Warmachine/Hordes MKIV coming! Update 11/10/23

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**Kaptajn Congoboy**

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I guess that's maybe to make up for a lack of free shipping (at least for the US customers)?

but it's still not going to encourage other stores to stock this if they're 'officially' undercut by the PP store

They're not going to be undercut, I think? PP will sell individual models/units, but the packages meant for retail all are planned to be cheaper than buying it from PP direct.

**pgmason**

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I guess that's maybe to make up for a lack of free shipping (at least for the US customers)?

but it's still not going to encourage other stores to stock this if they're 'officially' undercut by the PP store

How do you mean? Those are the $199 starters, which at todays price is £164.04. Given the UK prices will include 20% VAT , a UK RRP of £174.99 is actually pretty decent, and with the discount is better than I expected.

**tneva82**

Souleater wrote:
I think PP said in their latest Orimecast that they won’t be making any more of the existing models. Once their current stock is empty they won’t be available.

Thee whether theyw make models or not is irrelevant for what old models are brought to prime and colossus is just as valia as man-o-wars.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I guess that's maybe to make up for a lack of free shipping (at least for the US customers)?

but it's still not going to encourage other stores to stock this if they're 'officially' undercut by the PP store

He said one store so sounded like 3rd party store. And pp sells on dollars sureiy being from us?

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

My mistake, I thought Navarro was quoting a price from the PP online store, but he wasn't

**NAVARRO**

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
My mistake, I thought Navarro was quoting a price from the PP online store, but he wasn't

Sorry, initially I did not want to mention the store name since Im not affiliated and never purchased there, so not sure how reliable they are.

Its from The outpost under /products/warmachineMKIV

Im expecting the other more established stores in the UK to follow up soon.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

not your fault, i just need to read properly!

**ImAGeek**

I’ve bought from The Outpost a fair bit and never had an issue. I think they’re plenty ‘established’.

**LunarSol**

John D Law wrote:
So they finally pulled the pin on the Orgoth showing up. That only leaves Ord remaining of the nations without a faction/force in the game.

Ord dropping their neutrality and bulking up their military is a big part of the new IKRPG fluff. I suspect we'll see Steelheads get a "real" army, but its also possible they get looped under Crucible Guard somehow.

**Overread**

I did often feel that one weakness of MK2 lore was that the game had good reason to basically curtail any new factions appearing. It's something GW felt they had a problem with in Old World as well (even though they honestly really did not)

Basically when you've a setting that restricts factions you can hit the problem that everything you release has to be for existing factions. So those factions get bigger and bigger and more bloated. Even worse for Warmachine because they never really resculpted anything*. So giving players more models mean making existing armies bigger and bigger and bigger.

Eventually you hit a point where you have to do something

*they changed materials once or twice to plastics that didn't work well, but other than that once a sculpt was out that was it.

**LunarSol**

tneva82 wrote:
And they can keep producing other pre-iv models but not colossals then?

And legends rasely viable option. Is there game whese legends actually viable and not just abandoned.

Ask 40k players how often they get to use their legend models. Might just as well not have rules.

If someone brings an Unlimited army to play, I'm playing against an Unlimited army. Even if that wasn't my personal policy with gaming in general, PP is simply not releasing things quick enough for Mk4 to truly be new stuff only. We've got access to old stuff for variety, so just play old stuff. Warmachine's best feature is the endless variety of playstyles at its disposal. Unless one of the new factions hugely appeals to you, play with what you got. The community just needs to get back to playing for fun and exploring the endless variety the game has to offer. That's always been the game's biggest strength.

**NAVARRO**

Overread wrote:
I did often feel that one weakness of MK2 lore was that the game had good reason to basically curtail any new factions appearing. It's something GW felt they had a problem with in Old World as well (even though they honestly really did not)

Basically when you've a setting that restricts factions you can hit the problem that everything you release has to be for existing factions. So those factions get bigger and bigger and more bloated. Even worse for Warmachine because they never really resculpted anything*. So giving players more models mean making existing armies bigger and bigger and bigger.

Eventually you hit a point where you have to do something

*they changed materials once or twice to plastics that didn't work well, but other than that once a sculpt was out that was it.

They kind of resculpted some things for trollbloods IIRC they had metal versions which I love and own and then some sculpts changed.
But yes range bloat seems to be a thing once you reach a certain critical point, also happened with Rackham... Infinity seems to basically replace/ resculpt things.

Im not sure on how to place warmachine in therms of game/model count... is it a skirmish? I think if any game starts as a small skirmish and down the line starts to aim to be something bigger, more like a army game then the scaling of the catalogue was not correctly planned from day 1.

**Overread**

Warmachine's problem was it started as skirmish and then slowly started to become army. I think MK2 when you had al ot of people jumping over from Warhammer wanting an army game pushed it; but at the same time PP were giving you more models to play with per army so you want to use them.

So that all encouraged bigger forces; but the reliance on the whole warlock mechanic meant that the game was still trying to be a skirmish at its core.

I think that's why Warcaster did away with the idea of a caster on the table; because it was a huge limiter in expanding the game. You either kept them and stayed skirmish or you had to abandon them to go wargame (because when every game hinges on 1 character that character either has to be insanely OP or you have to turtle and hide them for the entire game otherwise everyone snipes for them)

I think that was the issue, PP tried to make a skirmish wargame hybrid.

Infinity stuck to its guns as a skirmish only game and honestly has a rather annoying policy of removing whole swathes of sculpts. Though they seem to be on the up and replacing "lost" sculpts seems to be going much faster now.
Plus because most units have 3-5 different weapon options but only 1 model with 1 non-optional posed gun; the community is in general way more open to proxies. I think that helps soften the blow at models being removed in form but not in rules cause you just proxy something as them and it works

Automatically Appended Next Post:
From PP Facebook

What a Gen Con already! We want to thank everyone who has ordered the MKIV preview battlegroups for your overwhelming support. The volume of online orders has blown away our expectations and we have already surpassed the orders any previous online promotion in the company’s history! While we hate to end things early we have several weeks worth of production ahead of us to fulfill all of the orders, and to maintain our production schedule for the Core Army Starters releasing in October, we must end online sales of the MKIV review battlegroups this morning. We are extremely humbled and excited by how many have already shown interest in the next chapter of Warmachine!
Thank you for your support!

**LunarSol**

Glad its going well.

Warmachine has definitely been more army as of late. It's still technically smaller than GW games, but the lines are very blurred, particular when you factor in huge models in either system.

Mechanically though its definitely skirmish. The new unit movement rules blur this a little more, but in some ways it feels a little closer to skirmish, at least at the 50 point level for mk4.

Funny enough, while Warcaster doesn't have.... a Warcaster, I find it more limited to size than Warmachine due to the ARC mechanics and the flow of respawning and activations. The skirmish game really shines with this really engaging churn of respawning units out of the table, where I find the larger game kind of becomes a drag where stuff just kind of sits there all game and doesn't do nearly as much. Of the two, I find Neo-Mechanika is far better small, where I think Warmachine has a lot more pros and cons depending on game size. The main limit for Warmachine IMO, is whether there are scenarios that do a good job supporting different game sizes.

**Overread**

I think Warcaster has the potential within itself to scale up better than Warmachine without changing the rules themselves; you just adjust resource generation and limits and raise them up.

I also think its a system that can stay skirmish or wargame and in both cases support a greater diversity of models because of the active sideboard. You just increase the limit of the sideboard as army diversity increases and you can take more variety to the game and just call in what you need.

It's also neat with the respawning because it introduces the idea of sacrificial units and of units not even having to "kill back their points" or anything.

**caladancid**

I really like both the Cygnar and Khador renders and painted models so far.

Orgoth to me is WAY overdesigned, which is a huge fault of the past five years or so in Warmachine and I hope they get rid of the need to layer on details on details.

**Overread**

Overdesign is, in my view, a symptom of 3D design work over physical sculpting. When you can blow the model up big enough to see the skin pours on your screen you can so easily just keep adding and adding detail. Details that can be produced.

Details that can look great as a render, but which when you've the model in hand can be so tiny as to be near invisible. Or which can make the model so "busy" to paint that its a huge challenge to get it right.

**LunarSol**

Overread wrote:
I think Warcaster has the potential within itself to scale up better than Warmachine without changing the rules themselves; you just adjust resource generation and limits and raise them up.

I also think its a system that can stay skirmish or wargame and in both cases support a greater diversity of models because of the active sideboard. You just increase the limit of the sideboard as army diversity increases and you can take more variety to the game and just call in what you need.

It's also neat with the respawning because it introduces the idea of sacrificial units and of units not even having to "kill back their points" or anything.

It's a super engaging game. I really enjoy it. Now what I will say is you can certainly increase the size of the sideboard. My preferred format is actually one mentioned in the league packet that's basically Skirmish+a couple of additional units but still play the Skirmish scenarios. Like you said, it just adds diversity into the game and gives you more options to work with.

That said, I still don't like it at the larger scale. A big part of the game is the mix of alternating activations and constantly spawning out new stuff to claim more board space. In a lot of ways, you're really only focused on new spawns and a couple power pieces. On the skirmish table, everything is pretty close and units that aren't the focus can be quickly shifted to when needed. What I find in the full size game is there's a lot of stuff that just gets abandoned and sits on points somewhere on the table all game. It takes too many activations to make them relevant so they just kind of sit there all game doing nothing. The game doesn't really feel any bigger, just emptier.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Overread wrote:
Overdesign is, in my view, a symptom of 3D design work over physical sculpting. When you can blow the model up big enough to see the skin pours on your screen you can so easily just keep adding and adding detail. Details that can be produced.

Details that can look great as a render, but which when you've the model in hand can be so tiny as to be near invisible. Or which can make the model so "busy" to paint that its a huge challenge to get it right.

Warmachine models have always been overdesigned. That's kind of their charm for me. Random netting with bottles stuck in it, everyone has a pouch or keg or little bit of nonsense. It's always made the models look pretty good with little more painting skill than understanding washes exist, but it definitely takes a long time to paint all the busy little details.

**His Master's Voice**

LunarSol wrote:
Warmachine models have always been overdesigned.

I disagree. Warmachine models might have been overtly detailed on occasion, but that's not the same as being overdesigned.

It's generally hard to pinpoint where overdesign happens, but a good starting point would be checking if you can identify primary volumes in a design at a glance.

**Voss**

Yeah, the overly detailed aspect of WM models was both faction dependent and got worse as they went along.

Skorne and Menoth tended to be busy, Khador and trolls significantly less so (though some troll models had a lot of... stuff, though happily normally just on belts.)
But the earlier models didn't have a lot of stuff tacked on. One of the best aspects of the early warjacks were the fairly simple lines and 'just enough' hatches and rivets. But not so many that its a nightmare to paint.

It's generally hard to pinpoint where overdesign happens, but a good starting point would be checking if you can identify primary volumes in a design at a glance.

On the other hand, this happened with several of the warjack designs, particularly with the shift to plastic. Box hands/wrist armor connected by tubes to the sphere shoulders mashed on the main block. Then add the angled head (a small cube with diagonal cuts taken out) and small tubes forming the legs (slightly hidden by simple armor plates)

**BobtheInquisitor**

But Menoth and Skorne are my favorites.

So far, I’m a fan of all the new designs and sculpts. I wish we could buy individual troops for reasonable prices, because otherwise I’ll never own any of them. It’s not like 3D printed starter minis are going to hit Black Friday sales at 75% off MSRP.

**Leo_the_Rat**

I'm wondering if PP will have a big(ger) blow out sale to clear their warehouse of all of the non new models? Sort of a sale to end all sales.

**Voss**

BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But Menoth and Skorne are my favorites.

?? Nothing says they can't be. But as someone who had a fully painted Menoth army (in white, no less) and a fair amount of painted skorne, they had a lot more detail to paint than Khador or even Cryx. And quite a few of the models look terrible if you tried to cut corners. Or at least mine did.

Honestly, most of my Menoth stuff was painted in a two week period where I did basically nothing else. It feels like a half-remembered fever dream, especially coming up with an off-white for thescrolls of the Choir members that didn't overlap with the white of the robes, and painstakingly marking runes on the scrolls in one go without screwing up and having to start over.

The only more miserable experience was pinning every.single.tiny.join on the Harbinger of Menoth, especially the tiny forearm holding the entire weight of that giant fething flag.

**BobtheInquisitor**

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
I'm wondering if PP will have a big(ger) blow out sale to clear their warehouse of all of the non new models? Sort of a sale to end all sales.

I hope so. I may be the only gamer on the planet who likes their PVC/restic minis. At the right price.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Voss, Ahh. I never tried to paint mine. Maybe someday I will, but for now I just enjoy looking at all the details, imagining the possibilities.

**beast_gts**

The new resin isn't toxic, honest!

Privateer Press wrote:
We understand there are concerns over safety of our new production resin. We had the same concerns for our own production and packing staff. To ensure the wellbeing of all parties involved, from conception of this production process we put several practices in place to help guarantee the safety of all those that handle our products, and chose materials based on safety and durability.
After prints are removed from the printer, they go to the first washing cycle. Here they receive a heavy rinse and scrub, and are then submerged in water as the whole batch is processed. From there, they are divided into smaller batches and are submerged in an ultrasonic cleaner for a minimum of 30 minutes. After the second cleaning cycle is finished, they are carefully spaced out in our curing station to bring them to the right consistent rigidity. Our cleaning standards far exceed recommendations from the manufacturer. With our unfamiliarity with processing such a large volume of prints, some parts of the process had newly developed issues. We realized we needed to change out the contents of our ultrasonic cleaners much more frequently to avoid a slight white chalky texture from appearing on surfaces/in cracks. With all parts different shapes and sizes and being processed in such large volumes, we had to increase our minimum cure times to ensure that some parts didn’t get less than a minimum standard. As we rise to the exciting challenge of fully mastering this constantly advancing and evolving production method there will inevitably be growing pains, and we still vow to make good on your purchases by replacing any parts that are less than satisfactory. Our production quality is important to us, but the one thing that will always remain our top priority is the safety for all involved.
That said, this resin is not much different from other resins in that you should always be careful when handling it. Whenever sanding a resin, one should always use a respirator use a wet-sanding technique. Additionally, one should always clean their work area and wash their hands after working with resin.

**AduroT**

That’s… not what they said? Like that literally ends with its pretty much like all other resin, use a mask, clean your desk, wash your hands.

They do address the white residue seen in pictures of the models though. Curious to see if that is indeed resolved by them changing the water more frequently.

**LunarSol**

Resin is and always has been toxic. The new resin is toxic. The old resin was toxic too. People pouring the stuff in their homes scares the flark out of me.

**beast_gts**

AduroT wrote:
That’s… not what they said?

Probably needed an /s - but enough people were concerned that they had to put out that statement.

**LunarSol**

beast_gts wrote:
AduroT wrote:
That’s… not what they said?
Probably needed an /s - but enough people were concerned that they had to put out that statement.

There's a report that someone had a skin reaction to the dust from a model purchased at GenCon. Haven't seen anything direct about it, but I assume that prompted the statement.

**Valander**

Once cured, 3d printed resins are pretty much like the other polyurethane resins used for casting. Yes, you don't want to inhale the dust of either one. Yes, there's a slight chance some folks might have an allergic reaction to either. Both are also terrible pre-cure.

**Ghool**

Uuhhh….so literally no or little QC, and uncured and not even an iso bath before they sell them.
So what happened to new player friendly?
This is something else….