Welcome to Warmachine

Hello everyone! I am PG_Hick and I am the newest author for Craftworld Lansing. SeerK has asked me to contribute and speak about Warmachine and Hordes. I'll start with a basic outlook of Warmachine and a basic outlook of my background as well.

I started playing Warmachine shortly after the book Superiority dropped around 2007 during Mark 1 (Warmachines first edition) and I started playing with Khador. Shortly before Mark 2 dropped I started a Legion of Everblight army. Even though I have bought, sold and played many armies since then, I have never been able to part with my Everblight army i've had since Mark 1. Now I own Everblight, Trollbloods, Cygnar and am slowly building the new Convergence of Cyriss faction that was recently released. I have also become a Press Ganger since then. The Press gang, for those that don't know, is a volunteer program run by Privateer to run official events for the game and to assist in running conventions and teach others how to play the game. But enough about me. Lets start to explore Warmachine and Hordes.

Warmachine is a fast paced 30 mm skirmish style wargame designed and created by Privateer Press. The game is very quick and very aggressive in general. Games generally last between an hour to an hour and a half. Unlike 40k, your leader is extremely important because if he/she dies, the game is over and you lose. Warmachine uses warcasters and warjacks, Hordes uses warlocks and warbeast and each system uses a different type of resource mechanic. The easiest way to explain the differences between the systems in a nut shell is warmachine is a game of resource management that uses the focus mechanic, where as hordes uses fury and is a game of risk management. Warcasters allocate focus to make their warjacks run stronger having a set amount of focus to work with every turn. Where as warbeasts generate fury and the warlock pulls as much as he can from the warbeasts each turn. The risk comes in the fact that you can push the beasts farther then your warlock can remove fury, and if they still have fury on them the following turn after the warlock takes fury from them, there is a chance they will frenzy and you will lose control of them. The best part of these two systems is even though they have vast differences, they are balanced internally and are playable against each other. Even better is that no faction has a distinct advantage over the others, unless there is a vast difference in player skill, and you will always be able to put up a fight against any faction with whatever faction you decide to take.

As I move forward with these articles, I will be discussing tactics from the various factions I play, Battle reports and tournament follow ups, opinions and rumors and answering any questions our readers have about the game. Feel free to direct questions to me about Warmachine at my email Jahickok@gmail.com, or send me a tweet @HickJa. I will be posting a set of follow up battle reports from a tournament this coming weekend as well and if anyone has any questions or suggestions for my next topic I will be more then happy to answer them in the comments or address them the following posts. Comments and questions are appreciated guys. Thanks!