warmachine, whats it like?

[doom-kitten]

To be honest I thought the OP sounded very much like a commericail and it amused me, I'd don't know much about companies but I've played Warmachine for about a year now with my awesome Cygnar guys and I have to say I've never run into a scenario I haven't enjoyed. Was horribly shocked and irked howver when a unit of bile thralls self destructed and wiped out all my stormguard thats was bad 3 uglies denotated and bye bye stormgaurd. I find it to be rather fast paced which is great as I can play it quickly and during a limited time span such as break and tournaments can have more games due to a lower demand on timings. And it's looks really good on the table top sure the jacks are rather top bulky and some look silly like the ironclad how that thing says upright is a mystery actually you could that about almost every cygnar heavy jack. But all in all it's a great game very enjoyable and relatively easy to pick up.

[Denzark]

I am a long term 40k player and joined a group that played Warmachine (also the pre-painted mechwarrior stuff). So I played a couple of timees to be polite. Some thoughts (I caveat this was 1sted warmachine).

1. I liked the minatures, and the fact you can get by with £100 or much less to get an entire army.
2. The game system was OK - yes very 'tight' by which I mean unconfusing rules without the ambiguity of 40K.

However:

3. Our average battles seemed to take place in a close knit confines - 5-7 turns of 40K might not get you much manouevre but you get more than the 'straight up the middle' feel of WM.
4. The entire battle had a 'quidditch Golden snitch' type vulnerability - kill the opposing spellcaster fella and you would normally win.

Warmachine was an amusing diversion when you wanted a skirmish game with not many units, and many decisions for each unit. It lets you play more tactics but less strategy.

Recommendation? If you want an all arms battle where no one part of the table is the focus for winning (unless a special mission condition) 40K is your thing. If you want skirmishes, play necromunda. If you want average steam-punk renta-fluff and you hate GW, you could do worse than WM.

[DarkLink]

I heard a good analogy somewhere I can't remember, that went something like this: Warhammer 40k is like playing guitar hero, and Warmachine is like playing a real guitar.

If you want to just hang out with friends and have fun, you can just pick up and play 40k. Skill is variable. You can play it on high difficulties, but it won't ever quite approach the skill required to play an actual guitar. You play it because you don't need to have that skill. You and your friends can form a band right on the spot and start rockin', something you can't always do with an actual guitar.

It's not a perfect analogy, but I like it.



I'll also add that at both the scale of 40k and of warmachine, there's not a huge amount of strategy in either. It usually comes down to "I can kill him in melee, so I'm going to charge", or "I can outshoot him so I'll kite his army a bit", or something pretty simple like that. Once you've decided on your basic approach, then everything comes down to tactics, where Warmachine becomes like chess to 40k's checkers.