The foundation of WARMACHINE & HORDES competitive play is the Steamroller tournament format. In the week immediately following Lock & Load GameFest 2016, all of the new and freshly upgraded Organized Play documents will release, and the newest version of Steamroller 2016 will be unleashed!

Steamroller has been updated top to bottom to perfectly supplement the release of the new WARMACHINE & HORDES editions. There are lots of little tweaks and changes throughout the document, but I wanted to touch on some of the bigger ones in this Insider.

For starters, point sizes. If you’re used to playing 35 or 50 point games in Mk II, you’re probably wondering what size is right for you in the new editions. Well, once the new editions are released, I recommend you should play around with all of the different point-sized armies to find the one that is right for you. To get you started, consider this: a 75-point army in the new editions is roughly the same as a 50-point army in Mk II (in terms of model count and game length); similarly, a 50-point army in the new editions is roughly the same as a 35-point army in Mk II.

Now that you’ve got your bearings and are ready to start some list-building mental exercises, let me drop a bomb of you. You might want to sit down for this one…

Character restrictions are gone in multi-list events.

Okay, let’s talk about that.

First, in a multi-list event, each of your lists still must be led by a different warcaster or warlock from your chosen faction—and yes, different iterations of the same named caster (i.e., Kreoss 1, Kreoss 2, Kreoss 3) count as a “different warcaster” to meet this requirement. However, all other models that are FA: C can now be included in as many of your lists as you like.

I know you might be immediately thinking: “Gah! Bane Lord Tartarus in every Cryx list? A non-stop wave of Gormans and Eirysses? Why?!” But trust us: we’ve rebalanced every single model in the game, so there shouldn’t be a single character model that dominates an entire faction anymore and that shows up in all lists. And if that does actually happen, we have a plan for how to address it (more on that in a future insider).

Further, let’s be honest: character restrictions in the past weren’t 100% equal across the board. The Choir of Menoth is far more of an “auto-include” in Protectorate lists than Gorman is, but they could be used in every single Protectorate list under the old restrictions. And some character models got caught in the restriction crossfire that honestly had no reason to be. Why should a Merc player only be allowed to take one Bloody Bradigan across his two or three lists, while a Cygnar player can take a squire in every one? It didn’t make much sense, and with the complete rebalancing of every single model, it’s gone.

Of course, with each new iteration of Steamroller come new scenarios, new objectives, and new terrain rules. That’s no different this year, but let me focus on the terrain rules in particular. Without going into all of the language details, the terrain rules are getting two major changes you’ll want to know about right away. First, the amount of terrain per table is increasing from 5–7 pieces to 6–8 pieces. To complement that, the rules for how and where terrain can be placed—specifically in relation to scenario elements—are much more relaxed than before. If you want an obstruction in a zone, go for it. Want to put an obstacle near a flag? Feel free. Want to shove all of the terrain to the edges of the table? No can do. In fact, terrain can’t even be placed within a certain range of the table edges to ensure that the battlefield looks like…well, a battlefield, one full of meaningful terrain and not a big empty killing field.

In addition to all of these tweaks and new elements, one new variant way to play WARMACHINE & HORDES that’s being added to Steamroller is incredibly exciting. Have you ever wished you could actually play kitchen table WARMACHINE? Or perhaps your local gaming venue doesn’t have 4′ x 4′ tables to accommodate a standard-size game, so you’re out of luck? Well worry no longer; we’re going to bring you a whole new way to play called Rumble.

In Rumble, the game is played on a 30″ x 30″ table or play area. Rumble games come with their own set of unique scenarios specifically designed for quicker engagement with players beginning the game so close to each other. Once you get started, a Rumble game feels like you’ve just started a WARMACHINE game on a 4′ x 4′ table right around the third round in terms of model positioning.

Of course, the big issue we had to solve with Rumble was turn-one caster assassinations. I won’t bog down this Insider with all the exact rules language, but the basic gist is that each player begins the game with only their Advance Deploy models in play. The rules then detail how on each player’s first turn, the rest of that player’s models either advance onto the table as if they were marching onto the battlefield from their table edge or are placed in play (for those models that can’t advance normally). After both players’ first turn is over, all of the models are in play, and everything carries on like normal, but this does mean that on the first player’s first turn, his or her opponent’s caster isn’t even on the table (because the opponent hasn’t resolved the step at the beginning of his turn to march forces onto the field).

Thus, the first player gets to advance up the field and prepare for an alpha strike early on, but the second player gets to effectively “deploy” in response to the first player’s entire turn and prepare his or her own counterattack. In our testing, we found that Rumble games play fast and furious yet aren’t that different from standard-sized games of WARMACHINE & HORDES. I expect that the meta of Rumble games will be slightly different than that of standard-sized games, simply due to the space restrictions that some casters will love and some will…well, have to deal with.

Regardless, Rumble provides players with limited play space a way to enjoy full games of WARMACHINE & HORDES when the new editions drop this June!

Look for all the rules about Rumble, scenarios, objectives, and so much more when Steamroller 2016 and all of the new Organized Play documents release the week after Lock and Load GameFest 2016!