Warmachine/Hordes presents the New Player with a dilemma almost immediately.

You’re faced with a large table in front of you, spattered with unfamiliar terrain features, maybe some objectives, and then your opponent holds up a dice to you to say: “Roll to see who chooses side?” Immediately you have choices to make and a plan to craft. Go first? Choose side? Deploy? And that’s before the first turn even begins!

For the New Player – This can be absolutely daunting.

One way to mitigate this is to plan ahead of time based on what you know before even leaving the house. Start by identifying what you need to accomplish, how your army can accomplish it, and what, if any, weaknesses you can account for.

Tagline for this post is simple: The only thing you can 100% control in Warmahordes is what you bring to the table; Know your army backwards and forwards!

Here’s my New Player Approach:

#1. What does my list WANT to do? (Win Condition & Rough Battle Plan)

Know your army and how it works (Examples): Is your plan dependent on getting the first (alpha) strike to devastate your opponent’s forces? Do you have considerable ranged units and need to hold the enemy at bay to pick them off? Can you get onto the objectives and hold them with durable units to achieve a scenario victory? Does your caster’s feator key models give you a prime assassination opportunity?

The key to this initial exercise is that you want to consider what your army wants to do to win in a perfect world. Ask yourself: “If everything in my army worked exactly as intended, What would the likely result look like?”

The “Perfect World” element helps make this an easier consideration. Only consider what your army needs to do to function. What this does (in my opinion) is drive you to learn your own models. After all – The only thing you can completely control in this game is what you bring to the table.

Remember: Two people with the exact same lists will have different results in this analysis. You’re planning what YOU will do with your army, and how YOU will put these models to work! It doesn’t need to be “perfect” it just needs to get your gears turning ahead of the dice hitting the mat!

Think about some of these things:

What is my preferred win condition? (Scenario, Assassination, Attrition)

Which stat does my list have the most of that gives it an edge? (SPD, POW, MAT, RAT, DEF, ARM, etc.)

Do any of my key units/models have abilities that get me closer to my win condition?

What do each of my units excel at? What possible situations can I use this to get to my win condition?

SIDEBAR: How in the heck do I identify my “Win Condition”?

My suggestion is to look at your Caster first. Identify if their spell toolbox and feat favor a particular win condition. Remember that there are three main conditions: Scenario, Assassination, and Attrition. [You can also win by Clock…But you can’t really build a strategy around that. Unless you plan to talk your opponent’s ear off during their turn, eating up their clock, and REALLY not make any friends in the process.]

Scenario: Winning by scoring the requisite number of objective points. Casters with strong control of positioning and ways to support mobility of their army will favor this condition. Some defensive feats are also well suited to this win condition. Ex. Haley2

Assassination: Winning by killing the enemy caster. Casters with a strong personal threat, (able to kill lots of things on their own like superheroes) or with heavily offensive feats that only damage a limited number of targets. Ex. Caine2

Attrition: Outlasting or Devastating your opponent so you can win by either of the above conditions because your opponent doesn’t have enough left on the table to resist you. Casters with offensive feats that aim to obliterate everything on the table , or casters with strong defensive feats that can bunker their army down for the long haul. Ex. Stryker1; Nemo3.



REMEMBER: Your caster might point towards more than one of these. If that’s the case, I would consider which the rest of your army supports best, or simply plan for both!

NOTE: Don’t reinvent the Wheel. If you’re unsure, check the Battle College article on your caster. Most of these articles will give you some idea on how to best use your casters abilities to achieve a win condition. Some of these articles point out in plain language what the favored win condition for the caster is. You don’t necessarily need to agree, or follow the advice, but it’s a good starting point.

My suggestion would be to use these considerations to create a 2 to 3 sentence summary of your battle plan. It should read like a “How My Army Works” summary. If another player picked up your list they could read your summary and have some idea what to do to win (or at least one good option).

Here’s mine for my Stryker1 List:

“I want to get my Arcane Shielded infantry units into position to stop my opponent scoring objectives, and use them to hold back the enemy to allow my ranged units to bring the pain. I can use my key units’ knockdown abilities, and my casters feat, to assist. Ultimately – I will try to outlast my opponent and win by attrition.”

Notice that this doesn’t include every possible thing that I could do. Instead it just summarizes what I think my Path to Victory is.

#2 What could go wrong? (Weaknesses)

You’ve got an idea of where you want to go, and how your units can get there. What, if anything, is holding you back? NOW you want to take way the “Perfect World” analysis and start thinking about what could go wrong.

Usually at this stage you’ll find that your units have inherent balance – I mean by this that they usually have both upsides and downsides. For example, a unit with high POW might suffer from having below average SPD. As a result – while it “Wants” to smash faces, it might not always get there fast enough to do so. Or the opposite might be true – Your units might be incredibly fast, but suffer from below average POW.

Some weaknesses may not be Stat-related at all. For example, does your caster have a lot of upkeep spells? You may be vulnerable to abilities that purge upkeeps off units. Do none of your units have True Sight or Magic Weapons? You might be vulnerable to Stealth or Incorporeal. These tend to be more match-specific, but its good have them in mind.

You can then extrapolate individual weaknesses in units to your list. Or, in other words, you key units weaknesses will translate into your list’s weaknesses.

(NOTE: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Check the Battle College articles for your models to see if there are already identified weaknesses and strengths.)

Part of this comes from if the unit is key in your battle-plan summary. POW issues with this key unit mean that heavy-ARM will be a problem for your plan. SPD issues will mean that high mobility lists might simply dance around your plans or secure objectives before you can get in the action.

Being able to identify these weaknesses gives you a clearer picture on executing your plan. You want to know how far you can push your plan and when you need to compromise.

Lets use an example, again from my Stryker1 List.

One of my “Key” units is my Infantry: the Stormguard and Stormblades. From my battle plan summary I try to use these units with Arcane Shield, along with Stryker’s feat, to ruin my opponent’s day with a field of meat-jam. My necessary condition to that plan is the Infantry need to move into a position where the jam will be useful!

But – Wait – What if something is between me and where the position is? Like…a Forest? The perfect remedy to this situation is Pathfinder. When I first started using this list (before adding Rhupert Carvolo), my list had NO Pathfinder to speak of. My infantry routinely had positioning issues and it bunged up my battle plan badly.

Enter the piper: Rhupert Carvolo. Carvolo can dish out Pathfinder to one full unit of infantry in a turn. 50% of this problem is solved with a small point investment.

Also: I have only one unit that can give out Magic Weapon (Arlan Strangewayes) and NO way to completely bypass Stealth.

This example also demonstrates my next point.

#3 Can I modify to mitigate my weakness?

The above example mitigated with a Support Solo. Often that will be a viable solution. However, it’s not the only one. Some solutions don’t require you to actually change your list to add or remove models. This is especially useful to think about if you’re a new player with limited models at your disposal.

For this: Consider ways your gameplay might mitigate the weakness, and modify your battle-plan summary to include this. Any sort of gameplay change that will make it easier to get to your win condition is viable for this consideration.

Let’s say, for example, that your list has a weakness where it has limited ranged capabilities, or is low DEF and liable to getting barraged by enemy fire. One way of mitigating this (I.e. Avoiding enemy fire as you can’t return the favor) would be to exploit line of sight blocking terrain. This solution is rather generic – It’s typically good advice to exploit this kind of terrain where lots of guns are aimed at your models. BUT it serves as an easy example.

Other modifications might be things like: “I will keep my [key unit] behind my heavier units to exploit late game assassination openings.” or “I will deploy my [key unit] in positions with clear lines to objectives to avoid rough terrain.” The latter was my modification before adding Rhupert Carvolo to my list, and it remains good advice for my Stryker1 list anyway.

Conclusion & Reflection

After doing this exercise you should walk way with a few things:

Knowing your win condition & battle plan execution; Identified weaknesses in your list that your opponent might exploit; Know how to avoid having those weaknesses exploited.

Now you can start to look at the battle field – terrain features and all – and think about your Battle Plan Summary. Ask: “How does [Choice] help me to execute my battle plan?” Filling in [Choice] with things like “Going First” or “Choosing Side”, for example, can be a helpful early-game exercise.

BUT REMEMBER: Don’t be married to your battle plan. If the opportunity/necessity arises to shift win conditions – Take it! Most commonly this will happen when you are going for scenario, it looks like it won’t work out, and you need to hail-Mary for an assassination. Or, if a key unit(s) die unexpectedly, and you don’t think you can execute your plan (I.E. Your the victim of attrition).

J

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