Hi everyone,

I just had my first 1 vs 1 game against horde and I was hoping to get some comments from the community.

I'm a bit confused about the balance of Jacks vs beasts.

while Jacks are limited by the amount of focus they can have, and is available for them to get, Warbeasts seem to have no such limits, able to get free hits and free boosts until they have killed everything.
I understand that each time they do these free actions they gain fury, that the caster then can take and dump, but it does not seem like this is much of a limit at all.

I fought vs Skorne with 4 beasts and had a very dull game as his beasts just ploughed through everything in their path, boosting and gaining extra attacks until what ever they were fighting was dead.

Is this normal for hordes armies, and how am I meant to actually fight against that other then just running away with a shooty list and pick them apart from range? (I see that most hordes beasts have no ranged attacks)

I dunno... I guess I'm missing something big here but after that game I'm rather discouraged from fighting vs hordes again with anything less then a full shooting list :(

Warbeasts actually have a limit on how much fury they can generate, though it's usually higher than the 3-focus limit for 'Jacks. It's usually 4 Fury (for heavy warbeasts) and less for smaller ones.
The counterpart is that losing beasts is much more painful than losing 'jacks most of the time, as losing Fury generators can be crippling where having more Focus for your caster can be helpful

 aprilmanha wrote:
Hi everyone,

I just had my first 1 vs 1 game against horde and I was hoping to get some comments from the community.

I'm a bit confused about the balance of Jacks vs beasts.

while Jacks are limited by the amount of focus they can have, and is available for them to get, Warbeasts seem to have no such limits, able to get free hits and free boosts until they have killed everything.
I understand that each time they do these free actions they gain fury, that the caster then can take and dump, but it does not seem like this is much of a limit at all.

I fought vs Skorne with 4 beasts and had a very dull game as his beasts just ploughed through everything in their path, boosting and gaining extra attacks until what ever they were fighting was dead.

Is this normal for hordes armies, and how am I meant to actually fight against that other then just running away with a shooty list and pick them apart from range? (I see that most hordes beasts have no ranged attacks)

I dunno... I guess I'm missing something big here but after that game I'm rather discouraged from fighting vs hordes again with anything less then a full shooting list :(

Was the person taking all of the focus on their Warlock? Because if there is any fury left on the warbeast, they have to make a frenzy check (roll under their Threshold).

The first time you play against Hordes, it can seem unfair, but it's basically a long game vs. short game type deal. If you wipe out all his beasts, he has to cut (do points of damage) himself for fury. If he wipes out your warjacks, you still get all your focus and are very dangerous.

If this was a battlebox game, don't worry too much about it. The game starts to be much more balanced at 25+ points and less susceptible to these sort of match ups.

The game was a 35 point game, Menoth VS Skorne.
I was just amazed how much damage Hordes can do.

Also not really sure what the point of the fury mechanic is since the Warlock can just take all the generated fury and dump it if he can't hold it all, making it near impossible for frenzy to happen?

Maybe it was a special Warlock ability his Skorne lock had that let him take the 12 or so fury... I don't know. Its just discoraging

I need to find more less competitive players O_o I stopped playing w40K so much because there was so much list competition going on

 aprilmanha wrote:
The game was a 35 point game, Menoth VS Skorne.
I was just amazed how much damage Hordes can do.

Also not really sure what the point of the fury mechanic is since the Warlock can just take all the generated fury and dump it if he can't hold it all, making it near impossible for frenzy to happen?

Maybe it was a special Warlock ability his Skorne lock had that let him take the 12 or so fury... I don't know. Its just discoraging

I need to find more less competitive players O_o I stopped playing w40K so much because there was so much list competition going on

Uh, that bolded part, no he can't. The warlock HAS to take all the fury generated up to his Fury stat. The rest gets left on the beast. If there is ANY fury on the beast, they make a Frenzy check.

There are some abilities that prevent this, but I don't know of any that allows Skorne to do that.

My first ever demo game was similar, although I was the one using Skorne and iirc my mate was Cygnar. After that game we both had the same doubts about playing the two games vs each other and we decided to stick to Warmachine only as we were only going to be playing each other. I went Cryx, he went Cygnar.

Years later we both have those same armies as well as a Hordes faction each and neither of us bat an eye at playing Warmahordes now. And we even get regular games against other opponents too!

It's just a case of learning what each system offers and cracking the Focus/Fury management.

Edit: just saw your new post... that's an issue!

If you are a Warmachine player, you will say - wow! beasts are so powerful! They can make so many attacks!

If you are a Hordes player, you will say - wow! Warcasters are so powerful! They have such awesome spells and feats!

It does sound like something peculiar may have been going on with the fury rules in your game, though. You should make sure you both understand the rules there. Basically, in the control phase a warlock can take fury points from beasts in their battlegroup until they have as many fury as their FURY stat ("leach" is the game term for this). They can't just take infinite fury points and then "drop them" (a warlock can drop fury points, but only during their own activation, not during the control phase).

That said, Skorne's main deal is that their beasts hit obscenely hard, maybe harder than anything else in the game, so you should expect stuff to die if their shenanigans are unimpeded.

Skorne have a cheap specialist unit devoted to fury control. They have rather explosive turns and are well-know as the heaviest hitters in general.

I find comparing aspects between warmachine and hordes tends to reveal an unbalanced arrangement no matter what your comparing. The games only even out when viewed as a whole.

Yeah, I think my problem is playing with someone who is a bit TO competitive.

Admittedly last time I played him, he played Cygar and was upkeeping Snipe with his caster on 4 different units a turn....

 aprilmanha wrote:
Yeah, I think my problem is playing with someone who is a bit TO competitive.

Admittedly last time I played him, he played Cygar and was upkeeping Snipe with his caster on 4 different units a turn....

That is not being competitive, that is cheating.

You can only have a single instance of a upkeep spell in play at any time. He could never upkeep four instances of Snipe at the same time.

 aprilmanha wrote:
Yeah, I think my problem is playing with someone who is a bit TO competitive.

Admittedly last time I played him, he played Cygar and was upkeeping Snipe with his caster on 4 different units a turn....

Well that's not being competitive, that's downright cheating...

Ninja'ed by keeping the page open for ages and not refreshing!

 aprilmanha wrote:
Yeah, I think my problem is playing with someone who is a bit TO competitive.

Admittedly last time I played him, he played Cygar and was upkeeping Snipe with his caster on 4 different units a turn....

Yeah, sounds like someone is playing fast and loose with the rules. You may want to see if there is a Press Ganger in the area, have them swing by. Most of those issues will be corrected with a little supervised play.

I think the best thing is just be more selective with my the people I play with

Its no fun when people care about winning

Everyone should care about winnning. You should just be careful in playing with the attitude that "winining is the only important thing and it doesn't matter how I do it."

I think if something seems a bit weird to you, don't be afraid to ask to see the rules about it, either on the card or in the book, or both. Either you'll learn the rules better or you'll find out the thing didn't actually work in the first place.

I play with the attitude "Winning is not important, only having a fun game is"

Unfortunately getting effectively curb stomped is no fun for anyone (Not for me cause there is nothing for me to do other then repack my models, and I assume not for the other person cause they only have like 1 turn of doing anything)

First couple times I played Hordes I got stomped. It's frustrating when you have 3 focus max and they have 5 fury. Next time with your Menoth have your vassal put enliven on your jack. That will save him from getting smashed

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/How_Fury_works_in_Hordes

Have a look at that guide as to how fury works and what the downside is.

One of the PP staff said "The objective of the game is to win. The point of the game is to have fun." Now, to help with that I would recommend finding somebody to guide you through the game as others have suggested. Where abouts are you in the UK as I might be able to point you to a group to help?

I play mostly in Worcester Wargames and a Club in Redditch, I don't really want to go further afield then that really anyway, going to clubs is stressful enough

Edit: I've had a look at the fury rules a bit closer now and it does seem to be... kill the horde in one go before they attack, because if they start attacking they will be rolling in so much fury they can kill everything.
Seems like its a very staggered mechanic, which favours going all or nothing, with either you are attacking and creating more fury to make more attacks, or not attacking and have no fury to do any attacks...

I think I'm going to stick to playing Just Warmachine, which feels much more balanced with the focus limits having casters creates.

I know the rules and all, but it does SEEM like when I play against Hordes, they just keep rolling dice until I die. I haven't had a single fun game against Hordes yet.

(Yes, I know, I just need to learn more about them and I'm doing it, but it is a slower process than I'd like.)

When playing against hordes, cripple the beasts and you'll cripple the caster.

Compared to warjacks, beasts tend to be far weaker in taking a hit. Even the most tanky of Beasts can't take as much punishment as a regular heavy. Once he gets low on beasts, then he'll have no fury left. Whereas a caster can survive quite well without and jacks.

Here is how Fury works.

Warlocks and Warbeasts both have a FURY stat.

Warlocks start the game with Fury equal to their FURY stat. They use this in the same way as focus to boost and buy attacks, cast spells, heal themselves, etc... Defensively, Fury is used to transfer damage the warlock takes to a beast in its control area instead of granting additional armor. The warlock counts as still having suffered damage, and all effects triggered upon being hit. The final difference with Fury is that, during its activation, a warlock can spend 1 fury point to heal 1 damage point on any of his warbeasts that are in his control area.

During their activation, a warbeast can be forced if it within its warlock's control area. When a warbeast is forced, you place 1 fury point on it. A beast must be forced to charge, boost+buy attacks, or make power attacks. Many beasts also have additional abilities they can be forced to trigger, like a Warpwolf triggering Regeneration. All Warbeasts also have an Animus, which is basically a primeval magical ability the beast has inherently. To cast its animus, a beast must also be forced for the amount specified in the Animus. A warlock also can cast the animus of any of his beasts that are in his control area, if he does so the animus counts as both an animus and a spell. If a beast casts it it is only an animus.

A warbeast cannot have more Fury on it than its FURY stat. Most heavy beasts are Fury4, there are some like the Skorne Bronzeback or all Dire Trolls that are FURY5. Most lights are FURY3, but there are some that have 2 or 4. A Warlock also cannot transfer damage to a beast that has Fury on it equal to its FURY stat.

During the Control phase, a warlock may siphon a number of fury from his warbeasts in his control area up to his FURY stat. Unlike Focus, Fury carries over from turn to turn. You don't lose all Fury and then siphon. If you kept fury on your warlock it will reduce the fury you can siphon. If, after siphoning, any warbeasts still have fury points on them you must check to see if they frenzy. You roll 2D6+the number of fury still on the beast and compare it to the beasts Threshold stat. If its equal or under, the beast doesn't frenzy. If it is over, the beast frenzies. TLR it immediately activates and attacks a random model in its melee range or it charges the nearest visible model and makes 1 fully boosted attack with its highest pow melee weapon. If it frenzies, you can then choose to remove any number of fury points from the beast. It may not activate again this turn.

Thats the downside of Fury as opposed to Focus.

Beasts do generally get more attacks. however, in general beasts have a lower P+S on their attacks than warjacks do. They also have less armor and hitboxes. Going all out on your beasts can mean you'll lose total control over them next turn. Beasts are also usually higher point cost than similar Warjacks, and you have to take more of them.

Warlocks also become crippled if they lose all their warbeasts because they lose the ability to generate fury unless they suffer 1 point of damage in the control phase to generate 1 fury. They also lose the animi of beasts that die, and since warlocks generally only have 3-4 spells instead of 5-7 that warcasters have they can lose a lot of abilities.

Beasts have less health, lower armor and tend to hit softer per hit than warjacks. They tend to have more attacks, better defense, tend to cost more and have the ability to heal. You need to understand this to start learning how to deal with them. As a menoth player you have a lot of tools to deal with them. You can emphasize your elite infantry and tear him apart with dozens of weapon masters. If you want to emphasize your jacks, you can deny magic, shooting, charges and then mop him up with some of the strongest hitting jacks in the game after they get buffed up. You also have the ability to strip animus and upkeeps. Skorne hits hard, very hard, but you need to learn your faction because you have everything you need to destroy skorne.

Ok so Horde emphasizes the Win Big or go home aspect, they either hit hard, and in so doing get to hit harder, or get shot down before they can get going and die.

Seems to one sided to me I think. going to stick to playing warmachine

Its not really onesided. Warmachine has better infantry, and one on one jacks are better than beasts. Hordes has worse infantry, they have to take more beasts, and they suffer if they lose them.

The games are balanced together. Fury is a little more forgiving than Focus thats all.

 aprilmanha wrote:
Ok so Horde emphasizes the Win Big or go home aspect, they either hit hard, and in so doing get to hit harder, or get shot down before they can get going and die.

No, that is not how Hordes and Fury works.

A Warlock will have to keep his warbeasts generating fury each turn so that he can use that Fury to cast his spells. The trick with hordes is in maintaining the balance between generating enough Fury for the Warlock to function, but not to generate too much Fury that he can't leach it all out of his Warbeasts.

If the can't remove all the Fury from his Warbeasts then each Warbeast that still has fury points will have to take a Threshold test and if it fails then the Warbeast's activation will be spent making a single attack on the nearest eligible model that can even be one of his own.

First time playing hordes always seems like it is overpowered. My advice is to make sure you learn the rules for hordes as well, especially for warlocks and their beasts. Once you learn how their rules work you can take advantage of them.

IMO, if you are still relatively new it isn't such a bad idea to get a Hordes battlebox just to play them a little. A battlebox is cheap and let's you learn the mechanics.

Or at very least print the free quick star hordes rules off the PP website. That has all you'd need to know how Fury works.

I play Skorne and Menoth, I don't own the hordes rulebook, just the warmachine one.

And I've played one demo game, yet own both rule books haha.

I don't think avoiding Hordes will help, you need to practice against it. It's really not overpowered against Warmachine, just works differently. Avoiding hordes altogether seems like a bit of a cop out really.

 aprilmanha wrote:
Seems to one sided to me I think. going to stick to playing warmachine

It doesn't really work that way. Noone 'just' plays Warmachine or Hordes. It is really the same game.

If you go to "Warmachine night" at your LGS there will probably be both. If you go to a tourney there will be both.

As I said, I'd get the rules (even the quick start rules, though I am pretty sure they don't cover everything) and when you get the chance to play against them take it.

Also, if you do think that hordes is that much more powerful or fits your style better then play a hordes army! Pretty much all my friends who play have multiple armies including at least one hordes and one warmachine.

It's worth mentioning that transfers, animus, and frenzies make beasts very different.

With transfers, their warlock will always have the same stats, but they can burn fury to transfer damage. This might mean that you don't have the setup to kill a heavy or two, but can wail on the warlock with old man stats and do heavy damage to the beasts.

Frenzy is a big deal too. If you can mess with the enemy fury management (kill the squishy specialized units that can remove fury), then you up the chance that the beasts will frenzy. They'll get one more attack...then can't do anything that turn. Even if they don't, they have to keep fury on them, making them less effective.

Animus are a big thing too. They are extra spells for the warlock while the beast is alive and are commonly extra buffs to stack with upkeeps. But if a beast is casting it's animus then that's less fury for attacks.

As mentioned before, it seems lopsided (and your opponent probably cheated), but warjacks and warcasters are more powerful on their own. If you attrition down, you'll have the advantage over a warlock almost every time.

Consider also that warbeasts have lower-POW weapons and are a lot more expensive. Six-point workhorse heavy warbeasts don't exist the way six-point workhorse heavy warjacks do; in Circle all the heavies I use are at least nine points. Warcasters also generate the Focus on their own so you can run with a smaller battlegroup and keep playing late-game when a warlock would have to start cutting to keep enough Fury to do stuff.

This question is a grass-is-greener thing; I started with Hordes and spent a long time grumbling that the Warmachine 'casters were all better and they could keep buying/boosting out of their 'caster's control area.

One other, IMHO, important piece of advice. If you start attacking a beast make sure that you can finish it off. A warbeast with one circle left can be healed for 2 points and be as good a new as far as offensive capabilities go.

 aprilmanha wrote:


I just had my first 1 vs 1 game against horde and I was hoping to get some comments from the community.

I'm a bit confused about the balance of Jacks vs beasts.

Don't be. They’re not meant to be directly compared. Beasts, essentially are better than jacks, but they’re also far more vital and necessary within a Hordes army. Fury is better than focus, but has far more hoops to jump through. Look. A warjack is a heavy hitter. ‘concentrated force’ essentially. A warbeast is a heavy hitter, wound sink, fury generator, and an animus. Kill a warjack, and you kill a heavy hitter. Big deal. I’ll send in infantry. Kill a warbeast and you take out so much more. As you kill beasts, hordes armies decrease in efficiency and effectiveness. They lose out against WM armies in the attrition game. Remember as well, hordes armies pay the ‘fury tax’, in that their beasts cost more than our jacks, and they must take more of them. So you have to take proportionally more, proportionally more expensive models. And Warmachine generally has superior infantry options on top of this to back up their jacks. Hordes armies generally field far less infantry, so their beasts are forced (ha, pun) to do far more heavy lifting. So yes, they’re better than jacks, but they’re also more important, and needed to do far more.

In that sense, comparing them is kinda pointless.

 aprilmanha wrote:


while Jacks are limited by the amount of focus they can have, and is available for them to get, Warbeasts seem to have no such limits, able to get free hits and free boosts until they have killed everything.
I understand that each time they do these free actions they gain fury, that the caster then can take and dump, but it does not seem like this is much of a limit at all.

Theres more to it than that though, to be fair. They’re not ‘free’ hits or boosts. Every attack/boost generates fury, and all beasts have a fury cap. They can only be ‘pushed’ so far. Warlocks cant ‘take it and dump’ either; in the following turn, warlocks can only leach up to their own stat worth of fury (so if you have a 7 fury warlock sitting on 2 fury at the start of the control phase, he can leach up to 5 fury from his beasts. The rest stays on them and forces frenzy tests). The rest stays on the beasts and potentially causes them to frenzy, with the effect that the owning player loses control of them for a turn. I’ve lost games because of frenzy. It is a big deal.

 aprilmanha wrote:

I fought vs Skorne with 4 beasts and had a very dull game as his beasts just ploughed through everything in their path, boosting and gaining extra attacks until what ever they were fighting was dead.

Yup. The hordes alpha strike is brutal when you present your whole army to him to tear apart in one go. But I’m pretty sure your opponent was doing things wrong too. Then again, where were you with proper positioning and bait/tarpit units to soak up his charges and attacks? How were they ploughing through everything, and why weren't you dealing with the beasts? Answer those questions and you are well on your way in learning how to play against hordes.

 aprilmanha wrote:

Is this normal for hordes armies, and how am I meant to actually fight against that other then just running away with a shooty list and pick them apart from range? (I see that most hordes beasts have no ranged attacks)

Only when you play poorly!

Well, start by not presenting your whole army to his in one turn for a colossal alpha strike. When facing hordes, you need to remember how vital beasts are. You don’t nickel and dime them. You focus on one until it dies. When facing hordes, you need to play the attrition game. Its generally understood that hordes is superior early game, warmachine is superior late game. So you need to get to the late game. Stop charges with control feats/spells so you’re the one hitting him first. Bait his charges with sacrificial units and take them out with your second wave. Engage with an obnoxious tarpit (especially something with tough, or high def) disable and kill his beasts. His whole army becomes less effective as you do. Secondly, its easier to gang up on hordes armies. Their footprint is often smaller than WM armies. In your game, he had 4 beasts. Assuming they’re titans, that’s basically 30pts tied up in four models. At 35pts my khador lists typically will have 2 maxed out squads of black dragons with Fangnik solo support – that’s 26 models on the table that eat beasts for breakfast. I know I can play his game. That’s very little left over in terms of beast support, or infantry. Having some decent melee tarpits or bruisers will both soak up their attacks, and ultimately attrition them out, and take them down in short order.

Oh, and make sure your opponent is playing by the rules. Yours isn’t…

 aprilmanha wrote:

I dunno... I guess I'm missing something big here but after that game I'm rather discouraged from fighting vs hordes again with anything less then a full shooting list :(

Yup, youre missing something. Its all part of learning though. Thing is, against hordes, you simply have to play a different kind of game than against WM armies. In your games thus far, you didn’t.

If I can ask, what army do you field?

Deadnight wrote:


If I can ask, what army do you field?

Well I got khador, menoth, cygar, a small cryx army, a tiny retribution army and some circle models for pasinting.

 aprilmanha wrote:

Deadnight wrote:


If I can ask, what army do you field?

Well I got khador, menoth, cygar, a small cryx army, a tiny retribution army and some circle models for pasinting.

You have no reason to fear hordes with any of those armies. Khador and menoth have brutal, hard hitting infantry and great staying power. The menites especially have lots of sneaky tricks to hand with self sacrifice etc. retribution and cygnar have solid control, and whilst they're not melee brutes (ret is a step above cygnar though), they have enough punch to see through beasts, especially when their guns are factored in. Cryx in General is just nasty. Apply banes with deneghra or skarre.

Do any armies really have a reason to fear Hordes?

 ImAGeek wrote:
Do any armies really have a reason to fear Hordes?

Ones controlled by me obviously
My armies are female first and foremost, so if an army has a female unit they will get taken over any male units (even if the males are "Better").
So my Cygar are the 2 female journeyman casters and alot of jacks, my menoth are daughters of the flame, my khador seem to be mostly guys :(
I need to get cards for them Cygar though, missing the cards for the jacks so can't field them much!

 aprilmanha wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Do any armies really have a reason to fear Hordes?

Ones controlled by me obviously
My armies are female first and foremost, so if an army has a female unit they will get taken over any male units (even if the males are "Better").
So my Cygar are the 2 female journeyman casters and alot of jacks, my menoth are daughters of the flame, my khador seem to be mostly guys :(
I need to get cards for them Cygar though, missing the cards for the jacks so can't field them much!

What does that have to do with anything?

Well nothing for the most part.
It just limits the units I would consider adding to my army.
Like my Cryx Satyxis Raiders group, if they need some Bane Knights to deal with a type of foe... they won't get them

Right so you're deliberately limiting yourself in your choices, and then saying Hordes is overpowered..?

Edit: I'm not trying to be rude here, just pointing out that there may be a reason you struggled against Hordes, and that's that you ignore at least half the tools available to you.

With respect, if you don't use the right tools, or artificially limit yourself to a subset of options, then you've got little right to complain about being unable to take on hordes or think they're unfair or unbalanced against wm.

Edit. And I'm sure there are gurl banez. They just don't wear boob armour.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Right so you're deliberately limiting yourself in your choices, and then saying Hordes is overpowered..?

Edit: I'm not trying to be rude here, just pointing out that there may be a reason you struggled against Hordes, and that's that you ignore at least half the tools available to you.

I'm just comparing my experience of the games I've had, as limited as it is.
I Just want to enjoy playing a game where my only options are different shaped men for once (Like w40k)
Having awesome looking female models that can kick butt is a lot of the reason I want to start WMH in the first place.

From what people have said about the play styles of horde, they sound like foes that do not give the style of game I enjoy, and as a beginner I would rather get used to playing the game in a way I enjoy before I then move onto learning other ways to play.
As such avoiding tournament armies and competitive people is a good idea, because I won't be playing with armies that can give me or them a fun game.

I'm not saying Horde are overpowered, just that they don't seem fun for ME to play against yet.
No point jumping in the deep end if it just puts me off swimming ever again right?

Not to be rude, but that's a fairly childish way to approach the game. You're practically saying you have decided that X isn't fun to play against and won't play against it, even though the reason you find it unfun is self-inflicted.

If you want a viable all female army, I would try out Thyra's Theme Force. Its a bunch of daughters. Its not the best list, but any living war casters need to fear it.

Deadnight wrote:
With respect, if you don't use the right tools, or artificially limit yourself to a subset of options, then you've got little right to complain about being unable to take on hordes or think they're unfair or unbalanced against wm.

Edit. And I'm sure there are gurl banez. They just don't wear boob armour.

Kossite spam FTW. Limiting yourself to a subset of options forces you to figure out what those options do best. As for an all girl army: remember that boobs and long hair a woman do not make.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"do not a woman make"? Ah screw it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Not to be rude, but that's a fairly childish way to approach the game. You're practically saying you have decided that X isn't fun to play against and won't play against it, even though the reason you find it unfun is self-inflicted.

If you want a viable all female army, I would try out Thyra's Theme Force. Its a bunch of daughters. Its not the best list, but any living war casters need to fear it.

Thyra is actually my first caster for Menoth (other then starter kit Kreoss, but he is trapped in a foam cube )

I'm just trying to keep the game enjoyable for my style of play, light and easy, and I'll try to find opponents who think the same way, that way we all have fun.
Its not like I'm ever going to play in a tournament or anything

You're seriously missing out on the main fun of the game by doing that honestly. Don't apply anything you think you know about competitive gaming to WMH competitive play, its not like 40k at all due to the tighter ruleset.

The only difference between a casual and a competitive WMH game is a competitive game is played at a tournament. The atmosphere is basically the same, players are friendly and chatty. There is no arguing over rule interpretations.

Also, its wrong to assume that units where you can't tell the gender are all male. All of the major martial orders in the Iron Kingdoms are open to everyone. Stormblades, Exemplar, Winter Guard(the officer is female), Temple Flameguard, Gun Mages, etc... All are open to male and females. You can't tell who is who under armor.

The only groups which are closed are the Daughters of the Flame and the Satyxis. Daughters are a group for grieving widows of Protectorate Soldiers, and the Satyxis are only female because the blight on their island turned all their males into bloated slabs of flesh.

 aprilmanha wrote:
I play mostly in Worcester Wargames and a Club in Redditch, I don't really want to go further afield then that really anyway, going to clubs is stressful enough

Edit: I've had a look at the fury rules a bit closer now and it does seem to be... kill the horde in one go before they attack, because if they start attacking they will be rolling in so much fury they can kill everything.
Seems like its a very staggered mechanic, which favours going all or nothing, with either you are attacking and creating more fury to make more attacks, or not attacking and have no fury to do any attacks...

I think I'm going to stick to playing Just Warmachine, which feels much more balanced with the focus limits having casters creates.

You seem to be misunderstanding how FURY works. It's very common and took me a long time to work my head around. Beasts do not USE Fury to buy attacks, they GENERATE Fury to buy attacks. If the Warlock can't leach all of the Fury (up to his FURY stat) then the Beast must make a Threshold check. If it fails, it frenzies. Then the Warlock USES Fury to pay for spells, attacks etc...

 aprilmanha wrote:


I think I'm going to stick to playing Just Warmachine, which feels much more balanced with the focus limits having casters creates.

The fury system is very well balanced though.

To be honest, the fury system is far more interesting to play with, and hugely integral the functioning of a war pack, far more so than the mechanics of focus and jacks and battle groups, which amounts to a simple resource management.

With fury, every piece of your battlegroup links in to every other piece. A warcaster simply 'fuels' a warjack. With fury, there is A far mor interesting series of interplays and interactions that go both ways; ie between warlock and warbeast, and warbeast and warlock. Fury and war packs are far more interesting to play with as a result. Both need each other. And yet, at the same time both act as limiting factors against the performance of the other. Warbeast performance is limited by their warlocks ability to deal with their fury, and the repercussions of their attacks, but at the same time, need the warlock for their control range/ability to generate fury. Warlocks are limited by their warbeasts, but need them as heavy hitters, wound sinks, fury generators and animi.

 aprilmanha wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Do any armies really have a reason to fear Hordes?

Ones controlled by me obviously
My armies are female first and foremost, so if an army has a female unit they will get taken over any male units (even if the males are "Better").
So my Cygar are the 2 female journeyman casters and alot of jacks, my menoth are daughters of the flame, my khador seem to be mostly guys :(
I need to get cards for them Cygar though, missing the cards for the jacks so can't field them much!

There's a player at my FLGS who runs an all-female Circle list, either Kaya with lots of 'beasts or Morvahna and female Tharns. The extreme Warpwolf in the frilly pink skirt is a sight to behold.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
If you want a viable all female army, I would try out Thyra's Theme Force. Its a bunch of daughters. Its not the best list, but any living war casters need to fear it.

PMorvahna is great at it, we have no idea about the difference between a male and a female Warpwolf so Kaya could pull it off, from the images of Makeda I don't know how easy it'd be to tell male and female Skorne apart, Cygnar doesn't have all-female units but it does come with the broadest selection of female named characters ('Casters and solos) around and has mixed-gender units.

Although it´s a very limiting theme you can get a lot of mileage out of mostly female models.
Both Sorschas are able to deal with Hordes. So does Winterguard when they are lead by their female officer (and Kovnik Joe but you know who´s boss). Widowmakers are lead by a woman and they are a strong piece.

If you can't beat them, join them. Have you looked at Legion of Everblight? That army should fit you like a glove, plenty of decent female warlocks and solos and more than possible to make extremely warbeast-centric armies. (Although like in so many places it's sort of... pin ups... sometimes.)

Oh and limiting your choice of models by aesthetic is a valid way of building your army. To say otherwise is to essentially default the game towards 40K list building (as in where you can only win if you use the correct subset of models).
HOWEVER, using a smaller subset of models does make it more difficult to change to a new meta-game, which shouldn't upset much either. Probably you just need to get more experience versus an opponent who actually know and is willing to play according to the rules - so you can work out what works for you and what doesn't in this new shiny expanded world of challenges.

Well I've actually just played another game this evening and thinking of just concentrating on my painting for a while.
Bit of a personal realisation that I'm finding it a bit stressful getting games which does not help make them fun and thinking I need to just get on and paint all the models I have rather then stress out playing a game O_o.
That way I can enjoy hanging out with the people gaming while I get on and paint

Thanks for the ideas and comments though, I've got some warp wolves who may soon have a date with some greenstuff

Women in real armor look just like men. Boobplate is a fantasy myth.

and high heels? Just no.

of course if you want that fantasy then go for it.

 Mordekiem wrote:
Snip

Uhhh not sure what that has to do with anything?
As long as they are strong looking poses, and don't look like relic knights level of kinky then it does not really matter what they wear.
I just like having models of strong women, rather then the manfests most other games seem to have.

Us women can be strong to even if some of us can't be

You know, this whole female army discussion reminded me of something I find rather amusing about the Convergence of Cyriss. The gender your body was has no bearing whatsoever on what clockwork body you get slotted into (that depends on aptitude), so you could easily end up with a clockwork angel that was a guy before he got the whole clockwork vessel treatment.

(for reference here's a picture)

To try and make this vaguely relevant, you could actually do a fine Convergence army with "female" (at least, female looking robots) models only. Aurora and clockwork angels with some vectors (Convergence Jacks), or Iron Mother and a bunch of non-intelligent servitor models.

Ohh I forgot about those models I might just get some to paint up

Even though they aren't necessarily female... Your logic is hard to follow mate.

 aprilmanha wrote:

 Mordekiem wrote:
Snip

Uhhh not sure what that has to do with anything?
As long as they are strong looking poses, and don't look like relic knights level of kinky then it does not really matter what they wear.
I just like having models of strong women, rather then the manfests most other games seem to have.

Us women can be strong to even if some of us can't be

I understand. I like the strong female characters and models and also looked at creating an all female army.

Since you seem to be focused on female models only, I'm just trying to point out that most of the models, especially those in armor, can easily be male or female. They are essentially gender neutral. In fact, I'd say a lot of the models are actually gender neutral and it is primarily our own biases that give them gender.

So for example these models could easily be female or male, especially with the helmets on.


The models you choose to use or play with are your personal choice. I'm just saying it sounds like you are cutting out a lot of excellent options because they lack boobplate or obvious female enhancements that are kind of unrealistic.

In essence, I am trying to help you in your quest to play an entirely female (or mostly female) army yet open some options that you may or may not have considered previously. Hopefully this will help make your list and play more competitive. If you were not interested in being at least somewhat competitive you wouldn't have posted this thread to begin with. And this is fine. Warmachine as a game and hobby has multiple levels it can be enjoyed on. IMO you should try them all out at one time or another.

Good luck in your quest.

Wait, does this mean you aren't running the Choir because they're dudes?

Well I have the chior, but they are not getting preferential painting treatment as I have more interesting units to paint
I'll get to them one day though!

I'm leaning toward the Legion suggestion here. Elves and androgyny go together like rama-lama-ding-dong.

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
I'm leaning toward the Legion suggestion here. Elves and androgyny go together like rama-lama-ding-dong.

Not heard of rama-lama-ding-dong before but I assume its like me saying "Like a house on fire".
I will slowly move through the Legion models and pick out the ones I like. Really not interested in their beasts (not fluffy like the Circle ones ) so I'll just stick to the fun casters and units for painting

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
Wait, does this mean you aren't running the Choir because they're dudes?

There is zero evidence of the choir being guys or gals. They're wearing huge robes and masks over the lower parts of their face. And the leader is completely covered.

In fact, just about every Protectorate model except for Idrians is wearing large headgear of some sort. Menoth himself wore a mask, thats why its the official uniform of the Clergy.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
Wait, does this mean you aren't running the Choir because they're dudes?

There is zero evidence of the choir being guys or gals. They're wearing huge robes and masks over the lower parts of their face. And the leader is completely covered.

In fact, just about every Protectorate model except for Idrians is wearing large headgear of some sort. Menoth himself wore a mask, thats why its the official uniform of the Clergy.

I get that you mean well here, and in an ideal world you'd be right, but it's a company that puts heels and boobplate on almost every identifiably female model. I haven't looked at the Choir closely, but I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking, yeah, these were almost certainly intended to be dudes given the rest of the model range.

Anyway, I just wondered if aprilmanha was running the choir, because if not I imagine that would tone the lethality of her games down quite a bit. My experience is that the sort of stuff she's identified as a Hordes thing, like heavy 'jacks dying on the alpha strike, is a feature of the game in general and not limited to Hordes.

 aprilmanha wrote:

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
I'm leaning toward the Legion suggestion here. Elves and androgyny go together like rama-lama-ding-dong.

Not heard of rama-lama-ding-dong before but I assume its like me saying "Like a house on fire".
I will slowly move through the Legion models and pick out the ones I like. Really not interested in their beasts (not fluffy like the Circle ones ) so I'll just stick to the fun casters and units for painting

The Rama-lama-ding-dong is from a Grease song I think.

Has the OP had a chance to play against Hordes again using the Fury mechanics properly?

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
I get that you mean well here, and in an ideal world you'd be right, but it's a company that puts heels and boobplate on almost every identifiably female model. I haven't looked at the Choir closely, but I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking, yeah, these were almost certainly intended to be dudes given the rest of the model range.

You know, I just realized something else. The Convergence universal unit attachment (transverse enumerator) is a lady as well believe it or not. I didn't even notice before now. The "boob plates" are actually somewhat integrated into how the armor is supposed to look. I'd say that's reasonably well designed, and at least there's no high heels.

 dementedwombat wrote:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
I get that you mean well here, and in an ideal world you'd be right, but it's a company that puts heels and boobplate on almost every identifiably female model. I haven't looked at the Choir closely, but I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking, yeah, these were almost certainly intended to be dudes given the rest of the model range.

You know, I just realized something else. The Convergence universal unit attachment (transverse enumerator) is a lady as well believe it or not. I didn't even notice before now. The "boob plates" are actually somewhat integrated into how the armor is supposed to look. I'd say that's reasonably well designed, and at least there's no high heels.

My Convergence army is mostly female. The infantry and Jacks aren't, but then the infantry could be female for all we know. Those bodies aren't their bodies they go around with on a daily basis, they just get loaded into combat bodies for battle.
Also, there's conversions. No Quarter has many articles about converting. Here's one of my own. I took Syntherion and made her into Forge Master Lucia.

 dementedwombat wrote:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
I get that you mean well here, and in an ideal world you'd be right, but it's a company that puts heels and boobplate on almost every identifiably female model. I haven't looked at the Choir closely, but I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking, yeah, these were almost certainly intended to be dudes given the rest of the model range.

You know, I just realized something else. The Convergence universal unit attachment (transverse enumerator) is a lady as well believe it or not. I didn't even notice before now. The "boob plates" are actually somewhat integrated into how the armor is supposed to look. I'd say that's reasonably well designed, and at least there's no high heels.

Hey, that's cool. I've been playing trolls lately, and the new Scattergunner and Highwaymen kits have three women trolls each in them (albeit all with the same sculpt). Braylen just came out this week, too. They're all clearly marked with boobplate, too (and the troll women have none of the chin-growths, plus weird fish lips for no apparent reason).

You see what I mean, though! When they intend the models to be female, they nearly always mark them so very clearly.

Conversions are cool, too.

You see what I mean, though! When they intend the models to be female, they nearly always mark them so very clearly.

That is exactly the problem. Real women, especially those in armor, don't look like that!

There is zero evidence of the choir being guys or gals. They're wearing huge robes and masks over the lower parts of their face. And the leader is completely covered.

Exactly my point from earlier. I just probably did not present it very well.

 Mordekiem wrote:

That is exactly the problem. Real women, especially those in armor, don't look like that!

I'm not to worried
I know noone is going to change the world overnight to convince model makers to make more realistic armour, So I'm happy with the boob armour when its within reason
Its not like this is relic knights after all O_o

Like, perhaps Calandra?


The hottest, baddest chick in Immoren. Her boob armor is not protecting her, it's protecting you.

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
Her boob armor is not protecting her, it's protecting you.

Haww

It would be fun to paint that blue, not tried a Pastel blue before, usually ultramarine blue, or Turquoise

Yeah, every player should own and paint at least one Trollkin model. They are lots of fun.

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
Like, perhaps Calandra?


The hottest, baddest chick in Immoren. Her boob armor is not protecting her, it's protecting you.

I might have to start Trollkin just for that model.

Or Minions...

I really hate the Calandra model... Helga is amazing though.

I would be tempted to bend her arm upwards to make it look like she is rocking out and doing the horns to the music

What isn't to love about a thick gypsy troll throwing up the horns and giving out re-rolls?!

Rerolls be damned she is getting painted with KISS makeup maybe a grenstuff tongue to match

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
What isn't to love about a thick gypsy troll throwing up the horns and giving out re-rolls?!

Eh the horns are stupid and it looks like she's dancing. Just looks silly.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
What isn't to love about a thick gypsy troll throwing up the horns and giving out re-rolls?!

Eh the horns are stupid and it looks like she's dancing. Just looks silly.

Metal horns are always awesome.

If you're 12...

Or even 29

Or 92

 ImAGeek wrote:
If you're 12...

Christopher Lee just came out with a metal album. Your argument is invalid.

I'm not saying metal is for 12 year olds, I know about Christopher Lees metal albums. Saying the horns are 'cool' however; there's literally nothing 'cool' about making a shape with your hand and it looks stupid on a Hordes model. I'm not even making an argument I'm stating an opinion.

In my first game against Hordes my brother made the opposite mistake. He thought his beasts start the game with their Fury maxed.

After Everything frenzied we figured something was wrong.

Have you had a chance to play against Hordes using the Fury rules properly?

 Eldarain wrote:
In my first game against Hordes my brother made the opposite mistake. He thought his beasts start the game with their Fury maxed.

After Everything frenzied we figured something was wrong.

Have you had a chance to play against Hordes using the Fury rules properly?

I think you may have missed some of the thread
About half way through the thread (somethng outside) gave me a bit of a personal epifiney and I realised I was not actually enjoying playing war-games anyway, so going to concentrate on making cool fun armies and painting but not worrying about the actual game any more.
I'm going a much for Girl Power as I can, since I have the MachoMen thing and done to death with my W40K armies

I've said it elsewhere, but eSkarre tier list.

Horny ladies, whips, and a great rack.

Its the most fun you can have with sadistic pirates.

Well I've already got her, the crew and 2 of those little melee arc nod jack things

Think Horned ladies is a better description then horny though :O

My brother uses Scarre teir and its scary.

It must be tough for a mini manufacturer when you have to cover all stereotypes to sell female minis to a mainly male market

I don't think I'll ever get the thing with the Thigh high boots and the miniskirt/thong O_o

 aprilmanha wrote:
I don't think I'll ever get the thing with the Thigh high boots and the miniskirt/thong O_o

On that topic, I've always vaguely wondered how thigh high boots are supposed to work. I mean, you have to bend your knees to walk... either they're made flexible somehow or walking would be downright impossible.

I imagine walking in them is somewhat difficult in them yeah. I mean you can get them in real life so you must actually be able to walk, but It probably does inhibit movement a little haha.

 dementedwombat wrote:

 aprilmanha wrote:
I don't think I'll ever get the thing with the Thigh high boots and the miniskirt/thong O_o

On that topic, I've always vaguely wondered how thigh high boots are supposed to work. I mean, you have to bend your knees to walk... either they're made flexible somehow or walking would be downright impossible.

It depends on the material, but unless its something super soft like lycra, then you generally just have to get used to not bending at the knee much.
Its like a corset for the leg O_o and those don't bend much either!

I don't want to drag this thread any further off topic, so I'm going to just make one more observation and then let it run its course.

Here's a very amusing comic related to the whole male/female armor disparity thing.

 dementedwombat wrote:

 aprilmanha wrote:
I don't think I'll ever get the thing with the Thigh high boots and the miniskirt/thong O_o

On that topic, I've always vaguely wondered how thigh high boots are supposed to work. I mean, you have to bend your knees to walk... either they're made flexible somehow or walking would be downright impossible.

They do make it harder to walk, but it is still very possible. Generally the part of the boot around the knee and up is a different piece of material and isn't as tight to the skin as the area below the knee so the person wearing them can still walk.

The thing I always remember is an armourer talking about how breastplates are meant to take an impact and distribute it over an area, so what the moulded cleavage on boobplate would actually do is focus the force into a point on your sternum, shattering it and sending shards of it into your lungs and heart.

I like how they seem to have been trying hard to add cool women to the troll range lately, and it looks like there will be more in a while based on the spoiler art. It's definitely a cool thing about Warmachine/Hordes, even if it's not perfect.

And Calandra's model rules.

I love how off-topic this thread has gotten, actually.

Aprilmanha: did you change your mind about not playing as much? I tend to go through the same sort of dilemma when it comes to picking up games (thanks in part to social anxiety and GID). But! the new Riven Bonds rules have me thinking of the game more like an RPG, which is awesome!



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plus, I got some awesome encouragement from the dakka dudes about not psyching myself out.

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
I love how off-topic this thread has gotten, actually.

Aprilmanha: did you change your mind about not playing as much? I tend to go through the same sort of dilemma when it comes to picking up games (thanks in part to social anxiety and GID). But! the new Riven Bonds rules have me thinking of the game more like an RPG, which is awesome!
.

I'm going to stop playing for a while I think, I've got a couple of w40K games in the next 2 weeks that I'm obliged to do (we have been doing a tale of 4 gamers thing and its coming to an end, which I actually started hoping it would make W40K more fun again... and then one person chose to do eldar and a waveserpent spam), but after those I'm calling it on Club wargaming. I'll still go along for the evening and do some painting or play some card games of board games.

Warmahordes I don't know well enough to do Pugs I think, and I quickly get crushed without really knowing what's happening... At least with w40k I've played so long I know all the rules by heart up until the tweaks to the most recent 7th ed codexes.

Its not just that though, with a few exceptions I have had the worst run of bad dice luck all year and its just sucked the fun out of it. It was funny at first and I was happy to laugh about it, but 6 months on and still rolling 4 ones with 4 dice in a go (that was last week) I'm just getting tired of it. Plus the limited amount I can even play, Plus the worry of travelling to a place to play, Plus the worry of meeting people who I don't know very well, etc etc, I usually come away less happy than when I started the evening.

I'm sure after a 6 month rest, to just hang out and paint rather then play, I will have perked back up again and be more interested in playing again (or drifted away totally and do something else) plus I might have made some closer friends by then I can invite to my house to play rather then travelling to a club for Pugs.

I've got enough wave serpents to do wave serpent spam (Eldar is my main 10k+ 40k army), but my analysis of 40k is:
1. Wave Serpent Spam makes it boring for my opponent ahead of the game in the same way I feel about the Hell Chicken.
2. I don't actually win games with Serpent Spam, I'm just left loosing with fewer Eldar lives extinguished.
3. The dice know I hate 40k so the dice will make me kill stuff I don't need to against all odds, but will roll horribly on the critical stuff like enemy HQ, key units, and objectives (I HATE random objectives).

Warmahordes I like a lot more. The dice know it as well and I tend to roll with an average attention from Oponn. But I do agree, PUGing Warmahordes is something I'd be hardpressed to do as well, it's a very knowledge intensive game where 40k allows you to mess up (because the rules don't actually interact all that much with each other).

Stay in there, though, don't give it up completely. It's rewarding when played against people of equal skill (I am a noob and I play with a bunch of noobs, it's fun!)

Omg I'm totally reading Malazan right now omgomgomg!
Also I agree with the not giving up.

Well I said I was going to Kiss-ify her up, and found here in the local game store this weekend.

This is very WIP though

That is so cool. The KISS makeup and tongue just make it great.