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.

Nightsbane wrote:thought of something when looking starting price, what is needed book wise? It looks like they dropped their all in one book strategy so I would need the core book, faction book, and faction deck?

Here is a high level breakdown of what I think you will need to have fun and diversity in WM/H. I'm going to average out the prices and round up, I figured you would be better off budgeting more and spending less. Keep in mind that the $$$ listed below are all retail prices. I don't like telling people "what to buy", so I would leave choosing of models up to you. =)

Faction cards ~ $18 (need 1)
Starter box ~ $50 (need 1)
Additional Warcasters ~ $15 each (need 3)
Light Warjacks ~ $18 each (need 1)
Heavy Warjacks ~ $40 each (need 2)
Character Warjacks ~ $50 each (need 1)
Unit Boxes ~ $50 each (need 2)
Unit Blisters ~ $12 each (need 4 to round out your squads)
Unit Attachments ~ $20 each (need 1)
Solos ~ $10 each (need 2)
Total ~ $450 (Retail)

So shave off 25-33% off the retail price for online orders and you're looking at slightly less than $300 for a very customizable army.

I don't want to say "competitive army", because it is very difficult for new players to be "competitive" in WM/H. Assuming you do not build a completely defective army list, the metagame is less significant in WM than in 40K. In WM, one critical miss step with your warcaster can cost you the game (via caster kill).

Welcome to WarMachine! Your friendly Skorne dominar will come welcome you shortly!

LordRavurion wrote:I would try for the following list:

Battlebox for crys. I would pick up the new one, but the old one is fine and might save a few dollar.
Also 2 other caster, for instance Skarre and Asphyxious
These give a nice selection of different casterstyles.

For jacks The battlebox provides most. I suggest an extra helljack, either slayer or reaper or Seether. This should fil up jacks for now.

Units
Banethralls (10)
- Bane ua (expensive moneywise, but worth it IMHO)
Mechanithralls (10)
Necrosurgeon (one of the best tarpits IMHO)
Bilethralls (6)
These units are for variing the army and are relatively cheap.

Solos
Pistolwraith X 2
Tartarus
Warwitch
Skarlock
These solo's give a lot of options in different setups.

This should combine to a pretty high pointsvalue. If you play 35 points normally then you can vary a lot of the armie to fit your style and the casters style.

This ads up to a expensive list though, so you might want to experiment with minimal units for now and only 2 or 3 solo's. Only suggestion I give is that I highly recommend taking tartarus with the banes in all lists except Denny (bb-caster) as he improves their hit rate drastically.

thanks, this is exactly the kind of thing I am looking for. I don't know yet what that totals up to, but as I said I am doing a 1:1 switch from 40k to warmachine. That money was my wargaming money and so I just want it to all go into the new game. I will have around 500 or so, and then will pick up a case and books with part of that. The rest is for units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Salisar wrote:

Nightsbane wrote:thought of something when looking starting price, what is needed book wise? It looks like they dropped their all in one book strategy so I would need the core book, faction book, and faction deck?

Here is a high level breakdown of what I think you will need to have fun and diversity in WM/H. I'm going to average out the prices and round up, I figured you would be better off budgeting more and spending less. Keep in mind that the $$$ listed below are all retail prices. I don't like telling people "what to buy", so I would leave choosing of models up to you. =)

Faction cards ~ $18 (need 1)
Starter box ~ $50 (need 1)
Additional Warcasters ~ $15 each (need 3)
Light Warjacks ~ $18 each (need 1)
Heavy Warjacks ~ $40 each (need 2)
Character Warjacks ~ $50 each (need 1)
Unit Boxes ~ $50 each (need 2)
Unit Blisters ~ $12 each (need 4 to round out your squads)
Unit Attachments ~ $20 each (need 1)
Solos ~ $10 each (need 2)
Total ~ $450 (Retail)

Didn't see this until I posted, but this is also extremely helpful, thank you.


I am kind of torn as to either just getting the battle box and a couple units, and then learning the game before buying up stuff (at a time when I won't know what for sure I want). I know I bought up stuff when I started 40k that I ended up finding out wasn't my favorite or had to sell off.

BUT

I still liked having a variety of stuff around for 40k to mix it up. Playing one list is boring, and it is nice to have the pieces already in front of you ready to go and paid for. Warmachine is also different to my understanding that it doesn't have sizable chunks of its stock that are worthless as with the case with 40k (Sanguinary Guard, I'm looking at you).

So knowing what units are better than others (when both occupy the same general slot in an army) is what is important to me. From there I plan on getting several warcasters, an assortment of solos, characters, and jacks, and then a couple full groups of troops and their addons.

I just need as much information as possible on what units should fit into those categories.

For instance:

Bane Knights or Bane Thralls?

Satyksis Raiders or Blood Witches?

That sort of thing. I know that the blighted trolls are about the only thing that does not interest me (don't like the models or flavor) but nearly everything else does.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
My biggest question right now is with the troops. They are the most expensive to add, and thus need to be right.


Will it be Bane Knights, Bane Thralls, Satyxis, or Mechanithralls? I am guessing I pick two of these types to take 10 and their addons. Which ones should they be?

As well as which bonejacks to take and how many more need purchased?

Bane Knights and Bane Thralls have similar but different skillsets.
You can just pick the one you like the look of more here, I think.

There is a UA for the BThralls that you would want if you chose them.
And if you were to pick up Goreshade, you need a 6-man Bane Thrall unit for his feat.

Satyxis Raiders and Blood Witches take up very different roles to my mind.
Raiders give you a bit of flexibility. They will do well vs jacks or infantry.
Witches can't deal with armor, but they cost alot less points. The UA Blood Hag is very useful if you play against hordes alot.

I think you definitely want a full unit of Mechanithralls. Getting the 3 Brutes for them could be costly, but they are useful.

You should consider the Bile Thralls as well. I do not have them, and I keep thinking they would be good to have.

My first units were Revenant Crew, Satyxis Raiders, and I qiuckly picked up Bane Thralls and Mechanithralls.

The biles are absurdly fun. Expect them to get shot to hell as soon as your opponent sees them, but if even one of 'em survives long enough to reach the enemy's line... Pop.

^Too damn true.
At first it doesn't look like a whole lot on paper, but when you use it/receive it, dear lord........

Have you seen banelings on a decent day in Starcraft 2? Yea, it's pretty much like that.

I guess I almost have to pick Bane Thralls, I like the Bane Knight look better, but too many casters it seems have specific benefits for thralls (like goreshade) to pass up. Will I need another 6 pack on top of ten because of their ability to add one on kill etc.? Also how many more points are the epic versions of casters than their regular counterparts? Right now thinking:

Epic Asphyxious
Epic Skarre
Terminus (first model that made me think cryx because of its looks)
Regular Goreshade (really like this model)

for my warcasters I will buy.

I only have 6 Banes and the Unit Attachment, which is an Officer and Standard Bearer.
I plan to fill the unit to 10, but I will probably only use those extra 4 guys when BLT does his thing.

If you are thinking you will run a 10+2, then you might want a blister or box for when you gain guys.
Otherwise buying a full 10 and running 6 will work fine.

Ok, here is my current possible buy list. I don't have any troops on it yet, but pretty much everything else:

WARCASTERS
Epic Asphyxious
Epic Skarre
Terminus
Goreshade the Bastard

ARC NODES
2 x Night Wretches

LIGHT JACK
Helldiver

HEAVY JACK
Seether

CHARACTERS
Deathjack
Nightmare
cankerworm (optional)

TROOPS
???

SOLOS
Tartarus
Pistol Wraith
Machine Wraith (optional)
Skarlock
War Witch Siren

----------
This comes to a current estimated total of $260 with everything listed. Advice appreciated. ON THE TROOPS: I am still a little torn. Bane Thralls looks super expensive, because you have to buy a 6 man box, 2 more 2 man blisters, the UA (which isn't cheap), and another 6 man for abilities where you get free ones. This put the unit alone at well over a $100 by itself. Am I counting this up right? I would like to try and get two full troop options in the budget for varieties sake. Outside of the cost issue, jury is still out on Banethralls+ knights, mCthralls, or Satryxis Raiders.

First off, the only 2 things that give you free Bane Thralls are Goreshade and Tartarus. The easy answer is to simply not buy Goreshade until you can afford him AND his feat. Then you have Tartarus, who is very good. There are 2 ways you could go with this; if you're playing friendly games and not at a tournament, any reasonable person would let you use empty small bases as your free thralls for Tartarus, provided you paint front arc on the bases. Second, you not buy Tartarus until you can afford more thralls.

Another major factor is you're not including the discount from buying from the right seller. You can easily get a 30% discount; this makes a box of six thralls only about $35, meaning that for less than $100 you can buy 2 boxes and the UA. That's 12 regular bane thralls.

For the rest of your buy list, if you want Terminus you virtually NEED mechanithralls. I'd take at least a full unit, and also buy the necrosurgeon to refresh them.
If you want to run eAsphyxious, Bane Knights are by far the best infantry choice. Buy 2 boxes; this gives you a full unit of them +2 spares for Tartarus.
Don't bother with Helldivers until you're ready to buy at least 2.
Get the new plastic battlebox, it's a magnificent value for what all you're getting.
Replace Goreshade with pAsphyxious. He's a very strong caster and IMO gets more mileage out of Cankerworm than his epic form.
Drop the Machine Wraith for a second Siren. The utility you get out of them is amazing.
Oh, and if you still have the cash after all of that, get the plastic helljack kit. You can magnetize that and the plastic Slayer from the new battlebox and use the parts between them.

thanks for the advice. Some of my warcaster versions are based on appearance, not use. I really wish they would allow either in competitive player, since the epic version is almost always much more awesome (except with goreshade in my opinion)

What? You can use the epic casters in competitive play if you want... They're treated as a seperate caster from the Prime version.

MasterDRD wrote:What? You can use the epic casters in competitive play if you want... They're treated as a seperate caster from the Prime version.

No that's what I mean, I wish I could use one caster for either or. I'd even be willing to buy both...I just want to use the one that looks cool. I am am aesthetics player, I want my army to look awesome, and I spend a lot of time painting and designing them. The epic asyphxious is one of the most well designed war casters in the game.

Well in friendly arenas you can get consent from your opponent. I would not mind at all, neither would most friendly players...

Back on troops I think the concensus is mechthralls are worth it. they are cheap fodder and therefore doable. they are even cheap moneywise. I would not bother with 3 Brutethralls to accompanie them. They only help when using asphyxious and then only barely. use the money you save on them to buy a pack of nodes. they are very usefull in most lists. the mechthralls are also more then capable at taking on a heavy. especially a debuffed one.

The second troops is a tough one. Will it be mainly anti troop or anti jack? Anti jack is more the bane thrall side, while troop is more knight. Both have the abilitie to do the others work, but are just less good at it. it also depends if you like stealth or not. I like stealth and use as much of it as I can, others like ghostley more... It is a preference.

For satyxis I would always go for raiders. They are very fast and have lot's of attacks, plus feedback. the seawitch makes them even harder to kill from range. Thing is they are not especially good with terminus or asphyxious as they are living. Goreshade also does not get much extra out of them. Only skarre can really make them do extra stuff as she can stack backlash on the target jack. That trick makes them do 2 damage to the owning caster.

Maybe do a split like this:
banethralls min (6)
-banethrall UA
baneknights min (6)

You could even drop the UA. This makes it so you have the option of fielding goreshade (feat food) or not. The UA will only be needed in games without goreshade, that can't be prevented. I think tartarus normally does not enhance the squad to greatly, as adding 2 also makes the opponent try to take out a few more. I think a blister extra of each should fill the adding needs.

As a final note do not hold on to full units too much. My banethralls only get filled out if I have the points to spare. if you want 8 take the ua, full is mostley not needed. The extra bodys are fodder most of the time and thanks to stealth that is not really needed IMHO.

Hope this helpd the choiche for you.

that was actually a ton of help, thanks. I am nearing the end of my selection whoo hoo!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
NEW LIST:

WARCASTERS
Epic Asphyxious
Epic Skarre
Terminus
Goreshade the Bastard

ARC NODES
2 x Night Wretches

LIGHT JACK
Helldiver x 2

HEAVY JACK
Seether

CHARACTERS
Deathjack
Nightmare

TROOPS
10 Bane Knights
10 Mechinthrall + necrosurgeon + 1 Brute Thrall
10 Satyxis Raiders + Sea Witch + Captain
16 Bane Thralls + Banner Officer

SOLOS
Tartarus
Pistol Wraith
Skarlock
War Witch Siren


That is EVERYTHING, comes with my books and hobby supplies, and in at $7 more than I got for my BA.

I'm not a player yet but like the OP I'm looking at Cryx. Now not wanting to hijack a thread I just wanted to say thank you firstly to the OP and secondly to everyone that has posted, this thread has really help to inform me a little more about what to look for.

Lennysmash wrote:I'm not a player yet but like the OP I'm looking at Cryx. Now not wanting to hijack a thread I just wanted to say thank you firstly to the OP and secondly to everyone that has posted, this thread has really help to inform me a little more about what to look for.

by all means use the information, it's good stuff!

Any last minute pointers before I make my purchase? Getting paid shortly.

Also the one thing I know I am lacking is another heavy jack, likely a plastic kit, but this was the best way to get the most bang for my available buck right now. I'm sure I'll pick up something down the road.

Magnetize your warjack that way you get three for one