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Well, since I have now taken my first hit from the figurative Privateer Press crack pipe, I am curious about Warmachine.

Specifically, I have some Hordes minis and the rulebook I think I have a pretty good idea about how Hordes works. I.E. how Warlocks and Warbeasts interact, animi, units, spells, etc.


So how does Warmachine work? I have read that while Warbeasts are clearly essential in Hordes, but in Warmachine Warjacks are becoming less common.

How does Focus work, as opposed to Fury? How are jacks utilized? Infantry? I would want to use at least one or two Warjacks in any army I did, but I wouldn't want to hamstring myself either.

So some basic info would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Hordini

Some factions use jacks better than others, but with only one (or even two) you probably won't be hamstrung against all infantry forces. The reason for this is that warbeasts generate fury, while warjacks drain focus.

It takes focus to force a jack to make extra attacks, boost, or do power attacks. Most of the time this focus can be spent just as effectively in the form of spells or boosting your warcasters attacks.

Beasts on the other hand generate fury points every time they do an additional attack, boost, or perform a power attack. There is a limit to the amount of fury each beast can generate each turn, but it is anywhere from 3-5 each. On your next turn you can "reave" fury, which takes points off of beasts and puts it on warlords, to be used as spells, prevent damage or boost attacks. Unused fury left on beasts may cause them to go crazy and do some serious damage to the closest model in sight and range. Fury is not as good as focus in a 1-1 comparison, but since you can generate over 10 points in one turn, then use 7ish to cast spells, you have a lot to play around with. This causes beasts to be much more flexible than jacks, and often stronger.

Infantry are used a lot because there are a lot of spells that hamstring a model. Warjacks and beasts are bad at dodging, making them great targets for spells like this. Charging (which requires neither fury nor focus) infantry often cause much more damage than a single jack/beast, and you can hit multiple targets at the same time. Their only real weakness is against attacks that hit multiple times with low strength (chain lightning, ashes to ashes, lightning clouds) and the average infantry has trouble harming the most heavily armored of jacks.

I play Cygnar a lot, and a defense buffed Centurion heavy jack is almost impossible to remove from an objective... one of the few advantages of these heavy point monstrosities. Arc nodes are always worth it with a warcaster that isn't a melee machine, and are only found on jacks.