingers crossed but I'm not very optimistic.

Ah the dedicated troll is back. You can even read the Grymkin rules whenever the fuck you want. So why don't you go do that instead?

I don't know...

At the ripe old gamer age of 30 I've played and collected dozens of wargames, never kept any of them. Always moved onto bigger and better games.

Warmachine was the last game I had interest in. They have dumbed the game down to the point where I have no interest in it.

I don't know where to go from here. I sit and wait for things to get better i guess?

Maybe some day I can field all 60 of my doom reavers or field my triple colossal list again.

>I'm just trying to find out what the criteria for a competitive game is
Steamroller rules and lots of tournaments, that's it.
Literally anything can be competitive provided you give people a framework to organize tournaments around and encourage said tournaments.

Balance as you said has nothing to do with it. In fact a significant number of competitive players love doing imbalanced shit.

Attach clock to 40k, streamline rules by removing too complex and rng shit, get rid of some time bloats like rolling buckets of dice and you'll get a passable tournament game.

How have they dumbed it down? Did you frequently use headlocks in games? The game feels a lot more like chess to me now. I know what my opponent's stuff does and what it can reach, and it's my job to position myself around it while bearing things like objectives and assassinations in mind. I can trade pieces, their value goes up and down depending on the situation (Orin protecting my caster etc.). It doesn't feel dumbed down at all to me.

I wouldn't hold too much hope out for either of those things. If that's what you're hoping for it's probably best to take a break. If they do make a Doom Reaver theme it'll probably discount their UA and the only current faction that can triple colossal that I know of is Ret (and neither caster who can do it particularly wants to).

Makes sense. So it has more to do with a company laying down infrastructure for actually playing the game in an organized fashion than anything inherent in the game itself?

>How have they dumbed it down?
Don't bother. He obviously hasn't played it yet. It's what all of the theory-only fags say.

Maybe you should try thinking for yourself. The rules have to be clear (no/very little room for discussion), fast and balanced. 40k has none of these properties and warma/hordes at least had them.
GW is trying to this right now with the rework of necromunda and the fantasy arena skirmish. They explicitly state to design them with competitive play in mind.

>How have they dumbed it down?
>I know what my opponent's stuff does >and what it can reach

You didnt understand that stuff before because the game was difficult and had plenty of non linear and unexpected threats. They pruned things like double teleporting, ball busting feats, and other interactions for a casual audience.

There are small things too in all the casters

For expample Sorscha1 with out spell support could be incredibly difficult to play, often you end up relying on the feat for a caster kill from down town. After a while of using her you began to understand her strengths and weaknesses, you understood the value in a support piece like silly will.

In mk3 they said fuck it, why not reliably let her do it all on her own if you want to play it safe, or be able to freeze multiple units, and if you cant use her feat correctly because your a sloppy player you can just double cast perhaps one of the most powerful spells in thr gamr on feat turn just to be sure.

>Asking for different points of view means you can't think for yourself

Okay

Anybody toss up a No Quarter 71 link yet?

>Making the game more balanced is dumbing it down
Yeah I'm sure Banez and Legion feat bullshit was all well and good for those Skorne and Minions players who had to settle for being stomped every game. If only we could go back to those days eh, fellow Cryx player?

>they balanced my OP shit so the game is dumbed down
Boo. Hoo. It's better than ever. We will not mourn your loss faggot. Now fuck off.

>Talkin bout complexity
>Uses MK2 battlebox caster as example

Strawman argument

strawman response

I seriously don't understand the mk3 hate.
Do you guys seriously think Haley double wall, gaspy2, bradigus, calandra, and a bunch of other cheesy lists were fun to play against?

I've played mercs since mid mk2 and the only way we could be competitive were these cheesy lists that relied on our colossal.
Sure I spent a few bucks into models I'll never use again but the lists I can field now are much more interesting than stacking a bunch of buff models, shoot and go.

I think if you removed

a) People who went full-tilt pay-to-win in Mk2, building overpowered stuff specifically to win games to feed their tiny egos and now have to either do that again with the new FotMs or actually lose games

and

b) trolls

More than 90% of the Mk3 bitching would go away.

I mean, I've got a friend that when I was showing him the game in Mk2, before looking at rules and just flipping through pictures, pointed at Gaspy2 and said "Him. He looks awesome, I want to play him", did so, and was bummed at Mk3, but he still plays Gaspy2 because he's fun and still awesome-looking. And I've seen people walk out of the LGS with a dozen Mad Dogs and then tilt when they got nerfed.

You're building a nice strawman there.

If someone plays competitively and his objective is to play the best possible list against other people playing the best possible lists it's not that they have a small dick. It's that they're actual men who enjoy competing with each other instead of little girls wanting mummy cuddling with their crappy lists.

The world would be a better place if more people tried to be competitive at what they did instead of jerking off in a corner over how much better they are then the people who enjoy the game on a deeper level than they do.

Then stop crying when your toys get balanced.

A lot of it is probably due to PP's shifty, rather deceptive behavior around the time of Mk3's release. The new edition is, on the whole, probably an improvement, but the actual release was a complete shambles and PP didn't help their case by pushing the "everything is fine, we playtested for three years, it's working as intended" angle and antagonising people who felt their factions had been left floundering with the #designspace memes.

>You're building a nice strawman there.

It's an ad hominem, you ignorant fuckwaffle. I literally said the people complaining were either trolls or ego-feeding assholes, that's not a strawman, that's poisoning the well. Learn your fucking logical fallacies before making yourself look stupid.

If I had said "what people are really complaining about is X, and X is wrong", *that's* a strawman. No, I'm directly attacking the complainers, which is an ad hominem, and specifically poisoning the well because I'm attributing qualities to them (trolls and ego-feeding assholes), saying you shouldn't listen because of those properties while largely ignoring their arguments.

>If someone plays competitively and his objective is to play the best possible list against other people playing the best possible lists it's not that they have a small dick. It's that they're actual men who enjoy competing with each other instead of little girls wanting mummy cuddling with their crappy lists.

Yeah, and most of the people I know who play like that adapted and play new competitive shit. It was the win-to-feel-better-about-themselves people who tilted -- in my experience at least.

Well this is just an anecdote but still.
Well my local games club used to be majority warmahordes players but now everyone has moved on to other systems except like 1 guy and the 2 people who occasionally play him. I didn't start playing until very recently but from what I've seen nearly everyone has had more than half their models made useless, not balanced but useless. The overall faction designs seem "better" but to get into that "better" space you have to shell out for a collection of models you wouldnt have because they sucked in mk2. Like i saw a guy who felt so betrayed he actually went back to 40k saying GW takes your money in greedy ways but PP had done worse than anything GW was capable of. Anyway that's what I've seen don't know if it relates to the overall or not.

So, odds on a dynamic errata today?

Wat? Why?

Where's our Friendly Cryxian Pirate with the No Quarter?

Storm Lances are gonna get Maddogged.

Do you have anything to back that up?

My desperate, fervent hopes?

>Saying people only play competitive lists because it strokes their ego to get easy wins isn't a strawman

HAHAHAHA. Is it any wonder Warmachine is dying when this is what the community thinks?

>implying implications
We're far better off without asshurt faggots like you. Now go pick a different thread to shitpost in. Or hell, maybe even play that amazing new game you switched to.

Warnachine is dying because most of its model range is still metal and nobody likes metal models. Or at least that's what i tell myself when i get fed up with dealing with bullshit metal models.

Out of curiosity, what faction do you play? Because I play Skorne and Lances were never really an issue. On the other hand pre-nerf Una2 is something I was glad to have dodged.

Ok, fuckwaffle, back to the lesson about logical fallacies.

I never said that people only play competitive lists to stroke their ego.

I said that the people *complaining* are mostly people that play competitive lists to stroke their ego, which as I've already pointed out is ad hominem/poisoning the well.

Misrepresenting my argument and attacking it, though -- *is* a strawman.

Rumors about incoming Storm Lance nerf in last thread.

Perusing the rules forum this morning I noticed a few notes from infernals about how wording is going to change in the next errata.

PP prefers to drop errata on Wednesdays.

>a) People who went full-tilt pay-to-win in Mk2, building overpowered stuff specifically to win games to feed their tiny egos and now have to either do that again with the new FotMs or actually lose games

Go back to your Sargon videos with your fallacies.jpg arguments.

A lot of people prefer metal models. If I recall Infinity is all metal and yet is growing fast.

Ignore the trolls, wmhg is on-again-off-again infested with them for some reason.

What's your preferred playstyle?
or
What faction pleases you more aesthetically? Undead zombie pirate liches or steampunk unscrupulous Russians?

Khador is a little bit more straightforward to play (not to say that they're without tricks), and Cryx has a little bit of a learning curve if you want to git gud. Their casters are generally good to really good, but a bit lacking in the troop and guns department.

Read the entire post, fuckwaffle. I never said all people who play competitively are ego-strokers, just that ego-strokers and trolls make up 80% of the complaints about Mk3.

Seriously? How! Its so much harder to work with/convert, they scratch, they weigh more, They always have less detail and assembly is a bitch.
What is the upside?

They weigh more is an upside. They're not less detailed. They tend to be easier to build (not having 15 million plastic parts for muh unique smass mareen). They don't scratch at all unless you're throwing them around.

It's like the new generation never learned with anything but GW plastics and can't work with metal, which is a nicer material to work with overall IMO.

Apart from Idrians, what's the best infantry to bring along with Feora2? I've used an unit of daughters (pretty content with their performance) and a min unit of Exemplar Errants (not really convinced here).

Should I consider Cleansers to try to light more things on fire or just screw it and go with more jacks (we're playing 50 pts currently and I've often just brought 2 heavies and 2 lights).

I don't trust the rumors posted here. In fact there are almost no reliable rumor sources online for WMH.

Anecdotes =/= evidence. Best way to check it out is playing and comparing some MK2 cards I guess.

PP has had a case of doublenerfs to things they think need fixing. They seem to have gotten better at that (see Una2 dynamic update) very recently (so I hope they avoid the double/triple nerfs in the future). So in the transition some slightly or batshit OP shit got downgraded (bane thralls seem to be the worst offender), other underperforming models were buffed.

A lot of units that were autoincludes in MK2 aren't autoinclude anymore, choice seems to have been broadened and the autoincludes of yesteryear are still viable choices in most cases as I see it (big exception: bane riders).

The betrayal that that guy felt => he was probably already looking to quit WMH if he felt that bad. I would take it with a giant bag of salt. Do some testgames and find out for yourself if it's worse or better.

Other than that.... things change I guess. I think things got way better in the transition, despite/thanks to the redesigning of a lot of units. Couldn't be happier that Stormblade Infantry is playable, as are Praetorian Ferox and MoW shocktroops and actual viable choices to consider.

One of the only things I think sticks out atm are storm lances.

The problem is that most metal kits from Warmahorde I have put together (or seen friends do it) have way worse sculpts. Especially the old jack models are small and lumpy. My friend has a metal Stormclad and just got a plastic Reliant kit. The Reliant is straight up larger and looks way better than the Stormclad. Heck, for some reason the light jack Thorn is as big as the Stormclad (even though he is also metal. A newe r sculpt I guess?)

That's just because some of those models were created in the first days of PPs existance. Their modern metal models are pretty good.

If you want to go all 'jack all the time-route, pick zealots to run interference. If you're looking for a unit to do work: vengers.

Sunburst artillery and cleansers can help you get your feat lit up. Be wary of trolls though, the stone can make their shit immune to continuous effects

Does Veeky Forums like Harkevich?

He almost got me into Khador. Almost.