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It's worth mentioning that transfers, animus, and frenzies make beasts very different.

With transfers, their warlock will always have the same stats, but they can burn fury to transfer damage. This might mean that you don't have the setup to kill a heavy or two, but can wail on the warlock with old man stats and do heavy damage to the beasts.

Frenzy is a big deal too. If you can mess with the enemy fury management (kill the squishy specialized units that can remove fury), then you up the chance that the beasts will frenzy. They'll get one more attack...then can't do anything that turn. Even if they don't, they have to keep fury on them, making them less effective.

Animus are a big thing too. They are extra spells for the warlock while the beast is alive and are commonly extra buffs to stack with upkeeps. But if a beast is casting it's animus then that's less fury for attacks.

As mentioned before, it seems lopsided (and your opponent probably cheated), but warjacks and warcasters are more powerful on their own. If you attrition down, you'll have the advantage over a warlock almost every time.

Consider also that warbeasts have lower-POW weapons and are a lot more expensive. Six-point workhorse heavy warbeasts don't exist the way six-point workhorse heavy warjacks do; in Circle all the heavies I use are at least nine points. Warcasters also generate the Focus on their own so you can run with a smaller battlegroup and keep playing late-game when a warlock would have to start cutting to keep enough Fury to do stuff.

This question is a grass-is-greener thing; I started with Hordes and spent a long time grumbling that the Warmachine 'casters were all better and they could keep buying/boosting out of their 'caster's control area.

One other, IMHO, important piece of advice. If you start attacking a beast make sure that you can finish it off. A warbeast with one circle left can be healed for 2 points and be as good a new as far as offensive capabilities go.

 aprilmanha wrote:


I just had my first 1 vs 1 game against horde and I was hoping to get some comments from the community.

I'm a bit confused about the balance of Jacks vs beasts.

Don't be. They’re not meant to be directly compared. Beasts, essentially are better than jacks, but they’re also far more vital and necessary within a Hordes army. Fury is better than focus, but has far more hoops to jump through. Look. A warjack is a heavy hitter. ‘concentrated force’ essentially. A warbeast is a heavy hitter, wound sink, fury generator, and an animus. Kill a warjack, and you kill a heavy hitter. Big deal. I’ll send in infantry. Kill a warbeast and you take out so much more. As you kill beasts, hordes armies decrease in efficiency and effectiveness. They lose out against WM armies in the attrition game. Remember as well, hordes armies pay the ‘fury tax’, in that their beasts cost more than our jacks, and they must take more of them. So you have to take proportionally more, proportionally more expensive models. And Warmachine generally has superior infantry options on top of this to back up their jacks. Hordes armies generally field far less infantry, so their beasts are forced (ha, pun) to do far more heavy lifting. So yes, they’re better than jacks, but they’re also more important, and needed to do far more.

In that sense, comparing them is kinda pointless.

 aprilmanha wrote:


while Jacks are limited by the amount of focus they can have, and is available for them to get, Warbeasts seem to have no such limits, able to get free hits and free boosts until they have killed everything.
I understand that each time they do these free actions they gain fury, that the caster then can take and dump, but it does not seem like this is much of a limit at all.

Theres more to it than that though, to be fair. They’re not ‘free’ hits or boosts. Every attack/boost generates fury, and all beasts have a fury cap. They can only be ‘pushed’ so far. Warlocks cant ‘take it and dump’ either; in the following turn, warlocks can only leach up to their own stat worth of fury (so if you have a 7 fury warlock sitting on 2 fury at the start of the control phase, he can leach up to 5 fury from his beasts. The rest stays on them and forces frenzy tests). The rest stays on the beasts and potentially causes them to frenzy, with the effect that the owning player loses control of them for a turn. I’ve lost games because of frenzy. It is a big deal.

 aprilmanha wrote:

I fought vs Skorne with 4 beasts and had a very dull game as his beasts just ploughed through everything in their path, boosting and gaining extra attacks until what ever they were fighting was dead.

Yup. The hordes alpha strike is brutal when you present your whole army to him to tear apart in one go. But I’m pretty sure your opponent was doing things wrong too. Then again, where were you with proper positioning and bait/tarpit units to soak up his charges and attacks? How were they ploughing through everything, and why weren't you dealing with the beasts? Answer those questions and you are well on your way in learning how to play against hordes.

 aprilmanha wrote:

Is this normal for hordes armies, and how am I meant to actually fight against that other then just running away with a shooty list and pick them apart from range? (I see that most hordes beasts have no ranged attacks)

Only when you play poorly!

Well, start by not presenting your whole army to his in one turn for a colossal alpha strike. When facing hordes, you need to remember how vital beasts are. You don’t nickel and dime them. You focus on one until it dies. When facing hordes, you need to play the attrition game. Its generally understood that hordes is superior early game, warmachine is superior late game. So you need to get to the late game. Stop charges with control feats/spells so you’re the one hitting him first. Bait his charges with sacrificial units and take them out with your second wave. Engage with an obnoxious tarpit (especially something with tough, or high def) disable and kill his beasts. His whole army becomes less effective as you do. Secondly, its easier to gang up on hordes armies. Their footprint is often smaller than WM armies. In your game, he had 4 beasts. Assuming they’re titans, that’s basically 30pts tied up in four models. At 35pts my khador lists typically will have 2 maxed out squads of black dragons with Fangnik solo support – that’s 26 models on the table that eat beasts for breakfast. I know I can play his game. That’s very little left over in terms of beast support, or infantry. Having some decent melee tarpits or bruisers will both soak up their attacks, and ultimately attrition them out, and take them down in short order.

Oh, and make sure your opponent is playing by the rules. Yours isn’t…

 aprilmanha wrote:

I dunno... I guess I'm missing something big here but after that game I'm rather discouraged from fighting vs hordes again with anything less then a full shooting list :(

Yup, youre missing something. Its all part of learning though. Thing is, against hordes, you simply have to play a different kind of game than against WM armies. In your games thus far, you didn’t.

If I can ask, what army do you field?

Deadnight wrote:


If I can ask, what army do you field?

Well I got khador, menoth, cygar, a small cryx army, a tiny retribution army and some circle models for pasinting.

 aprilmanha wrote:

Deadnight wrote:


If I can ask, what army do you field?

Well I got khador, menoth, cygar, a small cryx army, a tiny retribution army and some circle models for pasinting.

You have no reason to fear hordes with any of those armies. Khador and menoth have brutal, hard hitting infantry and great staying power. The menites especially have lots of sneaky tricks to hand with self sacrifice etc. retribution and cygnar have solid control, and whilst they're not melee brutes (ret is a step above cygnar though), they have enough punch to see through beasts, especially when their guns are factored in. Cryx in General is just nasty. Apply banes with deneghra or skarre.

Do any armies really have a reason to fear Hordes?

 ImAGeek wrote:
Do any armies really have a reason to fear Hordes?

Ones controlled by me obviously
My armies are female first and foremost, so if an army has a female unit they will get taken over any male units (even if the males are "Better").
So my Cygar are the 2 female journeyman casters and alot of jacks, my menoth are daughters of the flame, my khador seem to be mostly guys :(
I need to get cards for them Cygar though, missing the cards for the jacks so can't field them much!

 aprilmanha wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Do any armies really have a reason to fear Hordes?

Ones controlled by me obviously
My armies are female first and foremost, so if an army has a female unit they will get taken over any male units (even if the males are "Better").
So my Cygar are the 2 female journeyman casters and alot of jacks, my menoth are daughters of the flame, my khador seem to be mostly guys :(
I need to get cards for them Cygar though, missing the cards for the jacks so can't field them much!

What does that have to do with anything?

Well nothing for the most part.
It just limits the units I would consider adding to my army.
Like my Cryx Satyxis Raiders group, if they need some Bane Knights to deal with a type of foe... they won't get them

Right so you're deliberately limiting yourself in your choices, and then saying Hordes is overpowered..?

Edit: I'm not trying to be rude here, just pointing out that there may be a reason you struggled against Hordes, and that's that you ignore at least half the tools available to you.

With respect, if you don't use the right tools, or artificially limit yourself to a subset of options, then you've got little right to complain about being unable to take on hordes or think they're unfair or unbalanced against wm.

Edit. And I'm sure there are gurl banez. They just don't wear boob armour.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Right so you're deliberately limiting yourself in your choices, and then saying Hordes is overpowered..?

Edit: I'm not trying to be rude here, just pointing out that there may be a reason you struggled against Hordes, and that's that you ignore at least half the tools available to you.

I'm just comparing my experience of the games I've had, as limited as it is.
I Just want to enjoy playing a game where my only options are different shaped men for once (Like w40k)
Having awesome looking female models that can kick butt is a lot of the reason I want to start WMH in the first place.

From what people have said about the play styles of horde, they sound like foes that do not give the style of game I enjoy, and as a beginner I would rather get used to playing the game in a way I enjoy before I then move onto learning other ways to play.
As such avoiding tournament armies and competitive people is a good idea, because I won't be playing with armies that can give me or them a fun game.

I'm not saying Horde are overpowered, just that they don't seem fun for ME to play against yet.
No point jumping in the deep end if it just puts me off swimming ever again right?

Not to be rude, but that's a fairly childish way to approach the game. You're practically saying you have decided that X isn't fun to play against and won't play against it, even though the reason you find it unfun is self-inflicted.

If you want a viable all female army, I would try out Thyra's Theme Force. Its a bunch of daughters. Its not the best list, but any living war casters need to fear it.

Deadnight wrote:
With respect, if you don't use the right tools, or artificially limit yourself to a subset of options, then you've got little right to complain about being unable to take on hordes or think they're unfair or unbalanced against wm.

Edit. And I'm sure there are gurl banez. They just don't wear boob armour.

Kossite spam FTW. Limiting yourself to a subset of options forces you to figure out what those options do best. As for an all girl army: remember that boobs and long hair a woman do not make.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"do not a woman make"? Ah screw it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Not to be rude, but that's a fairly childish way to approach the game. You're practically saying you have decided that X isn't fun to play against and won't play against it, even though the reason you find it unfun is self-inflicted.

If you want a viable all female army, I would try out Thyra's Theme Force. Its a bunch of daughters. Its not the best list, but any living war casters need to fear it.

Thyra is actually my first caster for Menoth (other then starter kit Kreoss, but he is trapped in a foam cube )

I'm just trying to keep the game enjoyable for my style of play, light and easy, and I'll try to find opponents who think the same way, that way we all have fun.
Its not like I'm ever going to play in a tournament or anything

You're seriously missing out on the main fun of the game by doing that honestly. Don't apply anything you think you know about competitive gaming to WMH competitive play, its not like 40k at all due to the tighter ruleset.

The only difference between a casual and a competitive WMH game is a competitive game is played at a tournament. The atmosphere is basically the same, players are friendly and chatty. There is no arguing over rule interpretations.

Also, its wrong to assume that units where you can't tell the gender are all male. All of the major martial orders in the Iron Kingdoms are open to everyone. Stormblades, Exemplar, Winter Guard(the officer is female), Temple Flameguard, Gun Mages, etc... All are open to male and females. You can't tell who is who under armor.

The only groups which are closed are the Daughters of the Flame and the Satyxis. Daughters are a group for grieving widows of Protectorate Soldiers, and the Satyxis are only female because the blight on their island turned all their males into bloated slabs of flesh.

 aprilmanha wrote:
I play mostly in Worcester Wargames and a Club in Redditch, I don't really want to go further afield then that really anyway, going to clubs is stressful enough

Edit: I've had a look at the fury rules a bit closer now and it does seem to be... kill the horde in one go before they attack, because if they start attacking they will be rolling in so much fury they can kill everything.
Seems like its a very staggered mechanic, which favours going all or nothing, with either you are attacking and creating more fury to make more attacks, or not attacking and have no fury to do any attacks...

I think I'm going to stick to playing Just Warmachine, which feels much more balanced with the focus limits having casters creates.

You seem to be misunderstanding how FURY works. It's very common and took me a long time to work my head around. Beasts do not USE Fury to buy attacks, they GENERATE Fury to buy attacks. If the Warlock can't leach all of the Fury (up to his FURY stat) then the Beast must make a Threshold check. If it fails, it frenzies. Then the Warlock USES Fury to pay for spells, attacks etc...

 aprilmanha wrote:


I think I'm going to stick to playing Just Warmachine, which feels much more balanced with the focus limits having casters creates.

The fury system is very well balanced though.

To be honest, the fury system is far more interesting to play with, and hugely integral the functioning of a war pack, far more so than the mechanics of focus and jacks and battle groups, which amounts to a simple resource management.

With fury, every piece of your battlegroup links in to every other piece. A warcaster simply 'fuels' a warjack. With fury, there is A far mor interesting series of interplays and interactions that go both ways; ie between warlock and warbeast, and warbeast and warlock. Fury and war packs are far more interesting to play with as a result. Both need each other. And yet, at the same time both act as limiting factors against the performance of the other. Warbeast performance is limited by their warlocks ability to deal with their fury, and the repercussions of their attacks, but at the same time, need the warlock for their control range/ability to generate fury. Warlocks are limited by their warbeasts, but need them as heavy hitters, wound sinks, fury generators and animi.

 aprilmanha wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Do any armies really have a reason to fear Hordes?

Ones controlled by me obviously
My armies are female first and foremost, so if an army has a female unit they will get taken over any male units (even if the males are "Better").
So my Cygar are the 2 female journeyman casters and alot of jacks, my menoth are daughters of the flame, my khador seem to be mostly guys :(
I need to get cards for them Cygar though, missing the cards for the jacks so can't field them much!

There's a player at my FLGS who runs an all-female Circle list, either Kaya with lots of 'beasts or Morvahna and female Tharns. The extreme Warpwolf in the frilly pink skirt is a sight to behold.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
If you want a viable all female army, I would try out Thyra's Theme Force. Its a bunch of daughters. Its not the best list, but any living war casters need to fear it.

PMorvahna is great at it, we have no idea about the difference between a male and a female Warpwolf so Kaya could pull it off, from the images of Makeda I don't know how easy it'd be to tell male and female Skorne apart, Cygnar doesn't have all-female units but it does come with the broadest selection of female named characters ('Casters and solos) around and has mixed-gender units.

Although it´s a very limiting theme you can get a lot of mileage out of mostly female models.
Both Sorschas are able to deal with Hordes. So does Winterguard when they are lead by their female officer (and Kovnik Joe but you know who´s boss). Widowmakers are lead by a woman and they are a strong piece.

If you can't beat them, join them. Have you looked at Legion of Everblight? That army should fit you like a glove, plenty of decent female warlocks and solos and more than possible to make extremely warbeast-centric armies. (Although like in so many places it's sort of... pin ups... sometimes.)

Oh and limiting your choice of models by aesthetic is a valid way of building your army. To say otherwise is to essentially default the game towards 40K list building (as in where you can only win if you use the correct subset of models).
HOWEVER, using a smaller subset of models does make it more difficult to change to a new meta-game, which shouldn't upset much either. Probably you just need to get more experience versus an opponent who actually know and is willing to play according to the rules - so you can work out what works for you and what doesn't in this new shiny expanded world of challenges.

Well I've actually just played another game this evening and thinking of just concentrating on my painting for a while.
Bit of a personal realisation that I'm finding it a bit stressful getting games which does not help make them fun and thinking I need to just get on and paint all the models I have rather then stress out playing a game O_o.
That way I can enjoy hanging out with the people gaming while I get on and paint

Thanks for the ideas and comments though, I've got some warp wolves who may soon have a date with some greenstuff

Women in real armor look just like men. Boobplate is a fantasy myth.

and high heels? Just no.

of course if you want that fantasy then go for it.

 Mordekiem wrote:
Snip

Uhhh not sure what that has to do with anything?
As long as they are strong looking poses, and don't look like relic knights level of kinky then it does not really matter what they wear.
I just like having models of strong women, rather then the manfests most other games seem to have.

Us women can be strong to even if some of us can't be

You know, this whole female army discussion reminded me of something I find rather amusing about the Convergence of Cyriss. The gender your body was has no bearing whatsoever on what clockwork body you get slotted into (that depends on aptitude), so you could easily end up with a clockwork angel that was a guy before he got the whole clockwork vessel treatment.

(for reference here's a picture)

To try and make this vaguely relevant, you could actually do a fine Convergence army with "female" (at least, female looking robots) models only. Aurora and clockwork angels with some vectors (Convergence Jacks), or Iron Mother and a bunch of non-intelligent servitor models.

Ohh I forgot about those models I might just get some to paint up

Even though they aren't necessarily female... Your logic is hard to follow mate.

 aprilmanha wrote:

 Mordekiem wrote:
Snip

Uhhh not sure what that has to do with anything?
As long as they are strong looking poses, and don't look like relic knights level of kinky then it does not really matter what they wear.
I just like having models of strong women, rather then the manfests most other games seem to have.

Us women can be strong to even if some of us can't be

I understand. I like the strong female characters and models and also looked at creating an all female army.

Since you seem to be focused on female models only, I'm just trying to point out that most of the models, especially those in armor, can easily be male or female. They are essentially gender neutral. In fact, I'd say a lot of the models are actually gender neutral and it is primarily our own biases that give them gender.

So for example these models could easily be female or male, especially with the helmets on.


The models you choose to use or play with are your personal choice. I'm just saying it sounds like you are cutting out a lot of excellent options because they lack boobplate or obvious female enhancements that are kind of unrealistic.

In essence, I am trying to help you in your quest to play an entirely female (or mostly female) army yet open some options that you may or may not have considered previously. Hopefully this will help make your list and play more competitive. If you were not interested in being at least somewhat competitive you wouldn't have posted this thread to begin with. And this is fine. Warmachine as a game and hobby has multiple levels it can be enjoyed on. IMO you should try them all out at one time or another.

Good luck in your quest.

Wait, does this mean you aren't running the Choir because they're dudes?