It's a viable alternative. I wouldn't say better, I wouldn't say worse. They are two very different games. I feel warhammer does a better job representing two armies fighting a battle.
WM/H plays a bit more like chess where you need to protect your leader at all costs. In many missions if your leader dies, you lose. This will happen a lot in your first many games. You won't see a charge lane, your opponent will have some crazy ability you don't know about, you forget to move a model & boom ,game over, you lose.
People say
WM/H is more balanced, I say yes & no. If you look at the tournament scenes you see Menoth & Cryx doing very well, at least this is what I have seen. While legion, trolls & cygnar tend to do not so well. THis has to do with their units I play cryx & generally the word "Bane" means "Good". People bitch endlessly about bane knights & bane thralls, for the points they're really F'n good.
Some units aren't worth taking. While
PP does try to mitigate this by adding
UA (Unit attachments) that's extra models you need to buy. Why should I take unit X, when unit y does the same thing better/cheaper. Usually you see this argument in favor of a unit called the gatormen posse.
To be competitive it's not a game about the big mechs / beasts like I originally thought. Units win games. Think of your beasts & mechs like tanks. They're durable, hard hitting & good for punching a hole but they WILL get swarmed down if that's all you have.
The cost is generally lower for starters but expanding can be pricey. As a cryx player a unit of 10 bane thralls runs me $80 MSRP plus $27 for the unit attachment which is so crazy good why are you not taking it? So that one unit is $107 MSRP but it's also worth 13 pts & games are typically 35 or 50 pts. On the flip side for between $20 & $50 you can get a new leader & completely change your armys dynamic.
All the books get their updates at once. But that means a unit that is trash now will be trash for a while unless it gets a unit attachment to upgrade it. However there are relatively few trash units and it mostly comes down to play style. The rhinodon from skorne comes to mind as just not worth it at the moment. With updates
PP tends to give you new things to fill a gap rather than fix old things, the notable exception being unit attachments, which are like upgrade characters.
Also despite what people say this is NOT a skirmish game and it is NOT cheap, cheaper compared to
GW does NOT make it cheap. If you want a true skirmish game between small gangs of models and a significantly lower cost compared to
WH / WMH go give Malifaux a look.
Now it may seem like I'm overly negative but again I'm playing devils advocate & trying to warm you about potential pitfalls as this forum will lean heavily in
WM/H favor, and I want you to be aware of things you may not like before being surprised by them. That said I do like
WM/H and do want you to give it a try, just don't dive head first before reading which end of the pool is only 1m deep
lol.
One final thing, go here find a local(ish) press ganger. Schedule a demo and see if you like the game. This would also be a good thing to invite friends to as you would both be brand new to the game & using what should be balanced starter sets provided by the press ganger.
Also this is more or less my copy pasted forewarning I use in various areas
