War Machine Initial Impressions

Sunday I had the opportunity to play some War Machine. Unless you have been living under a bridge, you should know a little about the game. If not, shoot on over to Privateer Presses website and take a look. The miniatures look awesome if you are into steam punk Victorian stuff.

Overall, I think War Machine is a decent game. It is by no means perfect and suffers from a scaling problem. There is a crazy amount of stuff to track. You will need something to keep track of focus and spell effects. You will also need something to track your jack system status. Grease pen and card protectors work great. Yeah, this game uses cards for the unit stats.

I think the game probably plays best at the 25 point range. 11 points is really too little, but would make real quick games. A single mistake would spell doom at that level. I found that 15 points feels right for learning since you can have an interesting  mix of jacks and units. The game still moves pretty fast at that level.

I feel 35 points would be pushing the upper level of what the game can realistically support. There is just too much to keep track of and not enough focus to really spread around. Sure you can play larger games, people do it all the time. I feel that you would need a bigger playing area.

A key tactic in the game is to know when to utilize the special ability that your war caster has. In some respects you need to think about the game at least one turn in advance since the order that you activate your units in can make a huge difference. It is a sad day when you do not use your own special ability.

I also think that how War Machine handles cover and concealment is probably the best way I have seen in a miniature skirmish game. They essentially use penalties to hit, which makes a lot of sense. I also like how the deviation of missed area attacks is handled. I really hope Warhammer 40K adopts similar rules.

I did manage to get in a few games against different lists. I played my own list, with no changes between the matches. I own 15 points of Cygnar, which is half painted at the moment. It consists of the starter box and a Black 13th Unit. In the games I played the jacks I had were not as effective as I had hope. You really need to have extra focus to put on them to get them to do something interesting. For the most part it seemed they were big targets.

The Black 13th however were exceptionally awesome! They had an answer for everything. I was really surprised at how versatile they were. Reading about them on the internet really does not prepare you for what they can do. Even in the game where I faced the all stealth list, they were the go to unit. I think if I played them more aggressively, I might have won all the games I played.

Overall I like many aspects of War Machine. I think it is a game I could play off and on for a long time but only if I can get a decent 4x4 table made.  

 

Eldar Tactics - Rise of the Swooping Hawks

Swooping Hawks are one of the least used units in current Eldar armies today. Occasionally you will see some brave individual attempt to field a squad of them, only to have them under perform or get shot to pieces before they can do anything. This is not a problem unique to Swooping Hawks - a lot of deep striking assault troops tend to be cut down easily.

I tend to change this in the games I play. I have decided to build an army around using Swooping Hawks again. To add further insult to my opponents I will play "Attack of the Hawkmen" from Flash Gordon when they attack somewhere.

Fear me and my space elf hawkmen!

Swooping Hawks have some good things going for them. For one they come with Haywire Grenades that if hit will penetrate vehicle armor, no matter how high. Most likely they are going to just glance the vehicle. This is perfectly fine as well, since the worst result on the glance table is "cannot shoot". A vehicle that is not shooting is not achieving its points back and is neutralized for a turn.

Secondly, a Swooping Hawk squad with the Exarch upgrade has the option to buy the ability "Intercept" for 5 points! This ability is gold since it makes the maximum to hit roll 4+ on all vehicles. Those pesky Dark Eldar skimmers just got a whole lot easier to hit.

Swooping Hawk shooting is not impressive. They best they can do is harass light infantry. The leader can be equipped with a sun rifle that not only shoot six times, but has a chance to pin an enemy unit. I have never been successful at pinning an enemy unit with laser fire, so I stopped taking the Sunrifle upgrade. What I do take is the Hawk's Talon. The weapon is is STR 5, Assault 3. Outfitted with a Hawk's Talon the squad has a good chance of being able to penetrate the rear armor of a tank if they deep strike in.

How will I use the mighty Swooping Hawks?

My new tactic is to field two to three large squads of them and have them deployed on the table at the start of the game. They will be sent after primary vehicle targets that can threaten my vehicles - such as Razor Backs, Land Raiders, Storm Ravens or Dark Eldar Ravagers. Additionally, any vehicle that has some sort of cover save would be targeted if it is in an opportunistic range.

The Hawks will hit and run with the goal to keep them alive until the end of the game. Their mobility should allow them to take advantage of cover or line of sight blocking terrain features. Near the end of the game, they will be used to contest objectives or just overwhelm straggling foot troops.

Another option that I am currently exploring is adding an Autarch to the mix with wings and a fusion gun. That would add some extra ranged tank busting abilities to the squad for the turn they deep strike in.







 

Hmmm

This morning I discovered why Blue Table Painting makes all their big scenery pieces out of just foam and not foam and hardboard. Hardboard in large sheets likes to bend a bit too much causing a lot of stress on any filler compound you use.

I am debating scrapping the WarMachione table and salvaging what I can from the foam. I might go ahead and finish it up, but cut back on the detailing and crack filling I had planned on doing. Decisions, decisions.

Warpath

I just got the beta rules for Warpath, a game being put out by Mantic Games. The game is 40K-ish in a lot of respects. I am not sure how successful the game will be, as I see some holes in the system already.

What I do like is that the game has a number of modifiers for shooting. Cover seems to reduce the chances of being hit, instead of preventing damage. The other thing that I love is the heavy weapons guys can shoot at different targets!

I will have to print out the rules and read them to get a good grasp of how fun the game will be. Might do a test game next week sometime if I can scrounge up the models.

I am doing a happy dance, the majority of my order has shipped! I should have D&D miniatures and WarMachine armies by next Wednesday. Should be a good week!

War Machine Table

Its been too long. I am enjoying my month long vacation, and by vacation I mean making scenery! My family is out of town which means I can do crazy scenery projects and not get the third degree about how I am making a mess or taking up too much room with my garbage.

I decided to use the time to make a niffy war machine table. I wanted something that could play up to four people and still be interesting to play all the normal two player missions. What I came up with was a nice rocky mesa piece that will be lots of fun once I build some bridges to connect parts of it. I will also need to make some removable pieces to fully enhance the game play. Overall the table should be fun to finish and paint.

This project is bigger than anything I have done, and I have made it out of scraps left over from other projects. As my first foray into such project types, I have learned a few things.

The first is while using scraps is cost effective, it is far better to plan on using who sheets of foam. I should have just purchased a sheet of 2" foam and carved the rocky cliffs from that instead of layers of the smaller stuff. There would be less gluing hassle and overall there project would have flowed better.

The second thing I learned is foam will dull a blade really quickly. I was not aware how quickly until I worked on this project. I will have to buy a few new blades this week.

Thankfully, I have finished cutting everything I need to cut on the board itself. The next step is to put down some putty to make the transition from foam to table top and then to glue down a bunch of stand before I start painting it with my mighty airbrush! In theory, I could finish this up by Tuesday if I actually work ojn it over the weekend.

I did order my starting War Machine forces. I am going to play some Cygnar painted up like the Confederacy, minus the battle flag. I love the Cygnar blue, but I already have a blue army in Ultra Marines. Besides if Martin gets into the game, I know I will be painting his stuff up in traditional blue and I want my stuff to stand out as different.. Hopefully I will get them sometimes next week.

Other than that, I saw Green Lantern this week. I would like that two hours of my life back please. Its a decent movie if you do not think about how utterly absurd the story and characters are. I am not referring to the super hero genre or camp-ness. I am referring to the huge gaping plot holes and nonsensical character development. I actually had hope that it would be good. DC can stop making movies now as they seem to be terrible, with the exception of Batman.    

6th Edition Rumors

It was only a matter of time before the rumblings of a new edition of 40K started brewing. Given the recent change in the communication policies of Games Workshop, I believe that a new edition is just around the corner.  My guess is Christmas.

Lets look at some of the rumors.

* Development relied heavily on feedback of veteran playtesters. You can see some results of this new approach by the way the FAQs were handled in the last months. All codexes since Codex Tyranids were written with the new rules in mind, especially the new mission and reserve structure.

That might explain why the Grey Knight Falchions only give an extra 1 attack. My theory is we are going to see a lot of changes to assault that make it less game winning. The biggest one I can see is the removal of extra attacks for having two weapons.

The question then becomes, what makes an assault troops, assault troops? I have no idea. Perhaps they will get a bonus to their attack roll or be the only unit in the game that can fleet.

* strong narrative focus on Chaos, perspective shifting from the Empire to the struggle between free races and the Warp

A narrative focus would be good, 40K doesn't seem to have that anymore.

* Similar ballistic to hit chart as wound chart: compare BS to target’s speed and unit type. BS 3 hits moving infantry on 4+, but lightning fast jetbikes on 6+ and stationary tank on 2+… HUGE

This would be entertaining. Though now we will need movement markers for the units. I am a fan of markers so I am good with this.

* Victory points are back, but with another twist: you get two victory points if an unit holds an objective for an entire game turn, if a scoring unit holds one, you get three and one if you destroy a squad leader or vehicle

Seems like GW wants to do away with last turn sweeping in and taking objectives. I do like that any unit can hold objectives since it means my heavies can sit back on an objective and pour out some grade A bang, bang. It would add a more strategic bent to the game than it has now.

* Before the game there is a bidding contest for the opportunity of the first turn, if you bid more strategic points you can go first, but the enemy can spent these points on stratagems as in Cities of Death: 22 generic stratagems – for example for one point you can decide on night fighting or place an automatic gun, for four you can shift your reserves, most expensive stratagems are at 12 points and are really drastic, every unspent point can be used once a game for a reroll

I am not sure I really like this. It will come down to how interesting the stratagems are. The automatic gun could be interesting, hopefully they will have race specific weapons or a generic weapon. If they are anything like the City of death ones or the Planet Assault ones, then I will not enjoy this change. The stratagems were sometimes vague and either over or under powered. None really felt right to me.

Of course the idea of being able buy re-rolls is one I really like. I cannot begin to count the times I have said, if I could only re-reoll, it would change the course of battle.

The big question on my mind is what happens if nobody puts forth points to get the first turn because they both want to spent all their points on stratagems? How will that work?  

* new turn sequence: prepare-movement-assault-shooting-consolidate
new phase “consolidate” phase for random movements, jetpack movements, pursuits, morale checks/effects and resolving shooting reactions
assault before shooting – big units are real roadblocks!


I love the idea of having a "prepare" phase. I have often argued that 40K needs a Babylon 5 wars style turn outline to show what order things are supposed to go in. A prepare phase will solve a lot of disagreements as to when some powers can be cast with units coming from reserves.

The assault before shooting would be an interesting change. It would move the meta away from many small elite units to the realm of full squads again. It would also make arming the assault squad with anti-infantry weapons pointless for the most part. I find this one a little hard to believe, unless there will be something else at play, such as assaults do not last longer than the single assault phase.


*Heroic characters:
- independent characters more powerful, armour save and invulnerable save at the same time
- squad leaders more important, no more 50% rallying threshold, unit can rally as long as squad leader lives
- independent characters can snipe

I love the idea that squad leaders will allow the squad to rally. Too often I watch my eldar run off the table with an autarch attached to the squad. Having them being allowed to rally would be a great thing.

*More visceral combat:
- standard cover only 5+ now, Feel No Pain (1) only on 5+
- slow slogging units very vulnerable
- some weapon types are specialized in taking out specific unit types and are incredible good at doing this (sniper vs. infantry without armour), but on the other hand ordnance vs flyer isn’t going to do much

Yay for the reduction of cover saves! The game really was becoming less and less about the armor penetration of your guns due to the abundance of cover. I imagine stealth units and going to ground will still be in the game which will bring that cover save back up to 3+ for a few select units. That is a lot better than the 2+ cover save monkeys that currently prowl some game tables.

The idea that some weapons will be better at taking down specific unit types is another good change.

*streamlined: 
- no more random movement at all
- 5 general types of psychic powers
- wound allocation like 4th edition on unit basis, but attacker can chose every 5th wound to go to a single model (sniper weapon every second wound)
- artillery is normal immobile vehicle squadron, crew has no other game purpose than to be a counter for rate of fire and attacks

I always worry when a game touts it is being streamlined. That typically means it is losing some flavor or some complicated rule set that made it fun and interesting. I will not cry with the loss of random movement. I hated it, mostly because my harlequins would roll a 2 for their run speed.

I cannot recall how would allocation worked in 4th edition, (as that was when I had stopped playing) but I do vaguely recall some complaints that you could use template weapons to pick off specific models. I suspect there will be no real wound allocation, it will just be roll to see how many wounds you can save against. The targeted wounds will be rolled for first.

5 general types of psychic powers? That sounds like they are going to define them something along the lines of shooting, buffing, debuffing, template and utility.  

* terrain rules on a single page, true line of sight, non-vehicles models are ignored altogether, rules for special terrain like bunkers, ruins or deathworld mangroves in narrative rule section

This sounds like the idea of having ground troops screen for your tanks is also gone. I love the idea of having a rules for terrain on one page. Currently they are scattered through out the book, well at least the way a model interacts with terrain. I would love to see something along the lines of more rules instead of just a cover save.

* More elaborate reserve rules, can nominate turn of arrvial and has only small change to arrive earlier or later, or can intervene behind enemy lines, arrives randomly but can hinder enemy reserves, must be distributed evenly between turn two and three, later arrivals only randomly

This would be awesome, something me and my 40K group has talked about for sometime. The idea that reserves could be more reliable would be great. It would prevent someone from getting hosed if their reserves do not come in until turn 4 or 5.

I used to be that eldar player that reserved everything. Then I realized when I do that it really cuts down on my fire power. It is better to just start with most of your army on the table and focus down units. My win ration has doubled since I started using that tactic.

*no more random game length
*no roll for first turn

Love it!

*deep striking units more than 18” from enemy away don’t scatter, but landing in 6” is much more dangerous

This would speed the game up, and might make swooping hawks viable again.

* movement impairing effects from pinning weapons even if morale check is passed (if roll is above halved Ld), Fearless not immune to this, but only effected if rolled over full Ld

This would make pinning weapons useful again. As it stands now, there is little point in taking them except to try and kill monstrous creatures. Sniper weapons should be true infantry killers. Tactical squads should run in fear of them. Currently it is the opposite.

*more reactions to shooting than going to the ground depending on unit type and special rules. bikes can evade (3+ cover as same as before, but cannot assault or shoot next turn), jump troops can fly high, units with Stealth can attempt to vanish, …

This would be all sorts of cool!

My gut reaction is that Games Workshop wants to stream line the game because we will be putting even more models on the table with 6th edition. As a business they want us to buy more toy soldiers and field them. I cannot say I blame them. I would love to play a game where I can field even more eldar or marines.

It also sounds like they may be gearing the game towards competitive play by taking out the randomness that can kill you before the game really begins.

Only time will tell.

A little Teaser

I came home early today to get some more work done around the war room before the game this weekend. I had some time so I figured I would set up a light booth and take some photos of the D&D miniatures. Let me say that I am really impressed with my son's cheap $90 camera that has macro and 12.9 mega pixels. I paid over 600 bucks for the hunk of junk that I can no longer get to power up.

Isn't the technology curve wonderful?

I ran into some problems with the light booth, I probably need to get all daylight bulbs and use a purer white back drop to get the photos. All my photos I took today have a yellowish tint to them. I will get it take care of as I set up a permanent photo station in the near future.

The preview is of the NPC healer in the party - a mountain folk cleric. I based her on the concept of a white mage healer. Her personality is based loosely off of Starfire from the "Teen Titans" TV series - a heroic outsider that does not completely understand the world she lives in. The inspiration of the character came almost entirely from the image to the left. Yes, I know its from anime, but nothing says gaming and anime cannot mix.


Since she is a savage, I decided to go with a miniature in leather. I selected "Feiya - Iconic Witch" from the Reaper Miniature line. It fit the look I wanted and as a bonus came with a animal companion that I used for the wizard familiar.

I tried a experiment with the bases. I used my printer and adobe to print out name plates. I simply cut them and pasted them onto the base. I might eventually go back and paint the edges and see if I can get the outlines to disappear. I could also make them larger and cut them to fit specifically. I was impressed for the 20 minutes of work that it took me to do it.    

This is the Auriel from the back.

Tomorrow will be the full unveiling to my players when we start the D&D game. Hopefully they will be happy with how I see tier characters. Most gave me a good physical description, but one did not. All she said is that she wanted her character to wear bright colors. That is what I went for.