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So im considering playing war-machine along with my friend (SurfBoard66) after playing solely 40k for the past 2 years. The problem is deciding what army to pick, im stuck between Cryx and Khador, i played necrons in 40k and i like undead robot stuff so cryx sounds like a good army, but im not sure i really need another "emo army" as my friend calls it . Khador just seem fun, smashing everything to bits with huge war-jacks. Can you guys tell me anything about how each army plays out? what they're like? and just any advice in general would be greatly appreciated as im pretty stuck on this.


-E

Well, Khador is a fun faction in my opinion. I've played them since mark one and can say that they have great warjacks, but they're all heavy jacks baring the scrapjack. Also, sadly unless you run the P/EButcher or ye old Karchev ( THE CANDY MAN!) or pVlad the max most of your lists are going to run reliably are two. They're a little on the slow side, and easy to hit, but a lot of our casters have ways of speeding them up and they have better armor and more hit boxes than other factions. Depending on how you build your list, Khador tends to be an aggressive, close combat force. That isn't to say that our shooting is sub par, just look at the winterguard deathstar or the Widowmakers, it is that most Khador lists excel in close combat. Another marked difference is that factions like Cryx has a lot of arc nodes and their casters can sit in the back field and sling spells all day. Khador only has one arc node, and it is the scrapjack that only comes with the old witch. So Khador casters tend to have to be closer to the front lines. Which sounds like a problem until you realize that a majority of the Khador Casters are melee monsters who want to be out font.

Just realize that Khador has a lot more going on under the hood than walk forward and smash, is my advice. But all I have to add is that when you enjoy the look on peoples faces when your "slow" warjacks suddenly pull off an 13inch charge, fifteen inch with reach ( I'm looking at you Pvlad) you'll know you picked the right faction.

Cryx has awesome infantry and most of their stuff is undead so it avoids effects that only work on living models. Their jacks have low armor and not many damage boxes compared to other factions, but they are fast and hit hard. Cryx has lots of arcnodes, which means your caster can sit in the back and hit the enemy with spells. The faction has no real ranged attacks to speak of, their magic is their ranged attacks. Cryx models tend to have high defense, but lower armor.

Khador stuff tends to have lower defense but very high armor, especially the jacks. Khador jacks typically have a defense of 10 (very low) and an armor of 20 or more (very high). However, their jacks are very slow compared to everyone else. Khador infantry is average speed and they have some of the best infantry units in the game (winterguard, kazazy assassins) to pick from. Khador has NO arc nodes, with the exception of one warcaster who brings her own character jack.

Both factions have powerful warcasters who can be one man armies.

cryx arent emo. they're dragon worshipping undead necromancer zombie ghost pirates!

As to how the play:

Khador are angry russian imperialists. the thing to remember is that in Khador, the word for "bigger" is the same as the word for "better". And also, in khador, there is no such thing as "excessive force". In ways, they're slightly akin to a cross bwetween space wolves and the imperial guard, mixibng devestating short range firepower, excellent melee abilites, great artillery and long range fire support elements, and armour akin to leman russes and land raiders. Khador are the faction most reliably seen as "tough". they're primarily a faction geared around attrition, and massive damage output. though they're often seen as the beatstick faction (listen to the battlecries of "axe to face", and you'll get the mentality of your average khador player quickly enough!) they're surpringly an all-rounder faction, boasting the widest diversity of troop types in the game. Khador options range from power armoured Men O War, to other heavy infantry like Iron Fangs, regular "light" infantry like winter guard and assault kommandoes, irregular infantry like kossites, manhunters and kayazy assassins as well as ice and blizzard magey types. As mentioned, though they're seen as a beatstick faction, through various warcasters, khador can do a blitzkrieg game as well as having some surprisingly excellent ranged options. as youd expect from the "excessive force" faction, khador dont so much go in for long range rifles and chainguns like their southern neighbours in cygnar (although the Winter Guard Rifle Korps and the Widowmakers are beyond excellent) as they do for big massive artillery pieces that put huge holes in the ground, or are simply quite devestating and over the top - que flamethrowers, rockets, mortars etc. Khador tend to be a "raw stat" faction. they dont have a lot of indirect support pieces - pretty much, warcasters are the support options for a khador army, as opposed to the choir, book, vassals etc of menoth. However, Khador units tend to be remarkably self sufficient, and are quite happy, and fully capable of standing on their own without the need for someone else to buff them. In terms of jacks, khador tend to go more jack light. in the fluff, the materials used to build the cortexes (ie the brains) of the warjacks are in remote and inaccessible places, and as a result, khador makes fewer, but bigger, tougher and stompier jacks than their neighbours. they make up for the lack of jacks with their aforementioned hard hitting infantry options like men o war and iron fangs. khador jacks are big, relatively slow, and not that bright. they're solid beatsticks, and a few have excellent abilities. however, dont let the "tough" moniker fool you. there are no plague marines, assault terminators of purifiers in this game. everything can kill everything else. khador jacks go down in a turn to another jack easily enough, just like every other jack. its something you'll have to get to grips with.

OK, as for cryx, they're dragon worshipping undead necromancers, with a pirate fleet, ghost fleet, summoned "demons" (ie banes), necromantic constructs (thralls), amazon warrior women, blighted trollkin, and assorted thieves, murderers, cut throats and scum of the earth. in ways, they play like dark eldar, in the sense that they're quite fast, extremely hard hitting, but quite squishy behind it all. cryx are the gutter fighters of the iron kingdoms. a cryx player who plays fair is doing it wrong. cryx armies play by every low down, dirty underhanded, mean and nasty trick you can think of. plenty times their assassination runs come out of nowhere. you will often go "they can do WHAT now???" Overall, they're a debuffing/ buffing faction. while khador relies on raw stats and disgustingly hight damange output to carry the day, cryx relies on debuffing. they'll wreck your armour so its less effective, they'll buff their own guys up to crazy levels, and when it comes to crunch time, and your armour is like paper, they tear through it. thats how they play. they're fast, vicious, mean and will generally be the ones striking you first. cryx has very limited options for a ranged game, but makes up for this with excellent spell slinging abilities, they can however recylce their troops, suicide their troops for massive area damage, and are just about capble of getting anywhere on the board through ghostly shenanigans, or sheer, blinding speed. in terms of jacks, cryx jacks either come in the "chicken" variety, which are spell relay nodes with legs and bitey things, and meaner and bigger helljacks that want to hamstring you, and eat your soul. while khador play with land raider equivelants, these guys have falcons. cryx are generally regarded as having a lot of excellent choices, and fantastic warcasters that can really control a game.

overall though, go with the models you lilk. no faction is "better" in warmachine.when you decide, feel free to ask for more specific faction advice!

ShatteredBlade wrote: Khador only has one arc node, and it is the scrapjack that only comes with the old witch.

As has been established, Khador has access to lots of arc nodes. It's just that all their arc nodes are shaped like axes, and the only thing they channel is PAIN.

In my (short) experience playing Khador, I think that Khador IS the real axe-to-face faction. It's just that while they seem to be straightforward about this, you still have to accept that the game itself takes a lot of complicated and/or complex tactical thinking and assorted manoeuvring and activation timing to make your Khador actually do take axe to face as they should.

I just won two games with pButcher, having the latter scrap a formerly undamaged opposing Khador character heavy warjack in a single turn (with his feat on), followed by widowmakers executing Strakhov from 13 inches away in game one and pButcher walking into the middle of a Trollblood infantry horde (there were like 25 medium base infantry models... almost in my deployment zone on turn two) with five focus and iron flesh on him, being knocked down and taking hits from a warbeast, four trollblood infantry and his warlock and surviving with three clear damage boxes, and then proceeding to carve said warlock cleanly into several easy-to-handle pieces on his following turn of game two.

Okay, so most other Khador casters couldn't have pulled that last one off, and some take less straightforward attitudes, but this is how Khador plays in my experience. You have them advance, try to get the charge, but if you don't, you can just take a lot of damage and then still dish out the pain on your next turn. A few precision tools like the widowmakers help clearing paths to where you want the axe to hit, and some units need to be played more cautiously (for example in second line), but overall, it is about the application of hard armour and brute force.

I have khador and cryx armies. I love them both dearly, but at the end of the day the ability to make my opponent go "Woah, hold on, what did you just do?" keeps cryx my primary.

Every now and again though, I want to play an army that doesn't die to a stiff breeze. On those days I trot out the Man-o-war's and armor 20 bricks of death.

Both factions have amazing models. (My faves for each being Harkevich and epic Skarre, by the gods such detail)