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Hello I've recently decided to make the plunge into Warmachine and was just curious, how many people play pure merc armies, more specifically how many people play pure steelhead armies?

There's a pretty big Merc playing community, but still the minority in overall players.

Full Steelheads you say? You want Damiano's Theme list.

I would recommend not starting with Mercs as your first army. Are they awesome? Yep. Are they fun? Double Yep.

Are they gonna help you get your teeth smashed in a lot more than other armies while you learn the game? Even bigger Yep.

I would start out with one of the larger more fleshed out factions, you will collect useful Mercs along the way. Once you get a really good grasp on the game, and what factions due, then make the jump to Mercs.

Cygnar has a LOT of access to mercs so they're not a bad place to start if you eventually want to go full on mercs. they even have a unit attachment that makes a merc unit count as friendly faction.

Thanks for the advice everyone but I'm pretty sure on my choice to go full merc from the start. My win/loss ratio hardly matters to me and i just can't find myself to like the other armies as much.

Well if you're gonna, you're gonna.

I'd look at the different contracts and see which fits your fancy. From there look at what casters you want to run and the unit will kinda start to pick themselves.

I run full merc contracts. Lots of flavor in it, lots of options, more diversity than any other faction I believe. My recommendation for you is to start with Highborn Covenant contract. It allows thelargest selection of models AND llet's you take a unit of Cygnar's Arcane tempest gun mages as a mercenary unit. I onlyuse Rhulic wwar casters and usually run a forge guard squad but the rest of my lists consist of numerous solo models and various mercenary units, including steelhead halbrediers.