Warmachine MK II: Steampowered Boogaloo

Shrieking Banshee · Post by **Shrieking Banshee** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 9:44 pm

Well Im a new man here. Having arrived from the intellectual wasteland’s that are the Privateer Press Forums, I have arrived with a news report to display what exactly has evolved in the radioactive wastes of Warmachine / Hordes. And Im just doing this to get out my rage out all in one place so that I may leave this game behind in peace.

Phone Lobsters amazing rant was what brought me to this forum in the first place and brought me out of my stupor.

You start playing Warmachine and you start-seeing flaws. And so you go online to see what others think. You end up in the forum and with five thousand “Page Fives!”. And you start to thinking “Maybe Im just wrong? But how? The maths just don’t add up, basic design issues are left unaddressed? But….Everybody just say I suck? Do I lack a pair? Was I a woman all along? Is that the secret twist ending?”

And so you’re left with something of a combination of gas lighting and Stockholm syndrome:

“Warmachine is focused on playing warjacks and does so with ease. But also isn’t about warjacks and you can find that out in third tier supplementary fluff niblets, so its OK that it doesn’t. In fact I’m confused as to how you could have come to this decision.”

When the fluff doesn’t make sense, rules take precedent. When Rules don’t make sense, well “That’s cause its fluffy”.

If it weren’t for the actions of brave souls like Lobsterphone, I might have still been on the forums right now, feeling frustrated with the game, but still playing it because the masses say I’m just an idiot with insecurities about my masculinity.

Now a bit of background. I’m a relative youngster, and as such Warmachine was my first (And now last), Tabletop wargame. I never had any experiences with Games Workshop though I read about their demonic vileness on many a place. I got into warmachine when it was purely in its MKII iteration, so I have a different background then Phone Lobster.

I was intrigued by the minis, and to the Soviet, Magic, Russian Style faction. I find factions based off of my homeland charming and fun and so I go with Khador and buy the Battlebox.

For the uninitiated here is the basic concept of the game come MKII:

It’s a Wargame in which players compete with small armies led by “Warcasters”. The Warcaster is sort of like the king and queen. On one hand it’s the most powerful thing in your army, on the other hand if it dies you loose the game.

However in terms of visual design and attraction the Warcasters take a backseat to the “Stars” of the game (Even though technically Warcasters control them): The Warjacks. Giant Steam and Magic Powered Robot Warriors.

They have some of the more distinct design in the game, looking very stylized with tiny heads and massive oversized bodies in a Hunchback position balanced on tiny legs. And look intriguing in a silly cool kinda way. In fact they are the starts of the MKII Rulebook. Usually that sort of positioning is left for main characters dueling over the fates of the galaxy, but in this game the Titanic Clashes between the Warjacks should be the deciding factor in Victory of a War! At least in theory.

Most amount of rules are dedicated to Warjacks (With Unique Maneuvers and attacks only they can do.), and Warjacks are listed in books before infantry or solo characters just behind Warcasters. Like for example rules would explain how attacking and movement works for a warjack, and then list how the same works for infantry forces.

And one would think with this Much emphasis on Warjacks, the game would get them to run properly. But reading the rulebook before you begin to understand any of the finer details is the best the game ever gets:

Warjacks Suck. On almost every level.

It begins with basic things like-moving. Warcasters get a finite amount of resources every turn they can use to cast spells (Both offensive and Defensive) called “focus”. Well they can also use focus to get more attacks, make them hurt more, or make them more accurate, or lastly: Boost up warjacks (Make them more accurate, attack more, or more damage).

There are also 3 movement modes: A regular advancement which allows you to move up to the amount listed under speed in inches, run- which allows you to move double your speed in inches but throw away your action that turn. Or charge which moves your speed +3 and does boosted damage for your first melee hit. Regular things can do all 3 types with no issue.

Well in order for a Warjack to move more then with a regular movement the Controlling Warcaster must assign a focus point to the Warjack. So right off the bat Warjacks are a resource expensive burden.

Which is fine if what they are supposed to be is powerful machines that would make infantry obsolete if running freely.

Truth is though; Warjacks are just pretty much regular dudes with more damaging attacks, and more HP (Which they can’t use properly but Il get into that later).

A moving Warjack Is the same as any o’l moving trooper, or anything else. It doesn’t push everybody out of the way (Except for a few rare cases), or gain momentum, or even move all that fast.

So alright. Warjacks may be a burden with basic movement, but if their attacks did stuff they could still have a perpose. And they don’t.

Warjacks on Average have one Melee Attack, and one Ranged Attack, and if you want to attack more then once you gotta spend focus (And because this game wants more melee, ranged attacks have a Rate of Fire Limit on each weapon). And you can’t do a melee and ranged attack unless you got an ability to do so.

And Warjacks don’t get anything else. They don’t get increased range over a regular trooper, their attacks don’t do damage to an area, or do anything unique with attacks.

So what can a Warjack do that a Trooper can’t do? Deal more damage with their singular attacks. Now what I mean more damage, I don’t mean more damage overall.

The base of the maths of the game is that you roll two dice and add a number. If that number equals or exceeds the enemies’ defensive number, good stuff happen for you. Boosting your numbers results in an additional third die you get to roll.

And the game has two protective values:

Defense and Armor. Defense being how well you can dodge attacks, and Armor protecting you from damage.

And so attacks work by first rolling to hit, and then seeing if your weapon exceeds their armor and does damage.

So Warjacks on average have pretty high damage values on their weapons (Around the area of 17 or so for the bigger warjacks), and considering some of the highest tier armor for a trooper is 18, that’s pretty slick.
However it only takes 1 damage to take down a trooper. So be it Pow 18 down all the way to pow 14 a warjack attack will pretty much always kill a trooper.

However with the aforementioned lack of warjack attacks, all that power is pretty much wasted. Even against another Warjack a dedicated melee jack would be doing around 7-8 damage in total with their starting attacks. Warjacks get the OPTION of doing more attacks. But again they are expensive, and with the amount of spells a warcaster is throwing around you may have enough to power up maybe 1 jack. So jacks become pretty much only good at fighting other jacks (And that’s a sometimes).

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that infantry forces, who get around 6-15 troopers for around the same cost as a warjack, get a much more amount of attacks even if each trooper only gets 1, and they can’t buy more attacks, and their power on average is lower.

Well alright, basic maths means that as long as Infantry hitting power is low, it won’t penetrate Warjack armor, making Warjacks at least have that…..

Except infantry charge for free, and as I mentioned before, that boosts power. And you never have motivation NOT to charge if you can. So now weapons that did 1-2 damage now deal 3-5 on average to a warjack. And considering that warjacks have like 36 HP at maximum it’s a pretty big deal.

But still that would at least require a whole unit to deal with a Warjack. Nope again. See Warjacks loose effectiveness the more damage they take. Slowing down, becoming less accurate and dealing less damage even loosing the ability accept focus which is pretty much a death sentence for any warjack. So really all you need is like 4 infantry pieces to leave a warjack crippled and incapable, and even if it isn’t its now engaged with a bunch of units it can’t effectively deal with in any case.

And that’s not getting into the COMBOES. See how spells work in this game is they don’t select a limited amount of troopers per target, or cover an area. They either select a Unit group, or a singular target. So if a debuff hits a single trooper, it effects everything in its unit. However that also means buffs are 100% more effective on units then anything else. What was 3-5 damage becomes 8-9 damage or higher if the unit was one with high hitting power (And each faction has at least 1 unit that is).

So after all of this what do warjacks bring to the table? A couple of expensive mostly non-useful special attacks. By default all Warjack power attacks cost a focus and prevent you from using any regular attacks you had this turn.

Arm Holds allows you to hold onto a enemy warjacks weapon. This is the most useless thing ever in so many incredible ways, most basic being that’s simply damaging a enemy warjack enough for them not to use their weapon is a billion times better. Not to mention that for the warjacks that could benefit from this (Ones with weak power), their Strengh is too weak to be able to grasp heavier warjacks in any case.

Slams allow you to forsake dealing much damage and slam your target away to hurt anything it hits in its path. Its situationaly useful.

Throws are like slams but more controlled and hit less stuff in the path.
Head-butts. Allows you to knockdown enemies, useful for allowing more things to hit the target but again. Costs 1 focus already and takes away your starting attacks. May as well just cripple it.

Push: It’s a joke. HAHAHAHAHA

Trample: Is the sickest joke. So the idea is that Warjacks Do get someway of circumventing infantry with a trample attack that allows them to pass through them and deal damage to the ones you pass through. But because of pants on head backwards design philosophy, infantry dictates the positioning of Warjacks than warjacks the positioning of Infantry. See if when you pass all the infantry your base (And large base at that) is in contact with any infantry after it finishes moving-you move back. You rewind (And rewind any attacks you get to do) until your not touching any bases. And then your action is over. So with just some basic placement your opponent could make trampling worthless, but still make you pay focus and waste your action.

Then of course Cavalry infantry comes around, and what they do is when they charge, they can deal damage to the first line of things it passes, and if that kills them, they can continue moving. Then deliver an attack. Wonderful. Just great. Of course one of the best Warcasters for Warjacks is one that allows warjacks to act like Cavalry. Because PP’s design philosophy is duct tape and thumb tack.

But see if Warjacks just being awful were the only flaw of the game, it would still be a bad game. But its flaws are MUCH more numerous.

A basic flaw is what I call “The Bargain Matroyshka”. We got BARGAINS BARGAINS BARGAINS! AND BARGAINS WITHIN BARGAINS!

See you can buy a squad of infantry with 6 people in it for 6 points, or you can get 10 and only pay 8 points. And then you can attach a modifier to the whole unit for only 2 more points which makes every unit piece super duper awesome and gives you two more units. And then you can get the unique character commander for the unit so now the unit for only 2 more points so now the whole unit is super duper ultra pultra awesome. And now you can also buy some one of a kind extra attachments that grant the unit super puper weapons and it all stacks with the commander, and the attachment.

So now you have a unit with 15 people in it for 15 points but every unit is 200% more effective then it was at 6 for 6 troopers. So why would you ever have motivation to buy two 6 units?

The game pretty much encourages you to always go for attachments, and unique character modifiers because it’s always cheaper and more effective to do so. Reducing tactical choice in selection always.

Warjacks do have something similar, even if its on a smaller scale. See warjacks come in two verieties heavy and Light. Light ones cost around 4-6 and heavies 6-10. The upgrade from light to heavy at best (And I mean at best) nets +8 HP, maybe some switched around defense and armor, as well as maybe a light boost to hit and higher damage weaponry. Never on the same scale as infantry scaling because fuck you.

However there are unique character warjacks who are either useless because they come with a bunch of crap nobody wants, or are the only way to go. Like lets say my Warjack can either shoot or hit with its hammer. Well for just 1 extra point it gets better armor, better weapons, and can both shoot and attack with its hammer in the same turn always. So why would I ever NOT go for the character warjack?

Yeah that’s a massive waste part of the game.

More problems!

Enemy Debuffs work in such a way that you can either easily deal with them always, or you can’t at all!

Either you have the singular spell that removes debuffs with no issue whatsoever always, or get the Elf skank mercenary you HAVE TO take in order to abuse her mechanic of removing spells of things she hits to remove them. Or just suck it up and have your massive expensive unit trudge around for the rest of the game.

Now let me make clear, one would think this would encourage to take more singular units or such. But it doesn’t work that way. If having the choice between always being least effective, but not being crippled as bad by enemy upkeeps, or being fantastic at maximum efficiency and taking the mercenary elf skank. Your gonna take the latter.

But Im getting tired of listing each flaw point by point so Im just going to move onto privateer press itself and how it designs its game.

Privateer press has two ways it designs. Either by A: learning off of its mistakes and releasing better designed stuff later for more cash (New Factions or the Like). Or B: Crutches (Nobody is taking warjacks? Easy! Now you have free points to take at least 1. Problem solved!). With B being the most common, and A being far more disgusting of a practice. But sometimes it can multitask and do both at once.

Hordes being one of those times. See whilst I came into the game at a time when Hordes was already a pre built part of a the game, it wasn’t part of the core rulebook, and still didn’t know its rules until an actual encounter with a Hordes player.

Hordes being Warmachines “Mirror” game, where you play as Giant monsters instead of machines and the visual design is 100 times less interesting. Z

It also comes with some different rules where Warbeasts instead GENERATE your resources instead of taking them away allowing both them and the caster controlling them to go at full throttle through the whole game.

Whats still incredible that crutch mechanics still about (Mechanics that don’t address the core problem, instead making a quick work around often at the expense of the core mechanics.) even in Hordes after the second edition. You see instead of fixing the problem where because of how jacks lifebars are laid out, they loose efficiency far too quickly as they take damage, Privateer press simply allows their Casters to heal their beasts, and thus beasts retain their maximum efficiency the whole game because they simply never suffer the negative effects of damaged systems-ever. Turning the unique lifebars and spirals into just linear lines that you have to refresh every once in a while.

This is still common even with the newest Factions. Cephalyx are more akin to Warjack casters who can do the same healing as Hordes can, and the Convergence of Cyriss’s Warcaster who comes with the first introductory bundle heals all his warjacks by default (Alongside the factions more numerous and more efficient healing).

Whats just so incredible is how little of the core mechanical flaws has changed in-between the games from the perspective of a guy looking into the past from the future.

Quite Frankly PP is awful. But I don’t put the blame solely on them. If you’re best effort, and your worst effort get met with cheering applause, no matter what you do, your gonna start to hate the audience and just scalping them of everything they got.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 10:32 pm

Privateer Press has an errata policy that is very similar to a death spiral of madness. A lot of things they write up are overpowered compared to other things. Or perhaps the other things are underpowered, because those are precisely equivalent statements, as balance cannot exist in a vacuum. This sort of power disparity is to be expected, I'm sure there are units that are better and worse in Kings of War or whatever as well.

Here's where the descent into madness comes in: when Privateer Press gets around to noticing this, they attempt to fix it without changing anything they've written. Now you might say that that is fucking impossible, because once you've written an unbalanced product it's going to sit there being unbalanced forever or until you fucking change it. And if you never change it, then you wait until forever comes.

To thread that needle, PP attempts to make extra models that you can buy that make the underperforming models better. And since that is an incredibly clumsy system with a huge lead time, the process ends up getting repeated over and over again. That's why you get those weird things where you get a shitty unit that you can buy two or three or five upgrades for that all are way better deals than the original unit was.

And of course, every time they do this it's deliberate power creep that forces people to buy extra models or accept admittedly substandard units. And the pendulum swings too far like all the time, necessitating similar patches on the previously overperforming units that inspired the round of upgrades in the first place!

Add to this toxic brew the fact that Privateer Press actively shouts down reasoned discussions with their fans, and you have a mandate to make new models to powerup underperforming units combined with a methodology for figuring out which units underperform that is precious similar to throwing darts at a board. The rules addenda are basically the raw text outputs of the Hamlet typing monkeys.

Warmachine can't get better and the writers are uninterested in even trying.

-Username17

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sun Oct 18, 2015 12:23 am

Has there been a new warmachine/hordes edition? I feel like despite the game being, according to the fans with all those testicles, "perfect the first time, perfect with errata, perfect in the revised edition perfect in 2.0 and then perfect again in 2.0+errata+splats" we are about due to already have 2.5 edition by now.

At the very least there should be at least several of their supposed "game changer" tack on splats since I last looked at the mess. You know, splats like the one that was supposed to "fix" the crappy war jacks issue back in the original edition (mostly just by just adding trample, which no one ever proceeded to use) or like the time they added fucking PONIES to every faction, or the "fuck you Cygnar, JUST BUY FUCKING TRENCHERS, everything you get is now for FUCKING TRENCHERS" splat book. Those sort of game changers.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 18, 2015 12:26 am

I don't know, FrankTrollman. That model can work, as we can see from Yu-Gi-Oh! -- a game that's significantly more unbalanced than MtG and moreso every year. It all depends on what your target audience's tolerance for bullshit is.

Almaz · Post by **Almaz** » Sun Oct 18, 2015 4:40 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I don't know, FrankTrollman. That model can work, as we can see from Yu-Gi-Oh! -- a game that's significantly more unbalanced than MtG and moreso every year. It all depends on what your target audience's tolerance for bullshit is.

I think the difference is "can work in producing sales" and "can work in producing a good game." As we can see from Magic the Gathering and its continuing dominance over the years, there is a demand for both addictive sales AND a deep/interesting game that attempts to balance itself now and then. I feel strongly that if it slacked off on either it would be dethroned by now (and honestly nearly was). But of course you can just provide one or another and get an audience.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Oct 18, 2015 6:57 pm

Card games and RPGs are inherently more forgiving about adding content than miniatures games are. It takes a long time to assemble and paint an army of tiny metal or plastic mans. You can't just say "Buy this new book and put new feats on your character" or even "Buy these new cards and make new decks" because when people get new stuff they have to assemble and paint it.

Power creep in D&D is no big deal. You buy a few books a year. Power creep in Yugioh is more painful to the wallet because you have to buy boxes of cards or expensive singles or something. But power creep in miniatures games is fucking intolerable. Not only are the figures expensive and shit, but it's a lot of effort to convert them from piles of parts to finished playable models.

-Username17

Shrieking Banshee · Post by **Shrieking Banshee** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 3:56 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:or the "fuck you Cygnar, JUST BUY FUCKING TRENCHERS, everything you get is now for FUCKING TRENCHERS" splat book. Those sort of game changers.

Don't worry. Now its "Fuck you Cygnar - Buy more Mercenaries!"

Also now the pendalum has spun around to Khador and cygnar being mediocre and underperforming and Cryx being rediculous dominators of the scene.

With super powerful infantry, and crippling Warcasters that pretty much make taking elf scank a must.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 8:39 pm

Shrieking Banshee wrote:With super powerful infantry, and crippling Warcasters that pretty much make taking elf scank a must.

That sounds... yeah... people used to say that back when it was really very conditionally and partially true and I wouldn't be surprised if that was still the case.

Back in the day Cryx DID have nice infantry and did that and the crippling caster thing pretty damn well... but... largely just in comparison to anything else they might do, since anything else they might do was terrible, and actually doing the one thing they were good at was just "mostly OK" rather than dominating, but most warmachine players couldn't play worth an ass.

And people went on fucking endlessly about having to take the "unstoppable" "elf skank" and/or deal with her, which was pretty much always a pile of "WTF? Why is this minor pretty weak merc such a problem for most warmachine players, oh, that's right, they can't play worth an ass..."

In my local little warmachine community no one ever took "the elf skank" even though she has always been considered a much wanked over must have by the internets warmachine community. They didn't take her because in the early days of the local community tried her out a fair few times specifically in order to beat me (which they had difficulty with in general) and completely failed with her again and again because she is actually really weak sauce. They came around to that view pretty quickly as I repeatedly demonstrated it by dealing with her easily with no special preparation or specific dedicated counter or apparent cost.

Shrieking Banshee · Post by **Shrieking Banshee** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 3:44 am

Oh, not for assassinations. For upkeep removal. If you want your super large infantry unit to keep functioning forever, loosing one person to make the rest loose the upkeep spell on them is generally always worth it, and thus worth 3 points.

Its a retarded effect of upkeeps and the way they work but watcha gonna do

And again. Warmachine is the game where every faction had 1 omega dude. You take that 1 dude, and you spam them forever. You don't need a faction that could even reasonably be balanced inside of itself. Just give 1 omega dude. And thats it. Your set. Because then the game is balanced.

Like Sorcha dropped in prominence as her Assassination potential was dimmed. And without her Khador is a faction that is DEFINED by lacking things. Then it had a brief stint of making massive mounds of Winter Gaurd effect comboes, but then it dropped as infantry removal became more prominent. Removal that still can't deal with Cryx all the well because its design sucks. But whatever.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 5:44 am

Is Cryx actually good now, or is it just that 90% of the players are edgelords who play "THE EVIL SKULLS AND SPIKES ARMY" and thus 90% of the armies at tournaments are Cryx and thus the winner is bound to be Cryx? Because that's what the case used to be - not a good army, but so over-represented that they ended up brute-forcing their way into "one of the Cryx players" winning.

Anyway, your first post is to say how much you hate a product and why, you'll fit in just fine.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 6:10 am

I think he might be the first person to ever get his first thread into the Analysis Threads Thread

Shrieking Banshee · Post by **Shrieking Banshee** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 6:52 am

I think that Cygnar and Khador are the more popular factions.

Hordes falls far behind Warmachine in Popularity, however Legion of Everblight still dominates from it.

Answer is I don't know.

shlominus · Post by **shlominus** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:34 pm

this thread would greatly benefit from someone actually being good at and knowledgeable about warmachine.

i'm sure a deeper analysis of warmachine could be interesting, but blind people discussing color definitely is not.

even so, you could start by taking a look at the casters played at the wtc and how they did. the lists and results are not secret.

http://wmh-wtc.com/

https://wmhwtc.wordpress.com/2015/09/23 ... -2015-wtc/

Shrieking Banshee · Post by **Shrieking Banshee** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 4:39 pm

I looked at the results off of other websites, and BattleCollege. They just told different stuff.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 8:28 pm

shlominus wrote:this thread would greatly benefit from someone actually being good at and knowledgeable about warmachine.

It would, but it's been a long time since I cared enough.

Warmachine is pretty much dead to me, I can talk about it's past a bit but the present? Sure someone else can give me an update for my morbid curiosity, but I'm not feeling inclined to read the latest 300 page errata document and analyze the current tournament meta (which if past steam roller trends held now has games that take at most 1 minute and is won by who-ever fields a single miniature with an ability to make first contact with an objective point during deployment).