Solosam47 wrote:So i play alot of
40k but i want to get into warmachines since i here it is alot more balanced and competitive, now i want to go with either cygar or khador, but i just cant figure out how each of them play or what a basic starting army would look like? i see when people say certain armies are "jack heavy" or others have great mobility but when i watch batreps it just looks like two forces slam head first into eachother and the best rolls win.
Am i missing something? can matches be played in more urban settings so that position and cover take more effect then just ramming to one another?
Welcome to the iron kingdoms, solosam! here is your complimentary goggles and demolisher plushie. Its a great game, and like you say, extremely well balanced and competitive.
Regarding your questions as to how things play - the "rugby" scrum happens as objectives are a cornerstone of games. you simply cannot hang back like an imperial guardsman or a fire warrior and shoot from your deployment zone (and with 'long' range guns being 14", its practically undoable anyway). its a game where you must be aggressive, and where you must engage.
However, saying its all about 'the best rolls wins' is a very short sighted obvervation. and can be applied to all wargames - including your
40k. but when you dig deeper, you will find there is so much more. you cant just run at someone and expect to win, at higher levels of play. you have to deal with alphastriking, attrition, control/denial, manipulation, ranged, melee, magic, anti-magic etc. all those synnergies and combos genuinely stop it being a 'run into him and roll dice' kind of game.
Games caneasily be played in urban settings. do you have the terrain? then put in on the board and play. just because some people on the interwebs play with a game board possessing a fence and three trees doesnt mean everyone does this.
Solosam47 wrote:
Whats a typical starting list look like for cygar or khador? and how do they play?
As a new player what am i looking for when building a new army?
the closest thing to a 'typical starter list' for any faction is the starter set. heres the thing.... you come from a
40k background, so you are used to a certain 'way' of playing a game. you say you want to pick imperial guard as your army, and you will be told 'take this, this and this. ignore this, because its crap'. whole codices devolve into a handful of viable 'builds'. So its logical for you to assume there is some 'method' like this in warmachine? and the simple answer is 'no, there isnt'. you want a 'typical khador starter army'? it'll involve red stuff. unless you like mercenaries, in which case you take them too! you'll have 'a' warcaster, probably 'a' jack, or two, and 'some' infantry or solos (take your pick - winter guard, kayazy, iron fangs, doom reavers, men o war etc). there is no 'one' way to make a khador army. there is no 'one' way to build it. However, bear in mind its not a case of 2 3s is the same as 1 six. more importantly than 'stuff' is the 'stuff alongside the stuff'. synnery is key. Not everything is great, all the time, against everything. but you cant say its bad either. take infantry with karchev, who is a jack-caster, with no support for infantry, and you'll think they're terrible. take loads of jacks with irusk, who is an infantry caster, and you'll think they're all terrible. but are they? No, theyre not! jacks are great. so are our infantry. but its more important to put them alongside things that can push them and get the most out of them.Hence the comment about 'synnergy'. khador can do a ranged army. they can do a melee brick. they can do a cavalry shock force. they can do control/denial. they can do magic spam. they can do blitzkrieg. they can do high
DEF lists, and high
ARM lists, and infantry spam lists, and jack spam lists. So can cygnar. I've seen every kind of cygnar army from high
ARM infantry spam, to jack spam to mercenary spam (mercnar) with a huge variety of builds encompassing range, melee, cavalry, and styles of play, so i simply cannt say to you 'how cygnar plays' - sufficeth to say - they have a MASSIVE playbook. you'll find this about warmachine - swap the caster, and the same army will play radically differently. also bear in mind that despite all armies haveing a vast plabook with a lot of cross overs of styles (multiple factions having a ranged game, for example), dont think all factions are therefore the same. all factions have their own little quirks and unique features. whilst a lot of the 'questions' a faction can ask, and the 'answers' a faction may provide will be comparable, every faction has their own unique way of applying it.
everything can be built into an effective game-winning army, which is why you see so many variable army builds. best advice to you is this :forget everything you know about wargaming, as taught to you by
40k. its harsh, but its true. it took me the best part of 12-18 months of playing warmachine to exorcise myself of my
40k 'ghost' and start playing (and most importantly, thinking) like a warmachine player.
Solosam47 wrote:
As a new player what am i looking for when building a new army?
best advice anyone could give you is dont jump in at the deep end. pick up the cygnar/khador/whoever starter set, and play a lot of games with it. cut your teeth, learn your ways around focus, spells, the order of activation, feats etc. then expand slowly - maybe try and join a journeyman league if there is one in your area? Also prepare to lose a lot. there is an extremely high learning curve in this game, that i've seen more than one convert from
40k (used to winning/playing easily with a 'the best list a codex has' army,) feel staggered and overwhelmed as all of a sudden, their list isnt carrying them, and they have to think tactically. but dont worry about losing - its not you. its a rite of passage for the game(we've all gone through it), and if you do it right, you will find yourself enjoying your defeats as much as your rare victories when you start out! beyond that, expand with another caster, and slowly build up your infantry to 25, and eventually to 35pts. Like i said, dont reach for the big leagues straight away. this is a game where you have to start small, and build up.
Solosam47 wrote:
One last thing, can mercs be ran as their own army or are they like an ally force? i have heard they are only an ally force?
they can be their own army, but there are terms and conditions. Do you see the Khador roster? well, pick a khador warcaster, pick some jacks, infantry and solos, and off you go! With mercs, it doesnt work like that - you cant simply pick and choose from the merc roster. mercs have to have a 'contract' or be based around a casters own 'theme force'. contracts limit what options you have (for example, the 4-star syndicate limits you to mercs that work for khador/cryx, whilst the searforge contract limits you to dwarves for example), but give certain advantages to compensate. there is some cross over - for example, some of the rhulic casters will work for khador, so you could theoretically have a dwarf leading a 4-star list, but magnus (a human caster) could lead as well, but could never lead a rhulic force). as such, mercs are less of a faction, and more of a collection of sub-factions. you have the 'mafia' sponsored 4-star syndicate, the highborn covenant (the llaelese resistance), the searforge commission (dwarf army), the tallion charter (pirate army). all the rules are well explained in the mercs forces of war book, so dont worry too much
