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Last week, I played my first game of Warmachine, two new players learning the rules, my Cryx vs. Khador. We mostly had a starter box and a couple extra jacks to make it 35 points. Nothing seemed too complicated really, just learning focus points and spells to boost up a jack here or shoot at a guy there.

Yesterday I played a veteran player with Menoth. He had a couple of light jacks, but everything else was guys on foot like knights, grenade throwers, singing guys, guys with books, and so on.

So I line up my 3 heavy jacks, 4 bone (chicken) jacks, and Asphyxious against his horde of flat footed men. He lines up his grenade throwers on the front line and explains that they all throw a blast template hit. It can't be too powerful each because there's like 10 of them, right? So he gets first turn and starts boosting all his squads. This guy gets this boost, that guy gets that one, this squad gets these, and the squad in front can't be shot at. Ok, so I back up my shooty chicken and shooty harpoon jack and put my arc nodes closer to the front. Next turn everything is closer and he says that squad can now no longer target them with magic. Well hell, I guess I'll just run up and charge then, so I get ready for that. Now this turn they are completely invulnerable and I cannot kill them. WTF? Oh and they are +2 for this, +1 for that, and + god I don't even know where this is coming from. Everything I look at on the board is beefed up from like 3+ different sources plus their innate abilities and I'm feeling like I'm being throttled in a game of Killer Instinct and wishing for a button combination I can push and yell "COMBO BREAKER!!" Some of the effects finally wear off on the grenade throwers and I throw a couple of jacks at them with multiple attacks and kill two because that's all they can reach. So the rest of the fearless squad turns around and throws a ton of blast templates at my jacks and destroys them for being impertinent enough to assault a mighty squad of little men. Apparently since this a model vs model game, squads can't be tied up.

I thought this was a game about big heavy things beating up on other big heavy things. My veteran opponent was nice and fun to play with, but the only thing I think I learned was that the game gets more complicated the longer you play and that the rules favor mass models over big ones and that I need to buy squads $$. Well then what am I supposed to do with all these chicken jacks?

Mk1 or Mk2?

It's a battle game. So warcaster, warjacks, and infantry.

Protectorate is an attrition army.

MK2 those blast templates should only be POW 12/POW 14, and POW 6/8 on the blast. Also in
MK2, they cannot be killed by normal attacks, but magical attacks do them just fine.

Invulnerable thing is a mini-feat for that unit's unit attachment. There should have been
11 models on the table. 9 dudes wtih grenades, a priest with a mace and a guy carrying a
big cross on his back.
Their ARM increases for killingdudes in the unit, but they're much easier to kill
now than before.

The knights gain bonuses for models killed in their unit.

Here's a few pointers:

1. The grenade guys suck in HTH and grenades can't be thrown when they are engaged.
1a. The boosts come from the grenade guys' sgt. Kill him and the boosts go away. KILL THIS GUY FIRST.
1b. The invicibility comes from the guy carrying the cross. Kill him and that goes away. KILL THIS GUY NEXT.
1c. You can run into combat for that extra distance.
1d. 2 chickens can easily tie up that squad. The grenade guys aren't hitty enough to hit your DEF15 chickens. The worst that could happen is that they'll pop invincibility and walk out of combat. If the priest is dead, there's little damage they can do as their accuracy is poop and they've lost the priest's +2 damage boost.

2. The missile guys fight about as well as poop on a stick in HTH AND can't fire missiles while engaged. Getting a chicken or warjack into that formation will take away a significant amount of ranged firepower.

3. The singing guys have grot like stats. If you so much as look at them, they will die.

4. You had 4 chickens. I would have run the chickens around the flank to threaten multiple units with Breath of Corruption on turn 2. Asphyxious can run around, kill some stuff with Breath and then shadow wings away if threatened.

5. Everything you have is faster than his knights (SPD5). Even your heavy jacks! Make sure you get the charge on them, as they WILL wreck one of your helljacks if they get a charge off.

5a. If you kill a bunch of knights with a simultaneous attack (like a blast), they don't get the bonus applied until after the attack is resolved - so the chance exists to multi-kill at the lower statline.

6. Don't forget about the trample power attack. It is your friend against infantry.

We were playing MKII, and yeah it was POW 14 on the blast. I guess he got that part wrong. He also said he was waiting for some crazy uber powers to come out of Asphyxious that he doesn't have, so i guess the veterans are still learning right now too. I'm really unhappy with the idea that a jack will most likely be taken out if he goes up against a squad of regular guys though since he has to kill one of them at a time while all of the rest of them wail on him with weapons that hurt just as much as a jack weapon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
::Looks up trample attack:: Check! Will use that one next time.

How can two chickens tie up the squad if they kill the guys they are after and the rest are considered unengaged? Two guys down = 8 guys to throw grenades.


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1a. The boosts come from the grenade guys' sgt. Kill him and the boosts go away. KILL THIS GUY FIRST.
1b. The invicibility comes from the guy carrying the cross. Kill him and that goes away. KILL THIS GUY NEXT.

I thought under the new rules that if you kill a squad leader then the next regular guy becomes the squad leader with his stats?

mortal you're right. The Priest is not an officer. If you kill him, the squad can still pray.

Re; Engaging guys: You run the one warjack so that he engages three models and the second one
to engage another. You can probably even do so at the peril s of eating a freestrike because
of their low MAT and P+S.

Consolidation in this game is pretty far apart though. If he keeps them spread out, how can I keep multiple guys engaged? Am I allowed to move after killing a model?

Eat the middle or the unit leader and force him to choose a new leader that's further away.

I'm very glib, but I think it can work. Remember, CMD range is 8" from the leader. Models
further out will not be able to activate that turn. If you spread out too much, you
run the risk of losing activations.

Remember, CMD range is 8" from the leader. Models
further out will not be able to activate that turn

That's useful info. I'm pretty sure his unit was spread further than that from the leader. Thanks for the tips

Well, models not in CMD have to run into command range, so they won't be able to throw.

malfred wrote:mortal you're right. The Priest is not an officer. If you kill him, the squad can still pray.

Nice catch. I only have two games of MKII under my belt, so I am still learning myself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

malfred wrote:Re; Engaging guys: You run the one warjack so that he engages three models and the second one
to engage another. You can probably even do so at the peril s of eating a freestrike because
of their low MAT and P+S.

@Mortal: This becomes more awesome when the guy(s) doing the engaging have REACH. Bwahahaha!

@Mortal: This becomes more awesome when the guy(s) doing the engaging have REACH. Bwahahaha!

Yeah, too bad I have 3 Slayers :/ Maybe I need to learn to start throwing guys with them.

mortal888 wrote:the squad in front can't be shot at.

You really mean squad? AFAIK nothing in Protectorate can make infantry untargetable by shooting unless he tried to do that with Choir. But that would be impossible as the Choir can only protect warjacks.

mortal888 wrote:and he says that squad can now no longer target them with magic

Even if Zealots can't be targeted with magic it doesn't mean that you can't target something near with something like Breath of Corruption and count for a good scatter roll.

mortal888 wrote: Well then what am I supposed to do with all these chicken jacks?

You have arcnodes. You have Asphyxious. You eat massed infantry alive. With 7 FOC caster you can run a bonechicken and throw 2 Breaths of Corruption a turn wherever you want. Thats 2 3" AoE's hitting everything beneath with POW 12 = LOTS of dead infantrymen. And don't forget your feat - Choir members and Zealots die on a roll of 8, Deliverers on 7.

Remember that Asphyxious is more a spellslinger than jack supporter. If you want to run a warjack - heavy army maybe consider replacing the Lich with eSkarre or Mortenebra as they're much better with jacks. And if you own a starterbox, maybe try to repeat that battle with Deneghra. Nothing kills better those stupid Zealots like 3 Venoms a turn

Just want to amend what I said earlier. The Monolith Bearer is CMD 9, so while he's on the
table, models in his unit can't be any further than 9" away from him.

Just to chime in

I think some nice mechanithralls with a necrosurgeon are a good addition to your army. Replace the slayer and a node with these. then also look at adding a pistolwraith. It can kill 2 guys pretty easily (magic ranged attacks, so they can't be stopped by no shooty or no magic). Or when needed he can freeze a jack in place. From what I hear he is a good candidate to make the choir smaller so look into that..

good luck on the next battle

Thanks for the info guys. I think I'll get a pistol wraith. I'm also thinking about a bloat thrall and bile thralls just because I like the models. I might be playing a new game, but I'm still a nurgle player by heart


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Oh, and great avatar pic LordRavurion. It made me laugh.

LordRavurion wrote:Just to chime in

I think some nice mechanithralls with a necrosurgeon are a good addition to your army. Replace the slayer and a node with these. then also look at adding a pistolwraith. It can kill 2 guys pretty easily (magic ranged attacks, so they can't be stopped by no shooty or no magic). Or when needed he can freeze a jack in place. From what I hear he is a good candidate to make the choir smaller so look into that..

good luck on the next battle

Be careful with the mechanithralls though, that low cmd can bite you on activations and make sure the necrosurgeon unit is in place before the mcthralls charge in or you waste the chance to collect corpse tokens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Something else to think about, Asphyxious (Gaspy to his friends) is a great spell assassin.

Get line of sight on the opposing caster, if they have high defense, run a bonejack to within 3" of them and fire Breaths of Corruption, pop feat, and continue with the Breaths boosting damage where needed as the deviations will still catch them.

If they have low defense, you can stay a little further out with your bonejack and just Hellfire, Hellfire, boost damage, pop feat, Hellfire, Hellfire, boost damage if needed.