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In the early days of mid mk2, it was fun for me. I got stomped but everyone was friendly. Pg 5 never came across to me as permission to be a gakker, nor did I ever run into people irl that felt that way. Pg 5 to us meant "Hmmm ive got a crazy scheme that has a 5% chance of winning the game, but if it fails I've got a 99.9% chance of losing immediately, hmmmm. Oh well, pg 5, lets do this!".

Time went on, unbalanced themes started being a thing, didn't like that. Mk 3 dropped, and the rules were wonky, skorne was boned, but I didn't really mind to be honest. What I did mind was the community slowly growing more aggressive and less fun. Nobody cared about jounreyman leagues for new players. Nobody cared about narrative campaigns that saw one of your dudes level up and become stronger. It was 50 pt steamroller or nothing. I tried for a long time to squeeze blood out of that turnip, but to no avail. In the end, I had more fun playing niche games like malifaux and infinity, or dead games like confrontation, hell dorado, anima tactics, and all that jazz with one other dude who was always down to try something new, as opposed to a community (that shrunk) of people that only wanted to play tourny lists and formated all day erry day, and if you don't want to then they simply wouldn't play you.

To my eye as an outsider, it seemed like they ran out of new/interesting things to make with their universe and aesthetic right around the same time GW started getting their own lines in order.

The later Warmachine releases were just kinda "now it is really big" "now this caster has 4 models" "now the same stuff you thought was innovative 5 years ago are finally plastic"

 RiTides wrote:
Here's my problem with posts like oni's above, though:

Dude, seriously, you're shouting down anyone who's had a worse community experience than you. Your happy little groupo is no more representative of the community than the heaps of posters' who were turned away by the toxicity.

Mk3 happened

Wildly undertested (pre-fix Una 2 rivals anything GW has done in the tedious spam department)

A breath taking lack of awareness and/or arrogance from PP, thinking 'better' rules justify higher prices and lower quality models, without seeming to be aware of the vast range of alternatives now available

I still play from time to time as plugging a new caster into my existing collection is a lark, also helps my fellow local players are virtually horizontal in the laid back stakes

Yeah, have to add my own horror stories to this heap as well. Our FLGS tried to start up a Warmahordes community during the height of GW hate. The Press Ganger was a nice guy as I recall, and the demo he did impressed me enough to buy a starter copy and pick up the rules. I had my first double-take when I read page 5, and it made me cautious about playing with others - I’d had my head stomped in trying to learn 40K, and I wasn’t looking forward to a repeat performance. The PP guy had been nice enough though, I decided I’d give it a go.

So I practiced using the Warmachine video game to get some experience under my belt - at least a token level. Once I felt like I at least knew what I was doing at a basic level (and that took a few games at that), I took my Cygnar list to the shop to see if I could get a game in.

What I saw being played at the FLGS made me do an immediate 180 and walk out. It was the same “Play like you got a pair” sort of BS I had walked away from in 40K - but even worse. I could tell that not only would my list not have a chance nor did it have enough points to garner more than a few sneers at its size, the game banter wasn’t even pleasant to listen to. I felt like I was being sized up like an animal for slaughter; they were just looking for fresh meat for another notch on their belt.

Oddly enough, as soon as Mk 3 came out, the entire local community vanished. I haven’t heard of anyone at the local FLGS playing WarmaHordes, and the store isn’t stocking any product any more.

So is WMH generally now dead in most areas?
I recall around 2012-14 it being quite strong over here but havent kept tabs on it since.

It is dead in a lot of places. I know the Dublin scene is still somewhat active - a friend of mine is in the ETC group for WMH and he says it is still going strong.

But a lot of local groups in smaller cities have collapsed. Nürnberg used to have an active group playing twice a week, now it is completely dead within a year.

Sorry if it came across that I was ignoring your view, lord_blackfang! What I really wanted to focus on was this:

 Stormonu wrote:
Oddly enough, as soon as Mk 3 came out, the entire local community vanished. I haven’t heard of anyone at the local FLGS playing WarmaHordes, and the store isn’t stocking any product any more.

This matches what happened in a lot of areas where warmahordes was thriving, and so focusing on the events leading up to that, rather than just general like/dislike of the game, is more relevant to the cause (imo, of course!).

Yeah that was more Deadnight earlier on given his comments on peoples experiences within the Warmahordes communities that weren't positive.

 Da Boss wrote:
I basically put a list together of the models I liked, made one or two concessions to synergy, but apart from that it was just stuff I liked the look of. And once I learned how to use it, I could compete in tournaments. That is rarely true with GW.

And on an anecdotal level, that is the opposite of my own experience. I went in saying "the big dragons are cool, I want to run big dragons, what do you have to do to do that" and chose my caster based on that desire, got all the correct support elements, and put together a competent enough high-offense big monster list.

and I got absolutely hammered, game after game after game, by people running tournament meta netlists which were, to make matters worse, made extra confusing by the massive use of semi-assembled models and proxies. I never played against an army that had anything painted, and I probably played against more beaten up old GW dreadnoughts and starter pack space marines than PP models.

At the height of the scatbike/wk/formation madness of 7th edition 40k (the reason I was trying out WMH in the first place) competitive warmahordes lists felt less fun and interactive to play against. After all, who doesn't love playing against a circle list that slowly walks impenetrable lines of trees across the battlefield to get their massively tanky treemen in your face, or a list that knocks down all your monsters turn after turn so you can't do anything? And if the game's no fun, you can just enjoy listening to the wonderful community babble almost entirely in jargon broken up by the occasional rape joke if someone's army contains a female model.

I probably played 10-12 games just due to my own sunk cost fallacy before I realized I could just go on any number of swap sites and trade off my painted army for an unpainted 40k army worth three times as much.

Anecdotal evidence isn't worth anything to anyone but the person who had the one experience, for the most part.

Fair cop, mate. Being an Ork player for a long time, my experience with 40K was long periods of frustration with brief periods of intense enjoyment when we got a new book, until it was surpassed by the next new hotness and had to wait through the years long cycle of marine variants.

I don’t play as much, personally as far as communities go the ones I’ve been in were no worse that 40K communities (and better than the worst 40k community I ever had the misfortune of being part).

The online communities were exceptionally cutthroat though, and had a bad case of “bitter ex-spouse” syndrome when it came to GW games.

I didn’t mind mk 3 that much, I liked Jacks being a bigger part of the game again (especially after mk 1 and 2 saw lists minimizing if not outright removing them entirely).

But at the same time I saw what mk 3 did for some armies. For example, Skorne were so bad that PP needed to have a complete do-over with them.

I’m also not a huge fan of the way they handled the community with killing their forums and axing the PG program.

I also don’t like their new model and book release system. I liked how they would put out a book with a few new models for everybody and fluff that advanced the storyline.

One factor that I've seen mentioned but not really explored is the war with online discounts they embarked upon shortly before Mk. 3 was released. While they said it was to level the playing field for B&M stores, they then moved a bunch of their SKUs to special orders and did away with the Press Ganger program which would seem to be fairly anti-B&M moves. So in essence it seemed they managed to anger both online and B&M partners in the span of a couple months which is...generally a dumb idea for any supplier in any industry. That could have factored into some stores deciding they no longer wanted to bother carrying the lines which in turn does torpedo marginal communities quite effectively. As some have said, a perfect storm of ill-advised decisions by PP.

PP made some big mistakes all at once and burned bridges - hopefully they can turn it around and I would trust them to do so. It's still the second biggest game to Warhammer; its still got a strong set of rules and good models and it would be crying shame to see them fall apart after years of great gaming.


Sure things are a bit harder now; GW has awoken and the slumbering dragon has flexed its might with changes and shown that its still got a loyal following of addicts . That said I still think the market has room and that PP can stil rise up from these doldrums.

I only had a few interactions with WMH players, and they were mostly all positive. But I only tried MK2. Can’t speak for anything before or after.

 Krinsath wrote:
One factor that I've seen mentioned but not really explored is the war with online discounts they embarked upon shortly before Mk. 3 was released. While they said it was to level the playing field for B&M stores, they then moved a bunch of their SKUs to special orders and did away with the Press Ganger program which would seem to be fairly anti-B&M moves. So in essence it seemed they managed to anger both online and B&M partners in the span of a couple months which is...generally a dumb idea for any supplier in any industry. That could have factored into some stores deciding they no longer wanted to bother carrying the lines which in turn does torpedo marginal communities quite effectively. As some have said, a perfect storm of ill-advised decisions by PP.

In some ways, Warmachine is a good example of the problems with the online discount model. A big part of its rise was definitely the price, but that price wasn't really that much lower without considering the online discounts. The problem with this though, is the game was really only thriving through the sales of a couple major outlets. At a local level, a lot of stores were pretty frustrated with the game. They stocked it because people played, but nobody actually bought the stock. You had the enthusiasts buying in heavily, and then bringing those heavy investments in to places that didn't see a dime of it and were mostly taking a loss on what they kept in stock to support this popular thing that filled their shop. Battleboxes sitting on shelves got replaced with products people bought off the shelves and with that, there were definitely fewer new players. The discount limits were pretty necessary, but they kind of exposed the truth that the game really wasn't any cheaper than 40k and rather than people buying locally at prices more in line with what they could get online, a lot of people just stopped buying.

I'm not exactly sure how you go about fixing this, but I think Warmachine is probably the game that was most affected by the online discount bubble, and has certainly suffered after it popped.

 silent25 wrote:


Would have been playing WMH if it weren't for the caster kill mechanic. Just rubs me the wrong way.

I always loved that mechanic. Because regardless of how badly i was getting my ass kicked. I still had a chance to comeback and win.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
One factor that I've seen mentioned but not really explored is the war with online discounts they embarked upon shortly before Mk. 3 was released. While they said it was to level the playing field for B&M stores, they then moved a bunch of their SKUs to special orders and did away with the Press Ganger program which would seem to be fairly anti-B&M moves. So in essence it seemed they managed to anger both online and B&M partners in the span of a couple months which is...generally a dumb idea for any supplier in any industry. That could have factored into some stores deciding they no longer wanted to bother carrying the lines which in turn does torpedo marginal communities quite effectively. As some have said, a perfect storm of ill-advised decisions by PP.

In some ways, Warmachine is a good example of the problems with the online discount model. A big part of its rise was definitely the price, but that price wasn't really that much lower without considering the online discounts. The problem with this though, is the game was really only thriving through the sales of a couple major outlets. At a local level, a lot of stores were pretty frustrated with the game. They stocked it because people played, but nobody actually bought the stock. You had the enthusiasts buying in heavily, and then bringing those heavy investments in to places that didn't see a dime of it and were mostly taking a loss on what they kept in stock to support this popular thing that filled their shop. Battleboxes sitting on shelves got replaced with products people bought off the shelves and with that, there were definitely fewer new players. The discount limits were pretty necessary, but they kind of exposed the truth that the game really wasn't any cheaper than 40k and rather than people buying locally at prices more in line with what they could get online, a lot of people just stopped buying.

I'm not exactly sure how you go about fixing this, but I think Warmachine is probably the game that was most affected by the online discount bubble, and has certainly suffered after it popped.

Good points, but wouldn't a lot of that be offset by a store having an active (and capable) Pressganger? MY LGS was a huge hub of WM/H from MK1-3, and only this last spring did they clearance out all of their PP stuff. Prior to abandoning the system the LGS had an active PG and a thriving community. I know that PG drove sales to the store because he was really good at selling the game and getting people enthusiastic. I am sure not everyone who played there bought there, but the store devoted a substantial amount of shelf space to PP games for years, so it was obviously worth their while to stock the full range-- until it suddenly wasn't.

If a company is going to kill online discounts and drive sales to B&M stores, they need store liaisons pure and simple.

 Overread wrote:
PP made some big mistakes all at once and burned bridges - hopefully they can turn it around and I would trust them to do so. It's still the second biggest game to Warhammer; its still got a strong set of rules and good models and it would be crying shame to see them fall apart after years of great gaming.


Sure things are a bit harder now; GW has awoken and the slumbering dragon has flexed its might with changes and shown that its still got a loyal following of addicts . That said I still think the market has room and that PP can stil rise up from these doldrums.

I'm not sure that will be possible at PP. GW is a public company and it's revival was triggered by a new CEO who shook things up by kicking out certain upper managers and start listening to the rest of the staff. PP is privately owned by Matt Wilson and run by his wife. Talking with people who worked at PP, Wilson's wife keeps a pretty tight grip on operations. The perfect storm of bad decisions stemmed from them. Barring the sale of the company by Wilson, I don't see this happening.

Also, X-Wing has the prize for second biggest game next to 40k. PP use to crow about being the second biggest miniature game company out there, but since X-wing came out, they've stopped saying that.

 AduroT wrote:
Guild Balls been on a diminishing cycle as well at the moment it seems. Lots less interest there as well.

I think that's what you get when you sell your game on competitive play. If you let the "balance" slip, or something else comes along, then the players are off because it's the competition they're into, not necessarily your game. Warmachine started with a fairly interesting setting, then abandoned a lot of the exploration, IMO, to double down on adding things to the gameplay, rather than the world.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 silent25 wrote:


Would have been playing WMH if it weren't for the caster kill mechanic. Just rubs me the wrong way.

I always loved that mechanic. Because regardless of how badly i was getting my ass kicked. I still had a chance to comeback and win.

Gameplay, not setting. Works for some people, but not for me. I see why you like it, but from a story point of view, it never sat right for me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Mk3 happened

It was dead round here long before mk3 came out (and that actually caused a bit of a resurgence!). The tournament scene appeared to have moved on to Malifaux and Guildball. These days it looks like X-Wing and a hint of Shadespire.

In a wierd sort of related news the announced Malifaux Version 3 and the killer off certain characters making them unplayable in the game. I look to see them in bargain bins too.

thing is Mk3 wasn't terri-bad (from a non-Skorne POV) but far from what was promised

I don't like caster kill either but it has its place in a tournament focussed game

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

Warmachine started with a fairly interesting setting, then abandoned a lot of the exploration, IMO, to double down on adding things to the gameplay, rather than the world.

The setting really was a hidden gem. I have all the old D20 rpg material and pretty much all of the current ikrpg stuff.

I disagree that they stopped adding to the world. I think they started adding too much to the world and in the wrong way. When I started you had five warmachine factions and four hordes, plus mercs and minions. Now add to that convergence, crucible guard, grymkin and they've spoken about a new faction Every year. Now, the setting is the size of Western Europe but there is only so much space for this bloat of factions.

The ikrpg was a fantastic way of adding to the world, and it's a shame they've stopped publishing expansions to it (really wanted an ios one!). What they're currently doing though is adding bloat, without adding depth.

And it's a shame.

beowulfhunter wrote:
In a wierd sort of related news the announced Malifaux Version 3 and the killer off certain characters making them unplayable in the game. I look to see them in bargain bins too.

A similar thing happened with Infinity where CB split one of factions up due to a civil war/uprising. Players of that faction were not happy since a number of them found large chunks of their army unusable. While an evolving story world can be interesting, it can also turn off people when story events impact actual game play.

While not perfect, GW has at least included rules and points/rules for some of their old WHFB units for AoS so people can still play with them. They openly state though they are not meant for competitive play. Wyrd would be smart to include legacy rules so people aren't completely screwed in the new edition.

 silent25 wrote:

beowulfhunter wrote:
In a wierd sort of related news the announced Malifaux Version 3 and the killer off certain characters making them unplayable in the game. I look to see them in bargain bins too.

A similar thing happened with Infinity where CB split one of factions up due to a civil war/uprising. Players of that faction were not happy since a number of them found large chunks of their army unusable. While an evolving story world can be interesting, it can also turn off people when story events impact actual game play.

While not perfect, GW has at least included rules and points/rules for some of their old WHFB units for AoS so people can still play with them. They openly state though they are not meant for competitive play. Wyrd would be smart to include legacy rules so people aren't completely screwed in the new edition.

beowulfhunter is being disingenuous, Wyrd are doing exactly the same as what GW did with their legacy stuff. On the new edition launch, the removed masters are getting released in a "Dead Man's Hand" format, where they aren't tournament legal as standard(although a TO can elect to allow them) but they have full rules for any other game. Unfortunately for some, this isn't enough it seems, because the Malifaux community have been very angry with it in some places

On PP and WarmaHordes though, I would agree with the general sentiment presented here. The absolute failure of the Mk3 launch, public relations bungles and proliferation of themes destroying balance are the major things at play in terms of the lost playerbase. My personal experience with the local group was like this, as we first had major balance issues (Cryx got nerfed sure, but it was definitely too far in places, and Skorne were straight up unplayable), then we lost forums and the online community fractured (becoming even more toxic in a lot of places) and then themes started to hit. The free models on top of theme bonuses was really what killed them IMO, because it makes out of theme lists useless in comparison, and they've moved to a GW style of release with them. If you aren't one of the more recent CID factions with a new theme, you're pretty much left behind. And some factions also don't have all their theme lists yet, so if you're playing one of those themes, you're in worse luck (but IIRC this is almost not an issue)

beowulfhunter is being disingenuous, Wyrd are doing exactly the same as what GW did with their legacy stuff. On the new edition launch, the removed masters are getting released in a "Dead Man's Hand" format, where they aren't tournament legal as standard(although a TO can elect to allow them) but they have full rules for any other game. Unfortunately for some, this isn't enough it seems, because the Malifaux community have been very angry with it in some places

For some if it's not tournament legal, it might as well have been cut as it can influence a community to overall get rid of them.

Interesting points brought up and here I am just hoping pp keeps their painta available because I have taken a serious liking to what they are doing in that department. I always hated the resi . Loved the settings and asthetics and the complexity. I am a total complexity guy when it comes to wargaming but thy dropped the ball. Something corporations need to learn is customer service, it isn't just a problem I wargaming, it's a problem in almost every industry. They get cocky, arrogant, and take the customer for granted. Then it just falls apart. Most folks forget how Grass Roots GW once was, a game company for gamers. They got big and several times their arrogance has almost brought them tumbling down.

Smaller compo don't have that kind of luck or endurance to handle falling on their pride and living long enough to heal or just having a big enough global empire to make it through.

I don't really have a horse in the Malifaux argument, but my experience has been that if a model is not tournament legal, potential opponents will generally avoid playing against it. Usually this is because they're practicing for a tournament or tuning a list for one.

I used to see this all the time with special characters in 40k and Fantasy back in the day, and DZC had the same issue with their special commanders.

From the perspective of having started in Mk 3, I get the feeling that it is a much different game to Mk 2. It's like PP is starting a new game that basically has next to nothing in common with previous editions.

It's not that Mk 3 isn't a good game on it's own merits, because I think it is. It's that previous players obviously liked what was previously happening, and this game is no longer that. Which means that previous players don't like this new thing, and Mk 3 has to start over like a new game.

Like any new game, it needs "founders" to grow the community. And PP axed their previous "official" ambassadors. So as a business, I could easily see this as needlessly daunting to act as a founder for Mk 3 while 40k was hitting a renaissance. No unpaid support, angry fans, better financial opportunities meant all 3 legs of support went out from under the game.

I have every reason to believe the game will come back. I hope to act as a "founder" for this game in my home town because I like it, and want opponents to play against.

 greatbigtree wrote:
From the perspective of having started in Mk 3, I get the feeling that it is a much different game to Mk 2. It's like PP is starting a new game that basically has next to nothing in common with previous editions.

It's not that Mk 3 isn't a good game on it's own merits, because I think it is. It's that previous players obviously liked what was previously happening, and this game is no longer that. Which means that previous players don't like this new thing, and Mk 3 has to start over like a new game.

Like any new game, it needs "founders" to grow the community. And PP axed their previous "official" ambassadors. So as a business, I could easily see this as needlessly daunting to act as a founder for Mk 3 while 40k was hitting a renaissance. No unpaid support, angry fans, better financial opportunities meant all 3 legs of support went out from under the game.

I have every reason to believe the game will come back. I hope to act as a "founder" for this game in my home town because I like it, and want opponents to play against.

I agree. The only people I saw majorly grumbling* about Mk3 were the people that ran terrible skew lists that no longer worked and they had to buy new stuff (oh, the horror!). PP already attempted to accommodate them by removing the FA on certain units so all of those theme lists would be legal again, but that wasn't enough. They basically wanted Mk2 and were unwilling to learn a new game. "Competitive" to them meant I want to win every game all the time with no learning time in between.





*Yes, yes. There was Skorne too but they kinda had a point, unlike the other guys.