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Hello!

The wife and I are interested in picking up Warmachine. I'm a 40k player, and she's never played any wargame. I'm going to pick up Retribution of Scyrah, and she's interested in Cygnar. We're going to purchase the battlegroup box for each.

What are some things you wish you knew starting out, or concepts that were confusing for a new Warmachine player?

Also, just a general question I have about Warmachine in general: How important is the army list to being a competitive opponent?

Here's the contents of each of the battlegroup boxes for reference:

Retribution
Warcaster Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper
Chimera Light Myrmidon
Griffon Light Myrmidon
Manticore Heavy Myrmidon

Cygnar
Warcaster Commander Coleman Stryker
Ironclad Heavy Warjack
Lancer Light Warjack
Charger Light Warjack

Is one of these way more powered than the other?

Thank you so much for any replies or assistance.

Not sure on the scale of power between those, but the battleboxs are designed to be fairly equivalent AFAIK.

In regards to list building, Retribution and some other factions more then others, list is fairly important. A good player with a bad list will beat a bad player with a good list, but you CANNOT just grab the first five cards and call it a list. Quick way to hell.

In regards to what I wish I knew, terrain, power attacks and the Fury mechanic were important to me very quickly. In regards to Retribution , it was that the MHSF and MHA are not the be-all-end-all, and that they very quickly get shifted or marginalised, due to niches or dice dependency.

The other guys are more worth listening to though, so anything they say overrides what I just said.

I never did pay attention much to power attacks until towards the end of my playing (I'm actually looking to come back). Part of it was that I thought they didn't do much or seemed to complicated to bother with. As I got more games in and as I transitioned to more active groups I found that things like headbutt could be pretty useful. Throws can be pretty cool to witness too. While starting out, you might want to focus more on the basic stuff, be sure to give yourself an opportunity to learn the power attacks.

The Cryx battle box is quite a bit stronger than the rest. I think you are OK with what you have.

ziggurattt wrote:

Also, just a general question I have about Warmachine in general: How important is the army list to being a competitive opponent?

Very important. But not in the way that you understand it as a 40k player. In 40k the list is important because there is good stuff and bad stuff. List building boils down to 'take the best stuff'. In warmachine, pretty much everything is viable, and can be built into an effective game winning strategy. Thst said, it's not the same as taking Random bunch of stuff and expecting it to compete at a top level. Synnergy is the key. Unit x is great with caster a, but offers nothing to caster b. Does that make unit x, caster a or caster b good or bad? Neither. As individual pieces, they can all be built into a solid strategy.vtake home message is unit x with caster b is a bad call, but that the pieces are sound. Unit x is better with a, caster b is better with something else.

As such, lists are important, but are fluid and extremely dynamic. It's not the same culture as 40k. Similarly knowing your list is far more important than turning up with it. A good player with an ok list will beat a scrub with a power list every time.

Regarding the battleboxes:

The battleboxes are designed to be mostly balanced against each other, which is good for beginners. Some are a little better than others (Cryx and Menoth from Warmachine stand out as being particularly good) while others are on the weak side (Trolls and Circle from Hordes are awkard). However, the difference isn't that great.

Regarding list building:

What is in your list is important, because Warmachine is set up as a game of moving parts where certain pieces of your list work well with others. You can't take a random assortment of units and do well, you have to have a focused list with synergy between the components. Think about it like building a watch - if you plan for all the components and understand how they relate, it will work well. If you just throw a bunch of gears and springs in place, it probably won't work at all.

Typically when you build a list you start with a warcaster and work from there. For example, in Retribution one warcaster, "Vyros, Incissar of the Dawngaurd" (aka eVyros or Vyros2) has the spell synergy, which gives cumulative bonuses to hit and to damage when models in his battlegroup hit a model. So as a result, he want's to take a lot of warjacks, particularly cheap melee warjacks like the griffin. Since he wants a lot of warjacks but only has 8 focus, he'll want some warjack support pieces like Arcanists and possibly the Helios colossal, both of which hand out focus to his battlegroup. Also, since griffins are a little weak on their own, he often wants a big, hard hitting jack that can bring down another heavy or be used in an assassination. Imperitus fits this bill to a tee, providing him with a perfect weapon. Finally, since his list doesn't have a lot of bodies at this point, I add a unit of dawnguard infantry to hold the line, and an Aspis warjack to provide a shield guard to take any dangerous hits that come Vyros's way. Taking a look at the points, we have some left over, so we add a Soulless Escort to the Dawnguard to protect them from spells and add another body. So we'd have a list that looks like this:

Vyros, Incissar of the Dawnguard
-Imperitus
-Aspis
-Griffin x 6
Arcanist
Arcanist
Dawnguard Invictors
- Invictor Officer and Standard
- Soulless Escort

This is just an example list, and probably isn't perfectly tuned since I was just going off of the top of my head with it, but it gives you an idea of how the list building process works. Start with something, and then build around it. That something could be a warcaster (I want to play Vyros2), a theme (I want to play an all electric army in Cygnar, so I start with Nemo3...) or even a role that you want the list to play (I want a list that I can play into another list that has a lot of high-armor targets). Sorry if that got a little long-winded, but I wanted to walk you through an example of how a list is made to give you a bit of a better understanding of how the process works.

What I wish I knew.

Warmachine is all about infantry and Hordes is all about warbeasts. The names are very misleading and I spent more money on jacks than I needed to.

List building is more like Magic than 40k. You look for synergies over taking all the best units. Though sometimes you luck into both or some good things go great with most other things.

Your focus to begin with should be learning the game, not winning. Its a very experience and skill based game, so expect to lose your first 30+ games.

One of the most important skills is distance judgement and positioning, and it can only really be learned with practice. Positioning your models correctly is the difference between winning and losing in most games.

Learn to judge threat ranges. This also means being aware of what your opponent's army can do and not just your own. Knowing what your opponent's tricks and such are is as valuable as knowing how to pull off your own tricks.

For me the thing I wish I would've known was which factions I actually enjoy playing. I swapped through 3 factions before I finally found the ones for me.

 Florintine Mallorean wrote:
For me the thing I wish I would've known was which factions I actually enjoy playing. I swapped through 3 factions before I finally found the ones for me.

I have always known which faction I enjoy playing, but like an idiot have sold that army off two times. Just to come back to it for a third time because nothing else really plays the way I like it. Shoot, at this point I have owned most of the faction at one time or another.

That my first purchases when returning to the game in MK2 was gonna cop me aload of flak...

Some people seem to have an issue with eHaley and a Stormwall?!

I wish I had magnatized my Convergence heavies.

Lessons I have slowly learned:

Bubble-wrap heavies with cheap infantry.
Play for scenario.
Don't spread out your deployment too much; deploying in a compact central brick is often the best choice (although it has it's challenges).
Spread out your models if they enemy has any sprays or AOEs.

People will rag on you for playing Cryx.

Still, my second army is Legion....

I wish I'd started with something other than Cygnar. Plenty of cool stuff in that faction but when a 1/5 of units and almost every theme forces requires a lot of work to be competative and their best unit costs almost £100, why bother?

 keezus wrote:
The Cryx battle box is quite a bit stronger than the rest. I think you are OK with what you have.

Indeed, the included models cost 14 points all together whilst I think all the others for the two games give you 11, so it'll win every single Battlegroup vs Battlegroup game where the Cryx player isn't really unskilled or unlucky.

I beat the Cryx battle box in a league. Denny charged my syntherion with full fucus. He didn't scratch mr and next turn I demolished her.

Things I wish I knew...

How difficult it is to master this game. How one bone headed move will lose you a game or turn the favor to your opponent

How mentally draining this game is on me. Suffering from a brain injury doesn't help

Special attacks with your jacks such as trample , headbutt, throws... I always forget to use them. Should have used trample the other day

I started playing when the black and white MK I rule book just came out, and the Butcher had just been released, with the Mercenary box set of Magnus the Traitor was the "Special Release" at Gencon 2003.

I wish I had known this game would dominate my gaming hobby for the next 12 years.

 MWHistorian wrote:
I beat the Cryx battle box in a league. Denny charged my syntherion with full fucus. He didn't scratch mr and next turn I demolished her.

As I said, I wouldn't describe charging a full focus caster with a non-melee caster a very skilled decision.

 sing your life wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I beat the Cryx battle box in a league. Denny charged my syntherion with full fucus. He didn't scratch mr and next turn I demolished her.

As I said, I wouldn't describe charging a full focus caster with a non-melee caster a very skilled decision.

Maybe it was a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Although, 14:11 seems kind of stupid.

 Farseer Anath'lan wrote:

 sing your life wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I beat the Cryx battle box in a league. Denny charged my syntherion with full fucus. He didn't scratch mr and next turn I demolished her.

As I said, I wouldn't describe charging a full focus caster with a non-melee caster a very skilled decision.

Maybe it was a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Although, 14:11 seems kind of stupid.

One of the lessons I learnt was 'don't charge your warcaster into situations where she might die.' I was using Sorscha at the time. Which is why I went for Butcher.

 welshhoppo wrote:

 Farseer Anath'lan wrote:

 sing your life wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I beat the Cryx battle box in a league. Denny charged my syntherion with full fucus. He didn't scratch mr and next turn I demolished her.

As I said, I wouldn't describe charging a full focus caster with a non-melee caster a very skilled decision.

Maybe it was a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Although, 14:11 seems kind of stupid.

One of the lessons I learnt was 'don't charge your warcaster into situations where she might die.' I was using Sorscha at the time. Which is why I went for Butcher.

Yeah, I swapped from Kaelyssa to Vyros because I like the frontline role he plays.

Though, I had a Cryx player charge the Ghostly caster (Denny?) into Kaelyssa once, because she was running from the wreckage of her myrmidons and shooting with True Sight/Phantom Hunter. He charged, missed 2 attacks, did zero damage on one and 3 on the other, before dying to Kaelyssa in h-t-h. was hilarious.

Yeah, but isn't that MAT5 trying to hit DEF16? Even with boosted rolls your looking at missing most of the time. And Denny hits about as hard as a puppy's fart.

Actually, that is something I wish I knew starting out. How averages work. I mean like two dice is mostly 7, three is mostly 10.
It helps a bloody lot if you can work out roughly how much damage you can give or take in a single turn.

Able to get up to an effective PS 19 is hardly a puppy's fart to me.

Denny should have at least 2 if not 3 debuffs on her target if she is charging in. And her in melee is not completely useless against non-reach opponents since she shadow binds them on hit stopping them from retaliating. Also she has a knockdown spell which, if used properly, always hits (though costs 4 focus so isn't efficient if she is charging in herself). So depending on her debuffs, she can be up to an effective MAT 9 (12 after first hit) and PS 19. That will kill a lot of BB casters with 5 or 6 swings.

All that said, Denny should be able to win the game without getting in melee herself. Melee is a last ditch effort with her. If she is charging in it is because she lost all her jacks and is in a world of hurt. Though, depending on the opposing caster, I think I would still try to stay at range and dance away from the enemy while using her debuffs and spells.

Well, all he had left was Denny. I had Syntherion and a half alive Cipher who actually got the killing blow from behind.

Yeah, Game was probably already over at that point then.

Local players told me for the longest time that infantry wasn't very important in circle.

It was the beginning of my adventures in learning that not everyone is cut out to be a teacher, regardless of how well they know the subject matter.

Infantry? Not important in Circle? It's like they haven't heard of Druids.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Infantry? Not important in Circle? It's like they haven't heard of Druids.

Or blood trackers, skin walkers, or blood pack.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Infantry? Not important in Circle? It's like they haven't heard of Druids.

Or blood trackers, skin walkers, or blood pack.

Or Gatorman posse