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.

So I just picked up the Battle box and have chosen Circle as my faction since I love the sculpts. I have been drawn to the game since I slowly became more and more disenfranchised in 40k as my Nids in 5th edition had proverbial crap dumped all over them with each new release after their codex. Now 6th edition is here but the damage has been done. While I won't give up 40k entirely I have found an alternative which may become my primary outlet of disposable income.

So with that out of the way what I would really like to know how the game (or games if you include Warmachine) fare in terms of balance? I can already see how individual casters make certain builds more viable, but are there certain powerbuilds which would dominate a tournament scene for example, or is the game balanced well? Is the game more strategic than 40k, with more focus on what you do within each turn than the list you bring?

Sorry if these sound like noob questions, but I would like to get a bit of basic info under my belt before committing fully.

Thanks in advance.

Hello!

The game is much better balanced than 40k for a start. Almost all of the units are viable, although there are some that are slightly better or worse than others, but there is usually not much of a difference.

I'm not familiar with the tournament scene, having just started recently myself, but from what I've read on forums it seems like while there are some builds that your army will really stuggle against there is no one powerbuild that dominates the tournament scene, as every build has a hard counter. I also think (I might be wrong, and I'm sure that I'll be corrected if I am) that in the tournaments you are allowed to bring three lists, so that if you do meet the hard counter of the list you have been using you can change list to put you on an even footing.

I hope this helps!

So yes, the game is very, very well balanced at the faction level.

There are a few bad match ups between casters.

There are very few units that just are not optimal. Doesn't mean they suck, there are just better options.

For example, Khador MOW, fantastic models, hit like a ton of bricks, but they are incredibly slow. and not high enough armor to crawl up the table.

Because of the way that releases are done - every faction gets a small update at the same time - the inter faction balance is extremely good, and any faction has a good chance to do well. It certainly isn't anything like 40k where armies go from very strong to mediocre to somewhat poor over several years before they get an update. Every faction has had some major tournament wins during the year, and no faction gets close to completely dominating the scene. So while there might be some minor differences in power level (and every warmahordes player has a different opinion on which factions are more powerful), it's almost always the better player that wins out.

I will point out, however, that Mercenaries and Minions tend to have a little more trouble at tournaments, mainly because they have fewer players generally, and they have far most restrictions on their lists, and it seems most Merc/Minion players like to have a particular contract/pact to play, such as Pirates, Rhulic or Blindwater, rather than playing an entire faction.

A factions internal balance is more hotly debated, certainly as Castiel says, no unit is completely useless, though there are some that seems perhaps slightly worse than another option for a particular role. That said, just last year a guy won the super series here in Australia using several units and a caster who many thought were sub-par, just to show they were actually good when used properly. Also, I think it was at Gencon this year that a large number of player, including some of the best players in the field, went in for a random army swap, drawing names out of a hat to swap armies, and they still ended up right up the top of the ladders, where they usually were.

That sounds excellent. One of the main reasons I chose WarmaHordes was that I had heard it was more balanced where strategy plays a much bigger part in the game (though there were a lot of other reasons also)...Am now reading through Battlecollege's starter tactica. Finding it pretty useful. Will hopefully get in my first game soon.

Thanks to those who have posted.

 Lukus83 wrote:
So I just picked up the Battle box and have chosen Circle as my faction since I love the sculpts. I have been drawn to the game since I slowly became more and more disenfranchised in 40k as my Nids in 5th edition had proverbial crap dumped all over them with each new release after their codex. Now 6th edition is here but the damage has been done. While I won't give up 40k entirely I have found an alternative which may become my primary outlet of disposable income.

So with that out of the way what I would really like to know how the game (or games if you include Warmachine) fare in terms of balance? I can already see how individual casters make certain builds more viable, but are there certain powerbuilds which would dominate a tournament scene for example, or is the game balanced well? Is the game more strategic than 40k, with more focus on what you do within each turn than the list you bring?

Sorry if these sound like noob questions, but I would like to get a bit of basic info under my belt before committing fully.

Thanks in advance.

welcome to the iron kingdoms mate.

how does the game fare in terms of balance? Very, very well. No faction dominates. No style of play dominates. there is a roughly equal mix of wins between the hordes and warmachine factions as well, so dont go falling into the trap of thinking fury is broken either!

there was an excellent thread on the PP forums a while back regarding one of their big tournaments - templecon. and there was a huge breakdown of the results with the effect that you got to see all the faction on faction match ups, and the win percentages between factions. And for virtuall all of them, the win% was somewhere between 45% and 55% of wins to losses. obviously, this was coloured with specific match ups and the like, but it gave a nice general overview of how things stood.

are there builds that win? No, not really. Cryx have more outliers than other factions, and a few things there need a bit of a tweak, but for the most part, no particular faction, caster, or style of play will dominate. cryx gets a lot of complains, but by all accounts, this year menoth lists are doing extrmemely well, and this years UK masters was won by Khador. essentially, players are broken, not the factions.

40k has more of an emphasis on strategy as opposed to tactics, as its all about the list creation- it has very little in the way of tactical depth. In Warmachine, list creation is a factor, but in a completeley different way. whats more important is the synnergies, and combos that you build, rather than the specific list. and beyond that, it boils down to how you play, and the tactics you employ on the table.

and dont worry about noob questions. thats what we're here for.

Player skill trumps list composition. Unless you are facing one of the wonder twins, because you can punch your opponent in the face and it's totally justified.

There are certain list builds that counter other lists in a very hard way. But skill is more important then the list itself.

The game does have an element of Rock/Paper/Scissors to it, but its more on the individual list level.

And in tournaments this is often countered by players having multiple lists. You get to take 2 lists to a tournament and pick which one to use before each game. So if you find yourself facing a faction that in general will be a hard counter to list X you can instead use list Y instead which is designed to counter that particular faction.

For example you might have a list that has lots of Incorporeal models, which is good against most factions. But suddenly you are facing a Menoth army. Menoth has many units that come with magic weapons standard.

So to counter that you will have a list that doesn't have tons of Incoporeal models and has anti-infantry instead.

 Lukus83 wrote:
That sounds excellent. One of the main reasons I chose WarmaHordes was that I had heard it was more balanced where strategy plays a much bigger part in the game (though there were a lot of other reasons also)...Am now reading through Battlecollege's starter tactica. Finding it pretty useful. Will hopefully get in my first game soon.

Thanks to those who have posted.

And on the Privateer forums they have a subforum for each army. Most armies have pretty good intro articles in their subforums as well. Usually this info is even better than battlecollege.

First off, Warmachine and Hordes are really just two branches of the same game.

Secondly, the game does have balance issues. Mostly inside a faction where one option you can take is clearly better than another, but also between factions and casters. What keeps the imbalances from breaking the game tends to be that even the best stuff has a counter, and if that power faction/army/caster starts to run rampant people start playing the counter more. This causes the meta to constantly shift and ebb and flow. I believe it's currently moving into a stage of heavy ranged dominance with Menoth and Everblight.

Even with that said though, the imbalances tend to not be huge ones, and can be overcome with player skill. If you look at national tournament standings, it tends to be less about the factions at the top, and more the same group of names over and over again. Really good player played Cryx, kicked butt. People called Cryx broken, and Cygnar as the crap weak faction. Good player took to playing Cygnar for a year, qualified for and won the Warmachine Weekend Invitational with them.

Haley with Double Stormwall might qualify as truly broken though. I'm sure there is a counter out there but it must be super specialized.

I'll echo the points raised by others:

*All factions are competitive. Some may have some minor overall edges, or an above the curve list composition or two but it's hardly a dominating factor. Good showings by all factions (controlling for overall number of entries), in major tournaments support this.

*Some units are better than others, nothing is truly worthless. You'd be hard pressed to argue that there isn't anything sub-par and there are more than a few cases where some models are just strictly better than similar models in the same faction. That said you can make almost anything "Work" well enough to contribute to games even competitive ones, though sometimes it takes a specific caster or narrow list.

A good example is Cinerators in Menoth. They're slow, don't really hit hard enough or live long enough for their points. Vindictus makes them serviceable by increasing their speed and defensive stats. You wind up with something out of the buffs and models that is more than the sum of its parts.

Additionally PP isn't afraid to "Patch" the game through Errata when things are degenerate as printed. See eGaspy's feat and Shield Guard as examples.

Most importantly for me above all else, are the rules. They are very tight in comparison to other games I've played and it alleviates the aggrevation during gameplay.

When the rules state how something functions, the words they use are all important. It sets out the order of actions and makes for a very enjoyable play experience.

Welcome to Warmahordes!