Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
GWs spider-eggs scandal. We can't assume people haven't been bitten by hatched spiders when they open the new release boxes, some may be unable to post feedback because they are still in the hospital.


/s

....what!?

That GW haven't publicly stated that their kits aren't lousy with arachnids clearly indicates that they're orchestrating a cover up and silencing those affected.

However, I for one welcome the extra protein in each box.
Haters will complain even if they're getting free stuff. Some people are just never satisfied.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
That GW haven't publicly stated that their kits aren't lousy with arachnids clearly indicates that they're orchestrating a cover up and silencing those affected.

However, I for one welcome the extra protein in each box.
Haters will complain even if they're getting free stuff. Some people are just never satisfied.

You wouldn’t happen to be named George, would you?

As amusing as it may be to manufacture drama in order to try to make a point, let's wind it back to the actual topic, hmm?

 insaniak wrote:
As amusing as it may be to manufacture drama in order to try to make a point, let's wind it back to the actual topic, hmm?

Yes, let's please do that.

Looking at the photos of people's stuff from Gencon, it looks good, and seems to have sold out very fast... which I imagine is a big relief for PP. The gamble is showing positive signs of being a good move.

I still think it is odd that all the Army deals have 2 Warjacks, where the Battlegroups from MKI-III had on average 3 (2 light and 1 heavy). Would have been very tempting if they sold them with 1 less infantry unit and 1 more Warjack.

 stonehorse wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
As amusing as it may be to manufacture drama in order to try to make a point, let's wind it back to the actual topic, hmm?

Yes, let's please do that.

Looking at the photos of people's stuff from Gencon, it looks good, and seems to have sold out very fast... which I imagine is a big relief for PP. The gamble is showing positive signs of being a good move.

The preview sets were really popular and reddit, which is really dead for wargames not owned by GW, has at least one post a day in the WM subreddit about buying them. Here's PP post about how how well the sold from Friday.

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!

It seems to be picking up. But its not WM/H as its been know for 10-20 years.

Im hoping that they attract enough totally new players to refresh the community and get rid of many of the old guard and their outdated ideas about what the game should be

Sunno wrote:
It seems to be picking up. But its not WM/H as its been know for 10-20 years.

Im hoping that they attract enough totally new players to refresh the community and get rid of many of the old guard and their outdated ideas about what the game should be

I've gone from mildly optimistic to actually hyped for this now. You're right its not the same game, but... its not really all that different either. They did a good job remembering what makes Warmachine special and fun and making something a little more modern that still holds those bits in focus. Very excited for more content to try on this one.

If you were like me and needed to wait for minds and wallets to clear before picking up some of the $75 preview battlegroups before Aug 10 ....... well tough, because they stopped taking orders on Aug 5 due to being crushed with more demand than they budgeted production for in order to meet their core release. Good for PP but I tell you, sour af grapes for me and my buddy, who were set to order today, well ahead of the Aug 10 date they told us.

Which is crazy timing, because I was basically looking at either buying into Horus Heresy at my LGS today or investing in Warmachine MK4 at some point in the fall maybe if their production can handle it And my clubmate is on the same fence.

I managed to get an order in before they took it down on Friday, picked up Cygnar and Khador boxes (wasn't originally planning to do two, but free shipping is free shipping).

Was a bit miffed about the Warcaster special though. At the show they were doing a BOGO deal (buy 1 get a second free), they also pushed the same deal live on their website. I decided to wait until friday to order so my paycheck would clear first, by which time they pulled the offer down and said that it was never meant to be on their webstore and was a show-only special.

Has anyone read into (or even played with) the released rules enough to make a comparison between the power level of Legacy Cryx and Protectorate vs Prime Cygnar and Khador as they were presented to us?

Is there a push towards buying new stuff visible in the rules or do they seem fairly balanced between each other?

Cyel wrote:
Has anyone read into (or even played with) the released rules enough to make a comparison between the power level of Legacy Cryx and Protectorate vs Prime Cygnar and Khador as they were presented to us?

Is there a push towards buying new stuff visible in the rules or do they seem fairly balanced between each other?

There's no real way to play them against each other in their current state. We only have Battlegroup rules for the Mk4 armies where we can make full lists with the Legacy stuff.

From my initial comparisons though, I don't think it's a blatant attempt to make one better than the other. I think the flexibility of the Spell Rack is a hard advantage to top, but having tried a few configuration, I find that while the Rack spells are powerful the casters themselves are rather focus starved as a result, particularly since they seem to have more battlegroup buffs than infantry built into their kit. The Legacy casters feel like they have stuff to compete. Cyrenia has the free unit buffs I found quite powerful along with wall creation among a really excellent spell kit. Agathia's Field Marshal feels honestly unfair. I'm more worried about playing against her than any of the new casters.

Jacks feel pretty reasonable. The new ones probably have an edge with the right config, but I don't think its by a huge margin. For example, a Menoth Templar is 12 points for a SPD 4, MAT 6, POW 17, Reach, Chain, Beat Back weapon with Shield Guard at DEF 10, ARM 21. 3 pt Choir tax puts it up to POW 19.

A similar Great Bear with a Mace and Shield is SPD 4, MAT 7, POW 19, Reach, Beat Back, Crit Smite, with DEF 10, ARM 22 with Bulldoze and Aggressive comes in at 15 points. Definitely not strictly better, particularly when you consider 2 Templars + Choir comes to 27 while 2 Great Bears is 30.

It's real hard to support them when I have a metric gak ton of the jacks in 3 or 4 armies that are just door stops to them, now.

I have zero impulse to buy any more from them after the way they treated the players the last go around. I was a real fan around 1 and 2d edition, they lost me around the end with the ridiculous way they fouled up the KS, and the way they tried to gak on the fans as they tried to pull a page from GW's playbook.

Of course, if they could just try and put that proverbial "New and Improved" E peen away, actually get a rebalancing of the factions, or at the very least a rebalance of the game mechanics, before they turn it into another cash grab, again.

They went from a great company to pulling GW's bag of tricks, albeit badly.

 Grot 6 wrote:
It's real hard to support them when I have a metric gak ton of the jacks in 3 or 4 armies that are just door stops to them, now.

I have zero impulse to buy any more from them after the way they treated the players the last go around. I was a real fan around 1 and 2d edition, they lost me around the end with the ridiculous way they fouled up the KS, and the way they tried to gak on the fans as they tried to pull a page from GW's playbook.

Of course, if they could just try and put that proverbial "New and Improved" E peen away, actually get a rebalancing of the factions, or at the very least a rebalance of the game mechanics, before they turn it into another cash grab, again.

They went from a great company to pulling GW's bag of tricks, albeit badly.

You do realize that is exactly what they are doing with MK IV it is a combination of WHFB "end times" game reset that kills off most of the old line with a sprinkle of 8th ed 40K "simplify all the things"

With a pinch of ideas from other systems like star wars legion.

I give them props for going to 3d printing, modular kits and bits swaps with magnets. i think those are brilliant production side moves to reduce supply issues, material issues and model kit bloat.

The lines just got to big. with most factions having between 70 and 90 units with mercs topping out at a whopping 171.

I do honestly hope it helps the company and they are successful, even though i won't be joining them. the new look(i love the steam/diesel punk look), the changes to game play etc... are not what i am interested in when i play WM/H, if i wanted those things i can play one of the other dozen game systems i have minis for.

Unlike you i didn't like MKI or MK II but i love MK III because i play in a large active casual group that avoids steamroller, theme lists and tournament style players. We will continue to play MKIII because we like what it has to offer, and we have a large collection of minis (i have over 150 points myself and i have one of the smaller collections) some of which will not even make it into MK IV.

Thanks for the analysis, LunarSol! PP not canceling the old factions by giving them rules that make it impossible for them to compete is what everybody is hoping for, I think.

It also makes sens. Even if old players don't buy new stuff, they are people new faction owners can play against. Without them it would be hard to find opponents and the game would disappear.

 aphyon wrote:

 Grot 6 wrote:
It's real hard to support them when I have a metric gak ton of the jacks in 3 or 4 armies that are just door stops to them, now.
.

You do realize that is exactly what they are doing with MK IV it is a combination of WHFB "end times" game reset that kills off most of the old line with a sprinkle of 8th ed 40K "simplify all the things"

I think he realizes. And that's part of the problem it seems for him having large amount of models invalidated. 40k players aren't happy when they lose access to models they had and there at least it's only sprinkling. With WM it's lot more models.

Not surprised if there are old players unhappy about being told "sorry, buy new models to play"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cyel wrote:
Thanks for the analysis, LunarSol! PP not canceling the old factions by giving them rules that make it impossible for them to compete is what everybody is hoping for, I think.

It also makes sens. Even if old players don't buy new stuff, they are people new faction owners can play against. Without them it would be hard to find opponents and the game would disappear.

Well most of old models gets legendified so unless WM players take different stance to 40k/AOS where legends are more or less dead most of old models might just as well not have rules.

We'll see. 40k it works because it's only small amount of models in practice that been invalidated. In WM players might just say screw legends idea and keep them in use.

Not surprised if there are old players unhappy about being told "sorry, buy new models to play"

TBH, and i say this as an "old player", many of the old WM/H players are the reasons the community is in the mess its in and probably need to move on if WM/H is ever to grow again.

We need to get rid of the "2 list SR or die, flat 2d terrain, no fluff, no narrative play, no painting, no hobby" crowd as a matter of priority. What I have loved since the release of Mk4 beta rules is the amount of painted games on 3d terrain that have been posted on the FB forum from new or returning players which would NEVER of happened 2-3 months ago. We don't just need a new edition, we need a new mindset.

which would NEVER of happened 2-3 months ago. We don't just need a new edition, we need a new mindset.

You obviously have not been following my 50 point battles thread.

I despise SR, and 2d flat terrain. i bought a huge amount of ESLO finished terrain for use in WM/H.

Sunno wrote:

Not surprised if there are old players unhappy about being told "sorry, buy new models to play"

TBH, and i say this as an "old player", many of the old WM/H players are the reasons the community is in the mess its in and probably need to move on if WM/H is ever to grow again.

We need to get rid of the "2 list SR or die, flat 2d terrain, no fluff, no narrative play, no painting, no hobby" crowd as a matter of priority. What I have loved since the release of Mk4 beta rules is the amount of painted games on 3d terrain that have been posted on the FB forum from new or returning players which would NEVER of happened 2-3 months ago. We don't just need a new edition, we need a new mindset.

I wish it was that easy, based on my experience :( For quite a few years I tried to run events for new or returning players, convention presentations, teaching the game at different venues, basically advertising it wherever I was, online and IRL. All this with support from our local community which realises how small it is and how beneficial it would be to have swathes of new players.

All this with very little result, maybe one new and semi-consistent player for a few years work? The community even jokes about "these mythical new players" everybody keeps talking about but they never turn up to any event that is targeted at them (like Brawlmachine tournaments, demo games etc). Brawl events usually consist of a few veterans who come with absurdly weak, asynergistic armies to make up the attendance and zero new players or at best one returning, who disappears after the event never to be seen again.

Not a small town, but a 2 million capital of a EU country with plenty of wargamers, board gamers etc.

Looking back at all these years of wasted effort I genuinly think that all these times I could have got just games with the shrunken, but consistent group of WM buddies instead of trying to jump (and to make others jump) through hoops to create a perfect environment for newbies that just don't exist (because game too hard, too expensive, too unavailable).

Even now I have an event planned for new players - there's a Master tournament in September and we want to have a one day Mordheim-esque Brawlmachine campaign for more casual crowd, advertised everywhere. How many people have signed up already?

For the tournament itself - https://tournykeeper.com/#/tournament/details/1164 - 23 players
For the Brawlmachine campaign - https://tournykeeper.com/#/tournament/details/1180 - 3 players, but one of them is me, and one other is a friend of mine who said he won't come, but will sign up to make it look as if people are interested. Which makes, what ... ONE player?

Once again, instead of just shrugging and going to play in the tournament with the rest of the guys, I will (and already have) spend time and effort to sit there idly, waiting for "mythical new players" that were never there... :(

Don't know if that's an indication of anything, Cyel, but I think it's just hard to teach new games to people when there are many more exciting wargames with huge coverage and well known IPs sparkling around. After a year of attempts I've got exactly zero people involved in Mortal Gods, because every time somebody shows at least a bit of interest it ends in 15 minutes with their friend coming in and saying something along the lines of "Dude, F this game, there's a Spiderman fighting Fallout guy or something at another table! - Damn, really! Sorry, man, this game's not for me, I wanna go look at Wasteland Warfare/Crisis Protocol!".

I think dropping production of the old stuff is a bit drastic. A better approach would be to keep the Prime/Primal stuff in production or rescult them. That way it can still keep the old players with big collections not feel totally dumped.

As they have said Legacy is going to be a format where all the old stuff gets rules, it would be nice for those new to the game to still be able to pick up the older stuff.

I understand that there is a supply issue in the EU, that hasn't been a problem here. through a strange twist of good deals on used armies, gifts and interest among regular players we have quite a few new players. for the longest time there was only 3 or 4 of us that considered WM/H one of our games. in the last year or 2 it kind of exploded out of the 11 active players we have that play WM/H 6 of them are what i would call "new", with 3 being super new, getting into the game in the last 3 months.

The thing is, with the game's complexity and skill-heaviness you need a group of a few newbies learning (or re-learning) the game at a similar pace, sharing the same skill ceiling, so that games between them are close enough not to be discouraging, win or lose.

Once such a treshold of "newbie attendance" is reached I think you can get the thing rolling! Not with one prospective player at a given time, though.

Btw, our tournaments have 3D terrain

Sunno wrote:

Not surprised if there are old players unhappy about being told "sorry, buy new models to play"

TBH, and i say this as an "old player", many of the old WM/H players are the reasons the community is in the mess its in and probably need to move on if WM/H is ever to grow again.

We need to get rid of the "2 list SR or die, flat 2d terrain, no fluff, no narrative play, no painting, no hobby" crowd as a matter of priority. What I have loved since the release of Mk4 beta rules is the amount of painted games on 3d terrain that have been posted on the FB forum from new or returning players which would NEVER of happened 2-3 months ago. We don't just need a new edition, we need a new mindset.

And making expensive models people have bought and painted useless is the way? You realize more likely is "forget miniatures, switch to paper counters" since you can't be sure how long your models stay useful.

Fforget 2d terrain, soon 2d models are in...

And btw recruiting new players is way harder than holding new ones. There's reason companies as a rule try to avoid screwing existing customers. Getting new one is more expensive than keeping old one.

So after they try to balance over a hundred units per faction, which do you prefer? Trying to constantly produce all that and expect stores to carry it, or move the old stuff out of production and new players can’t buy the old models that are being used against them?

I think players are only having their models invalidated if they insist on having their models invalidated. If players are unwilling to play against Unlimited armies; if players are unwilling to play against someone playing Stormblades as Storm Legionaires... then we've kind of failed to learn anything as a community.

Legacy armies are going to be the bulk of the game for the foreseeable future. Unlimited is going to be the primary format for the next year and after that, Prime is still going to mostly be made up of Legacy armies. Eventually tournaments will be Prime only but....the game really needs a healthy play environment off the table and if people are turning their nose up at Unlimited there.... IDK, maybe the community just isn't fit to survive.

Wow, are we just jumping full in on blaming 'the community?' As pre-emptive strikes for an edition launch full of uncertainty after a shaky edition with its own launch troubles and bad acting by the company, that's pretty hard core.

I haven't read the new rules but a strange thought occurred to me regarding legacy models. Assuming PP kept its volume rule as opposed to going with GW's silhouette rules what's to keep a player from using legacy models from outside his original legacy army as part of his current army? By that I mean if his jack has a 2" reach sword and a shield and he is playing Khador what would be the problem with him using Gallant? I mean a big sword is a big sword and a shield is a shield. I think that it would be fine especially if he had Gallant painted to match his Khador jacks. So, legacy models can still be used, at least jacks, it just means that players will have to carry more models than someone who has the new magnetized jacks.

Voss wrote:
Wow, are we just jumping full in on blaming 'the community?' As pre-emptive strikes for an edition launch full of uncertainty after a shaky edition with its own launch troubles and bad acting by the company, that's pretty hard core.

40k players like to blame the community all the time, so I'm not surprised Warmachine has some of it too.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
I haven't read the new rules but a strange thought occurred to me regarding legacy models. Assuming PP kept its volume rule as opposed to going with GW's silhouette rules what's to keep a player from using legacy models from outside his original legacy army as part of his current army? By that I mean if his jack has a 2" reach sword and a shield and he is playing Khador what would be the problem with him using Gallant? I mean a big sword is a big sword and a shield is a shield. I think that it would be fine especially if he had Gallant painted to match his Khador jacks. So, legacy models can still be used, at least jacks, it just means that players will have to carry more models than someone who has the new magnetized jacks.

In casual games with friends? Absolutely nothing. If you and your group don't care about "proxying," then you can do your thing. However, when it comes to "official" events, there's usually a WYSIWYG policy in place the often forbids the use of proxies. Warmachine is particularly bad on this front, historically, with the reasoning that you needed to know exactly what model you were facing at all times in order to "keep competitive."