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 Kanluwen wrote:
They are!


Caine+a new Ace seems to be a thing.

No dog in the Who-owns-warmachine fight, but I'd never seen this picture before and I'm curious. Is this the sort of thing that the fan base likes? I put 6 first and second version Khador Warjacks with CCW in my KoW army as trolls and I love them, but this 40k-ish Dread with a heavy bolter just looks sad to me.

I'm not sure where the 40k comparison comes in. The main difference I've noticed between the new and old Warjacks is they're slightly less top heavy with better leg proportions. As for weaponry, that's up to the list. This is a character Dire Wolf add on that's upcoming, but whether you have a big gun or a big mace is a list building choice.

He is talking about the aesthetic again, it looks to modern to be warmachine. even Cygnars most advanced lightning tech looked like a mix of medieval weapons with magical gizmos attached to fit the setting. aside from convergence and a bit of retribution who had the most advanced tech most of the setting has that old world look and feel that MK IV has moved away from.

the generic heavy warjack of the past-



compared to the picture he posted above where he calls the gun arm a pseudo heavy bolter.

I mean.... I guess? I was more focused on the dreadnought comparison. Heavy boters aren't exactly high tech and the Iron Kingdoms is full of high caliber cannons. To me, its quite similar to other weapons in the game. A little more modern, but mostly just sharper details than 15 year old PVC.

I think that its subtle but you can certainly see a shift in the style taking place and its more "advanced" refined slick or otherwise just feels that bit more modern and just a little less archaic steampunk.

I think the leg change is a welcome one honestly; some of the old jacks look almost comical with their tiny legs

 Overread wrote:

I think the leg change is a welcome one honestly; some of the old jacks look almost comical with their tiny legs

I just appreciate that the legs are no longer flat footed. Some of the newer stuff was better, but those PVC kits have the most boring stances.

From someone that has been Warmachine Curious for a while now, the new aesthetic is great. I'm reminded of the shift in style Corvus Belli introduced with Infinity.

Well I guess that's my answer then. Fans of the game like the newer aesthetic.

That would help explain how I was able to acquire a bunch of old Jacks (which I much prefer the look of) for $5-10 bucks each.

@Aphyon
That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm old enough to remember when Warmachine came out. I knew from the start the game wasn't for me but the setting and many of the figures (Especially Khador) always appealed. I'm sure WM fans aren't wild about the comparison but, at the time, nothing in the tech level was much beyond what you might see in a WHFB Dwarf army. Now it looks it's headed toward 40k and IMHO, that's a weird choice.

I certainly appreciate your concerns.

For me the new direction is a plus and I'd be more willing to invest in the system if we see more like this, at reasonable costs and easy enough to get hold of!

Eilif wrote:Well I guess that's my answer then. Fans of the game like the newer aesthetic.

That would help explain how I was able to acquire a bunch of old Jacks (which I much prefer the look of) for $5-10 bucks each.

@Aphyon
That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm old enough to remember when Warmachine came out. I knew from the start the game wasn't for me but the setting and many of the figures (Especially Khador) always appealed. I'm sure WM fans aren't wild about the comparison but, at the time, nothing in the tech level was much beyond what you might see in a WHFB Dwarf army. Now it looks it's headed toward 40k and IMHO, that's a weird choice.

i don't really know how much the new look appeals to the general fan base, it doesn't appeal to me because i play so many different games i like the uniqueness of the setting it was created in. i think you are finding them so cheap because of the fact the game is dead in most places not that players want the new jacks. unfortunately many of the players drawn to the game early on were hardcore tournament players who were generally toxic to the community and drawing in new players.

Tabletop_Magpie wrote:I certainly appreciate your concerns.

For me the new direction is a plus and I'd be more willing to invest in the system if we see more like this, at reasonable costs and easy enough to get hold of!

While the high tech looks bugs me a bit considering the setting. what annoys me more than anything else is the change to the rules that mirrors 8th ed 40Ks attempt to dumb down the game mechanics. which is why i still play MKIII core rules. although i leave the worst parts out like steam roller tournament rules and theme armies that give players free units/rules if they take specific models much akin to 7th ed 40K formations.

Like oldhammer i want to bring the minis i want to play with and still have a fun game. which i can do in 5th ed 40k and MK III warmachine because the game mechanics make it possible.

Mk2 was peak for me, and I still have all my books. If ever I feel like playing again I'll get the Mk2 books out and see what happens.

I do watch what happens, but I'm not that optimistic about the current game. Especially since they did their own "End Times".

I think one thing with the new style is that its happening for all factions at once without a gentle lean in of advancing some models and then others; its a huge restart button and that means even if they'd kept all the original styles; there'd still feel like a jarring jolt of changes unless they left everything identical as it was before.


MK2 was indeed the golden age. We could still get back to that but it needs PP to have a steady hand (and now SFG) and some years of just steady growth without issues. No big dramas and just let the game grow organically along with some marketing pushes.

Honestly they need exactly what Dystopain Wars is getting now - steady releases; steady growth and continual attention and positive elements



Because I bet alongside "Oh gods this boxed set costs a lot" a lot of old fans are being like us - sitting on the fence waiting for things to look stable and settled and like PP will be around in 5-10 years time and the game will too.

https://steamforged.com/blogs/brands/iron-kingdoms-manifesto-part1

Probably the big news here is that those models pictured are from a new character model 2 player starter that will be done in HIPs.

 Da Boss wrote:
Mk2 was peak for me, and I still have all my books. If ever I feel like playing again I'll get the Mk2 books out and see what happens.

I do watch what happens, but I'm not that optimistic about the current game. Especially since they did their own "End Times".

Agreed. Mk. II was some of the best times I had playing tabletop games with my buddies.

Mk. III felt like such a huge downgrade, with the Mk. III themes being incredibly unenjoyable for me.

Mk. III felt like such a huge downgrade, with the Mk. III themes being incredibly unenjoyable for me.

Oddly I felt that rules wise, Mk3 was better than Mk2. Themes were a great idea, just really badly implemented as PP couldn't balance them or any of the new theme models, gave up and just outsourced their QA and play test to the open community via CID.

Mk3 let me play with Jacks finally, which is all I really wanted. I'd rather play it over Mk2 though the Mk2 era was certainly more enjoyable because the community was so fun. Honestly though, I feel like people have a lot of rose colored glasses when it comes to the actual experience of the actual game in Mk2. I can't help but feel the change just gave people an opportunity to hop off a treadmill they were already tired of running.

I think it might have been different for WM players, due to the focus mechanic intrinsically not being as supportive of jacks as fury was of beasts, but as a mainly Hordes player I loved it.

Don't think I ever had a game I didn't enjoy, honestly! And I played in tournaments and everything.

What I loved the most about it was, I really felt for the first time in ages that I could just grab the models I liked the look of and make a force that worked out of them because I knew how they worked and the game rewarded me for using them properly. It did help to use the right Warlock, but swapping a Warlock in our out was not such a huge thing that you couldn't use pretty much exactly the same models.

It honestly changed how I approached the hobby, because while I loved some of the Troll sculpts, others I thought were really poor. So I only bought the ones I liked, and was able to make it all work on the table. And I was looking at it thinking "Why the hell doesn't Warhammer work like this?!?" and from then on I've never bought an ugly model for an in game benefit.

That's why MK3 gave me such harsh whiplash, because suddenly it was "take THESE exact minis with THIS exact warlock or you are heavily disadvantaged". Yuck!

I think in MK2, esp by the end, the Focus mechanic was feeling its age as was the system. The game was honestly trying to be Skirmish and Wargame all at once and kind of tripping over itself.

You had people wanting more models on the table because armies were far more diverse and people had more models to use; but hte more you added the harder having a single lynchpin of your hero became; esp with the focus mechanic which also meant Warmachine players were often heavily restricted on how many Warjacks they could take whilst Hordes players could just load up with far fewer limits.

Because lets face it the Warjacks and Warbeasts were BIG show attention parts of the game.

My one big gripe with Mk3 as a whole was that they narrowed the focus of armies so much with themes, but didn't shrink the size of games. I had a lot of bloat that could cover it, but it really made the tail end of mk2 problem of only playing full sized armies much worse by requiring more FA.

That's actually an issue I feel Mk4 solved, but the community wasn't keen to follow and PP hasn't really stuck to it. 50 point games in Mk4 honestly feel pretty good, though 75 is where it feels like armies can have more varied strategies and my preferred size. 100 just feels bloated again, but a bloat that most players have rushed back to. I really feel like they need to adjust FA down for each game size for it to really work.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Mk2 was peak for me, and I still have all my books. If ever I feel like playing again I'll get the Mk2 books out and see what happens.

I do watch what happens, but I'm not that optimistic about the current game. Especially since they did their own "End Times".

Agreed. Mk. II was some of the best times I had playing tabletop games with my buddies.

Mk. III felt like such a huge downgrade, with the Mk. III themes being incredibly unenjoyable for me.

I very much preferred MkII.
You definitely had to approach tournament & friendgroup games much differently.

My friends didn't have the inclination or huge resources to chase the meta, so we used more 'jacks and generally didn't play Infantrymachine.
If I signed up for a tournament, I knew certain matchups weren't going to go my way because I didn't take direct counters to what would likely be there.
I stubbornly took what I wanted, and did my best not to spam units.
Fortunately, after a loss, I was playing the other guys who were there just for the games.
The tryhards usually bailed after they took a loss (another aspect of the WM/H player base I disliked)

The theme lists & their "free models", as well as the CID meta chasers turned me off of Mk3 early.
You couldn't find a true pickup game any more.
Most players seemed to be "testing out" the next CID cycle or practice for the next tournament.
Also the shift to digital & constantly changing cards was a problem.
It really sucked to have cards update between games and only discover it in-game when the card didn't say what you thought it did.

Theme lists with free models was a MkII thing as well, though.

Yeah, towards the end. It was a really bad choice then too.

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, towards the end.

That was an entire edition thing, it wasn't just towards the end. I played the majority of MkII with free Exemplars.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, towards the end.

That was an entire edition thing, it wasn't just towards the end. I played the majority of MkII with free Exemplars.

Theme lists existed since the beginning of Mk2, but were caster locked and more often than not, not terribly powerful. As the game grew, PP definitely started pushing themes a bit more, but it also took the community quite a while to unlock their potential so it was easy to feel like they didn't exist early on.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, towards the end.

That was an entire edition thing, it wasn't just towards the end. I played the majority of MkII with free Exemplars.

You must be correct, and I just didn't notice them til later on.

I remember being really unhappy when I did notice them though.

Mk1 had the best gameplay but also the most useless models. Early Mk2 was still pretty great, the balance revision (through a long and systematic public beta test) made up for dumbing down the core rules. Then it just bloated out of being what I was playing it for, with too large armies, too large single models and forced composition and playstyles through theme lists that was basically the same dumb gak as Detachments in 40k 7th.

I always kinda fancied getting some of the trolls from hordes, but have never seen any in stock anywhere in the UK.

If this new deal can sort out distribution and get product back on shelves maybe the game / games have a chance at a comeback.

 Tamereth wrote:
I always kinda fancied getting some of the trolls from hordes, but have never seen any in stock anywhere in the UK.

If this new deal can sort out distribution and get product back on shelves maybe the game / games have a chance at a comeback.

Firestorm and Wayland Games both generally had stock over the years of things.

 LunarSol wrote:
Mk3 let me play with Jacks finally, which is all I really wanted. I'd rather play it over Mk2 though the Mk2 era was certainly more enjoyable because the community was so fun. Honestly though, I feel like people have a lot of rose colored glasses when it comes to the actual experience of the actual game in Mk2. I can't help but feel the change just gave people an opportunity to hop off a treadmill they were already tired of running.

Oh, I totally agree with you and Sunno. Mk. III was the better base game because warjacks became a main focus again. It was themes that made me feel like Mk. III was a downgrade. Mk. II had its issues, but like you said the community was great at that time.

The endless CID cycles, poorly balanced themes, focus on Steamroller, and poor launch of Mk. III was what really killed it for me.

Actually that makes me wonder - one of the arguments we saw for them taking down the Press Ganger system was legal issues regarding voluntary work and pay (I believe around the time a bunch of MTG judges sued Wizards for pay?).

I wonder if this partnership might release that issue from "PP"?

Whilst there was not one thing that caused the steady decline in Warmachine, I do think that one of the big elements was the shutdown of the PG system. PGs had a vested interest in running, organising and hyping up the game at the local level and I think when that went it was both all too easy for people to not bother and also try out other games and before you know it no one was holding a torch for a few weeks and suddenly everyone moves on.