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Okay, part of the reason I am looking over to the beasty steampunky side is the dirty little rumors of game play balance. I was speaking with one of my friends and he said that it only looked balanced from the outside.

I am wanting to know what the warts are to warmachine and hordes. Is there stuff that is totally "broken" in that you should expect to see 4 or 5 copies of the same list at any event? And if so, what is that warty list?

Thanks again. I am having a harder time selling my group on this than I thought I would and am looking for some ammo.

The most warty thing that I can say about the game is not all casters are equally valuable. There are clearly some casters that are better than others. That being said the game is very rock/paper/scissors in that what is a strong list against one thing will be absolutely destroyed by a different list that gets beaten easily by yet another list, etc.. Just like everyother game there are casters/factions that are more popular than others but it all seems to come out equally.

Somnicide wrote:I was speaking with one of my friends and he said that it only looked balanced from the outside.

I'm afraid your friend didn't play that game enough. From all the systems I've played (and there were quite a few during last 20 years) WM/H seems to be one of the best balanced. Of course, there are some choices considered "weaker" by some players but there's simply NO unplayable model/unit in that game.

Somnicide wrote:Is there stuff that is totally "broken" in that you should expect to see 4 or 5 copies of the same list at any event? And if so, what is that warty list?

First: you should keep in mind that the conception of "being broken" works a bit differently in WM/H. In fact, every list built correctly is utterly broken by definition. That's how this game works - my army is broken, your army is broken so we balance each other. Some love that aspect of PP systems (I do), some hate it.
Second: Currently both systems total 10 playable factions with 102 (IIRC) warcasters/warlocks. That means 102 different armies/playing styles. Depending on event size and local meta you may encounter several copies of the same caster/warlock but I really doubt if any list will completely duplicate. The same caster does not necessarily mean the same list conception. eg. you may take pDeneghra and build her list around lots of arcnodes with minimal support and go for the straight casterkill with her spells only or you may throw in some infantry and heavy armor and go for killing enemy stuff with Denny using her spells for denial/softening targets. Same caster - two different lists - two different styles of play.
And in any case you need skill first. Copy-pasting from internet a list that won an event somewhere will give you nothing. A player with a good skill can beat such a list with a randomly created army (we've tried that in my gaming group).

Leo_the_Rat wrote:The most warty thing that I can say about the game is not all casters are equally valuable. There are clearly some casters that are better than others.

Yet still there're NO totally unplayable casters/warlocks. And again, it strongly depends on the skill of the player and local meta. Models/units considered broken/useless in one gaming group may be treated differently somewhere else (eg. Defender is widely considered as a "must have" in most Cygnaran lists - in my and my gaming group opinion it is the weakest heavy warjack Cygnar has to offer... except Triumph maybe ).

Leo_the_Rat wrote:That being said the game is very rock/paper/scissors in that what is a strong list against one thing will be absolutely destroyed by a different list that gets beaten easily by yet another list, etc..

Again - that's another aspect of the game that some players love and some utterly hate. But that's also why the official tournament format allows two armylists.

Hope that helped a bit.

Somnicide, I'm pretty sure I know which "friend" you meant. I'm also pretty sure that nothing will lure him away from the siren call of a certain UK-based wargaming company.

For a game system with this many factions and models, Privateer Press has done a remarkable job of balancing the different units. I think a great example of this is with the battle engines. The rules for the Khador Gun Carriage appeared in the latest issue of No Quarter magazine. And while it has certain inherent strengths, it's got inherent weakness too. It is by no means a "must purchase" item for Khador, but can be strategically viable depending on what kind of a list you take.

Importantly, while each faction has a few "must have" models, and a few that are, shall we say, situational at best, overall your strategic gameplay is going to matter a lot more in this game than just rolling buckets of dice. And when you see similar lists in Warmahordes tournaments, it's likely because someone has chosen to do one of the faction themed lists, which purposefully restrict the models you can take if you want to benefit from the special rules in those lists.

Also, don't forget there already are a lot of people in your gaming group that are playing Warmachine/Hordes. But with our FLGS starting up a 40K league/tournament, you're probably not going to win over any of those people that haven't already been won over.

If your comparison is 40k, I think the main wart of WarmaHordes is the 102 warcasters/warlocks that was mentioned. There's just so many characters to learn to really get your head around the game. And since each is based around their feat which is game breaking/purposefully super annoying, you can't typically get away with just having an understanding of how the faction works or how you think the caster will function. This sets the learning curve very high, and it isn't necessarily a fun learning curve - it feels like a lot of memorization and testing (to me, to each his own). Unit rules also tend to be a little more than the normal 40k I shook slightly better, I am slightly harder to kill - determining the effectiveness of any one unit is less straightforward when you first start. The game seems like it would be awesome if you like the game style and you and your friends get very good at it, with a lot of "oh I didn't realize you could do that, I guess I lose" outcomes on both sides until you reach that point.

Lambadomy:

Really, if you're a player that needs to know all the abilities of every model in every force you might end up facing, you're going to have to do a lot of memorization no matter what tabletop game you're playing. Hell, the new 40K Grey Knights codex has 14(!) different HQ choices, all with different stats and abilities...and that's not even counting the retinues they can take! So that's somewhat of a specious argument when it comes to WarmaHordes.

One big difference in Warmachine/Hordes, is that you have cards that list all of the spells/abilities/attacks for each model. And unless your opponent's a dick, he'll happily show you any of his cards before or during the game, or explain exactly how a model or unit works.

The game is actually quite fun, and fairly easy to learn. I suggest taking a look at the quickstart rules that are available for free on the Privateer Press website, or better yet, seeing if you could find someone that plays to take you through and introductory game.

DrunkenBoxer wrote:
Really, if you're a player that needs to know all the abilities of every model in every force you might end up facing, you're going to have to do a lot of memorization no matter what tabletop game you're playing. Hell, the new 40K Grey Knights codex has 14(!) different HQ choices, all with different stats and abilities...and that's not even counting the retinues they can take! So that's somewhat of a specious argument when it comes to WarmaHordes.

One big difference in Warmachine/Hordes, is that you have cards that list all of the spells/abilities/attacks for each model. And unless your opponent's a dick, he'll happily show you any of his cards before or during the game, or explain exactly how a model or unit works.

The game is actually quite fun, and fairly easy to learn. I suggest taking a look at the quickstart rules that are available for free on the Privateer Press website, or better yet, seeing if you could find someone that plays to take you through and introductory game.

This. Its perfectly acceptable to ask your opponent to see his cards.

Also even though there are a ton of different casters, you only will be exposed to a few of them. I highly doubt that all of them are played at your LGS.

My final suggestion would be to talking to people who have actually played the game for a long time. See why they like it, and watch their games, then get a few demo games in yourself - its the quickest and easiest way to learn.

I played warhammer fantasy for a while, years actually, before I switched to warmachine.

What I noticed is that in warmachine, you have tons of models and they do not make a whole lot of difference by themselves, which means basically everything in your army is expendable (with some exceptions OFC, like an emperor dragon). In warmachine, your lists are smaller, so every model in that army has a purpose and usually are not lightly thrown away without achieving something. In this fashion, it often seems like some models are unbalanced, especially to people who have not played the game (I know that is how I felt when I watched my first few games).

I will give you an example of a game of mine. I am playing a WG heavy butcher list against a merc army (the one with that big cannon). I run my WG into my enemy's flank, knowing full well that they will be killed by my opponent's melee infantry (WG are primarily a ranged squad). My Opponent now needs to clear the WG tarpit in order to free up his squads and his heavy jack is bogged down as well, so he wheels his infantry around to take out my light WG squad. In doing so he exposes the opposite flank of his artillery to my Butcher who obliterates his cannon before moving in and putting the hurt on the enemy warcaster.