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 Talamare wrote:

 Grundz wrote:


One of the things you'll find about warmachine is spamming doesn't work,

Xerxis Tier 1 Cataphract Spam

Which has some horrifyingly bad matchups, menoth in general can just laugh at them with aoe spam, set them all on fire to get around the shield walls, enliven away from the charges, prevent the drags with errants that just dont die and with passage, it's just a bad situation for the skorne player, not to mention if someone with a collosal just runs at the brick of spears to engage them all and prevent the extra dice of charge damage it can just laugh at the lowish number of low-mid pow weaponmaster attacks at dice minus 6-8 or so, god help them if they face tuffalo's with borka who'll just be plowing them all over again and again..

To note: I only have one local skorne player, but I think that menoth has all the tools to take the thunder out of that list even without harbys feat, or the battle engine nuking them, or a friendly eating ashes to ashes in the back to get around the cata UA, if you can do it /and/ not lose on scenario, thats another story

I guess I should rephrase: spamming doesn't work generally, there's maybe a few lists that can do it but have tremendously bad matchups

If you want khador but with a low model count go Skorne. Skorne looks to me to play like how I imagined khador would play.

Plus Big four armed elephants smashing things with metal gauntlets, tortured baby elephants and magical statues.

Bullockist wrote:
If you want khador but with a low model count go Skorne. Skorne looks to me to play like how I imagined khador would play.

Plus Big four armed elephants smashing things with metal gauntlets, tortured baby elephants and magical statues.

Agreed getting into Skorne myself, they are overlooked as from what I understand they were stronger in the older MK1 ruleset. However they can field strong warbeasts, single wound and heavy infantry. If you like heavy warbeasts Rasheth's tier reduces their point by 1, a 7 point Gladiator is crazy good, been playing with the list builder and am really eyeing a 25pt 4 gladiator list with a single unit of beast handlers, at 50 points it can be 6 gladiators with a bronze back leading them so they auto pass threshold checks and 2 min units of beast handlers or take a max unit and upgrade one of those gladiators to a Sentry or drop a titan for some nihilators.

Hargus56 wrote:

Bullockist wrote:
If you want khador but with a low model count go Skorne. Skorne looks to me to play like how I imagined khador would play.

Plus Big four armed elephants smashing things with metal gauntlets, tortured baby elephants and magical statues.

Agreed getting into Skorne myself, they are overlooked as from what I understand they were stronger in the older MK1 ruleset. However they can field strong warbeasts, single wound and heavy infantry. If you like heavy warbeasts Rasheth's tier reduces their point by 1, a 7 point Gladiator is crazy good, been playing with the list builder and am really eyeing a 25pt 4 gladiator list with a single unit of beast handlers, at 50 points it can be 6 gladiators with a bronze back leading them so they auto pass threshold checks and 2 min units of beast handlers or take a max unit and upgrade one of those gladiators to a Sentry or drop a titan for some nihilators.

Skorne was actually a lot weaker in Mk I. They had virtually no access to Pathfinder, and would be utterly hosed by anything with the ability to create rough terrain, especially Inhospitable Ground casters.

 Laughing Man wrote:

Hargus56 wrote:


Agreed getting into Skorne myself, they are overlooked as from what I understand they were stronger in the older MK1 ruleset. However they can field strong warbeasts, single wound and heavy infantry. If you like heavy warbeasts Rasheth's tier reduces their point by 1, a 7 point Gladiator is crazy good, been playing with the list builder and am really eyeing a 25pt 4 gladiator list with a single unit of beast handlers, at 50 points it can be 6 gladiators with a bronze back leading them so they auto pass threshold checks and 2 min units of beast handlers or take a max unit and upgrade one of those gladiators to a Sentry or drop a titan for some nihilators.

Skorne was actually a lot weaker in Mk I. They had virtually no access to Pathfinder, and would be utterly hosed by anything with the ability to create rough terrain, especially Inhospitable Ground casters.

Well, just before the changeover to MkII, they were very strong. Just that it only lasted a few months.

I'll agree that Skorne certainly plays the way Khador looks like it would. A lot of supporting infantry that can do a bit of the lifting, but full of warbeasts that'll tear apart near anything when they actually get into melee.

I actually ended up getting the hordes 2 player starter. I will be taking the legion of everblight components as I heard they are the lowest model count within the ruleset. What warlock should I aim for and how should I expand it to be a low model count list.

On the topic of spamming, I think it runs wiht different connotations in WM/H than it does in Warhammer. There are things that spam, but it is usually either a mechanic that's spamed (Weaponmaster, Tough), the "spam" is not as big as it is in Warhammer (less total models) or what's spammed is kind of a result of a weird list build, oftne a Themed Force that allows for such unusual spamming. In the last category, it is often by making something just cheap enough to be pretty much a steal for its points and piling those in as a result.

The first category is not even all that hard to do for some Factions. Tough Spam is what Trollbloods are inherently, and a lot of use of Mercenary models will do. Weaponmaster spam is similar, since some Factions just have a lot of troops that do that.

The second category I see terms tossed at like Dudespam. This is just unbalancing your list to a certain sort of troop. THis is often used to acheive something like in above, where you have a lot of a mechanic. Banespam is kind of this for Cryx (lots of Weaponmasters). Some lists have a huge skew of lots of beasts or lots of troopers that are hard to remove. Even in any of these two groups, you might not see a lot of repeats. "Moar Banes" usually is "spam" in the sense that you have maybe two units of different kinds of Banes with the support solo. At most you'll see maybe two full man units of the same sort, but oftentimes what the troops in a list are are actually different.

The last group is kind of a weird thing based on trying to abuse a gimick and these are spammy I think. This includes Epic Vyros running seven Griffon warjacks, Doomshaper running five units of Runeshapers, or Epic Butcher with a bamillion Doomreavers. The trade-off these lists have is match-ups. Some are able to cover a lot, but what these do is often tilt your list to a certain skew. You are putting all your eggs into a particular strategy that if you hit the paper to your rock, you can collapse pretty fast. Doomreavers don't like getting shot to death. Griffons hate hyper-anti-warjack stuff or things that can remove their warcaster. Runeshapers hate anti-magic en masse.

I guess all this is to say that "spam" is a thing in Warmachine and Hordes. The devil in the details is that it is defined differently than it would be in WHFB or WH40K, and in such a way that might look different than the results in that game most the time. I might be wrong on all of this, mind, as I'm not familiar with how it is done in Warhammer a lot.

And stuff.

 dreadnova wrote:
I actually ended up getting the hordes 2 player starter. I will be taking the legion of everblight components as I heard they are the lowest model count within the ruleset. What warlock should I aim for and how should I expand it to be a low model count list.

Sounds excellent. The first thing I'd do is get many and several games in- that'll give you an idea of the kinds of things that are valuable in the game. That being said...

First off, I'd get a warlock that plays well with lots of beasts. I think Thagrosh (Prophet), Saeryn, and Vayl(Both) are both great options for this. Thagrosh tends to go for more of a tanky armor-spam sorta' list, while the others tend to operate more on a first-strike basis. I'd lean toward Thagrosh because he plays /very/ well with the Carnivean in the basic set, while the others often find it a bit over-priced for what it does. (Thagrosh has some excellent defensive buffs that stack well with spiny growth). Furthermore, Thagrosh can increase the damage output of all your melee beasts /and/ both the melee and ranged of your warspears.

Next, I'd look over some of the heavy warbeasts you may want. You're not going to need another carnivean, so I'd look at Angelius, Ravagores, and Scythians.

Angelii are best in amounts larger than 1, and they perform very well with defense buffs. They are also excellent in scenario play because they can repel enemy models with their animus.

Ravagores are one of the best ranged beasts in the game, and are useful at every stage of play. I'd take them with any 'caster that has a melee damage buff. (That way they can pull their weight in both melee and ranged, because they're probably going to eventually be in melee, and with a little buff that makes them effective at all points).

Scythians are fantastic melee threats, and put out a ton of damage. Angelii are more /efficient/ in terms of fury usage, but a Scythian has a much higher maximum value. They're great in all lists, and I'd lean towards both them and Ravagores for Thagrosh, because they synergize better with the armor buff he gives out.

You're going to want/need support for your warbeasts. The two major options are Shepherds and Forsaken, and both will remove fury from your war beasts, allowing you to 'run hotter'. Shepherds are cheaper, but they have no real damage output. Forsaken are more expensive and have melee capacity, but they aren't /quite/ as good at the job of removing fury. Which you choose will come down to what your list needs more, though you'll almost certainly want one or the other.

Finally, because you have the warspears already, I'll /highly/ suggest picking up their Unit Attachment. Their UA /dramatically/ increases their potency, and it's relatively cheap both in terms of points and $$$ in comparison to the impact it will have on your army.

Strider Deathstalkers are great anti-infantry solos, and picking a couple up to try out would probably also be wise, though you /may/ not need them if you take a pair of Ravagores for ranged support. They're good models though, so you'll probably want to get some eventually.

I'm sure others will have more input and things that I missed, but that should be a pretty quick overview of some of the models I'd look at to begin with, especially considering you're leaning toward a more beast-heavy force.

everything board said for everblight is accurate

you want (eventually)
2 angeli
3 sythean/ravagores magnetized (some lists will take 2 of one or the other, some will take 3 total)
2 shepards and/or forsaken, shepards can heal and are cheaper, forsaken are a legit threat to hordes armies and tougher to kill these guys keep your beasts from getting too much fury
1 seraphim (later on) slipstream is a really really really good animus, but you need to get clever with it
1 naga (later on) again, great animus

Legionaires/spawning vat, you usually take these two together, they make beasts from corpses and the lego's provide the corpses, and also are a great midfield unit for blocking charges and generally being annoying.

basically all our casters besides kallus and rhyyus work great with lots of beasts

If you magnetize the heavy chassis kit, it isn't a bad idea to keep the Carnivean in mind too. It is not going to be in as many lists as the Ravagore, but Spiny Growth and some of its hitting power aspects do come into play with a couple of Legion's warlocks like Thagrosh.

The Spawning Vessel and its satelite of other models isn't a bad investment someday either. It's called colloquially the Cheating Pot here for some of the long-term swing it can have in generating warbeasts.

And stuff.

 Blaque wrote:
If you magnetize the heavy chassis kit, it isn't a bad idea to keep the Carnivean in mind too. It is not going to be in as many lists as the Ravagore, but Spiny Growth and some of its hitting power aspects do come into play with a couple of Legion's warlocks like Thagrosh.

he's already got a carni in the starter set so I didn't mention it

 Talamare wrote:

 Grundz wrote:


One of the things you'll find about warmachine is spamming doesn't work,

Xerxis Tier 1 Cataphract Spam

Also eKreoss' theme. It's a damn solid sort of "B/B+" level list despite being very spammy.

Terminus + 30 Bane Knights and 26 Bane Thralls. Add 4 pt jack. Watch chaos.

But the reason we can name these examples is that they are less likely to be seen. Balance is essential.