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 Sqorgar wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

I rather disagree on the level of complication. Sure it's more complicated than 40K 8th Edition and Age of Sigmar, but there are plenty of other games that are equally or more complicated than that. It doesn't even touch the complication of Battletech, which doesn't even come close to Starfleet Battles.

Well, I did say "one of the most complicated", and I think it still qualifies. I would even say "over complicated", as I feel it has a lot of complexity that doesn't really add to game - and maybe even takes away from the game experience. Honestly, I expect WMH mk4 to be considerably streamlined and simplified like AoS or 40k 8th, and it would probably be one of the smartest decisions PP ever made.

I still disagree. I would classify it as middle of the road in terms of complication, but that may be because I have a broader view of games to compare it against. The only space it is more complicated than X-Wing, 40K, and AoS, is in damage for the Warjacks and Warbeasts. X-Wing's movement system can actually be more complicated to plan and play. Honestly, I find WarmaHordes less complicated, over all, than Infinity. The base processes are quite simple and not difficult, and they tie everything in to the system. If you keep that system in mind and the order of things, then it is easy to parse the rules.

Now, some people feel that remembering all the rules makes the game complicated. I disagree because they are still tied in to the processes at one point, rather than GW's sticking their rules in place without proper indications of interaction. In addition, the scope of the special rules is not a level of complication.

WMHDs might be complex for a "mainstream" game, but it's fairly middle of the road when you take games like Starfleet battles or some of the more obscure historical games into account.

As far as terrain is concerned, the drive towards 2D terrain in WMHDs has and is being driven by a few factors, but mainly it all boils down to model placement/how models interact with the terrain. The biggest factor in this is probably hills (really anything that a model can be placed on that rises above the plane of the table surface) - model placement in WMHDs requires precision, and hills are not generally conducive to this within the framework of the existing rules (this is why one of the few elements of 3D terrain one might see on a WMHDs table are obstacles that models cannot be placed on, such as wall templates, and relatively flat terrain features such as forests with movable trees ala battlefield in a box). You can't exactly be precise with model placement if 3/4 of your base is hanging off the edge of a cliff causing it to tip over, or your top-heavy warjack keeps tipping over because it's on a sloped hill. These issues could pretty easily be solved with maybe a half page of rules governing model/terrain interactions in these situations (and in the process open up new design space for models/units to take greater advantage of these rules interactions), but the designers don't seem to see it as an issue that needs addressing.

chaos0xomega wrote:
WMHDs might be complex for a "mainstream" game, but it's fairly middle of the road when you take games like Starfleet battles or some of the more obscure historical games into account.

That's not really a good argument. Especially when SFB is a dead game, along with the pre-Flames historical crowd; no coincidence that the player base for both games is rapidly approaching average mortality.

WMH should be compared with the other miniatures battle games currently on the market. My sense is that the best selling games are less complex than before (AoS, 40k, X-wing) while the more complex games (Infinity, Heavy Gear, Flames, WMH) are lagging.

Da Boss wrote:That is what it seems like to me. A few years ago this subforum was thriving and my local store had a thriving WM/H scene, it was the biggest game. With Mk3, they literally put all their stock on sale for half price and cleared it because the entire community dropped the game. I got curious and went looking online and everywhere seemed dead. That is my perception. I don't really know what happened.

A lot of the changes in the initial release of Mk. 3 were pretty bad. The guy who was the lead on Mk.3 also was a jerk to the community as a whole which was IMO strike 1. Then they had a period of about 6 to 8 months where a ton of really unbalanced lists came out, and I think this is a huge one so strike 2. People also left the game in droves because the game balance changed and a lot of what made a faction unique was suddenly gone. It felt like having the rug swept out from under you in some cases making for strike 3. I think PP realized this and now has a sense of direction for where Mk 3 wants to go. At the beginning of Mk. 3 they were also silent on how theme lists would work, but now they are at the forefront of how Warmachine is played. Some people don't like Theme Lists at all because they think it's not fun and doesn't encourage diversity so for a lot of people that's strike 4. My 2 cents is that theme lists are good because they limit the scope of each faction to an extent. It helps solve model bloat, by not invalidating your models, but by making it so not all theme lists have access to everything.

LunarSol wrote:Certainly the attack volume of Hordes helped a lot to make their heavies viable. Part of Legion's success though was simply that they had a few models with insane infantry clearing potential. The Strider solo could reliably clear nearly half a unit on its own for a fraction of the points. Ravagores limited charge lanes while also always giving the army an assassination out when things when strong due to the extremely limited ways to protect a caster against them. Tenacity also made it very easy to put a beast in a range where infantry couldn't kill it; particularly the high defense flyers who incidentally had one of the best toolkits for heavy vs infantry in the game. Of all the factions, they had the best ability to not take damage rolls on their heavies for that weakness to matter.

On the other side, MMM is actually where you can see the damage roll break the other way. Around ARM 21, you hit a point where things are only doing a point or two of damage without spiking. Bump it above 21 and you see a lot of things failing to damage, even with a charge. When you start hitting dice-7 range the game hits a scary point where a model is suitably durable against a volume of attack, but given just a little more ARM is basically immortal and, equally problematic, if they're stripped of just a little bit of ARM, find their durability cut in half. Colossals sitting around this point made this flaw really noticeable, and a big improvement in the model rules for MK3 is the limited ability to put mulitiple abilities that affect ARM either direction in a single list by making things like +ARM animi self only and reducing the number of debuffs in the game to limit the ability to stack them.

I just used Legion of Everblight as an example, but look at Skorne, Trollbloods, Minions, and Circle in Mk. 2. They all used beasts in multiples and not just as Fury batteries. They were active components of your army and even with the huge infantry clearing potential that Legion had, beasts in general just had much higher damage output than a jack did on a more consistent basis because they required no Fury resources from a caster. In fact you didn't really pay the cost of using Fury until after they were committed to where you needed them because you paid the cost after the action rather than before the action. Even then sometimes you'd send in a Warbeast have it destroy stuff your opponent had committed and then never cared that it was full on Fury because it did its job. It would then Frenzy usually to your advantage or if your opponent took it out then that is Fury you don't have to even consider next turn.

Jacks required Focus from your caster and Focus was essential to keeping your caster alive in Mk. 2. Every Focus point spent was a point of armor you lost. Infantry on the other hand don't have to spend focus to run or charge. All they need is a solo/unit attachment to make them better and a spell from their caster. Jacks need Focus which the caster was already hungry for AND a spell. That's a huge burden on the caster's focus. If removing the dice roll of the armor roll was really the driving factor then why in Mk. 3 was it changed that having a jack in your control range has it gain one focus point in the control phase in Mk. 3? I feel like that's good evidence that Warjacks in general were lacking in Mk. 2 and needed buff. Not to mention now in Mk. 3 most Warjacks are cheaper than an equivalent Warbeast.

NH Gunsmith wrote:Shoot, I am mentoring our new players, although I am new to Mk.III, I have been playing since Mk.I. We printed off our cards to make it easier to pass information back and forth between each other, and it allows me to read their other cards for models they haven't used yet to think of ways they have missed when using them.

I can understand that some other communities may not have had this type of love and care put into guiding the new players, but it makes such a huge difference. Just yesterday, one of our new guys and I got in three games of Warmachine. We were smiling and laughing the whole entire time. The 40k guys at the next table looked miserable the whole way through their game. Arguing and complaining how OP the other models in an army are.

That's great! This is exactly the kind of mentoring new players need in any miniature's or tabletop game. I wish you all the best of luck with your players. Sounds like you have a great community that is thriving.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
WMHDs might be complex for a "mainstream" game, but it's fairly middle of the road when you take games like Starfleet battles or some of the more obscure historical games into account.

That's not really a good argument. Especially when SFB is a dead game, along with the pre-Flames historical crowd; no coincidence that the player base for both games is rapidly approaching average mortality.

WMH should be compared with the other miniatures battle games currently on the market. My sense is that the best selling games are less complex than before (AoS, 40k, X-wing) while the more complex games (Infinity, Heavy Gear, Flames, WMH) are lagging.

The real irony in those statements is that WHFB was probably the most complex of those games listed, and 40K wasn't that far behind (especially when it came to rule interpretations). It's only when GW decided to throw the baby out with the bath in FB, that AoS could be classified as a simple game. 40K kept getting more and more complex with every book released (and I'm including all the codices and campaign books) until they did a total reformat last year.

I wouldn't say that X-Wing is uncomplicated, but that's probably because I think their maneuver system is clunky and their army build system is far more complicated than WMH.

PP has been caught rather flat-footed in this regard with their major competitor going from "Historical With Dragons" level of complexity to almost "Green Army Guys" level of complexity. Then the up-and-comer hits with a simple to apply (if complicated to plan) system right behind them supported by one of the biggest nerd franchises in the culture. While Mk 3 did simplify some of the mechanics somewhat (bye bye half of the purpose of Command), the more complicated actions and damage that a Jack/Beast did were still around.

To be fair, it's not the first time that GW hit the reset button for 40k or WFB. 40k3 was all-new simplification from the bloat that 2E became, and WFB6 was an massive cleanup from WFB5.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
To be fair, it's not the first time that GW hit the reset button for 40k or WFB. 40k3 was all-new simplification from the bloat that 2E became, and WFB6 was an massive cleanup from WFB5.

Yes and no. I don't think anyone foresaw the vast changes between WFB 8 and AoS as it was nothing like the changes Fantasy saw between 5th and 6th. Both were still largely Historical games, Fantasy-style, when getting down to brass tacks, just some of the emphasis on model groups changed (if what I have heard is accurate). AoS feels more like a quick skirmish game more than the Rank and File game its predecessors enjoyed.

40K 7th and 8th was semi-predictable only because it happened with the Fantasy side of things. And there were more than a few people who were looking forward to 40K changing after 7th's Formation Bloat.

And seriously, I don't know how you could reduce WMH down to AoS/40K level without seriously harming the overall presentation of the game and losing out on a lot of fun things, like Throwing. There was already a fit when the Errata changed it so you can't Throw Friendly models, could you imagine the backlash if you couldn't Throw Enemy models any more?

40k 3E was unprecedented and had massive backlash from the 2E crowd.

If AoS had square bases, people would have loved it. One page on formations, and it would have been fine

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
40k 3E was unprecedented and had massive backlash from the 2E crowd.

If AoS had square bases, people would have loved it. One page on formations, and it would have been fine

Another option is to make movement trays (because lets face it everyone used them) with a series of round slots on them to slip models into. In theory GW could still do that, however the poses of some of the newer models might not work in trying to fit them together in a tight formation as before.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
40k 3E was unprecedented and had massive backlash from the 2E crowd.

The fact that the change was unprecedented is not the point, it is the change in the level of complexity between Editions which is the point that is being made. When going to Mk 3, PP roughly did the same amount of complexity change as 40K did from 6th to 7th, when people were getting 8th Edition from 40K and X-Wing was really hitting its stride to become #1.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If AoS had square bases, people would have loved it. One page on formations, and it would have been fine

You can still run AoS on square bases if you want. Bases are there to make sure the models don't fall down. Most of the complaints I saw were the dumbing down of the game and the loss of Rank & File (the latter being the reason to use square bases, admittedly). The level of complexity went from a 9 down to 3. Model facing no longer mattered. You didn't have to wheel a unit in order to turn it. Templates? What are those? Strength and Toughness completely dropped all together. Those were just some of the cases of simplifying of the game's rules. They went from over 200 pages of rules down to 4. That only went up a little with the introduction of the General's Hand Book, and that was more about army creation than actually playing the game itself.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
WMHDs might be complex for a "mainstream" game, but it's fairly middle of the road when you take games like Starfleet battles or some of the more obscure historical games into account.

That's not really a good argument. Especially when SFB is a dead game, along with the pre-Flames historical crowd; no coincidence that the player base for both games is rapidly approaching average mortality.

WMH should be compared with the other miniatures battle games currently on the market. My sense is that the best selling games are less complex than before (AoS, 40k, X-wing) while the more complex games (Infinity, Heavy Gear, Flames, WMH) are lagging.

Err, there are still plenty of complex historical games (By Fire and Sword, anyone?) in print and more are coming out. And despite some of the older games being "dead" they still have active player bases. Attempting to shift goalposts will get you nowhere.

I was very active in MK2, but dropped off at the tail end when Bradigus spam list ruled and ADR massively increased the rate of changes.

The reasons I can never see myself starting to play warmachine again, even though I have a huge painted Khador army are:

1: You cannot play casual warmachine. If you don´t know about the combos, you will lose to them. With so insanely many different units being able to interact to build new combos, you need to really study to be able to play at an even footing. With kids, a house and full time job, my gaming time is already limited, I can´t spend tons of time on getting an overview of the bloated mess of units in this game.

2: Warmachine is the most "gamey" war game I have ever played. Millimeter precision, 2D terrain, combos, caster kill, the scenarios, the multi-list format... there is just a lot of little bits here and there that adds up to it not really feeling like you are playing a battle, but just an advanced version of chess. I think this is also why it often seems that there is more proxy in warmachine, because the miniatures don´t really matter, they are just markers for your card.

3: Too many updates. Aiming for balance is fine, but if you only play once a month, then keeping up with constant rules updates is hell. Moving away from physical cards was a mistake in my opinion. With those, it was at least possible to skim your opponents rules during the game. Having to resort to an app is much less efficient unless warroom has changed massively. Kings of war has yearly updates, and that is plenty. Gives time to actually playtest changes as well.

4: The balance was an initial draw, but after the giant cock-ups they do time and time again (Bradigus MK2, Skorne failure, wild overreacting nerfs etc), it is very clear that the balance is not really that good. It is just good compared to 40k, which is not really a big achievement. Balancing around theme forces, forcing players to buy tons of the same unit to be competitive is a failure as well.

As someone who only ever plays casually now, WMH is done, and Infinity is a non-starter. I am ok with that

I'm in your boat, I think, but with the right group, I wouldn't give up on Warmachine. Apart from anything else, it's got a very unique visual style and setting - there's plenty of scope for some interesting terrain if that's your thing. Perhaps Company of Iron? I've been watching the GMG videos on YouTube, and I'm very tempted.

Is there any sort of community for MK1 players like there are Oldhammer players? Some of the most fun I've ever had was playing WM MK1. Granted, my group played pretty casually so that may have been part of the appeal.

WMH is completely dead at my LGS. They sold the last of their stock off earlier this year, which is crazy because the shop carried WMH since MK1 and had a huge community up until the release of MK3.

We just had a tourney here in Aus which had 60ish players, and could have easily had more if that had been the goal of it. It was great fun, everyone laughed, I think it just comes down to community in the end rather than anything else

With GW just announcing record profits, it clearly shows where everyone went.

I agree with the previous comments that Warmachine is not a friendly game for new players or causal gamers.
With Special Combinations that can way lay the game isn't good when you are just trying to understand the basic rules.

The other thing I wish they would have handled better was some way of keeping the press gangers. I feel the
reasoning was something to do with the WoTC judge employment lawsuit. but I think they could have done something
to avoid what was happening while keeping a strong group of local loyal supporters.

Well, there was big news locally...the store that was the major carrier of WMH stuff and place to play has decided to drop the line from the store. The reasons have mostly been covered already, the edition change, balancing, end of press gangers/forums, etc. led to serious declines in the local player base.

It seems like it was just a very bad convergence of events that lead to this for Privateer. They stumbled, right as GW was having a surge with their somewhat friendlier evil corporate empire, and the new edition of 40K. Now my closest store is down to mostly 40K and X-Wing/Legion, with a few Sigmar players. Warmahordes gave it a run locally, and had a few good years, but nothing has been able to surpass or outlast GW. WMH, Mantic, Flames of War, and others have all tried. But the groups all died out eventually.

pretty much its all by locality. Here Warmahordes is as strong as ever and GW has shown no signs of life outside their own store. Our FLGS has around 80 solid players and there has never been a time when I have gone in and not seen at least 3 games going. Star Wars Legion is picking up steam and so is guild ball, but no 40k and no AoS (except me and 2 buddies)

 thekingofkings wrote:
pretty much its all by locality. Here Warmahordes is as strong as ever and GW has shown no signs of life outside their own store. Our FLGS has around 80 solid players and there has never been a time when I have gone in and not seen at least 3 games going. Star Wars Legion is picking up steam and so is guild ball, but no 40k and no AoS (except me and 2 buddies)

I have to echo this. It really depends on the store and really depends on the location. In the same city we have 3 to 4 stores. 2 of those stores used to have a crowd, but with the newest store opening up recently all of the players went there. New store now has 16 new players. Also about 1.5 hours away is another store where some big names play and there scene is huge too. I don't think the game is dying. I just feel like it's in flux.

The statistics speaks against PP.
The last entry in the Army List Forum is from 07-15 and the bottom entry on the 1st page is from 03-23.

Which army list forum?

PP's? Since getting rid of the faction-specific boards, their traffic is mostly rules questions.

Here? This is primarily a 40K forum, everything else are side jobs compared to that.

The Facebook and LormaHordes posts are far more busy each with WMH lists than can be found in both areas combined.

lormahordes, reddit, and twitter. I think only neckbeards and a couple young people outliers forum anymore.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Genoside07 wrote:
With GW just announcing record profits, it clearly shows where everyone went.

I agree with the previous comments that Warmachine is not a friendly game for new players or causal gamers.
With Special Combinations that can way lay the game isn't good when you are just trying to understand the basic rules.

The other thing I wish they would have handled better was some way of keeping the press gangers. I feel the
reasoning was something to do with the WoTC judge employment lawsuit. but I think they could have done something
to avoid what was happening while keeping a strong group of local loyal supporters.

While there has been some decline, 40k players tend to exaggerate. Some communities are strong (have even grown) since the edition change and some have evaporated. Part of this is because there are 40k AND WMH players and right now 8th is exciting (though this starting fade too as rules bloat becomes a thing) and so they are playing 40k. This is common with players who play more than 1 system. I do the same thing, sometimes I am all about one system and then one day it is the other, and it is not hard to do because I already own armies for those systems.

PP still hosted another LnL, someone won the Iron Gauntlet and the streaming footage showed a full house. So....exaggeration.

Between PP getting back the license from Universal for Monsterpocalypse (they already contracted the rights out to Warner Bros. to produce a big studio Monsterpocalypse movie, I haven't seen anything large studio movie deals for 40k or AoS) AND with them creating a stronger professional relationship with FFG (they are licensed to produce minis for the Legend of the Five rings) I don't see PP or Warmachine going anywhere.

If merchandising and the movie goes well prepare for an Iron Kingdoms show/movie in the future.

I stole this from the X-Wing thread here on Dakka... But it seems like Privateer Press is still doing more than okay.

Nice to see that AoS bumped Hordes off the Top 5

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Nice to see that AoS bumped Hordes off the Top 5

Hordes hasn't been on the list in a while. I think it got kicked off around the time X-Wing hit the top.

I thought it went 40k, X-wing, Warmachine, ???, Hordes for the longest time.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I thought it went 40k, X-wing, Warmachine, ???, Hordes for the longest time.

It was ...xWing , 40k, warmachine, AOS and I believe Armada about 2 yrs ago. But I don’t keep up

Orlando posted this in the other version of this thread:

Warmachine position from Spring 18 to Spring 2012: 3,3,5,3,4,4,4,3,4,3,2,3,2
Hordes position from Spring 18 to Spring 2012: -,-,-,5,-,-,5,-,5,5,5,5,4

So Hordes hasn't consistently appeared on the list since like Spring 2014

 LunarSol wrote:
Orlando posted this in the other version of this thread:

Warmachine position from Spring 18 to Spring 2012: 3,3,5,3,4,4,4,3,4,3,2,3,2
Hordes position from Spring 18 to Spring 2012: -,-,-,5,-,-,5,-,5,5,5,5,4

So Hordes hasn't consistently appeared on the list since like Spring 2014

I like the evidence-based outlook. Here's some web traffic links. The graph trends are interesting, please copy-paste into browser, hotlinks don't work on a first post here:

www.alexa.com/siteinfo/games-workshop.com

www.alexa.com/siteinfo/privateerpress.com

www.alexa.com/siteinfo/privateerpressforums.com

For me, destroying their own general discussion boards and faction forums was an illogical further self-insult (on top of having little plan to address the disbanded Press Gang, inconsistent fluff releases, etc.). It certainly drove me away by draining their overall traffic - and thus paint-hobby subforum activity - to a trickle. In fact, no single online venue has regained that level of centralized activity. Facebook is NOT an option for me, given that I use it for work purposes that don't jive with my hobbying. Plus I hate it, lol. I've been posting hobby blogs on lormahordes, and a little on Reddit and here, but I feel like part of a diaspora. For Chrissake, they had us *in the store*, so to speak. Any salesman knows that's going to increase the chance of a sale.

I hope Will Shick or whomever is responsible for this apparent mismanagement wises up. I want Warmachine to bounce back. I love the aesthetic and the world they've created!