Warmachine MK3 - Even more changes and more thoughts on it

Cheers to Sean for compiling these notes for our local wargaming scene. 

Here are some more updates on MK3 and what to look forward to. The more I see of it, the better it looks. 

No skill checks at all - I don't know anything other than models requiring skill checks are completely retooled

This is great, they had previously said repair rolls, but getting rid of all skill rolls is a nice game smoothing mechanic. I'm really interested to see how Stormcallers are balanced now. 

Frenzy Checks are much simpler. 1) Shake any effects, 2) Charge nearest models 3) Make a boosted attack with your highest P+S attack value

I never played a hordes faction, but I know the frenzy rules were a bit awkward. SOunds good. 

No wreck markers

I'm so-so with this one, simply because I got metal wreck markers and painted them. Oh, and one of my finest Warmachine moments was double handed throwing an enemy jack back towards my caster so my army could wreck it and he would have somewhere to sit in cover all game. 

No psychology 'tests' whatsoever

This makes a lot of sense. Troops would be scared of undead, but not of 12 foot tall killing machines armed with fire weapons or even a mountain king? If the game had psychology for troops, it should have triggered a lot more. As it was, i'd forget command checks a lot as they seemed like an after thought. 

All cavalry get a after-activation re-position. Heavy cav gets a 3" move. The assumption is that light cav gets more.

As some with loads of cavalry, who likes cavalry armies. I'm cool with this. Cav should cost a bit, be a glass cannon, but have far more mobility than other units. Nice change. 

All Heavy Infantry except MOW drop to five boxes. MOW stay at 8 and their new solo gives them basically anti KD, & immovable rules. Armour wise they are apparently super tough.

5 boxes still isn't a lot really, but i'm ok witht hat. I'm very pleased with MOW being closer to mini-jacks though, nice change. 

Other medium based infantry are realigned with where they should be – Warders become more defensive, as do Skin Walkers, Ravagers gain a ton of new abilities via their solo to increase their aggressiveness – Overtake & Vengeance plus others. They didn’t specifically say it, but they worded Vengeance weird, mentioning that it triggers off damage (so not necessarily kill?)

Will need to check the specifics on this at some point to fully judge.  

There are no longer Minion Pacts or Merc Contract. They all all unified contracts without restrictions (outside of animosities). You cant take a gator beast with a pig warlock, but you can take farrow with a gator warlock for example.

This is interesting, and probably got a massive cheer from Minions and Mercs players. Should open up the factions to some awesome new tactics and combos. I wonder about Lialese gun mages which many highborn covenant players used though. 

Theme Forces – A faction wide and far fewer. They are not restricted to warcasters

Theme forces are the dumbest thing in warmachine. They are invariably either complete rubbish, or the best way to play a caster, there are few that are good without being great. I hope the new theme lists are less restrictive, but give less bonuses. 

Tough Changes – Tough does not work if you are knocked down.

It never should of. This is a great change. One of the silliest things in WM was hitting a knocked down tough model 4 or 5 times and having them shrug it off. Sure,t hat rarely happened, but a constant invulnerable save is just a luck magnet.

FACTION NOTES

I wont comment on these, just check them out. 

Cygnar 
• Ironclad quake hammer *Attack hits a model and centres a 4” AOE on that model hitting everything down except the Ironclad itself. The model hit still suffers the melee damage from the hit
• Point costs are reduced where required

Cryx – Increased emphasis on Jacks

Menoth – Choir loses +2 to hit buff entirely. All jacks that were lower are brought up to MAT6

Khador –
• Colossal - Creeping Barrage is a flat POW 10 – not halved like a normal AOE – seems legit
• MOW are designed to be an unkillable tanky unit – moreso than any other in the game

Ret – Just a rebalance, no real information

Mercs – All contracts merged

Trollbloods – Kriel Warriors are super cheap. Warders and Champs redone

Skorne –
• Ancestral guardians/Immortals have souls now – so they can trigger abilities on themselves, so they don’t need another unit to die in order to function.
• Removing some of the Skornegy

Circle – No real information outside of working on the medium based infantry

Legion – 
• A removal of some fury management. Still the best in the game, but not quite so good
• A real emphasis on infantry to try and drive a real choice between infantry and beasts

Minions – No pacts.

Warmachine Mk3 - What's changing and some thoughts

So, a lot to take in on the future of Warmachine. 

A lot of this stuff is from some early release videos and what not. So here are the first changes mentioned.

Ill add comments in italics text.  


What has changed? - [3:50]
- We have rebalanced every model in the game.

Good. PP does this well, nothing like having some armies/models operating under old rules to mess up a game  

- Each warcaster has a unique, flavorful spell/ability. Some casters already had, some had to be added.

Excellent. Some casters did feel a bit dry, especially some of the Battlebox ones. I also think that each caster needs that signature effect to stand out. Keen to see how some casters who are a little dull get unique effects. 

- Doubled the point scale.

This is a small one, but at low points some models were annoying to point out. The difference between 2 and 3 point solos was a great example. 

- Addresses difference between Focus and Fury.

Not sure what this means, I do like that the systems are currently different. I hope these changes keep the flavour. 

- New Mechanics: 
- Power Up = Warjack are allocated a focus for starting in the caster's battlegroup.
- Upped warjack/warbeast points. 28-30 points now.

Anything that makes jacks more integral to the game and useful is great for me. This is a game about giant robots and beasts, not infantry swarms after all. 

- Spirit Bonds: As warbeasts die, Warlocks can gain fury "from the grave"

I don't know how this will work, but this could be a real game changer. As kill the beasts, then kill the warlock was a key strategy against hordes. Curious how this works. 

- Games are still similar sized.

Good, game bloat, like what has happened to 40k and other games is awful. Keep it skirmish level where possible. 

Why MK III vs MK 2.5?
- "Felt like the right time."
- "MKII got to a point where it was a time to readdress [interactions and power level]."
- "Look at the whole picture."

6 years of MK2 is a long time really. And personally, I was starting to have issues with the game, ever since collosals came out. 

What were some lessons from MKII?
- "Punctuated by "setting huge base models free in the wild."
- "Played huge base models conservatively in places. Push them more in places"

Colossals are a nightmare for balance in a skirmish scale game. Too easy to throw the game into skew one way or the other. I hope they address this well.  

- Global reset of the rules. Smooth things outs.
- Rework presentation. Organization to (hopefully) make information more accessible.
- Differences in Fury and Focus are addressed (in a meaningful way)

ok, comments above address most of this

PREMEASURING
- "It already exists, felt like a loophole."
- No more 'Gotchas'

Premeasuring exists if you are good enough with trig and can measure things using your control area.

All making it permissible openly does is help level the playing field. An excellent inclusion, my experience with Armada shows that pre-measuring can actually add to a game, not distract from it. 

No more Fear/Terror

Ok? does this mean they are rolling them into one, or getting rid of the effect all together? 

Change with Huge-Base Models [15:00]
- They feel like the monsters of the battlefield like they should.

I'm not sure about this. I know they said they will push them more in big battles and less in smaller ones, but the issue with skew is still a big one for me. 

Presentation of Story 
- Time-skip! Two-year jump.
- Flash-Point. First installment in a trilogy.
- Story line stuff. Resolutions and new things

Two year jump means that the prediction that the journeymen casters will be full-blown heroes in the story. That's ok for me.  

- No favorite character is safe. Plot armor is off! 

I simply cannot stand the plot armour of the fiction to date. It kills all tension and suspense when a character is in danger. And I could get a few characters having plot armour, but every single damn one of them? For a world at war, no one seems to have actually been fighting and dying. This is a necessary change, and for me, as important as any rule balance.  


New Hordes Faction [Preview - LnL 2017] [29:00]
- Unlike anything they have ever done. "Weird stuff"
- "Things you have never been able to do before."
- Built from the ground-up under MKIII rules.
- "Feels like a complete little ecosystem as a faction, interesting reason for being in existence."

Personally, I want to see the "dragon alliance" as a faction. With each of the different dragons contributing units of their own fashioning and style. I'm unlikely to buy a new faction anyway, but I am intersted to see where they go with this. All I hope is that they don't "jump the shark" and introduce something idiotic like aliens. 

CONCLUSION

As said above, looks good, but lets wait and see. 

Even more changes are noted here

Warmachine 40000 – Could you play 40k with WM rules? Part one

Ok, this is going to be a bit of a thought exercise and is not intended as a serious product or anything more than kicking around an idea.  Also, I frankly don’t care if you think 40k is a superior system and that this idea is entirely invalid, this is my playpen and I’ll write what I want to. 

I love the 40k world, love it to bits, but I find 40k a dull game these days. I really like Warmachine (WM)  as a game, and while the world is ok, it’s not quite as cool. In a perfect world, I would be able to play with Space Marines in a better game system, WM is a great game system.  So what would WM 40,000 look like?

Setting boundaries and guidelines

You can’t just pick up 40k stuff and drop it into WM, it wouldn’t work. The settings are a little different and the expectations of what a game feels like are different. Space Marine heroes assigning focus points to a group of Dreadnaughts doesn’t really fit with how we see 40k. So let’s set some basic ground rules.

•          If in doubt, don’t adjust the WM rules. The core rules are fine, minimal tweaks the better
•          Keep the WM stat lines (Spd, Mat, Rat, S, Def, Arm, CMD)
•          40k guns have better ranges and there is a general emphasis on big guns as a staple in the game. But don’t let a “gunwall” dominate.
•          40k has variety in its squad builds, don’t lose the “customization” approach.
•          40k probably has too much variety in its builds, so don’t be afraid to streamline it.
•          Make 40k heroes heroic, without having to have the “character only” aspect of WM.
•         Focus on infantry first, then figure out how to do vehicles/transport/etc.
•          Use spells and bonuses from WM, but consider toning them down first and making them “feel right” for the setting. 
•          Look at Warcasters and think how that system could be used to represent 40k character heroes, without them feeling like Warcasters.
•         Start with Space Marines, as they are the most popular army, the 40k models I own, and some WM 30k could result from just looking at one army.
•          Most of my codexes and rules are an edition behind the current play. So if I mention a unit and it’s wrong, that’s why.

Basic Statistics

Ok, here are two traditional stat lines from 40k that every player with recognize.

WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD
3	3	3	3	1	3	1	7
4	4	4	4	1	4	1	8

Yep, the human standard stat line at the top and the “Marine” stat line at the bottom. Now lets think how these stats can port over to WM.

Weapon Skill --- Melee Attack

In WM, models have a MAT score of 2-9, with 2 being a cowardly gobber mechanic with no military training, and 9 being a handful of elite characters. 40k has WS from 1-10, although I can’t remember any models with WS 1.

Now, you might think that you could swap the number over and it might work, but the way MAT works, it would be more appropriate to make Mat scores more median.

Looking across MAT stats for models, 4 represent a standard human with moderate martial training. So would be a good number for WS 3. MAT 6 represents a normal frontline fighter, so would be good for WS 4. Then place the other numbers on a bell curve. Sure, it might mean that two characters with WS 8 & 9 both end up with a MAT of 8. 5 could be reserved for models with WS 3 that should be considered a little better than most WS 3 models in a fight in the fluff, say scouts in a condex where they are WS 3 for example.

So, lets use this table as a starter, I’ve added MAT 10 because “Bloodthirster”. I don’t’ mind that thing having a better MAT than anything in WM.

WS	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
MAT	2-3	4-5	6	7	8	8	9	9	10

Ballistic skill ---- Ranged Attack

This one is even more straight forward as most models in 40k go from bs 2 – bs 5 with a few exceptional models above that. However, bs 6+ isn’t a massive improvement on BS 5. So we can compress the top band easier.

Rat 5 represents a basic human shot in WM, so let’s set that as BS 3.

BS	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
RAT	4	5	6	7	7	8	8	9	9

Strength

Ok, here we have a like for like stat that represents the same thing. The big difference is that Strength in WM only determines part of your melee strength, the other part is the weapon.

Discounting Collosals, 12 strength is the upper limit for normal figures, and that’s for a heavy Warjack. Here we may have to expand the bell curve. 

Strength for human models is pretty much 5-6, with 6 being a “knight” or “warrior” model. Strength 5-6 should be the human norm, so we may have to fiddle with each figure to be appropriate, but we will go with marines as having Strength 7. The affor mentioned “gobber” has strength 4, and as they are indistinguishable from grots. That works for Strength 2.

S 40k	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
S WM	4	5-6	7	8	9	10	10	11	12

Speed

Every standard model in 40k moves 6” unless otherwise mentioned. But I think that’s a good example of where WM can make some tweaks.

Speed 5 is standard in WM, so let’s set each models speed to that as a starter. Units with “fleet”, high initiative scores, or who just look a bit faster (Howling Banshees) should go up to 6. And slow and purposeful units, and other heavy gear should drop to 4.

No hard and fast rules on this one, but I feel a Genestealer should win a leg race with a Terminator.

Defence and armour

Now this is where things get tricky.

40k has the following process, roll to hit based on BS, roll to wound with Strength vs Toughness,  check armour penetration and make armour save or invulnerable save to live.

WM has a to-hit roll based on Rat/Mat vs Def and then a damage roll against armour. In general, you miss a lot more in WM than in 40k, but hits are more likely to kill.

Ideally, we want models to have comparable survivability and flavour to how they appear in 40k.  

Looking at stats we see Wounds, toughness, armour save and invulnerable saves that need to be factored in to the units survivability. But most of those feel like “armour” rather than defence.

Another big factor in a units survivability in melee is its initiative. And when you look at high initiative models like Genstealers, Exarchs and Incubi, you feel they should be “hard to hit” figures that have good defences. So we should factor that in when calculating their defensive stats.

Wounds will translate into hit boxes and very heavy armour may translate into hit boxes as well. Traits like tough can also be used to represent tough models.  

So let’s make them a shared stat pool from initiative, toughness and armour saves and allocate Def/Arm in a way that seems logical.

Def 13 is human normal, Def 12 normal for a big guy like a troll or ogre, and Def 16+ reserved for absolute ninja characters.

Arm 11 seems normal for an unarmoured character, with Arm 20+ being reserved for very heavily armoured units. Now, I expect more armour penetrating weapons in 40k and less armour buffing effects and spells, so base armours will probably be higher across the board than standard WM.

The formula for Def/Arm

Total Def/arm = 20+ Toughness + Initiative + save points (6+ = 1 point, 5+ = 2 points etc)

Cap ARM value at 20 for 2+ models, 18 for 3+ models and so on.  Have defence at roughly 10 + initiative. High armour models should be vulnerable to armour piercing weapons. Invulnerable saves should translate into special abilities that resist armour piercing attacks, rather than boosting overall armour values.

So, A marine gets 20+ 4 toughness + 4 initiative + 4 save points for a total pool of 32 points. We could go with Def 14 and Armour 18, but I think Def 13, Arm 18 and tough is a better statline.

Again, use the formula to create a statline, and then play around with it a little to make it fit. This is as much art as science.

Attacks

Multiple attacks in WM for standard troopers are pretty uncommon, and usually come from paired weapons. One rules change would be to give each model “gunfighter” and “virtuoso” so they can use the traditional “pistol and chainsword” in combat together.

However, a base 2^nd attack is a little overpowered for basic troops, so I’d recommend taking that extra attack and adding it’s point to Strength, MAT or both as makes sense.

An attack score of 3 or higher will give the model bonus attacks equal to their Attack score -1. Or, possibly "rage/focus" style points that can be used for boosts. 

Wounds

All upgraded sergeant type models will get 5 hit boxes. Models with Armour/Def scores that are too high to fit properly can also get 5-10 boxes.

Roughly, each wound after the first should equal about 5 hit boxes. All "superheavy infantry" should have a few boxes as well. 

Leadership

A straight stat swap, no reason to change this as they use the virtual the same system. Although “know no fear” may have to be changed to “fearless”, which is ok as Leadership has more uses in the WM rules including unit coherency.

Rules tweaks so far

•       Gunfighter and virtuoso as standard, to represent 40ks pistols in melee action
•       Infantry models with 18+ ARM to get the key word “armoured” which allows Armour piercing weapons to work on them.

Sample stat lines

	Speed	MAT	RAT	ST	Def	Arm	LD	Hits	Special
Guard	5	5	5	5	13	15	7	1
Marine	5	6	6	7	13	18	8	1	Tough, Armoured
Terminator	5	7	6	8	13	20	9	5	Tough, Armoured, Reflector field

Conclusion

A fun little exercise, next time I’ll talk about weapons and how to make 40k shooting and melee feel right in the WM rules.

I plan to mock up a Simple Space Marine army list and do some testing as well.