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  1. #1

    Default Questions about hordes/warmachine - New Player

    Hey all, Im going to be selling my tyranid army and will be wanting to start playing warmachines/hordes. Ive been looking at circle, ret or minions. What are the Pros and Cons of each of these. Im leaning towards Circle. Also, what is warmachine really like compared to 40k. I play fantasy also, so if you could connect the dots to either of those 2 games it would be appreciated lol.

    Thanks!

  2. #2

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    Great! I'm primarily a Circle player, and can give you the lowdown on them and Minions - but I'm afraid I'm not well versed in the Warmachine side of the equation yet.

    Circle is tricksy and capable of alot of terrain manipulation - rather like Wood Elves in fantasy. Casters can generate terrain, or mitigate it, or both. Your beasts tend to be fast and have ways to ignore terrain via spells or animi. You also have the option to take the Wolds - stone golems that are slower, but have better armor and the ability to ignore terrain built in. The faction isn't as hard to kill as Khador, and not as brutally damaging as Legion of Everblight, but it specializes in isolatign elements of your opponent's force, and applying force where it can't be struck back.

    Minions, 'm considerably more fuzzy on, but if you want to play full Minions, then your choices are basically Gators (which hit hard, and have pretty good armor) or Pigs (which are fast and hard, but aren't as tough). Minions suffer from not having faction buffs, and just having specific buffs.

    I have no experience with Retribution.

    Warmahordes has a very different style of play from 40k/WFB. Instead of having 'phases' in which everything moves, and then everything shoots, and then everything assaults, W/H has individual model activations, in which one model or unit activates, then moves, shoots, attacks, and then ends it's activation, then you activate another unit. this gives you options like charging with a beast/jack, throwing an intervening model out of the way, then activating a second beast/jack to charge through the new opening into the enemy caster.

    The game also has the 'caster kill' win condition, so if you kill the opposing leader, you win. Much like the king in chess, your warcaster/warlock is your most important model, and losing it will usually lose you the game. Games are much more knife edge than 40k/WFB, and you can pull a win even with nothing left but your caster, so long as you can kill the opposing caster. Simply beating on your opponent's army until he loses more models than you is not a very viable strategy. The game is also set up for you to build and exploit combos. Model A gets bonus slam damage. Model B can cast a spell which increases your range to charge or slam. Model C creates terrain which generates collateral damage from a slam. Use them all together to create big damage combos. It's a more dynamic game overall.

  3. #3

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    I can help out on Retribution. The play a bit differently than the other warmachine races.

    Their Myrmidons (warjacks) are have fairly average stats all-around, but make up for that in utility. Many jacks have both ranged and close-combat attacks that are decent and each also has a 'field dependent' special ability. Their one above-average stat is speed. Even the heavy warjacks move just as fast (or faster) than most light warjacks of other faction. The damage boxes look pretty pathetic compared to other jacks, but the Force field helps mitigate that a lot and prevents early damage to your systems. Be careful, though, once the force field is gone it's pretty easy to start crippling systems.

    The place where Retribution just shines is in their infantry and solos. Most Retribution lists I've seen only run 1 or 2 warjacks even up to 35 points. Magehunter Strike Force and it's UA can just be devastating. especially with snipe cast on them. Battle Mages have a ton of use control the board, Houseguard are cheap as dirt and have several mean tricks, dawnguard are heavily armoured and hit like truck.

    On the solo side of things, Magehunter Assassins are one of the deadliest solos in the game. Huge melee range, weaponmaster, decapitation, stealth, and high defense pretty much means that whatever she hit will die. Even if something does live, unboosted attacks are going to have a little of trouble touching her. But if something does actually manage to lay a hit on her (AOEs are very mean), she'll probably be pummeled into a find, red mist.

    Magisters are very nice for board control and are infantry that can make slams. Arcanists are great mechanics, if a bit squishy. And either Eiryss versions work wonders in retribution.

    Can't really go into specifics in gameplay because each of the casters are pretty varied. However I can say that none of them work all that well with a lot of warjacks. Even Rahn (the high focus one) is very greedy and want to use most of his focus on spells rather than warjacks (though a phoenix for an arcnode and a Manticore/Discordia for two open fists/beatsticks is good).

  4. #4

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    The previous posts have most of it covered, so I'll just add a few other notes about general gameplay:

    1> There's no wargear in Warmachine/Hordes and all armies are lead by a named character. This is something that folks moving from WHFB or 40K sometimes have issues adjusting to. You lose a little bit of the ability to truly make an army your own (although playing "counts as" is still fine as long as model substitutions aren't too confusing), but it's nice to be able to say say "oh, my opponent is playing Baldur today, I'd better not hang out in the woods lest he teleport over here and hit me with that big stone sword..."

    2> Things die in this game. A lot. The only saving throws in the game are for models with the Tough rule, and that's only a 5+. Models with multiple wounds take damage = (attack strenght + die roll) - ARM value, so even the toughest things in the game can get one-shot if you hit them hard enough (never get within charge range of The Butcher, for example).

    3> Shooting is relatively short-ranged. The longest range in the game is 20", and that's on an innacurate mortar that's going for deviated blast damage most of the time. Usual rifle range is 14", 18" with a buff spell (Snipe). Charge ranges in the game are usually 9+ inches, so don't expect multiple rounds of shooting against a melee army. There are ways to make this better by using hit & run tactics and blocking enemy charges with terrain, smoke clouds, disposable infantry, etc.

    4> As mentioned above, the game is almost never over until your leader is dead. You can have your whole army in flaming ruins, your leader down to a single wound left, and if you can pull off some clever tactic to kill the other guy first, you still win. From a story standpoint this may not be that realistic, but from a gameplay standpoint it makes it a lot of fun.

  5. #5
    Battle-Brother
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    Quote Originally Posted by tonyzahn View Post
    4> As mentioned above, the game is almost never over until your leader is dead. You can have your whole army in flaming ruins, your leader down to a single wound left, and if you can pull off some clever tactic to kill the other guy first, you still win. From a story standpoint this may not be that realistic, but from a gameplay standpoint it makes it a lot of fun.
    Kill "the other guy" OR pull a scenario win. Do not forget scenarios. The game becomes much more fun (and brutal) if you play outside plain casterkill.

  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by mazgier View Post
    Kill "the other guy" OR pull a scenario win. Do not forget scenarios. The game becomes much more fun (and brutal) if you play outside plain casterkill.
    True. I usually don't play scenarios except in tourneys, but they do add that extra win condition to mix things up.

  7. #7
    Librarian
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    Let's talk about your factions:

    Minions: Minions are broken up into sub-factions, and as of right now there isn't any crossing the line. You would want to build either a Farrow force or a Gatorman force. Both have interesting play styles.

    Their pros and cons are both in small model selection. You could easily have one of everything available to you, but at the same time, they don't have a lot of options for you to branch out yet.

    Circle: This is a tricky faction that does a lot of terrain control (as in we create forests). They're sort of an alpha strike faction- at least in close combat. You'll want to be hitting your opponent before he hits you. You absolutely cannot play an attrition match with them (except maybe at longer ranges).

    Retribution: They play as something of a denial faction- which is a good thing for them. They have a lot of strong assassination tactics, but you could build your force to go toe to toe with an enemy force pretty well too. Overall, they're easily the most shooty of the factions you've mentioned here, and can get some impressive ranges.


    Coming from 40k, you'll find that the first turn means something completely different, since almost no attacks can get from one deployment zone to the other.

    Another thing you'll notice is that the Warcasters/Warlocks are far more central than any leader you have in other games. Changing the 'caster out will completely alter the way a force plays.

    And since the game goes on until 'caster kill (or scenario victory) there isn't any real focus on attrition, and often you can come out from behind. The circle is pretty good at coming from behind, I've won a lot of games that way.

    www.GardenNinja.com

  8. #8

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    I think everyone's covered everything pretty well. The one thing I'd want to reiterate is that Warmachine and hordes play nothing like 40K and even less like Fantasy. I play all three games and I play them for different reasons. In my opinion, 40K is 'easier' to keep up with as it's rules are more homogenous. A Melta is a melta is a melta...in general. With the latest release of the Warmachine and Hordes rules they've moved in that direction but you're going to find that every unit operates a little differently and it's extremely important you are familiar with your opponents army before a game.

    I believe there's a steeper learning curve with Warmachine and Hordes (that's not to say it's "better" in some way). You'll have to spend some time understanding how each army you're going to face works.

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