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What's more popular: Hordes or Warmachine?

And what are the most popular armies?

Warmachine tends to be a little more popular than hordes, but not by a startling amount. The factions are very well balanced in both games with minions and retribution, the two newest factions with fewer options, being represented less than the more established factions. The least played factions of the classic nine seem to be Skorne and mercenaries by a margin of maybe 10-20% less than the rest of the crowd.

Rest assured there is no overwhelmingly popular posterboy faction like space marines.

Seems to be a pretty even split; every army seems to be equally represented in my area in some fashion

Khador and Menoth are very popular here for WM armies (and almost everyone seems to have a Mercs army, even if it isn't their main.)

Circle and Legion are the most popular Hordes factions, much to my chagrin.

I remember somewhere reading that of all the Warmachine/Hordes Factions, Cryx was the most popular and Mercenaries/Minions were the least, but it's fairly well balanced, unlike in 40k where roughly half the armies are some SM variant.

I know that for Warmachine Cryx is by far the most popular. WIth Cygnar & Khador tied for a distant second, then Menoth, Mercs and Retribution in that order.

For my own meta we have the following players

1:Khador (Primary), Cryx
2: Menoth
3: Menoth
4: Trollbloods
5: Cryx (Primary), Khador
6: Cygnar (Primary), Mercs
7: Khador
8: Skorne
9: Circle
10: Circle
11: Circle
12: Legion
13: Trollbloods (Primary), Legion
14: Skorne

(wow, we have a lot more players than I thought. Really though only the first 6 could be called regulars.

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
What's more popular: Hordes or Warmachine?

And what are the most popular armies?

it very much depends on the meta. where i play retribution is the major faction. I'm one of 2 khador players, and 1 of 1 circle players. elsewhere, the place would be swamped by khador. or cryx. or whathave you.

In general, cryx might be slightly more popular on the whole, but this isnt 40k - there is no "space marine" faction.

I'll add in that there's always an argument (usually brought up by newer players) that Hordes are better than Warmachine factions - mainly because the Fury system seems so much more flexible and more powerful than the Focus system that Warmachine factions use. This doesn't bear out for experienced players or in tournaments, where every side is pretty evenly matched (and there have been major titles won by every faction at some point in the last year). Basically, when you're starting and see the raw power output and flexibility of hordes, you wonder why anyone would choose Warmachine, then as you get more experienced in the system the more subtle advantages of Warmachine start to show, and you find it's all quite evenly matched.

Our local club has a Legion player, a Circle player, a Cygnar player, a Trollbloods player, a Khador/Trollbloods player, a Skorne player and myself (Protectorate player). A solid mix, and we might be having a couple more people turning up with armies soon

That's interesting. So there won't be too many Circle players?

Depends. Locally there are three or four guys who play Circle.

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
That's interesting. So there won't be too many Circle players?

It's important also to realize that now that PP has released the two-player starter sets, you're likely to see a surge in players of Circle and Legion, if only because the boxes are such a good value for people looking to get into Hordes. (Easily $200 worth of stuff in that box.)

Personally my advice would be to not go by what you think other people aren't playing, but try and find an art style you like, and then a caster with a style you like. Different casters can radically change the way a Faction plays, some you will like, some you will loath.

Cool, thanks!

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
What's more popular: Hordes or Warmachine?

You do realise they are pretty much the same game and can be played against one another, right?

 Mordekiem wrote:

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
What's more popular: Hordes or Warmachine?

You do realise they are pretty much the same game and can be played against one another, right?

I don't know why people put such a division on the game.

PP should really just release one rulebook with both types of magic and monster rules together and change the name to something reflecting that.

Apparently they would like to do that, but some trademark issues are involved. At least that's what I remember seeing in an interview. More or less, "We'd like to, but situations won't really let us" or something.

And stuff.

Collosal release event here had 5 ret players as the most played army....

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
What's more popular: Hordes or Warmachine?

And what are the most popular armies?

I'm presently involved in a slow grow legal which has about 30 dedicated players, then about 10-15 who are hit or miss. From the folks who have attended that and steam rollers I recall the following being played

Khador~ eButcher x1. Karchev x1. pVlad x2 . eVlad x1. Irusk x1. pSorsha x1. eSorscha x1
Cygnar~ Siege x2. pStryker x1.
Menoth~ pKreoss x1. Harby x1. eKreoss x2 Reclaimer x1
Cryx~ Terminus x2. eDenny x3. pGoreshade x2. eGaspy2 x1
Mercs~ Gorten x1. Ashlynn x1. Macbain x1.

Legion~ eThaggrosh x2. Abby x1. Rhyas x3
Circle~ pKaya x2. eKaya x1. Kromac x2
Trolls~ Borka x1
Skorne~ pMakeda x1. pHex x1
Minions~ Caliban x2. Maelok x2. Barnabas x2. Lord Carver x1.

Some of that includes games at Steam Roller play with dual lists. In our local Meta we are very Khador, Circle, and Cryx heavy at competitive play. Many of the folks who play something else, will bring out Cryx for steam roller play.

Well, most of my Meta play more than one army. Most of us have a WM army and a Hordes army. I have Menoth, Warpigs (Minions), Legion, and Skorne (through no fault of my own). We don't really have anyone dedicated to Mercs, and Khador and Cryx do seem to be slightly more represented, but otherwise it's 1-3 people with each army.

I think that the best way to put it is how a couple of others already have; there ain't no space marines here

Just a quick revisit to this topic with a little bit of evidence. Apperantly one of the fine people at the Benelux masters made this pie chart showing faction representation. I believe protectorate was slightly underrepresented here compared to what is the norm, but otherwise it shows a fairly typical faction distribution at a competitive event.


I wish this guy would have made trolls and protectorate more distinct colors.

I'm one of the few hordes players at my store. There is one other person who plays straight Minions and another that plays Troll Bloods who I have yet to see. I obviously doubt his existence! Everyone else plays Warmachine. I don't find its too bad. Its rather fun to see to different ways of controlling monsters and machines, and how they interact.

Eh, the division allows them to manage the release schedule.