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On the whole idea of focus vs fury... Um.. Focus is way over powered (kind of sorta)... When my buddy slams the Harbinger of Menoth down my throat and keeps a bunch of focus on her, she's a pain.

Also cataclysm at more than half an inch and less than an inch sucks... eVlad died like a punk.

I always describe WarmaHords as a Rock-Paper-Scissors Table top game. There is always a counter to everything and generally its balanced.

Speaking of Harbinger camping Focus - In a recent game with my Legion the Tier 4 Theme Harbinger player had destroyed all my beasts, pushed eThagrosh in a corner and moved in for the kill with Harbinger camping 6 Focus.

Too bad he completely forgot about my fully loaded Forsaken model sitting behind a wall 8" away. Walked up and popped - 8d6 at dice minus 12 = 25 damage baby!

Focus works well for certain players as a game style while others work better with Fury. To me its all about planning - Fury is more reaction and Focus must be planned better. (activation and allocation wise)

SpectralTime wrote:This is going to sound bitter and ranty, but screw it. I'm in a ranting mood.

Fury is quantifiably better than Focus. There is no way to argue against that statement. People argue that Hordes carries additional risk, and it certainly can, but it doesn't NEED to to have a comprehensively stronger, more versatile and powerful mechanic. A six Fury warlock is the equal of a twelve fury warcaster without one particle of additional risk, because its caster only requires its Fury for itself, and its beasts boost for themselves without affecting its pool. And that's not even bringing up the difficulties in gaining more focus compared to the ease most Hordes armies have in removing excess Fury to avoid risk.

its not just the risk. there is everything else too. its not soley frenzying that balances fury with focus. and frenzies can be a pain to deal with - more than once i've had to replan a whole battle plan because a beast decides to get angry. look at the points costs of warbeasts. they tend to cost, at least 25% more than their WM equivelants. warlocks need to take proportionally more, proportionally more expensive beasts, and those beasts are a lot more fragile, and lack the punch of WM jacks on top of that.

warcasters are limited by their focus total. unless they have focus multipliers like full throttle, dark guidance, or unearthly rage, they can only spend it so far. that said, those focus multipliers really help level the field. but warlocks are limited by their warbeasts, and warbeasts are limited by their warlocks. yes, you can have 4 warpwolves and you can push them to 16 furies in total. but if you have a 5 or 6 fury caster, you can only deal with a certain amount of that excess. you're guaranteed frenznies, and whatever doesnt frenzy will be less effective. hordes armies cant reallyplay a long game. attrition will always favour a warmachine faction.

SpectralTime wrote:
Transfering is better than overboosting. In the first case, no-selling an attack altogether is better than having extra armor. In the second, while Grevious Wounds is admittedly much more common than Arcane Assassin (as a critical effect), Eiryss is an ubiquitous model, and can easily strip a caster of overboosted focus no matter her incarnation. Is there an equivalent effect in Hordes?
.

there are spells/feats that prevent transfers too. i dunno, i tend to lool at it this way - there are ways to stop eiryss. she isnt necessarily "the" game winner. and at arm24 and def17, the likes of butcher can deal with a hell of a hammering. warlocks? well, the damage is going somewhere, rather than being absorbed.

SpectralTime wrote:
Yes, killing a warlock's beasts will do injury to that warlock's ability to function, but this only proves that beast-heavy casters are quantifiably better than beast-light ones, so that they can have more redundancies. It says nothing of the fact that many warcasters are nearly as crippled without heavy 'jacks. For that matter, damaged beasts are comically easy to heal, with a profusion of healing effects and Regeneration to quickly have a damaged beast back to fighting shape. In a pinch, the warlock can even just spend some Fury on the problem, of which, once again, they'll always have more to spare than a warcaster will Focus. Will ANYONE claim that Repair, which has no range and is almost always on models that are either sub-par or possessed of better abilities, is the equal of these?
.

thats why you dont spread damage in hordes. when you attack a beast, make sure you kill it. cant heal that now, can you? and beast heavy casters are better than beast light ones? well, yes. that goes without saying. but the backbone of a hordes army is its beasts. kill a jack, and you've killed a heavyhitter. kill a beast, and you've killed a heavy hitter, a fury generator, a wound sink, and an animus. regarding repairs, i think repair teams (khadoran mechanics) are great. they're cheap, and they fix things. whats so bad about that, if it gets your heavy back in the fight.

SpectralTime wrote:
As to how I would fix it, there is a very simple solution: remove Reaving from the game. Maybe include it as a spell effect, or as a special ability of certain balanced-around-it warlocks, but don't make it an integral part of the Fury mechanic. There's risk for you: should I have more Fury on the board and suffer the possibility of a frenzy, or play it safe and suffer the consequences if an opponent kills off something that was going to feed me Fury next turn. This way, throwing a heavy out in front of my army is a risky proposition rather than standard procedure.
...Okay, I'm done. Descend on me with your math-magics, internets.

i think that overall, hordes and warmachine are well balanced against each other.

Deadnight wrote:

SpectralTime wrote:
i think that overall, hordes and warmachine are well balanced against each other.

Agree. Worth noting is that Hordes have had much better showings recently at the high level tourneys, but that could simply be because the meta evolved or the best players decided to run different armies.