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A friend is attempting to entice me into starting up WM...the models look great and I've heard the system is good as well. One thing that I don't care for is the fact that you are limited to one type of leader (a warcaster) and have to use warjacks. There doesn't seem to be a lot of options in force customization. How much variety do you see in army lists? Also, I don't like using premade characters...even in 40k I use my own chapter of Space Marines. How friendly is the game to "counts-as" characters? And, lastly how viable is an all mercenary force when compared to the factions? Would I be better off building a primarily faction based force (I was considering PoM even though I don't care for their color scheme and feel their jacks look kinda silly) and supplementing with mercs?

The game is about pre-made pieces.

Instead of optimizing an individual model, they balance things by pre-selecting
everything and building it into the model. What that does is it allows them to
figure out the power level of an item without worrying that the two items you put
on one model is going to be too much. Instead, you customize your force
by thinking of model interactions and how they play off your warcaster's/warlock's
strengths and weaknesses.

What do you mean by counts-as? There are no rules for generating your own
leaders. If you play Warmachine/Hordes you have to accept that the iconic characters
of the Iron Kingdoms are going to be your character.

By "counts-as" I mean basically using the rules for a character but making him unique to my force by renaming him and coming up with my own backstory. It just helps me to get more involved with my army to have it more personalized.

I've seen people do that, but people will still call him by his special character name
because those models have their rules.

So if you call your character Marneus Calgar, they'll still call him Adeptis Rahn since
that's how the game is built. Trust me, once you see the special rules for the
character models it'll be tough to think of Stryker as anyone else but Commander
Coleman Stryker.

Thank you for the input. At least now that I know it's not unheard of for players to at least name their own characters that's a little more appealing...I'll likely pick up the rules and start digging in deeper.

Gridge wrote:Thank you for the input. At least now that I know it's not unheard of for players to at least name their own characters that's a little more appealing...I'll likely pick up the rules and start digging in deeper.

It's not, but you'll see that it's just easier after a while to play it as it is.

And the crazy thing about the fluff is, once you start reading it, you kind of get stuck on
the characters name and storylines anyway.

I found that, at least for me, the "special characters" in WM aren't really a fair comparison to the special characters in 40k. In 40k, even the mighty heroes are still fairly insignificant blips in the scheme of the universe, whereas in WM these are the top dogs; the real power players of most military engagements. They will, by and large, be the ones directly determining the outcomes of the Iron Kingdom's many situations, as opposed to the 'notable personalities who're along for the ride' feel of 40k special characters.

It doesn't hurt that they're very well fleshed out individuals, some of which have pretty direct relationships to the other warcasters (Haley and her twin sister Deneghra or Stryker and, well, every retribution warcaster ). I find it more compelling than 'unnamed imperial guard officers 7a and 7b' with no ties to the conflict at hand.

I can never get into playing pre-made iconic heroes. It's perhaps all the years of playing pen and paper roleplaying games...I like to make my own characters. That is what gets me far more engaged. I never use any of the characters in 40k either...instead I have my own chapter with it's own master and I name every character in my force down to the sergeants . Building the army is as much fun to me as playing and I get pretty in depth with it.

Counts as is fine in any game as long as the person on the other side of the table is fine with it. Just like with GW games. People definitely do make their own characters, but their conceptual game identifiers matter.

What I usually do is try to integrate something about their name into the name of the new thing. For example, I wanted to include some Pirate stuff in my normal mercenary army but the nautical/pirate motif doesn't fit with where they've been operating in the story of local campaigns. So the "Sea Dog Deck Guns" become "Steelhead Field Cannons" and "First Mate Hawke" becomes "First Lt. Hawke". I used different miniatures for these than the ones PP sell because I didn't like the pirate look for my army. I think the pirates look great, but I wasn't building a pirate army.

I also have a Khador army which is egyptian based using Wargods of Aegyptus miniatures and other Egyptian themed stuff from other companies. I call my Winter Guard stand-ins "Desert Guard." The Butcher of Kardov is still a big nasty brutish fellow, but he's no longer from some Russian sounding place. He's Atensekmeht the Butcher.

As for Mercenaries, they are very viable. And they just got even better with the release of the mk2 Mercenary Contract rules:

http://privateerpress.com/company/blood-and-coin-mercenary-contracts-for-mk-ii

I started playing when Mercenaries were not quite as viable as they are now. I went with Protectorate of Menoth and added Mercenaries and transitioned into playing Mercs and sold my Menoth stuff. There's no reason to start with another faction if you like the Mercenaries.

Army lists can have great variety as long as you avoid the group think that can go on in the various faction forums at Privateer Press's website. Some people get very vocal about what they think is bad and some people there post so frequently that you end up reading about how bad or good something is more often than you should given the size of the community. I'd recommend discovering what works for you in play.

Malfred's articles here on dakkadakka are astoundingly good for learning what works well together without having to run someone else's ideas for your list. Generally speaking, balanced lists are very competitive. Spend some points on jacks, some points on infantry and some points on solos and pay a little mind to how some things can boost the abilities of others and you'll be fine.

There are also some autoincludes based on the casters you choose. For example, Deneghra for Cryx needs arc nodes. And the three arc nodes are somewhat similar to one another so the core of a Denegrha army is likely going to include a few arc nodes. Magnus has a jack that only works with him. It's his only arc node and has one of the best one shot weapons in the game. He built the jacks with his bare hands and it's common to see him with at least one of them, often two. He's not as reliant on them as Deneghra is on arc nodes though.

The Protectorate of Menoth has some seriously good support units like the Choir and the Vassal. As soon as people start going jack heavy with Menoth, they're bound to show up as they're just so good with lots of jacks. That said, changing out Kreoss and some Exemplars for Feora and some Flame Guard and you suddenly have a very different feeling army even though they might both be running the same warjacks and support staff.

Armies can become superficially similar but remain fundamentally unique.

Let me know if you want to hear my thoughts on any particular mercenary item. I don't think any of them are bad. Even the much maligned Croe's Cutthroats have killed their share of warcasters for me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thing that has happened as my mercenary collection gets larger and larger is that national faction casters and jacks that don't have a lot of faction only boosts become merc casters. For example, Lt. Caine doesn't really rely on having other Cygnar stuff around. All his spells help "friendly model/unit" so they're not Cygnar only. Some casters say "friendly faction model/unit" in a given spell.

So I can grab a caster and a couple jacks from another faction that work well with non-faction models and fill the rest up with mercenaries and end up with such an atypical army that people can be pretty shocked by it's uniqueness. And I can take Jack Marshals to run Mercenary jacks and have both Cygnar and Merc jacks in the same army.

An example:

Lt. Caine
- Sentinel
- Defender
Dirty Meg
- Nomad
Nyss Hunters
Boomhowler & Company
Reinholdt the Gobber Speculator

frozenwastes wrote:

Let me know if you want to hear my thoughts on any particular mercenary item. I don't think any of them are bad. Even the much maligned Croe's Cutthroats have killed their share of warcasters for me.

Um...Devil Dogs!

Though I hear they're much better in MK2 (haven't looked at them yet).

They are much better in MK2.

Maximum size is pretty much necessary. Sam is too important to the unit to let her be easily picked off. Being a name character leader, you can't just replace her, instead a grunt gets promoted.

Sam pretty much needs to marshal something. Things I think She works well with:

Bucaneer - for the ranged knock down attack. Her drive pronto means that it can move and still get the aiming bonus or it can move twice and hit something pretty far away.

Mule - generally shoots once so a jack marshal is fine for boosting the attack roll. Also, pronto lets it move and still aim to build up pressure in it's steam lobber. Out of activation movement is fantastic with this jack.

Nomad - it beats face. Again, pronto gives it an extra degree of mobility. The open fist is nice and all, but the single sword attack is quite strong. 6 point heavy with reach.

Talon - the least loved of all the mercenary jacks. But it has +2 to attack on the charge and speed 6. So pronto it and you're looking at a 17" threat range with that stall spear. it's also great for solo hunting and hitting high DEF things. MAT 6 +2 for charging is pretty good.

Vanguard - Shield guard for Sam. All round decent jack. Doesn't get amazing with pronto as you'll want it near Sam.

Mariner - Good on the defense. Again, won't benefit from pronto much unless you also think about moving a loader in so it can fire it's gun. Perfect jack for Sam to sit base to base with to get her ARM bonus.

The mangler is alright with Sam because of the increased mobility, but I like giving the Mangler focus. I don't quite find marshalling is enough for it. The Freebooter also benefits greatly from Pronto, but I like a couple focus to make sure Chain Attack: Grab and Smash actually happens. That said, if you can get it at a low defense target like another heavy, the Freebooter can be a great choice for giving a nice knocked down target to the Devil Dogs.

The next thing you need to figure out in a given game is whether or not Sam and her Devil Dogs are on the offense or defense. How regularly you use them as either offense or defense will determine your jack selections.

When you're on the offense, don't cling too closely to the ARM bonus by staying base to base with a jack. Any jack that is hugging Sam to give her a defensive boost can't really benefit from the increased mobility of Sam's Drive.

On to the Devil dogs.

Their gun. It's range 4 and POW 14. But only RAT 4. They need someone to lower their targets defense or they need to be shooting heavies. This is where the Bucaneer can come into play. Don't be afraid to shoot heavies. POW 14 is fine. And heavies often have a low enough defense that you can actually hit them with RAT 4.

Their net. Only useful on jacks and warbeasts. But it's how you access trash in many cases.

Trash. Doesn't just work on jacks. This is why a jack marshalled by Sam can help a lot by knocking things down.

Surprising Mobility. Sam can Drive: Pronto even when the unit is ordered to run. So the unit can move 12 and the jack can move anywhere from 15 to 18 inches in a single turn.

They're typical infantry. With DEF13, ARM 13, they're nothing special. They die just the same as Steelhead Halbardiers. You want them to either attack something and be in a situation where there is minimal reprisal or spend their lives to completely halt a jack wall.

Pay attention to the order you do things when fighting higher DEF heavies like Cryx & Retribution stuff. Sam can stall it, reducing it to DEF 7. A lucky net can go right to 5. Then you want to activate the models who are going to use their melee attacks to get trash. Or ones that will just shoot the knocked down jack.

If you don't charge (which requires an Order), different models can do different things. There's nothing wrong with advancing into a jack and only getting there with a few models. Hopefully it's a low defense heavy that is either stalled or knocked down. Then activate the Devil Dogs that didn't quite make it and pour some POW 14 fire into the thing.

If you take a Bucaneer or a Freebooter for even more knock down potential, think carefully about your order of activation. The Buncaneer can move and throw it's net. Then the unit can move up and perhaps pour up to 9 POW 14 shots into the knocked down jack. 9 might not be realistic though, but there's lots of jacks that will be quite hurt by even 5 or 6 POW 14s that only miss on 1,1. Sam then does pronto and pulls the Freebooter or Bucaneer back into base to base with her for a nice ARM bonus (if that makes sense).

If you have other things in your army that can knock things down, then charging can be devastating. Auto hit 4 dice damage is fabulous.

Hope someone finds this useful.