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Would a beginner need an army spefic book of the get go or is the rulebook alone good enough? How much more stuff is in the army specific books? I'm thinking of starting Cryx if that helps.

It depends.

The big benefit of getting the faction specific books is getting all of the units and their tactical tips. Do you want to be able to read over all of the stats for the models you're thinking about getting?

But almost all of the rules for Warmachine are in Prime Mk II. The rules for Battle Engines are in the Wraith and Domination books where that model type is introduced; Hordes specific rules are in Primal Mk II, and the rules for Retribution's force field generators are in the Retribution book.

If you want to be fully informed for your own faction, you should get:
- Prime Mk II for the rules
- Forces of Cryx for the majority of your model choices.
- Wraith for the first expansion's model choices.

As a general rule the faction books are not mandatory. The rule book contains stats for some models and since every model comes with stat cards, and there are a lot of online ressources like battlecollege, you dont really need a faction book.
They are mostly nice for a) fluff, b) to see the stats of all models in the faction and c) theme forces. These thing are nice to have, but if you can go without there is no need to get the faction book

All the books but the rule book are completly optional imo. I got only the hordes rule book, but own Warmachine armies and i never had any problems just using the Hordes rule book, considering that the differences are minimal and the hordes specific rules are more complex than the warmachine specific ones

Vombaticus wrote:
All the books but the rule book are completly optional imo.

Yes and no.

As long as you don't want to run Battle Engines, yes.

If you do, you need Wrath or Domination, as BEs have a lot of rules that are easy to forget if you only run them occasionally.

Platuan4th wrote:

Vombaticus wrote:
All the books but the rule book are completly optional imo.

Yes and no.

As long as you don't want to run Battle Engines, yes.

If you do, you need Wrath or Domination, as BEs have a lot of rules that are easy to forget if you only run them occasionally.

I'd have to double check, but I think the rules for the battle engines were printed (in their entirety) in an issue of NQ as well. So you could get that, instead of Wrath/Domination.

That said - your initial purchases should be Prime MK II/Primal MK II, and some figures. The faction book(s) can come later. I only have half the faction books (give or take), but I have forces for everything except Talion charter (pirates) - and that is merely waiting on a trade. At some point, I will pick up the faction books that I am missing, but more variety for my current forces takes priority to a faction book.

solkan wrote:... the rules for Retribution's force field generators are in the Retribution book.

This is actually incorrect, most of the rules for field generators are actually in Prime MKII. The only rule not in there is the ability to regen D3 shield boxes by spending a focus.

Mastershake wrote:

solkan wrote:... the rules for Retribution's force field generators are in the Retribution book.

This is actually incorrect, most of the rules for field generators are actually in Prime MKII. The only rule not in there is the ability to regen D3 shield boxes by spending a focus.

There are three rules associated with the force field generators. All three of them are covered in the two paragraphs in the Ios book, and two of them are covered in the main book. That still means that you need the rule from the Ios book to use them.

solkan wrote:

Mastershake wrote:

solkan wrote:... the rules for Retribution's force field generators are in the Retribution book.

This is actually incorrect, most of the rules for field generators are actually in Prime MKII. The only rule not in there is the ability to regen D3 shield boxes by spending a focus.

There are three rules associated with the force field generators. All three of them are covered in the two paragraphs in the Ios book, and two of them are covered in the main book. That still means that you need the rule from the Ios book to use them.

Not really, most Ret players don't even realize or care about the D3 regen.

Thanks for the replies. I did end up getting the armybook too. There was just so many more rules for so many more models, I just had to pick it up(and the fluff looked like a fun read).