Monday, May 31, 2010

What's this Warmachine thing all about?

So I'm listening to The War Banner podcast (hi Phil and Mike!) and theyre talking about Warmachine. They basically did the beginers guide to the game and I have to say I'm kinda interested. Anyone out there play Warmachine? Did you like it? How does it compare to 40K?

BTW I'm posting this from my Droid (best phone ever!) so I hope this turns out ok...

1 comment:

  1. I've been playing 40k for a year now, and have been suspiciously eyeing the models for warmachine for much longer (though I've only played a couple games), frankly because I think of the warjacks as artsy dreadnought varients. I was going to start a mk1 army, ironically until Mack from DLT attempted to and then decided not to specifically for the appearance of an almost rock-paper-scissors style of army vs. army.

    Since then I went to my local con (Kublacon in the SF Bay Area) and watched a couple guys actually play warmachine, and I gotta say that if you're on the fence, find someone that'll play a demo game with you with a couple armies you're thinking of. Small scale "battlegroup" battles made from the starter boxes are the perfect way to get a feel for the game without hyper investing in an army. That said, One point I often hear in favor of warmachine is that it's so much cheaper than 40k, I'd say it definitely depends on what you play. My friend just picked up Khador, and full retail dropped $220 on their army book, paint set, set of templates, the plastic kit, a Behemoth, and Karchev (warjack/warcaster), which for 3 models is certainly not cheap.

    Compared directly to 40k I think there's a number of points in favor of Warmachine;

    It's primarily small scale friendly (5 ish models until you start adding units), which can give you the opportunity to go crazy on painting at a higher level.

    It uses significantly less dice, on a smaller table (4x4 typically, about the same amount of terrain though.)

    About 2 read throughs of the rules will generally make all the important stuff stick, which is more than I can say for 40k.

    It can be scaled into an insanely massive scale, but unlike 40k there aren't any massive scale battle specific models, at least not yet (no titan equivalents, etc.)

    It also runs alot faster, primarily due to 2 factors, model count and the caster-kill feature of all premade missions. All the missions in the book have a "kill all enemy warcasters and you win" tacked on to the end of them, so one wrong move on you or your opponent's part and your warcaster gets pegged on turn two and it's game over. That could also be considered a minus though as sometimes I like to see how close to the border of victory or defeat I can scrape by in 40k, warmachine battles tend to be a bit more decisive, and aggression is often rewarded from what I've seen.

    All in all, I think it's worth it to even just collect some warjacks as something that's extremely fun to paint. I've been having modeling/painting nights with my friends as we prepare our warmachine armies and the jacks and Hordes warbeasts I've been painting are very very fun to work with and have such large open spaces that it's easy to practice painting techniques on them, though I'll warn you my friends been fighting with his Behemoth for about a week trying to get it to sit together properly.

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