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So I am very new to the whole Warmachine and Hordes games and am looking for information... I understand a little bit of the differences between fury and focus. One of my main questions is are there any advantages or disadvantages to focus or fury? Also i like the Scyra, Cryx, and Circle of Orborous models but was hoping to get a quick rundown on their strengths and weaknesses... Thanks

They are very different mechanics, with different advantages and disadvantages.

Focus is more limited (in general) with how much you can give each of your warjacks, and it can be wasted if something goes wrong (for example, if a warjack has 2 focus on it, to boost hit and damage, but it misses with its one shot, then the focus you had to boost damage just sits there wasted). But your warcaster will ALWAYS get their focus at the start of the turn (short of disruption/certain feats). This means that late game you can still allocate focus as necessary no matter how your army is fairing as a whole.

Fury is a bit different. It is both more flexible and less flexible at the same time. It is more flexible in that you can force a warbeast to boost, then to boost damage after you see it has already hit, rather than wasting a fury. And certain warbeasts can end up doing this 4, 5, even 6 times. However, it is more limited in that if you rile a warbeast this much, you could well lose control of it on your next turn, because your warlock can only take a certain amount of fury off it.

Some people say that focus is resource management, and fury is risk management, and there is some truth to that.

For the factions you like, I'm no use, but I think there is a sticky at the top of this subforum which links to articles here on dakka with a quick rundown on each faction?

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

Scyrah article
http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Retribution_of_Scyrah

A summary from another thread about circle, courtesy of deadknight
Circle: Faustian Terrorist Druids meet up at Stonehenge for a tree spiking or a human sacrifice.
Forget tree hugging hippies. THese guys are the wrath of the hurricane. these guys embody purely the wild, powerful, untameable and incredibly destructive aspect of nature. Fires, floods, earthquakes and disaster. These nature manipulators believe that civilization will bring about the destruction of mankind. They seek to destroy civilisation, and restore "balance" to the world. They draw their power from a being that essentially represents the end times. They will steal babies, blight the harvest and make Faustian deals to advance their agenda. Their army consists of druids, wildmen and hunters, werewolves, beastmen, stone-golems, sacred stone markers, grizzly-sized goats, and anyone they can manipulate to serve them. They source their magics from the very wilds themselves, and use magic to manipulate terrain and nature itself(earth and stone, wind, lightning etc), slay foes, teleports or makes their minions stronger. they're a surprisingly resilient glass cannon/ guerrilla faction. lots of dirty tricks and manipulations.

And the same user on cryx
Cryx are the gutter fighters of the iron kingdoms. they use every dirty trick imaginable. they're the offensive de-buffing faction. that arm 20 jack is now arm15. smash smash smach. its dead. cryx like to melt things and steal souls and use all manner of sneaky, dirty underhanded tactics. in terms of thier make up, you've got zombies/necromantic contstructions, summoned "daemons" for want of a better word (bane thralls/knights), ghost/undead pirates, amazon warrior women, blighted ogres and trollbloods, and your general assorted riffraff, scum, murderers, thugs and mercenaries. their jacks tend to be hard to hit, utterly brutal in melee, and very very squishy.

Ok I understand... Thanks Motyak

Keep asking questions though, the more you ask, the better you will understand. Which warcasters/warlocks do you like from those factions?

Well at this point I'm still reading rules for the games... but Krueger looks awesome to me as well as the warpwolves. Almost Everything in Retribution looks cool Dawn Lord Vyros sticks out to me with his pet hawk lol .... Lich Lord Terminus seems good for Cryx but again at this point i may think it's strong and not know. All in all i like all the models for these armies though, my real concern is I'm an Eldar 40k player and unfortunately they are very squishy and im trying to make sure i can avoid that mistake in warmahordes.

One question would be though... Where does a lot of the game have action... i.e CC, shooting, near the warcaster or jacks?

Also what is a standard size game here?

Well there is an artifice in many of the tournament scenarios called 'killbox'. This means that after the second turn, your warcaster can't be within 14" of your table edge. This tends to force CC eventually. It isn't as easy to 'kite' as it is in other games like 40k, however without killbox mobile armies can run rings around less mobile ones and keep their range.

And standard game size differs depending on your group. In my group it tends to range from 35 to 50 depending on the individual's preference, but other groups may gravitate towards 25 so they can get more games done quickly, or higher than 50.

And to be honest, some things make anything 'squishy'. When you come across things like a Skorne Bronzeback, you will realize that anything can be squished with the proper application of force. There are also a lot of debuff spells in the game with certain armies (especially cryx), which can make normally strong units and solos much more average for a turn, allowing them to be killed.

Awesome man I appreciate the help... I actually like the idea of the games almost forcing CC into the scenarios with the killbox, it'll make shooty armies have to work to stay away.

Not every scenario has killbox, but even when they don't if you don't move to capture objectives then you'll lose. It doesn't work like 40k where it is counted up at the end, it goes on a turn by turn basis. For example the scenario Close Quarters has 2 flags, if you get your warcaster/warlock into B2B with the flag closest to your board edge you get 1 point, and if you control the enemy flag with any model you get 2 points (B2B again), or if you dominate it you get 3. This is per player turn, so you score in your opponents turn as well. So if you don't get up there and score points, you'll lose by scenario.

However that particular one does have killbox, so it isn't the best example, but tournaments sometimes modify the rules of steamroller, so my point stands.

NM, I can't read.

NM, I responded before your edit

zeus89 wrote:
Awesome man I appreciate the help... I actually like the idea of the games almost forcing CC into the scenarios with the killbox, it'll make shooty armies have to work to stay away.

A good thing about this game is that the ranges on weapons are rather limited (Mainly around 10-12 inches). With the right Warlock or Warcaster you can cast a spell on a unit that gives them added range (Example: The spell Snipe adds +4" to the range of ranged weapons in a unit).

Yea that is something cool that I saw as well... no one has corner to corner range on their weapons to just be annoying with. But that being said I've been wondering are there any factions or hordes that just seem yo be weaker than others or is it pretty balanced?

Seems pretty balanced to me so far. You need to make sure you have combos of stuff that works together, which takes a little getting used to if you are coming from a game like WH40k.

Yea lol, 40k can be rough sometimes with that.

 motyak wrote:
They are very different mechanics, with different advantages and disadvantages.

Focus is more limited (in general) with how much you can give each of your warjacks, and it can be wasted if something goes wrong (for example, if a warjack has 2 focus on it, to boost hit and damage, but it misses with its one shot, then the focus you had to boost damage just sits there wasted). But your warcaster will ALWAYS get their focus at the start of the turn (short of disruption/certain feats). This means that late game you can still allocate focus as necessary no matter how your army is fairing as a whole.

Fury is a bit different. It is both more flexible and less flexible at the same time. It is more flexible in that you can force a warbeast to boost, then to boost damage after you see it has already hit, rather than wasting a fury. And certain warbeasts can end up doing this 4, 5, even 6 times. However, it is more limited in that if you rile a warbeast this much, you could well lose control of it on your next turn, because your warlock can only take a certain amount of fury off it.

Focus and fury work the exact same way in regards to boosting. You boost before the specific roll you're boosting.

You also skipped the other important aspects of fury and focus. Warbeasts have a spell called an animus. They generate fury in order to cast it. Your warlock can cast your warbeasts' animus by spending fury. Warcasters and warjacks have no equivalent.

Focus is a passive defense mechanism. When you hoard focus, you gain a bonus to your armor stat equal to your focus held.

Fury is an active defense mechanism. You must spend a fury to put one damage roll taken onto a warbeast, up to the point where they do not die from the transfer. Any excess damage the warlock will still receive. A warbeast at full fury or 1 damage box remaining cannot be transferred onto.

http://battlecollege.wikispaces.com/

Check out the link above.

It has good information for starting with tactical tips and a rundown of abilities for everything.

Awesome thanks.

Right, to echo the above

-dont worry about statistical differences, there's no eldar or tau faction that just plain suck, the game has a unified ruleset and everyone gets extra units at the same time, it ends up being VERY balanced

-don't worry about "hey i want to play menoth because harbinger has 10 focus and I like robots" there are many jack mashals (regular dudes that can help out jacks) and things like reclaimers that give focus to jacks

-don't spam, spam doesn't work in this game, with very rare exceptions

That sounds so great Grundz. I am a 40k player and on a regular basis subject myself to the torture that is the eldar army lol. But I'm thinking about doing circle orboros i just wanted to be certain that i wasn't getting into trouble like the space elves.

There are bad matchups for certian casters.

Like Khador Caster A has issues against Cygnar Caster D

but Khador Caster A has many things against Cygnar Caster B.

Etc etc.

Choose the faction.

Looking into the Warcasters.
Every faction can be competetive.

Not every Warcaster Can be.
Now im not saying there is a massive gap, but some casters just dont bring as much to the table in certain instances.

Overall through.. Most of them work well.

lol even hearing that is cool... with GW doing one army at a time the strengths are constantly shifting to one army or another. Do tournaments work the same with hordes or warmachine?

Hordes/Warmachine is basically the same game.

Usually each player brings 2-3 Lists.

Then when you get paired an opponet, you choose your caster.

So if you have 2x Casters, and your playing Cygnar, you take the caster that goes the best against them.

It helps eliminate bad matchups

That is great... Why was I playing WH40k?

In general, if you want your big guys doing work, you'll want to play a hordes faction, as fury has more flexibility, fury management is available, and you can spend a whole lot of it in a turn. However, because your warlock keys off of the fury generation of your warbeasts, you must take at least a semblance of a battlgroup.

Warmachine's warjacks are less flexible, and less able to do work(though Menoth has plenty of ways to fix that), but your list building is a lot more flexible as battlegroups are largely optional. You can rely on infantry to get the work done. Retribution in particular is an infantry-heavy faction, though the latest warcaster to come out has somewhat ameliorated that. This is not to say warmachine factions can't do jack heavy, but you will be more limited in your caster choices.

Yea i understand... the more I've been reading and looking Circle has caught my attention with Kromac the Ravenous.

zeus89 wrote:
That is great... Why was I playing WH40k?

figure 40k is checkers, I love the fluff, the hate, and the idea

warmachine/hordes is a straight up better game, it is chess. At first it'll be like 40k where you just ram your army into the other one and look for openings, but once you start getting how to use throws, slams, feats, spells, arc nodes, and such to really turn up your game, things get pretty nuts.

As a few general notes that may repeat some information already mentioned (although this is mostly to make sure I don't miss anything)

1. Just to clarify what others are saying, Focus and Fury are just as strong as each other. Focus is constant, more stable, and stronger in the late game, whereas fury is less variable, dependent on the pieces you include, and becomes weaker with each model you loose. Any theoretical differences in strength are correctly balanced, if anything the general trend from tournament results has a SLIGHT bias towards warmachine, but there are other factors that may influence this (mainly that more players play warmachine than hordes). As a whole factions are well balanced and equally supported (models are released for all factions at once rather than with GW's codex update plan).
2. There are very few if any 'bad' units, although there are bad lists and bad matchups. Additionally, some units are 'better' than others, but generally speaking synergy is far more important to the success of your list than the raw power of individual pieces.
3. Player skill is more important than in 40k. Again, while there are unfavourable matches, a skilled player can win an unfavourable match against a less skilled opponent. Basically, in many cases wins are dictated less by who brought what list than they are by who is the stronger player.

RegalPhantom wrote:
As a few general notes that may repeat some information already mentioned (although this is mostly to make sure I don't miss anything)

1. Just to clarify what others are saying, Focus and Fury are just as strong as each other. Focus is constant, more stable, and stronger in the late game, whereas fury is less variable, dependent on the pieces you include, and becomes weaker with each model you loose. Any theoretical differences in strength are correctly balanced, if anything the general trend from tournament results has a SLIGHT bias towards warmachine, but there are other factors that may influence this (mainly that more players play warmachine than hordes). As a whole factions are well balanced and equally supported (models are released for all factions at once rather than with GW's codex update plan).
2. There are very few if any 'bad' units, although there are bad lists and bad matchups. Additionally, some units are 'better' than others, but generally speaking synergy is far more important to the success of your list than the raw power of individual pieces.
3. Player skill is more important than in 40k. Again, while there are unfavourable matches, a skilled player can win an unfavourable match against a less skilled opponent. Basically, in many cases wins are dictated less by who brought what list than they are by who is the stronger player.

That's cool... and the way they release everything at once makes me question GW even more. And with synergy and the way tournaments have multiple lists it does rely more on player skill which also seems to be a much better system.

One question though... why is focus better late? I'm playing circle and most of my friends are warmachine factions, and the way it looks is that when i play well into the late game fury seems to be better. I only ask because once my beasts are in his face i can just max fury them and kill anything in front of me, if they frenzy they charge into more of his models.

zeus89 wrote:

RegalPhantom wrote:
As a few general notes that may repeat some information already mentioned (although this is mostly to make sure I don't miss anything)

1. Just to clarify what others are saying, Focus and Fury are just as strong as each other. Focus is constant, more stable, and stronger in the late game, whereas fury is less variable, dependent on the pieces you include, and becomes weaker with each model you loose. Any theoretical differences in strength are correctly balanced, if anything the general trend from tournament results has a SLIGHT bias towards warmachine, but there are other factors that may influence this (mainly that more players play warmachine than hordes). As a whole factions are well balanced and equally supported (models are released for all factions at once rather than with GW's codex update plan).
2. There are very few if any 'bad' units, although there are bad lists and bad matchups. Additionally, some units are 'better' than others, but generally speaking synergy is far more important to the success of your list than the raw power of individual pieces.
3. Player skill is more important than in 40k. Again, while there are unfavourable matches, a skilled player can win an unfavourable match against a less skilled opponent. Basically, in many cases wins are dictated less by who brought what list than they are by who is the stronger player.

That's cool... and the way they release everything at once makes me question GW even more. And with synergy and the way tournaments have multiple lists it does rely more on player skill which also seems to be a much better system.

One question though... why is focus better late? I'm playing circle and most of my friends are warmachine factions, and the way it looks is that when i play well into the late game fury seems to be better. I only ask because once my beasts are in his face i can just max fury them and kill anything in front of me, if they frenzy they charge into more of his models.

Because no matter how many pieces get attritioned out a Warcaster always generates their full stack, every turn. Once Warbeasts start to die they won't generate fury any more, To conceptualize, imagine an extreme scenario: You play an even game and you both wind up with your casters as the only model left on the table. The Warcaster can still buy attacks, boost and camp until the cows come home. The Warlock has nothing left to transfer to, and has to bleed themselves dry just to buy a few extra attacks.

Ok i see what you're saying. Does Privateer Press do anything to try and balance that? Like warlocks are slightly tougher than casters? Or are the warbeasts tougher than 'jacks?