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shyzo wrote:


Sorry, we had night here, so I went to sleep.

Alright, what I want:
1. Good balance.
2. Cool minis.
3. Cool fluff.
4. Cheaper than GW.

That's all.

Hi Shizo, here is a breakdown on WMH. I’ll sell it as a brilliant game, very engaging, and very enjoyable. I’ll be honest – I lost interest in the gaming side of 40k at the end of 4th edition – the iron Warriors killed it for me. I took a walk in the gaming wilderness for 18 months before coming back. Thing was, it wasn’t 40k that brought me back. It was warmachine. Take this as a testimonial if you like, but warmachine/hordes was the game that made me fall in love with this hobby again. That’s the greatest compliment I can give it.

Rules/Balance: WMH is an extremely well written game, with very tight rules and no ambiguities. Its designed as a very competitive-friendly type of game (but casual works just as well). Balance is extremely good. Its not perfect – there are some outliers on either side of the power curve, but the difference in power level is a lot less than you’d find in 40k. Its probably one of the most balanced games out there, and even with the outliers, you’ll find you can still beat them if you know what you’re doing. 2-list formats and steamroller scenarios help. effectively, everything can be built into a game winning strategy. That is not to say that you cant write bad lists; or that there are dud units, not everything works equally well with everything else against all opponents under all circumstances. A lot of the time, ‘bad’ stuff is situational, rather than generalist. A lot of people compare it to a CCG – I don’t know how true that holds, but it is game where your plan revolves around synnergies between your units and pulling off killer combos and strategies.

In terms of minis, it’s a marmite thing. Some love the minis, some cant stand them. Personally, I like them. Whilst also heroic, they have a different aesthetic to GW games – a bit more steampunky (and i don’t like using the term – its meisleading), a bit cartoony, big shoulder pads, big weapons etc. Apparenly, American footballers, their stances, armour etc was the inspiration for the hulking jacks. Its not that the WMH sculpts are bad, or worse than others ; its that the aesthetic is different, and for some, it takes a bit longer to get used to it, coming as they are from the ‘norm’ of GW stylings. Like I said, there are some really nice scupts and models out there, along with some stinkers. its also harder to modify and convert than with 40k.

WMH fluff is a hidden gem. A lot of folks just see it as a wargame and don’t delve any further; then blindly argue that WMH has no fluff, or that it is a pale shadow of what 40k offers. I disagree strongly. WMH has a huge amount of very well written fluff and some very decent writers behind it.

first up: complete chronological list of fiction.
http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?195787-The-Complete-Chronological-Iron-Kingdoms-Fiction
check out the forums as well - often the lead writer of the fiction - Doug Seacat will step in and elaborate on any and all points of the fiction that raise questions. Heck, he once personally explained to me why they don't have orcs in their ip.
http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?77295-Doug-Seacat-on. A collection of seacat's posts expanding on and explaining in (sometime exhausting) details the nature of certain aspects of their world.

The first place for fluff, as you can guess is the rulebook and army books for both warmachine and hordes. they have the ongoing fiction, as well as character back stories, unit descriptions and the FOW books often describe some of the logistics, and actual nuts and bolts of army organisation, and history. they're good solid reads (i love the retribution book in particular, its background material is phenomenol!) but generally, act as a great intro. If you are interested, the fluff goes all the way back to Mk1 and the original books from over 10 years ago. if you get the PP reader app, you can download all the old books for a song. its well worth it, IMO. the hordes expansions (mutagenesis and evolution iirc) have some really excellent story material.

the second place is PPs magazine. No Quarter. it is an excellent read. pick it up at your FLGS, and if you want the older copies, check out the PP reader app, where you can get all the old issues for a few pence. there are short stories throughout the magazine. they also run very popular and very well written fluff articles in the magazine. For example, you have the Gavyn Kyle files, which elaborates on, explores and deepens the fiction behind a lot of the "names" in the game. Not just casters. But other famous individuals too. Sometimes its units (there was one exploring the history and culture of the kayazy). Another great one is the Guts n Gears files, which are like the GK files, but are less about individuals, and more about the fluff behind unit types and warjack chassis (where they were made, how long they were in service for, development history etc). the NQ magazine is well worth a read - it has some excellent terrain making and conversion content and is well worth its price tag. i think they're re-releasing some of the fiction via skull island as well (see below). there is also regular fiction which includes both once off short stories, and stories that continue on the arc from those in books - for example, what happened to Kallus at the end of Domination is explained in one.

The third place (and my personal favourite) is the RPG material. Warmachine originated as a D20 RPG using the DnD open source licence. Their very first adventure was called "the witchfire trilogy" and is a great read, with some interesting little nuggets. The "old" D20 material comprised the character guides (which have a lot of the basic information, cosmology, history etc) 2 monsternomicons (with huge bits of info on infernals, and skorne culture/history, although its generally about the monsters that inhabit immoren), a small exansion on the port of Five Fingers, and the excellent world guide. I cannot recommend these enough; the World Guide in particular. its epic. you can literally smell the smoke when you read it, hear the clanking and grinding of gears and the hissing of steam engines. They're very, very engrossing lore books, and do a fantastic job of bringing the world to life - not just the history, but crime&punishment, trades and learning, entertainment, finance, language, cosmology, and lots of information on locations, towns, cities, forts, and the big names in all of them. Now, the old material is still online (if you know where to look; winkwinknudgenudge) but they're also all being updated by PP into a new RPG series using a proprietary rules system based off of the wargame. So far they have the IKRPG core rules, five fingers, a new monsternomicon and the excellent Kings Nations and Gods books. Again, all well worth the read. Coming up soon is the iron kingdoms: unleashed "complimentary" RPG which focuses on adventures in the wilds, and expands on the races to include tharn, farrow, gatormen etc. I’m quite looking forward to that one! i think the RPG material on its own is stellar, and really does a fantastic job of bringing the world to life - far more than you’d expect from a regular wargame.

The fourth place is PPs publishing wing. Skull island expeditions. https://skullislandx.com/
they don’t yet have the volume or the library of titles of the black library, but what’s there is very solid. I will particularly recommend the warcaster chronicle series (caine, butcher and shae so far), warlock chronicles (makeda and thagrosh), extraordinary zoology (brilliant little read!) and top of the pile is Into the Storm by larry correia (award winning author). The’ iron kingdoms excursions’ and ‘called to battle’ series of short stories that are quite fun, and enjoyable to read too.

In terms of price tag, WMH is both potentially cheaper, and potentially more expensive. Price per model is about the same, but arguably, you need less models in WMH. Its definitely cheaper to ‘buy in’. there are some greater entry level choices. You have the battle boxes, which are great to learn the basic rules, you have the 2-player starter sets for Warmachine and Hordes, and most recently, some excellent ‘all-in-one’ box sets which provide very solid mid sized armies with a decent discount on top of it. In terms of rules – you need either the WM: Prime, or Hordes Primal book. Other books are optional. If you’re tech-savvy, get the WarRoom app for your tablet, and you can buy all the ‘cards’/stats for your faction for a few quid-$7 iirc per faction. This updates automatically with new releases and theme lists so you are always up to date with the rules- no new codex woes! WarRoom also gives you access to all the rules of the game (that mightn’t be covered by Prime – the battle engines and colossal were releases after, and their rules are in their relevant expansion books rather than Prime/Primal, but can still be accessed via warroom).

As a game, its also easier to expand than 40k. buy a new caster, and your army plays radically different. Buy a new unit, and the whole armies dynamic can change. You don’t need to swap out everything in your list. So rather than having to fork out $300 or $400 for a new army, you can spend $20 here, and $40 there on a new unit/solo/jack-beast/caster and slowly expand. Reason I say it can be as expensive as 40k is this; its not frontloaded like 40k is. The easy to expand model hurts your pocket a lot less than the frontloading one, but after twelve months, if you look back and price your purchases, you’ll find you might have spent quite a bit on it!

There are lots of good miniature games out there, but there aren't many science fiction/futuristic[i] choices out there. You pretty much only have Infinity and Warzone: Resurrection for sci-fi infantry based combat with larger vehicles/monsters.

I left out Mantic games, because of all their wargames are lacking in models and have been in this state for years despite kickstarters etc. they haven't been able to get their production together and what is available is really substandard.Also, one of their main game designers is Alessio Cavatore who is an ex-GW employee well-known for writing imbalanced army books.

Infinity is an excellent game that is usually played with 6-20 models per side, but plays nothing like 40K. It has recently undergone an edition change that made a lot of improvements. It is a much smaller investment than 40K even if you want to buy some extra minis for variety. Also, it does have free rules, free web-based list builder, and a dedicated tournament system called ITS that ranks all players by ELO internationally. IMO it also has one of the best balance between factions so the gameplay really relies on your strategy and tactics (as well as dice).

Then there are the "epic" scale science fiction games like Dropzone Commander and Firestorm: Planetfall. The scale is smaller, but the emphasis is on vehicle/tank combat even though infantry units do still exist (and are necessary for mission play). The price point for these games is only slightly less than 40K as they are both UK based companies.

Also for sci-fi, are the ship combat games like X-wing, Star Trek Attack Wing, Firestorm Armada, and Dystopian Wars. With the latter two being more heavy miniature game systems.

For fantasy games look to Malifaux and Warmachine or Hordes.

Well, in our gaming group, half of the member have switched to WMH.
The rule set is tighter and PP supports a tournament format (Steamroller).
However, it appears that the learning curve is a bit more flat than in 40k.

shyzo wrote:

 Eilif wrote:
Shyzo,
If you'd just take the time to answer the questions in the second post, this would be alot more fruitful and you'd get more tailored answers.

Sorry, we had night here, so I went to sleep.

Alright, what I want:
1. Good balance.
2. Cool minis.
3. Cool fluff.
4. Cheaper than GW.

That's all.

A bit vague, but I can work with this.
I'm going to assume that if balance if a concern you game enough that you'd like a game that you will be able to easily find opponents for and if minis are a priority then you'd prefer a non-prepainted minis game. If this is not the case, let me know and I'll suggest something else.

However, working from my above assumption I'd recommend Infinity and Warmachine/Hordes. Both are well supported games with tight rules and good balance. Both avoid codex creep by mostly advancing all factions at once with each game edition. As for cost, both have minis that are as (sometimes a bit more) per fig that GW, but they both require far fewer figures and so usually end up with a far cheaper cost of entry. Both also have starter boxes or faction boxes that actually save you quite a bit of $ and are not limited edition products.

At that point it simply boils down to what genre, aesthetic and game scope you want.

-If you like Anime style gaming and models with individual model activation on a very small scope (few figures per player) then I'd go with Infinity.

-If you like a steampunk/fantasy universe with platoon level games and minis that have their own style, but are a bit more GW'ish in terms of style and proportion then Warmachine and Hordes is a good bet. If you really like Tournament gaming, then WMH is definitely your top choice.

You can't go wrong with either, though they are very different games so I'd visit your FLGS and get in a demo game. I don't know about Infinity, but Warmachine is supported by a dedicated group of promoters called "Press Gangers".

Balance on Warzone is pretty good. New stuff for all factions is constantly being added along with new factions. And you can build a full army for less than $100 bucks. They have starter sets for each faction with models you will actually use, a lot of the rules are in PDF although the main rule book is very nice. It has alternating activation for units, which is far superior than one sides army goes then the other. Futuristic and no skulls everywhere. The fluff is 20+ years old with plenty to build on taking place in Earth's solar system. Game play is pretty fast. Rules are fairly solid and it will work as a tournament game. I think I saw Salute has a tourney with a $1k cash prize. The game is huge in Europe and starting to get better known here in the States. Truescale minatures, done in resin, extremely well detailed and the style is not cartoony like some other games.