Yeah, in GOMC1 pretty much anything goes. I haven't finished painting my ape gang, but the Top Dog looks like a slightly more cowboy-ish an Indiana Jones... but as a Gorilla. He is larger than the other minis, but since he's a Gorilla, and the Top Dog, I didn't mind.

He is from Critter Commandos by Team Frog. Most of the others are only okay, but my Top Dog is the guy in the bottom left of this image:



The others would be good in a gang, but they do measure about about 40mm from bottom of shoes to top of hat.

EDIT: BTW, it's hard to see in the photo, but my Top Dog is wearing round shade and smoking a cigar

Arabin

Ah ha is that what you call yourself - GameSniffer!


Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

As for buying into the hype - yes and no.

Yes from a marketting point that they releeased teasers up to a year ago, which were done tactfully.

No - Warmachine pretty much worked out of the box, therefore with that in mind and the fact that they have been producing good sized supp. (not really a splat book) that you don't need to play the game is also a great reason to get it a look see. If your not a Grump - in the way that steam and pistons turn your gears but want to make your oppersition feel pain. Not just by winning but beating his/her army/group into a bloody plup, then this is a game that is up your alley.

If you want your magic casters to be more man that can hold his own rather than pansy range weapon then this game might be fore you.

If you want mechanics that run with the game, enhance the fun insead of a dreaded knowledge that you will have to run through a cross reference chart just to get the result then roll that target, then Hordes might be calling your name.

Am I excited about this game - yes and no.

No because it's primality a mini game that mean having to invest in a chunk of metal (which looks good) that I will never paint. Also unless I do international orders then the figures are very very expensive also. Yes I know they are not as much as GW or Racham but still very costly.

Yes becasue this game is puure savage fun, I'm sure that its a product of our generation up-bringing. Cartoons and movies that engage in bloody battle where wild engeries are not just airy farie but the power that makes or breaks battle. This game, like Warmachine is not about stating out your units with the best stuff but in using your units to the best of their ability - you and everyone else knows that when you field a unit what its stats are, what its weakness are - its up to you and your force to prove yourself on the tabletop. No weapons of bonus nor second chance standards just brute raw force.

Hordes might be the hype of the day but it will hold its own. Just another bowling ball to skettle the GW pins. My only wish is to have a campaign system included.


Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

Heh, the second battle went in a very different way, this time he kept his warlock out of harm's way...

I got crunched. He targetted Nemo with Lylith's bow, and sent the Carnivean to go play with him.

At the end only Nemo, the Trenchers, and the Defender had taken serious damage, then he managed to breath on Nemo with the Carnivean, poor old Nemo did not even live long enough to be chomped on, he was taken out by missile fire from a missile light army.

On the bright side, the Trenchers managed to kill a couple of Shredders this time... then got shredded in turn. I am learning to hate Shredders!

And in a few weeks he is getting the Seraph.

The Auld Grump

ha ha ha you got trounced! dont worry so much man, i get battered all the time as i am a rubbish player. just got seneschall for me army now so i will be playing a variant on it soon so watcth this space.

In Superiority they are going to have an Epic version of Magnus the Traitor - he can be used with a Skorne army for Hordes, and in WARMACHINE he can field Skorne units... Evil bastard.

Cygnar is my army of choice, it is natural that I hate the wretch.

The Auld Grump

Heh, reasons to like Cygnar...

The nearest thing to good guys in the game. (I prefer playing heroic types, one of my players says its because I enjoy playing against type. )

It is fun to use faux British accents.

It is fun to imitate Christopher Lloyd while playing Nemo. ('I am a man of SCIENCE!')

I tend to like ranged combat, and they are decent at it.

The army is flexible.

Cygnar is where my Iron Kingdoms game is set, so I can get double duty out of the miniatures. (I can also use Cryx for bad guys, but Cygnar has some decent PC types for figures.)

Trenchers. Yes, I know that they are a more defensive than offensive unit, but I like their feel.

I have more terrain that fits Cygnar than anyone else.

It is not those heartless bastards who worship either the Dragonfather or Menoth.

The Auld Grump

I fielded The Trencher's All list for the first time today/yesterday. It hunkered and shot, with two warcaster casting Snipe in series. The trick with Snipe is to activate the unit that has it as an upkeep spell first, then activate the warcaster, who moves it to a new unit. With two warcasters you can increase the range by five inches on four units/warjacks per turn. Stryker kept it on the Defender and the Long Gunners while Caine maintained the Trenchers and the Hunter light warjacks.

I had to use a fair number of proxies, since it will be quite some time before the models come out in some cases.

In a battle against Everblight it did much better than I expected, the Hunters and infantry taking out the Shredders before they could do much, while the Defender kept pumping one shot a round into the Carniveans. I lost the trenchers and their chain gun crews, but that was it. The Hunters used their reserve tanks to fire one last time, then fall back, taking out Whatsisname The Ugly Ogrun (painted to look like Hellboy....) and hurting Lylith, who was once again blown into next week by the Defender. (Mike is starting to feel the same way about the Defender as I do about his Shredders.)

Against Khador it was a bit less effective, eking out a narrow victory. It ended when he allowed the Butcher to wander into LOS of the Defender. It did exactly the number of wounds that Ursus had remaining. If Ursus had not spent all his focus the previous turn he would have survived.

Cryx beat me in a narrow loss, holding more key points at the end of the battle. (He scared off the trenchers after killing Finn. Note to self - do not let Finn get into hand to hand against a Slayer, he will only piss it off. )

The battle against the Circle ended in a tie. Neither side managing to kill anybody in six turns. (The only time I have seen that happen in WARMACHINE - he did not want to get his critters gunned down, and I did not want to get eaten by Warpwolves and Argus. So we circled each other, looking for openings and taking pot shots at each other.)

I am not doing nearly as well as I was in Mordheim, and having a lot more fun. (I really did get tired of winning all the time.) I also played one game of Mordheim yesterday, helping test out an Ogre Warband. Needs work, too few models, and losing a couple of ogres can mean the end of the band - they are too expensive to replace. My Undead warband lost, but killed two ogres dead while not permanantly losing anybody important. (Zombies are cheap, fearless, and can help the vamp take down the ogres just fine.) The Rieklanders won, shooting and retreating, and killing another ogre. (Bad rolls were Rob's Curse in regards to take downs.) The list needs some cheap infantry.

The Auld Grump

Has anyone played WARMACHINE vs. Hordes much?

Against every Hordes force I have fought, except Everblight, the Trencher's All has been doing very (almost too) well, not so much from better tactics, at least so it seems, but through sheer weight of fire.

Against heavy Everblight armies it does okay, but against a light, fast, Everblight army made up of Shredders (and to a lesser extent the Seraph) it ends up as Purina Shredder Chow. Last game was the closest I have come to beating the Shredder army, unfortunately to do so I was using proxies for the Grenadier light Warjack and the Grenade Porter. The proxied Scouts on the other had lasted all of two rounds against Shredders, being able to advance deploy just meant that the Shredders got to them that much faster.

It just feels that with that single exception Hordes has a vulnerability to an infantry and shooting 'Jack army. Hopefully when Evolution comes out things will get a bit more even.

The folks playing Trollbloods seem to have switched to other armies, as has one of the Circle players. Everblight and Skorne are doing well.

And, for what it is worth, Khador still stomps my army fairly regularly, and of late I have been discovering that you just plain don't let an infantry heavy Menoth army get too close. Fire templates are not my friends! (Most recently involved Zealots and a unit of Long Gunners in tight formation... I killed most of the Menites, but the ones that survived wiped out the Long Gunners to a man. I spent too much fire on the Flameguard, and should have destroyed the Zealots before they got that close.)

The games were a 'Defend the Town' mission - one quarter of the table being town, two were woods, and one was open terrain with a few ruined buildings. Defender choosing the town and one adjacent quarter. Hordes doing the attacking, WARMACHINE defending. Three tables, and a fair amount of my remaining Village Works terrain in use, as well as my reconstructed 'ruined mill' and the Hilltop Encounter building.

*EDIT* So the defender could have town and open terrain, or town and woods. All tables also had rivers running diagonally across the open terrain and into the town. Two bridges crossed the river - one wooden and one stone. The bridges were a mix of resin terrain, World Works models, and WotCs cardstock models from their website.

Next week's battle will be using the Sacrificial Portal as the center point, with Hordes taking the Defenders position against WARMACHINE.

*EDIT 2* The battles weren't only Hordes vs. WARMACHINE, but when they were then WARMACHINE defended - having Hordes trying to protect a town just is not quite right, though maybe using Skull Cove....

The Auld Grump

Hey guys! I'm New to WorldWorks, but not new to Warmachine, looks like you all have a great community here.

I've been playing Warmachine since just prior to Apotheosis (just in time for the release of NQ1), and I currently have 2000+ points in Cygnar, 1500+ points in Khador, 700+ points in Mercenaries (focused on Ashlynn), and near 500 pts in Circle Orboros.

I did want to pipe on here and let you, Auld Grump, know that there's some good support for WorldWorks over on the PP main site, is the thread I started in conjunction to one I started over here. Note the absence of disparaging remarks!

-Ken

Heh, I just got back from some WARMACHINE gaming - I got me arse handed to me three out of the four games I played!

Part of this was playing a new army - I brought a mercenary army, led by Ashlynn d'Elyse, that I want to have for folks to borrow. So I decided to test it out....

Ouch! Nothing seems to work quite the way I expect it to - the Mule has a very short range for its gun, the lack of any Arc Nodes, and trying to keep one of my two Vanguards between me and the enemy was all a big change. Handling the Nomad in the same way I use an Ironclad on the other hand worked just fine.

Army consists of:
Ashlynn d'Elyse - Warcaster
2 Vanguards
1 Nomad
The Devil Dogs (7 members)
1 Mule, attached to the Devil Dogs
497 points.

Built using the Highborn Covenant list.

Lessons learned - Don't play defensively, the only battle that I won was the one where I sent the Nomad and Vanguards in at full bore, running Ashlynn to keep up until they were engaged, and bring the Mule and the Devil Dogs up as fast as they could go on the flank, until the Mule was finally in range.

Don't assume that the enemy will come to you - the Mule did almost nothing in the first two games, simply because I didn't want the Mule getting shot or charged before it got to fire.

I am not altogether pleased with the way that the Devil Dogs seem to work in play, but I really need a 'Jack Marshal to make this list work, and that is the one that I have. I like to hunker and shoot, and this list just can't do that, because of the insanely short ranges.

Ashlynn d'Elyse on the other hand is very nice.

The Auld Grump

I have an Ashlynn army I'm running, she's proven to work very well, and couples nicely with some amazing 'caster combinations at 1000 points (nHaley, nKreoss, just to name a couple). Her Feat is nasty, nasty, nasty (and, if you can fire a boosted Mule shot during her Feat round, you're practically guaranteed to get a Crit).

Did you remember about the Mule's range booster ability? If he stands still, he adds, I believe, 4" to his shot (this is also upgradeable with an application of "Snipe" if you're co-running w/ either Caine or Stryker). I've had my friend blow apart several units (and battleplans) once I got into that extended range on the Mule. And, remember that if it's standing still, I believe it still gets the +2 aiming bonus to hit! And remember to always boost the "to hit" for the amazing Critical Effect.

Ashlynn is suffering from a severe case of Arc Node envy, but if you keep her protected well enough to let her see battle (Quicken is awesome for that - cast it once on her, Activate, move and get the DEF bonus. At the end of her move, cast it on the Nomad or the Mule, they'll get to move and get the DEF bonus, too, IIRC), she's a menace w/ Distraction.

I can't offer you any help on the DD's, though, as I don't run them. I field my Ashlynn w/ Alexia and the Nyss Hunters.

Let us know how your next game goes.

-Ken

Yep, it was actually the range boosting that played against me the first couple of games, the desire to hunker and shoot resulting in my stalling two or three inches short of my (enhanced) range. Since I was running with Ashlynn all by her lonesome there was no Snipe. I get so used to having Snipe, and adding five or six inches to the range of the already long ranged Defender....

And yes, the mule does get the +2 in addition to the longer range.

Ashlynn's feat made all the difference in the last game, when her Nomad and Vanguards were able to get into hand to hand combat, the Mule relegated to a close support role. (Firing once at a unit just before the Nomad and Vanguard entered the scrum, softening the target up. Rinse and repeat as often as possible.)

The Auld Grump

I have noticed that I am losing a lot more games of WARMACHINE than I did of Mordheim. Whether because we have some older, more experienced players, the rules are more balanced,or just that the tactics that always worked in Mordheim only work most of the time in WARMACHINE. I seem to be winning about 75% of the time, as opposed to maybe 90% in Mordheim.

It may sound strange, but I am having a lot more fun now that I have a serious chance of losing. (Though I like the idea of Mordheim more than that of WARMACHINE....) I do wish that one of the Mordheim players had been willing to take over running the campaign once my work schedule changed.

The Auld Grump, back to playing Cygnar this time....

Hmmm, I have never been all that terribly impressed with the Troll Mauler sculpt, but this version...

...is another story.

Mind you, at 50 dollars it will likely remain only a temptation, but....

The Auld Grump