A bit more about questions and answers today.


APOLOGIES WHERE APOLOGIES ARE DUE

First of all, let me apologize for the last article about the Way of the Water Warrior, which meandered around like Caine1 looking for a drink in a deserted miner's town. I knew what I wanted to talk about, but I didn't know what I wanted to say. Which I believe is a sure sign that I was stuck on the last article's topic because I felt like I needed to figure it out for myself. Now, writing your thoughts down is often a good path to clarity, the same as speaking them aloud.

Anyway, I think the conclusion from the last article is clear: I don't really know how to fight extreme question / skew lists. I've got a few theories, and I hope they might be useful for you as well, but I'm not that much further than you are here, really.


SUMMARY

Anyway, here's what I came up with so far:

* Bring the necessary counters
DASH is your friend here, knowing exactly what questions you have to face is key, knowing what your factions's answers are is essential.

* Bring some of your own Questions
A strong Assassination threat, a powerful spell or feat that can lock down the enemy for a turn, something that denies / interferes / threatens.

* Know the Match-Ups
Again, preparation and knowledge is key. Balanced demands flexibility demands toolboxes demands units that can fill multiple roles. While the ultimate gernalists from the Water Warrior Army might not exist in Warmachine, they illustrate this point marvelously: Playing reactive demands flexibility demands units that can be plugged into a multitude of situations and still do something good. Again using American Football to illustrate my point, outside specific blitzing schemes, Defenses are a lot like a reactive army. The some linebacker often has to drop back into coverage or rush forward to catch a runner in a heart's beat.

* Good Reactive Play is Hard Work
Reactive play is in my experience always about out-thinking your opponent, about thinking a step or three ahead of him. It's far easier to think up one clever way to attack your opponent than to think of every clever way he can attack you.


FIRST THINGS FIRST

Which brings me to another little theory of mine: Unless you've got the comfort of a truly casual group, when you feel the pressure to improve quickly, why not start with the questions? You might be like me and consider it a point of personal honor to play elaborate schemes, relying on finesse over brute force. And like me, you might be wasting time trying to learn to run before you can crawl. There's a reason I recommend small sized games to the degree I do, and that is simplicity. Let me repeat that: Simplicity. Everyone with any experience with teaching will (hopefully) agree that it's usually best for the learners if they can focus on a small, well defined aspect of their chosen activity and slowly expand from there. Why should tabletop be different? If you can't orchestrate an army of 5-10 models successfully, what makes you believe you can do better with an army of 50? That being said, if you don't know how to stop Caine2 executing your caster, why not play him yourself for a while? You'll start to see the limitations and the counters pretty soon.


BACK TO THE BASICS

When I brought up 15 point games recently, a friend told me he hated the way 15 points games turn into rock-paper-scissor. I get what he means. Here are a few remedies I came up with:

* List by Committee
Basically a slightly formalized version of talk to your opponent: Both players send each other a few lists they want to run before the game, and the opponent has right of first denial, meaning he won't have to play a list he hasn't accepted first. By accepting two to three different lists, you can still keep the surprise momentum (which list will he bring?) to prevent direct list-tailoring. Make sure you agree what you expect from your opponent's list, if your opponent asks make suggestions what kind of list you will accept.

* Highlander
There can only be one... each. Basically, no more than 1 heavy, 1 light, 1 unit, 1 solo, etc. per army. Can still be abused, I think, but I see some balancing potential here.

* Who's the Boss?
Lists are written without Caster, assuming 5 jack/beast points, after both players hand each other their lists, the other player get's to choose your caster. Obviously, a model should be available, but if someone's a jerk only bringing the two casters he really wants to play with his list, you can always provide their warcaster for them. It's not like most warcaster models cost the world...

I think this last variant should really skew the game towards balanced lists.


GO AGGRESSIVE

But again, I really urge you to go for it, risking a ballsy move is the only way to figure out whether it would have worked or not. They say in life you mostly end up regretting the things you didn't do, not the things you did. While I have some doubts on that, I think it holds true for tabletop games. Sure, you might be like me, instinctively trying to avoid the confrontation, to draw out the fight, but I'm afraid Warmachine doesn't reward that playing style.

Sure, I noticed that my worst losses usually come from overconfidence, especially against new players I feel obligated to teach while ripping their armies apart in a spectacular fashion, but here's the catch:

The Do or Die attitude leads to progress by trial and error. If you never tried if you can rush your Warjack into his caster, you'll never know. And not knowing what you can or can't do is not a good place.


SIMPLICITY IS KING

Which brings me to the point of this whole article: Playing the skewed lists helps you learn the counters to them, playing the aggressive game teaches you what you (and your opponents) can and can't get away with. So, yeah, what I'm trying to say is that the road to a powerful reactive army usually leads through a large number of aggressive armies. They might be your opponents' armies trashing your reactive list as you encounter new unanswered questions every game, or they might be your own armies. The choice, as always, is yours.


Part 1: Basics

I think I went a bit overboard last time trying to make sense of something I haven't really grasped myself, how to play the balanced / reactive game against extreme skew. Let's talk about that for a moment.


APOLOGIES WHERE APOLOGIES ARE DUE

First of all, let me apologize for the last article about the Way of the Water Warrior, which meandered around like Caine1 looking for a drink in a deserted miner's town. I knew what I wanted to talk about, but I didn't know what I wanted to say. Which I believe is a sure sign that I was stuck on the last article's topic because I felt like I needed to figure it out for myself. Now, writing your thoughts down is often a good path to clarity, the same as speaking them aloud.

Anyway, I think the conclusion from the last article is clear: I don't really know how to fight extreme question / skew lists. I've got a few theories, and I hope they might be useful for you as well, but I'm not that much further than you are here, really.


SUMMARY

Anyway, here's what I came up with so far:

* Bring the necessary counters
DASH is your friend here, knowing exactly what questions you have to face is key, knowing what your factions's answers are is essential.

* Bring some of your own Questions
A strong Assassination threat, a powerful spell or feat that can lock down the enemy for a turn, something that denies / interferes / threatens.

* Know the Match-Ups
Again, preparation and knowledge is key. Balanced demands flexibility demands toolboxes demands units that can fill multiple roles. While the ultimate gernalists from the Water Warrior Army might not exist in Warmachine, they illustrate this point marvelously: Playing reactive demands flexibility demands units that can be plugged into a multitude of situations and still do something good. Again using American Football to illustrate my point, outside specific blitzing schemes, Defenses are a lot like a reactive army. The some linebacker often has to drop back into coverage or rush forward to catch a runner in a heart's beat.

* Good Reactive Play is Hard Work
Reactive play is in my experience always about out-thinking your opponent, about thinking a step or three ahead of him. It's far easier to think up one clever way to attack your opponent than to think of every clever way he can attack you.


FIRST THINGS FIRST

Which brings me to another little theory of mine: Unless you've got the comfort of a truly casual group, when you feel the pressure to improve quickly, why not start with the questions? You might be like me and consider it a point of personal honor to play elaborate schemes, relying on finesse over brute force. And like me, you might be wasting time trying to learn to run before you can crawl. There's a reason I recommend small sized games to the degree I do, and that is simplicity. Let me repeat that: Simplicity. Everyone with any experience with teaching will (hopefully) agree that it's usually best for the learners if they can focus on a small, well defined aspect of their chosen activity and slowly expand from there. Why should tabletop be different? If you can't orchestrate an army of 5-10 models successfully, what makes you believe you can do better with an army of 50? That being said, if you don't know how to stop Caine2 executing your caster, why not play him yourself for a while? You'll start to see the limitations and the counters pretty soon.


BACK TO THE BASICS

When I brought up 15 point games recently, a friend told me he hated the way 15 points games turn into rock-paper-scissor. I get what he means. Here are a few remedies I came up with:

* List by Committee
Basically a slightly formalized version of talk to your opponent: Both players send each other a few lists they want to run before the game, and the opponent has right of first denial, meaning he won't have to play a list he hasn't accepted first. By accepting two to three different lists, you can still keep the surprise momentum (which list will he bring?) to prevent direct list-tailoring. Make sure you agree what you expect from your opponent's list, if your opponent asks make suggestions what kind of list you will accept.

* Highlander
There can only be one... each. Basically, no more than 1 heavy, 1 light, 1 unit, 1 solo, etc. per army. Can still be abused, I think, but I see some balancing potential here.

* Who's the Boss?
Lists are written without Caster, assuming 5 jack/beast points, after both players hand each other their lists, the other player get's to choose your caster. Obviously, a model should be available, but if someone's a jerk only bringing the two casters he really wants to play with his list, you can always provide their warcaster for them. It's not like most warcaster models cost the world...

I think this last variant should really skew the game towards balanced lists.


GO AGGRESSIVE

But again, I really urge you to go for it, risking a ballsy move is the only way to figure out whether it would have worked or not. They say in life you mostly end up regretting the things you didn't do, not the things you did. While I have some doubts on that, I think it holds true for tabletop games. Sure, you might be like me, instinctively trying to avoid the confrontation, to draw out the fight, but I'm afraid Warmachine doesn't reward that playing style.

Sure, I noticed that my worst losses usually come from overconfidence, especially against new players I feel obligated to teach while ripping their armies apart in a spectacular fashion, but here's the catch:

The Do or Die attitude leads to progress by trial and error. If you never tried if you can rush your Warjack into his caster, you'll never know. And not knowing what you can or can't do is not a good place.


SIMPLICITY IS KING

Which brings me to the point of this whole article: Playing the skewed lists helps you learn the counters to them, playing the aggressive game teaches you what you (and your opponents) can and can't get away with. So, yeah, what I'm trying to say is that the road to a powerful reactive army usually leads through a large number of aggressive armies. They might be your opponents' armies trashing your reactive list as you encounter new unanswered questions every game, or they might be your own armies. The choice, as always, is yours.


THE BIG REQUEST

Looking back on last week's Way of the Water Warrior, I have got a big request to everyone that still bothers reading these:

Please point out my shortcomings. Be it that I'm wrong about something in the game. Be it that my writing is failing. Rereading last week's piece multiple times, I feel like I said most things at least twice, which means I could have said the whole thing in half as many words.

So, please, point out my shortcomings, help me become a better tactician, teacher and writer!


Part 1: Basics

Today I want to talk a bit more about reactive lists.


THE WAY OF THE WATER WARRIOR

The Way of the Water Warrior describes a specific army for another gaming system, that uses a base of resilient generalist models without any particularly good or bad match-ups to great effect. While the list might look like a skewed list at first glance, spamming the same units over and over, it was actually conceived and played as the ultimate reactive list. Being a generalist army without any particular strengths and weaknesses beyond staying power, the creator envisioned them as an empty cup, as formless dough that could be molded into shape once the actual game began. Against a shooting army, they could act as a melee force, against a melee force they could act as a shooting army, etc.

I don't think there is anything like the Water Warriors in Warmachine. The closest think I could think of, both in terms of playstyle and appearance, would be an army composed entirely of Defender's Warded Exampler Errants or Arcane Shieldes / Iron Fleshed Ogryn Assault Corps. Still, we don't get the full package of Can Do Everything toolbox that works against the whole DASH-spectrum. Which is actually a good thing, in my opinion.


DIVERSITY THRIVES ON BAD MATCH-UPS

Now, this is just a theory of mine, but I believe that one reason spam is more the exception than the rule in Warmachine is the fact that there is a bad match-up for everything. Sure, some things are harder to match-up against; Cryx has this image of an army that can't be played against with normal tactics; the Cygnar Haley Twin Stormwall list has conjured a ton of whining, old men weeping in the streets, women lamenting. But still, big surprise, the last major tournament didn't see a single Haley2Walls list in their finalists.


UP ON THE INTERNET, DOWN IN THE REAL WORLD

Anyway, that's the theory. It doesn't really help you win your next game when you're staring across the table at 30 Banes (Thralls or Knights), 42 Doom Reavers (the Butcher2 Theme list), or Karchev loaded up on heavy armor. All of those might have bad match-ups, but what if your list is not one of them?

So, lets take a few minutes talking about fighting skew lists with a balanced army:

I am water
First rule of Fight Club with a truly balanced list: Don't act, react. A great reactive list has all the answers, we're just waiting for a question to pop up that we can respond to. Which requires a level of mastery I'm leagues away from. I don't even know all the questions, yet, nor do I think every faction has an answer to every single question. So let's just move on for the moment.

I got a plan
I think every good balanced list at least has some active potential, at the least a vague idea for the endgame. If assassination or scenario / board control figures into your list in any capacity, you might be able to circumvent the whole skew and just do your thing. We've got a new player in our group that loves armor. It's just a matter of time until he will field his first Karchev skew list. So naturally, I'm already thinking about answers. I've already been focusing on Cygnar assassination casters this year, and I believe both Caine2 and Stryker2 can execute Karchev the moment they get a shot at him. Which means all I have to do is deliver the killing blow (can't be that difficult, right?), which is another case of trumping a strong question with a stronger question.

I'm loaded
Last week I set up a game for the two rookies in our group. Said Khador player was doing fine on his own, so I put together a Protec list for the other guy. I firmly expected at least some armor spam, so I stressed the anti-ARM portion of the list:

Feora1
* Reckoner
Bastions (max)
Zealots (max) with UA
Choir (min)
TOTAL 20

Feora and the Reckoner and the Bastions can all wreck face, even against high ARM. The Zealots where there as a) a point of impact unit and b) a toolbox with their grenades. Feora herself meanwhile covered the DEF, Stealth and Hordes part of DASH with her feat. In the end, it worked out, barely. The Reckoner was lost due to an underestimated threat range, the Bastions reached Vlad1 and gleefully ignored his Blood of Kings, only to stumble over the Wardog, reducing 8+ attack rolls to 10+ attack rolls. They still got Vlad down a bit before they were killed, which enabled Feora to Hulk Up and do Vlad in herself.

At that moment, the Khador player still had an unscratched Behemoth and a barely walking Juggernaut. Still, if the Reckoner hadn't fallen to a surprise attack by the Juggernaut (utilizing the feat to maneuver around obstacles and barely get into melee range), the war of attrition seemed up in the air.


QUESTION OR ANSWER?

At which point you're entitled to ask how the Protec army was reactive, when it had a clear plan itself (attack the high ARM with a ton of anti-ARM of its own). Well, the answer is, it wasn't really that specialized. It had answers against ARM, but I feel that it would have stood an equal chance against the Sorscha infantry list our fledgeling Khador player built next to play against me.

Also, I think it makes a difference whether you're able to kill ARM with most of your list or whether most of your list needs anti-ARM questions to kill it.


DOUBLE COVERAGE

Remember the 15 points Caine1 list from the early chapters?

Caine1
* Ironclad
Gunmages & UA
Stormblades
Reinholdt

I've got, more or less, each DASH-point covered at least twice, including:
* Double coverage at high ARM: Ironclad and Stormblades

Compare that to a 35 points list from a battle rep I recently read:
* Double coverage at high ARM: Centurion and Stormstrider

That's right: two POW 15 shots a turn was the whole anti-ARM backup in case the Centurion got traded or distracted. While I'm fully aware that list was written specifically with a more fragile army as opponent in mind, imagine going up against Karchev with nothing but a Stormstrider after your Centurion got wrecked taking down a Spriggan or a Juggernaut...

Sure, I've played my fair share of games with single anti-ARM coverage myself - in the 15 to 25 points bracket. I don't know. I might be wrong, but I feel a 35 points army should be capable to deal with more than a single heavy on the other side. I don't know. If your 35 points army brings less anti-ARM than my 15 points army, you might be bringing a knife to a gunfight...


THE TRAP OF UTILITY UNITS

This is another theory of mine, but the same way we get tempted to drop too many points into needless support, we also get tempted to take nice-to-have units about necessary units. Take the Cyclone, for instance. Board Control, anti-infantry firepower, can threaten assassination under the right circumstances. However, was it worth its points when you're running short on heavy hitters and can't crack the enemy armor?


LESS LIST, MORE GAME

However, a friend recently told me that these articles focused too much on list building and not enough on list playing, so let's go back to that!

You've got a somewhat balanced list, you're up against a skewed list, what do you do?

First of all, I urge you to prioritize. You might have a single anti-ARM tool for every four Warjacks your opponent brought. There might be thirty Bane Thralls to one unit of your Gunmages. Figure out what your answer units are, and make sure you preserve them and protect them as well as you can. Identify weaknesses; a Karchev armor skew list, for instance, might be slow enough that you can win the game on scenario even if you didn't bring a scenario-list. Or again, perhaps you can threaten that assassination that wins the game outright. Which might mean that you can't throw your anti-ARM units at the enemy heavies, if you also need them to crack the enemy caster.

There's a strategy I read about: People playing Butcher1 often focus on taking out the few things that can actually hurt the Butcher in the early game, once that's accomplished they send him in to kill the rest of the enemy army on his own. The reverse principle applies here; identify the units you need later in the game, and preserve them.


BACK TO THE WAY OF THE WATER WARRIORS

So yeah, if you want to play real reactive play, I think you need to stay uncommitted through list composition way into the early game. In Warmachine, ruling out a playstyle (Assassination, Attrition, Scenario) entirely means committing to the other two, or even just one. That's not the Way of Water.


Part 1: Basics

Today I want to talk about Space:


AS THEY MAKE THEIR WAY ACROSS THE ̶U̶N̶I̶V̶E̶R̶S̶E̶ TABLETOP

I already talked at length about threat ranges, overlapping threat ranges, zone denial. etc. Let's look at these again in the context of an actual game:

Last week, my Cygnar squared off (the "square" here being a 48" by 48" gaming table) against my pal's Protectorate forces. Set up was done, I'd managed to deploy more compactly than I used to, even though we were playing incursion (yaay for me!), and first turn was about to start. Here was what I saw across the thinly terrained table, from left to right:

A Forest, Knights Exampler (melee monsters that kill elite hard targets), Deliverers (long-range AOE-lobbers that threaten light infantry), Cinerators (more heavy knights), Zealots (more AOEs). Ignoring the warjacks and everything else in the second line for a moment, I found myself staring at what seemed like a cluster of overlaying threat ranges threatening everything I got, both the light ranged and the heavy melee units. This only got more complicated when his Warcaster started laying down a smokescreen in front of his army...

Comparing notes after the game with my opponent, something I can't recommend enough, I got to see the same moment (between deployment and turn one) through his eyes:

Across the table, up center, stood a powerful unit of Forgeguard rocking ARM 21, threatening all his heavy units. They were flanked on both sides by Gunmages and Blazers that threatened his army with vicious hit & run needle strikes from range. Add hated Eiryss, a Minuteman hungry to run into his forces and shred face with a rain of grenades and a powerful ranged caster trailing the Forgeguard in the second line, and my opponent felt his approach routes denied just as much as I did.

The game itself became pretty intense, with some bold moves early on on both sides, aiming to overcome the initial standoff. This piece is not about the game, however, it's about the initial standoff.

My point is this: Both our armies controlled the space in front of them. I didn't want to put Eiryss a few inch from the right table edge, but the presence of the Deliverers in the very center of the table in combination with the utter hatred of her by my opponent left me little choice. I couldn't advance across the center and take potshots the way I wanted to with my Gunmages (mounted or otherwise) either, because of the AOE threat right in front of them. The units not threatened by the Deliverers all lived in fear of the elite knights framing the Deliverers on both sides. Which meant they could operate within the Deliverer threat ranges, but could not get close enough to do their own thing without the counter-thread.


ACROSS THE TABLETOP

Again, threat ranges and overlying threat ranges and area denial are just part of the equation. Position in general is key to this game. We already talked about SPD 4 models jogging across the table, trying to get where they need to be in time. We talked about zones and zone control, about match-ups, about terrain you had to hug or avoid. Like in chess, sometimes it's worth trading a piece for a good position on the board.


SPREADING OUT

But if there is the board on the macro scale, then there is the unit formation at the micro scale. One of the most important formations in my mind is the anti-AOE spread in which every model in a unit is positioned about 2" away from each other, forming small triangles. The difference between seven Gunmages spread out like that and seven Gunmages clumped together B2B is often seven dead Gunmages after a single AOE.

However, spread out like that, the second line often gets denied their shots, because the unit is operating at extreme range, or because there's only a narrow firing gap between terrain and intervening models. Either way, I've repeatedly been tempted into close clumps, sacrificing my own models in the process. This happened in said game against the Protectorate once again; My opponent used scattered ruins and smoke to deny all LOS to his army except for a tight cluster of 5 Zealots visible inside the smoke. It felt like the perfect spot for an Arcane Inferno. I guess it was, as I killed all five in a single strike. This was the turn before my opponent's feat turn. He brought back four of his five dead Cinerators (my Forgeguard had bravely advanced into the smoke and taken their hammer to the fanatic knights) behind my Forgeguard in nasty proximity to my Caster (who barely survived the charge). He also brought back two Zealots in close proximity to my Gunmages. Close enough to lob firebombs right into my cluster of ... burnt corpses, as it turned out.

There's also something called the Fan. Essentially, you position a small portion of your melee unit ahead of their comrades, baiting your opponent into a charge. Those select few might die, but the rest of your unit is then in position to take on your opponent. In a way, it's the Chess / Punishment principle writ small.


COME THE CASTER

One of the oldest dilemmas faced by Warmachine players is the question where to put their caster. As the queen, you want him at the front doing damage, as the king you want her in the back, screened by the rest of your army. It's another question of space and positioning, again.

What helped me a bit here is the concept of Backfield, Midfield and Upfield Caster. I'm not going to explain which caster is which, if you need help, ask the veteran faction player of your trust and they will certainly help you. But just knowing there's usually a general idea how far upfront each caster needs to be should be reassuring.

Just don't overestimate what Upfield caster means. My last two games with Stryker2, both played against the same fledgling player in my gaming group, both ended with me winning the War of Attrition before losing Stryker...


BE ZEN

In high school art class, we were once supposed to draw our own hand. My art teacher told me something that blew my mind (ten years later, when I understood what he meant): If you have trouble painting the hand, paint the space between the fingers instead!

By the same token, start seeing the empty space on the tabletop.

I can't say more on this, however. Like any Zen puzzle, it can't be explained, just experienced.

(Although I can only recommend the consumption of green tee in long, slow sips as you look thoughtfully at the horizon while you send your men to die for your p̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶q̶u̶a̶r̶r̶e̶l̶s̶ eternal glory.)


GO SEAGNAR SEAHAWKS

I already explained the similarities to chess, with threat ranges, denied space, models covering each other. Let me give you another metaphor:

Warmachine is American Football, your Warcaster is the quarterback trying to throw the ball, while your army is the offensive line protecting him against the "pass rush" by the other team's defense. Except the ball is focus the quarterback tosses to his teammates for small gains (and sometimes for the big game winning touch down drive, or he might keep it and charge forward himself) and both your offense and defense are on the field at the same time.

Also, my favorite team/faction wears dark blue and and is operating out of Seattle.


ONCE AROUND THE ̶U̶N̶I̶V̶E̶R̶S̶E̶ TABLETOP

Let me finish this one with another snapshot of my game against the Protec army from above: Annoyed by both the smoke screen and the tight frontline of overlapping threats, I ended up running my Blazers around the enemy army. By turn two or three, I occupied the open space behind my opponent, forcing him to turn part of his army around. Remember what I said about seeing empty space? Zen.


MAIN

I've been asked to talk about deployment and the mental preparations directly before a game.


KNOW YOUR ENEMY

I will assume that by the time your army hits the board, you already know thyself. Now it's time to know thy enemy.

Warmachine comes with these incredibly handy cards that explains how every unit works. Read them.

My gaming group has this ritual by now, before each game, once the board is set up (or while a third player is still setting up the board), both players hand the cards for their whole army to their opponent and take the time to carefully read his. This adds about 20 minutes to each game, but it's time spent worth well.

Unless of course you feel comfortable with the army you're going to play against. I'm a bit the exception in my gaming group in that I generally don't have to read the cards my opponents hand over to me, knowing pretty much what their units can do. Which means I haven't done said exercise for a while now, and will need to combine memory and guesswork to describe what one should look for in those enemy cards.

First off all, look at the offensive and defensive potential of their units/models. What can they threaten, what do they fear, which of your own attacks can they ignore outright. Speed is also an important factor, especially in combination with movement buffs. I once handed my opponent a deck of cards including Stryker2, Anastasia di Bray and Madelyn Corbeau. My opponent was aware that I had a bunch of speed buffs, but never realized how much movement tricks I could pull off until the actual game was already underway.

Next, carefully look at support models. They are probably there for a reason, find out what that reason is. Perhaps your opponent brought a Squire simply because he likes to measure the full 14" gun range of his caster's big gun, but don't rely on it. Even some thoughtless inclusions can end up producing unsuspected synergies later in the game. If your opponent didn't think about them before the game, that doesn't mean he can't discover them during the actual game. So better be save than sorry, extra caution is never a bad thing.

Once all of that is done, I suggest you take a really, really close look at the enemy caster. Again, unless you know him or her by heart. At the very least, read the feat carefully, make sure you understand his spells, and get a good idea for his resilience against enemy attacks. The enemy in this case being you.


MATCH THE MATCH-UPS

The next step, in my opinion, is figuring out the best and worst match-ups between your armies. I once watched a game between two of my pals, one ran Khador, the other ran Protec. There was the main game, revolving around the hard army cores facing off in the center of the field and there was a secondary battle taking place on the flanks. Basically, they had brought Errants and Deliverers vs. Widowmakers and Doom Reavers. After-game analysis brought up that these four units were a perfect hunter-prey circle: Doom Reavers eat Deliverers, Deliverers crush Widowmakers, Widwmakers killshot Errants and Errants munch Doom Reavers. Understanding these things before the game really really helps shape the fight in your favor.


IDENTIFY KEY UNITS

In every game, there will be certain units that become essential, either as counters to enemy tactics (answers) or as a threat your opponent can't easily defend against (questions). Understanding which these are, or can be if you manage to remove just the right unit or two early, can shape the outcome of the whole game.


DECIDE PLAYSTYLE

As you may know by now, I prefer to bring balanced lists that I can adjust to the enemy and the battlefield. Under ideal situations, I have attrition, assassination and field control potential. So will your opponent. Comparing the two armies, figure out which one offers the most potential against this enemy. Also, figure out whether you're Beatdown or Control.


BEATDOWN AND CONTROL

Beatdown and Control are incredibly potent terms from the M:TG trading card game. The theory essentially is this: When two equally strong decks clash, one will always be faster and the other stronger in the endgame. Understanding which is which is, supposedly, often the key to victory or defeat. In Warmachine, Beatdown often correlates to melee power - get in there fast if you want to win, Control to ranged firepower (and potentially also stalling abilities) - keep the enemy away long enough and your guns will get the job done. It's not always clear which one is which, if for instance both players brought melee-heavy armies, but it still helps to keep these terms in mind.


A SHORT DETOUR

I once crushed an opponent in a game of 40K simply because he mistook his army for the beatdown. His army wasn't that different from his other armies, what had changed was my army, instead of the usual evasive hit & run ranged space elves, I had brought in-your-face aggressive space elves. Not knowing what my army was all about doomed him. Being able to read the cards for my army before the game would have helped, too. Which brings us back to my previous point: Read the fragging m̶a̶n̶u̶a̶l̶ cards!


ENTER THE BATTLEFIELD

You also should take the time to assess the battlefield a bit. Napoleons biggest advantage over his enemies was that he actually studied the terrain before his battles, I believe. The first question I always ask is: Where are the access routes to the objectives? After that comes: What are good spots to hide Warcasters in? And then finally: How does the battlefield affect specific units and matchups? Rough terrain, cover, elevation, obstacles, etc. can all affect different units differently. Widowmakers for instance are only half as scary without cover or concealment to hide in/behind (unless of course your opponent decided that Fog of War is the new black, as my opponent in my last game did).


SET UP

The first question I ask myself during actual setup is: What's my point of impact? Which units do I want inside the zones or near the flags first. And how do I get them there? Which terrain will get in my way, how do I navigate around it?

Also important: Which models need to start in close proximity. I once overran one of my opponents simply because he'd placed his heavy warjack more than 6" away from Irusk1. Maneuvering to correct his mistake threw his whole formation into wild confusion, opening up opportunities for me to exploit.

I already talked about the block formation in the center of the board favored by veteran players, and hinted at the main reason I don't always comply with it: Unfortunate terrain between my deployment zone and the scenario objectives.

If you're going second or deploying AdDep units, it's also useful to remember the match-ups you wanted. Don't place Knights directly across from Snipers, if you can avoid it. When going first, with some experience you can still stack the match-up game in your favor. Your Knights are afraid of those snipers? Put them on the flank where the terrain doesn't favor the snipers. Want to make sure, put the knights next to your long range AOE lobbers - most snipers hate those and will either stay their distance or pay the price.


READY, SET, GO

So, you're done deploying, you went through all the match-ups and everything else I talked about, and now you're ready to go. Just hand each warjack a focus, unless they can run without focus, and run. We already talked about this: Lateral moves, running into positions/formations, rushing towards zones or flags. The first turn is always a run turn, unless extremely rare circumstances dictate otherwise. Run forward, the combat action usually starts in turn two, and by the end of turn two, the game is often headed to its conclusion already. (Which doesn't mean we don't sometimes play nasty attrition way into turn five or six. Sometimes it really comes down to three models on each side desperately clawing at each others faces.)


LEARNING TO UNPACK

This is actually new to myself as well, but between the tightly packed starting formation generally favored by veterans and timed game turns in tournaments, some players develop opening moves they can perform even half-asleep, often called "unpacking", as their closely packed army stretches unto the battlefield.

Compare these to opening moves in Chess, fixed build orders for the first ten buildings/units in Starcraft and the scripted 10-15 opening plays many NFL teams use to get their offense going.


FINAL THOUGHTS

Read the cards, know your enemy, identify favorable match-ups, plan access routes to the objectives, practice your unpacking move and you should be well prepared for your next game. Good Hunting!


MAIN

Let's talk about Feats today.


TO FEAT OR NOT TO FEAT?

I distinctly remember from my early games that Feats tormented me. Should I feat now? Should I keep it for later? What if I need it later? What if this turn is the best turn to use it and I'm letting this opportunity go by?

Starting with Cygnar, trying to make sense of Stryker1's Invincible was pretty bad. It helps if you've got an offensive feat. It's easier to use an offensive feat to your advantage as a new player, I believe. Even better when it's a self-reliant feat. Goreshade1, Caine1, Caine2, Feora1, these are all pretty straight forward. As close to point and click as we're going to get in this game, I believe.

Haley1, Kreoss1, Butcher1, Stryker2, these are not exactly self-reliant, but they still happen on your own turn, so they should be easy, right? Except I always struggled to time Haley's feat right. Part of my army was always out of range, another part of my army was going down meanwhile, meaning the longer I waited, the less models I would have left to use Blitz on. And back then, it wasn't exactly easy to prioritize. Today, I feel more comfortable saying this unit firing on that enemy unit has priority and should get the feat, if possible. And I still mistimed it in my last game with Haley, getting off three extra shots from my Blazers while the Stormblades and the Stormclad I really wanted to use the feat on ended out of range somehow...

Now, let's make things even more complicated: Stryker1, Severius1, Old Witch, Haley2, Skarre2, partially Deneghra1 and Irusk1. These feats are reactive. They happen in your opponent's turn. Back in my early games, I've seen Stryker pop his feat only to see the enemy retreat and wait another turn to hit the alpha. Kind of frustrating...

How the heck is a new player supposed to know when the enemy is going to hit him hardest? If he's still struggling with figuring out when his own army might get a good punch in (see Haley1 above)?


MASTERING THE FEAT

I noticed, however, that Stryker's feat got more manageable the moment scenarios came in, because scenarios force the game into high gear early, and you you can't just draw back and withdraw from zones as you like. Which holds true for far more feats than I first suspected. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but the essential turn in many games comes in round two. And turn two feats have become far more common than I first thought. Now, don't get me wrong. There are feats and there are feats. Some are very precise tools that accomplish something special and should be timed perfectly, i.e. Caine2. Others however, like Irusk1 and Stryker1, are more like unaimed AOEs raining down, precise, unguided, doing something, probably. These are generally the hardest to grasp for a new player, in my opinion, and if you have trouble timing them, it's not a bad policy to pop them preemptively in turn 2. Just like taking a Squire with your Warcaster. It's a useful policy while you still figure out the bigger stuff, as long as you eventually get around to revisit these policies.

Learning a complex game like Warmachine is all about compartmentalizing, about knowing what to concentrate on first and what to focus on later once you got the essential basics. This is one of these things.


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Does anyone have any recommendations for B13 replacements that are not completely out of scale?
Third party models perhaps that fit the mold? Anything?

Thanks in advance
RT

PS: I heard Malifax has some gunmage-convertable models. Anyone got any recommendations there?

Since her release I have played eMorvahna quite abit, atleast considering that I can only play at max one time a week. At 50 I have used the somewhat standard EMorv list(two Stalkers, Gorax, WoO, Morraig, Skinwalkers, Stones and Groves), and it has worked really well, I've been having lots of fun with her, and especially with the Skinwalkers, I have been dieing to get them to do proper work(having mainly used them as a min sized unit in eKaya theme list). But in 35pts I have uptill now used her theme list and I have had fun, but the whole set-up feels just wrong. Counter synergies all over the place! It's mostly the troops I have trouble with; I have tried out Bloodtrackers, Wolf riders and min sized Ravagers with UA and WA(this last unit I don't actually have, I've just been proxying them for 2 games, and I won't buy them until I know that I'm going to use them). And I have no idea of which unit needs carnivore?! I'm starting to think that in order to make that part of her to work it needs to be on a beast(not ideal).

I really want to make her work in 35 as we mostly play that point scale here, theme(and I do like themed armies) or not. The beasts I'm fairly certain on; Stalker(duh) and either a Gnarlhorn or a Pureblood. The rest is a bit of a haze for me at the moment, I have tried to use the druids more lately too(I have not found out exactly how they tick yet), though not with her. Anyone have some input on how they work with her? The only synergy(other then what give to every caster) I see is that with Fog of War, they don't need the vortex so much, how much does this effect their performance?

Anyone has any other experience they want to share about eMorvahna in 35?

Today I want to talk about mentality, awareness and other things Zen.


ANOTHER STUDY IN HUMILITY

Remember that con, where I brought LARP swords?

I want to share another experience I had that day. I was fighting someone, not sure if it was the same guy I already talked about or not, it's not really important either. After a few short minutes he stopped fighting to tell me: "You are predictable. You always repeat the same single strike. What I do is, I study my opponents." Not sure he added, but he might as well have, because it was obvious from his tone: And when I'm done studying your fighting style, I will beat you all the time, every single time. Because I'm better than you!

Now, let me tell you my side of the story. As you might know by now, at heart I'm the reactive guy. I like to control fights set the terms of engagement, and I'm not really running on all cylinders until my opponent puts out interesting moves I can try to counter / answer. So take a guess what really happened in these three or four minutes.


CROUCHING TIGER...

Essentially, I was ... lurking. Is that the word I'm looking for? When you wait, watching your opponent, waiting for the first sign of weakness to pounce. The one-dimensional power strike I was supposedly repeating, the question I fully committed to, was little more, from my perspective, than a mere feint, a distraction, an easily deflectable strike with little power behind it that was merely supposed to draw a reaction from him. It wasn't my finisher, my end-game, in fact it was my standard opening move. What he did, essentially, in terms of Warmachine is put his unscreened caster in my Sorscha's or Caine's threat range four times in a row. And then tell me my game was one-dimensional, I had only that one move. So yeah... a bit more humility next time, please.


MORE HUMILITY WHERE HUMILITY IS DUE

I used to play Go. You know, the Japanese game, with the black and white stones? I wasn't exactly good, I never got further than about 17th kyu, which roughly translates to advanced beginner. I still had fun playing and I used to be the strongest player in my circle of friends. Anyway, that one time I was playing the brother of a very, very close friend. I was beating him badly, yet he had nothing better to do than criticize my game. "You're playing pretty small. You should be playing bigger!" That's what his teacher had told him, I could see why, so he was focusing on it at the time; I get that; still, playing small was a deliberate choice on my part at the time, because it was effective against him. I was using those small moves to draw him where I wanted him, building up to a big move in slow, careful steps. To put thing into familiar terms, small moves generally correlate to Beatdown, big moves to Control. What I was doing at the time was using these small moves, these aggressive attacks, to control the board without him noticing. In other words, I was beating him using a technique that he didn't understandsimilar to what I did against the sword guy from above. What both of them could have done, if they had chosen to, is take a step back, look at what was happening, and learn from it; but I guess it's easier telling the person currently beating the crap out of you that he's doing it wrong...


... HIDDEN DRAGON

Essentially, what I was doing in both these cases was beating my opponent with techniques hidden from them, invisible to them. It wouldn't have been difficult to explain to either one what I was doing, what was going on on the layer they didn't see, what the purpose behind my seemingly clumsy moves was. Sure, I would have given up my advantage be explaining it, but I don't really care about that anymore; making someone else a better player doesn't make me worse, it only pushed me to improve myself. Explaining to them what I was doing, I could have put them on a more equal footing. It's just, they were so busy correcting and belittling me, I didn't have the heart to interrupt either of them...

Anyway, about that opening move I used against the sword dude. For my Master Thesis, I read Legacies of the Sword – The Kashima-Shinryû and Samurai Martial Culture by Karl Friday. He went to great efforts to explain the central dogma of the Kashima-Shinryû, boils down to: Every single move is both feint and attack, depending on your opponent's reaction. A whole school of sword fighting committed to non-commitment, if you want.

The Kashima-Shinryû also believes in taking the initiative, in controlling a fight by being the proactive force. Not exactly the Way of the Water Warrior I strive for in gaming, fighting and life in general, but useful none the less. Having thought about the approach for a while now, I consider its style proreactive. Proactive reaction. Setting up a situation that allows optimal reaction to the opponent's moves. Active defense. Control.


LAYERS

Which brings us to the point of this whole article. This game is played on multiple layers, and it's easy to forget or overlook one of them. How often has every single one of us missed an attack vector, been blindsides by a clever ruse or an unexpected move by our opponent? Remember the recent talk about discipline? That applies to our opponents as much as it applies to us. So unless you fight a perfect player that always makes the optimal move and never misses anything happening on the board, there is always the potential to disrupt, to feint, to obscure. Sometimes we focus so much on some part of the battle that we completely miss what's going on elsewhere on the board. Sometimes it is enough to set up eleven threats to their caster. He might catch ten, miss one and that's the game.


MAIN

Today I want to tie several threads from my Introduction Guide together.


YOU BUILT THAT

Your army is done, it hit the field, what now?

I already talked a lot about army composition. Now, your army is on the field, you can't change it anymore, your opponent stands before you, and you have to play and win. I already talked about the thoughts going through my head before the game begins. I mentioned the good and bad match-ups, the core pieces, etc. I don't feel I really explained what I meant with all of that.

Essentially, it's time to assign roles.


SO THIS IS A ROLEPLAYING GAME NOW???

Nope. What I mean is this: If your army is a well oiled machine that runs your opponent over smoothly, than your models, your pieces, are the cogs that make up your machine. They need to do their jobs, to fulfill their functions, in order for your army to come through. Now, the question is, what are their functions? That can't be known before the actual game. That's why we assign temporary roles.

Dealing with the enemy heavy - that's a role.
Going after the enemy caster - that's another role.
Denying part of the board - that's a role.
Contesting a lone objective - that's a role.
Screening for another unit - that's a role.


THE BLUEPRINT OF A BATTLE PLAN

Basically, we're talking about the blueprint for a battle-plan. An easy way to do it is this: Assign each of your units a primary target they are supposed to go after ("man-to-man cover"), or a part of the board they are supposed to go to ("zone cover"), or a friendly unit they are supposed to protect / assist ("assignment"). These things can change as the battle rages, but we can't plan for every eventuality (unlike Batman).

Which means it's perfectly fine to adjust rules as the game develops, a flanking unit or model can suddenly become a scoring model / unit, a unit can kill it's designated prey and demand new instructions. Etc.

Some models are pretty one-dimensional. There is little you can do with a Protectorate Choir after all the Warjacks are dead. They can still block enemy models, get in their way, clog up charge lanes, etc. however. All I'm saying is that not having a plan for two leftover choirboys that are worth a single point and will have minimal influence on the outcome of the game is acceptable. Especially when you're working under time constraints. Don't worry about a point or two left unsupervised, get the big picture right.

These things apply double if you're getting to play an army composed for you by someone else. If you do, always take the time to ask how it is supposed to work. Under normal circumstances, there should be a structure beneath every selected army, a driving purpose, a web of interactions. Ask what it is. Ask what roles each unit, each model, is supposed to fill. Ask how the army attacks, how it takes an attack, how it deals with DASH, how it intends to win games. Ask for the assassination vectors, ask for the zone denial / board control potential, ask for the attrition game. Don't just put the models down on the table and play. Make sure the screening unit is in front of the other unit it was supposed to screen, that you know what your anti-ARM weapons are to point them at your opponent's ARM.


ACTUALLY...

You know what, screw that. Forget about an army put together for you by someone else. Ask the same questions, no matter who built the army you're about to play with, someone else or you yourself.


MAIN

Today I want to talk about discipline.


DOWN WHERE THE DEAD MEN LIE

I just come off a humiliating defeat. Having played the Cygnar assassination game too much lately, I wanted a change of pace. So I took Haley1 out for a spin. The plan was to castle up, play pure defense and win the war of attrition. I did that surprisingly well in my first two turns. My Blazers were clearing out Errants on the right side of the board, my Rangers were sneaking forward through the left control zone (Outflank scenario) towards the weak left flank of my enemy and my Stormblades and my Stormclad advanced up the middle, towards a favorable match-up against a small jackwall of Repenter-Reckoner-Dervish.

I was playing so well, the frustration my my opponent's face became clearly visible. He denied it, later, saying he was just concentrating on the game, but I felt like he wasn't having fun. Add in a jerkish move on my part early on (when he asked me about the Blazers and Defenders Ward, I told him that my Blessed shots will ignore the DW, but not that I'd rather shoot his Errants with my other ammo types; thinking DW was useledd on the Errants, he left them exposed for my Horsemages), and I started to feel uncomfortable and tried to cheer him up somehow. Both Haley's Temporal Barrier (which he encountered for the first time) and he dice kept screwing him up, though, which made the whole thing even more awkward. Anyway, I think I started pulling some punches, hoping to get him familiar with Haley and her zone control attrition style, so we'd have a better game next time he plays against her.

At this point, I got distracted. Part of it had to do with what I just described, part of it was me winning the War of attrition and getting cocky, and part of it was simple lack of discipline. Feeling like my victory was imminent, I first wasted my feat, which was a simple mistake (I'm still learning how to play Haley, having had a total of 5-ish games with her over the last two years)), and then I sent my Stormclad over to the right flank, persuing both the zone (scenario play) and threatening his caster (assassination game). With the Stormclad gone, his Warjacks broke through my line of Stormblades, opening up an attack vector for Vilmon, who strolled into melee range with Haley, hit her with his sword and broke her.

Honestly, some of the mistakes I made during the game were normal growing pains. I nearly lost my last game with Haley as well, overestimating Temporal Barrier, allowing reached enemy models to walk up to her and hit her. More experience playing her will take care of that. But there's one mistake I made in that game that I really want to talk about:


STICK TO THE PLAN

There was no good reason, at all, to send the Stormclad over to the right side. Quite the opposite, it went against my whole plan for the game. Early on, comparing our lists before set-up (remember Part 9), I realized that his only real anti-ARM weapon was a single Reckoner. If I could remove that, my Stormclad would become near untouchable. And an untouchable Stormclad makes for a great finisher, especially since Haley does not bring a strong endgame of her own, unlike our assassination-oriented casters. Anyway, the plan always resolved around containment, keeping a tight formation, grinding my opponent down over time while denying him access to my army. I even left the right zone deserted for a round in my turn 2, feeling that it didn't matter if he took a Control Point early, if that ensured my Blazers could wipe out his Errants without further casualties. And if his caster came forward to dominate, all the better. The decision was right, I think. Everything was going according to the plan.

And then I got cocky. The list wasn't designed for Scenario or Assassination list, I was in a bad position to attempt either, things were going my well in the grind.


THOSE TWO STINGING LOSSES TO OUR FLEDGELING PLAYER

I lost my first two games against our fledgeling Khador player as well. I played Stryker2 both times, both times had a good start, hitting his army fast and hard, and then I got lost in the massacre and didn't see the attack vectors he had on my Stryker. Again, less overconfidence and more discipline, and I should have won both games.


CONSOLIDATION

I recently read an article on a Warmachine blog (steamforged, if I remember correctly) that talked about consolidation. How early gains are often lost as we push forward further, and how veteran players seem to consolidate their early gains. Pushing forward because things are going so well apparently does more for your opponent an his retaliation strike than it does for your own army. Either way, it's a question of discipline.


AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE

I don't think that Haley list really was a reactive list. It knew from early on, even before the game was started, what it wanted to do. It wanted to play defense and attrition. Reactive play often gets confused with defensive play. By me as well, sometimes. This wasn't a list of Water Warriors. This list knew exactly what it wanted to do and what it was good at.

Although, truth be told, the plan I had was a plan of attrition warfare. Focusing on defense over offense, I needed to think differently. If my usual assassination approach is all about driving a spike into the shell of a coconut (the coconut being my opponent's army), the Haley approach is catching the coconut, holding it in place and applying equal pressure from all sides simultaneously. I wasn't trying to drive a spike into that coconut and get to the soft, nutritious center, I was trying to squeeze it, to crush the entire nut. By which I mean, I wasn't focusing on a particular attack route, I was constantly focusing on the whole battle-line. Contain over Attack, Control over Beatdown. At least over the early turns of the game...

Again, using the football metaphor, if you play offense, you have the one ball and need to do something good with it. That's your whole focus. If you play defense, you need to contain that very football, which means you have to deny your opponent along the whole Line of Scrimmage. It doesn't matter if your right side is covering and blocking perfectly if your opponent finds a glaring hole on your left...


GOING FORWARD

Anyway, despite my flawed game and the sadly deserving loss, I really enjoyed the defensive approach. I'll probably go forward spreading my time between Caine2 and Haley1 in the near future. Interesting change of pace between the two of them.


MAIN

Today I want to talk about sportsmanship and respect for the people we play with.


PAGE FIVE

I quote:

WIN GRACIOUSLY AND LOSE VALIANTLY

It's right there, on the very first page of the Warmachine Prime rulebook, a mission statement by Privateer Press, if you want. And I think we sometimes forget about it.


A LITTLE STORY

Last weekend, I brought LARP-Swords to a fan convention. It wasn't exactly planed, it just happened, but it turned into great fun for a decent number of people. Yet a single negative experience cast a shadow over the whole thing: There was one guy, apparently he had a sword or two at home, and he apparently considered himself a great swordsman. So he came over, eager to show off his amazing skills, I guess, and to be admired and praised. Except, it didn't go that way. My weekly training paid off and he was slightly outmatched, skillwise. At which point the excuses started. He kept talking about his greatshield and how it makes him invincible, and about his great swords, that would cut through mine like butter. Well, guess what, I wouldn't expect otherwise from metal swords hitting spandex swords...

Anyway, he was apparently pretty frustrated that things didn't go as well as he had expected and that he didn't get the respect and admiration he apparently thought he deserved.


A STUDY IN HUMILITY

The whole exercise led to a frustrating enlightenment: I fall into the same trap from time to time. Mostly it's when I'm new somewhere, people don't really know me, I am afraid to be rejected, or worse, to be belittled. So my ego takes over and makes me eager to show everyone how awesome I am. I want to show off my skills, be respected, admired, I want to feel that my words hold authority. So far, that's not entirely bad. Drive and ambition, competitiveness in a word, are very well in the spirit of Warmachine. The problems start when things don't go my way, when I start losing games. Suddenly I'm the one who's making excuses, afraid to lose face.


LOSING GRACIOUSLY

Except winning or losing that game counts about as much as being able to handle a sword did for the guy from above. People won't judge me by the result of a single game. They will judge my behavior as I win or lose, however. Personally, I myself really admire people that can lose valiantly. That can smile as you take down their caster, compliment you on a victory well deserved, make you feel like they enjoy your victory with you. It's great playing against that kind of player. I truly aspire to become one of them myself.


I'M NOT LOSING TO A ROOKIE!

There is another trap I tend to fall into. I am playing against a beginner, trying to make the game fun for him and to sneak in some subtle teaching moments, and then suddenly the game turns against me and I feel like my authority starts slipping away. I feel like if I lose now, I lose my authority. He will dismiss what I have to say about the game, because why listen to someone who he has already bested.

And that's the great fallacy, I think. If he's really beating me, perhaps he's more talented than I expected, or perhaps my own game has flaws I don't understand yet. Time will tell. And if I'm really as good as I think I am, I'll assert my dominance not over the course of this one single game, but over the course of the next eleven, and the dozen after that.


WINNING IN DEFEAT

Either way, last week I lost to someone who's always been worse in tabletop than me, who just played his third or forth game of Warmachine, and I lost simple because I got overconfident. When we were done, I shook his hand, smiled at him, and complimented him on his unexpected victory. I felt the urge to explain what I had done wrong, to make excuses, but I put the spotlight not on my defeat but on his victory. I might have lost the game, but I feel like I won that day. Big.


MAIN

Today, I want to talk a bit about unit viability and about questioning established wisdom and authority.


RIDING OUT

It is fascination to watch the discussion on Khador Outriders taking place since their release. The general consensus on their playability before the actual models came out was "they're bad, Magic Ability 6 makes them horrible, they don't offer anything". There are still strong voices repeating that message. But there's been also a steady stream of people that actually played them, and they seem to do pretty well in actual games, away from pure theorymachine.


AS IT TURNS OUT...

Exampler Errants were considered one of the strongest infantry units in the game, especially under Defender's Ward. As it turns out, regular AOE blast damage from Winter Guard Rocketeers, Ogryn Assault Corps, Deliverers, etc. eats right through them.

Many people considered Man-O-War Bombardiers a terribad unit. As it turns out, Signs & Portents was all they needed, it pushes them so far beyond good into amazing that they are actually considered undercosted in some circles these days.

Cygnar is known for the lack of good anti-ARM. Part of the problem is the neglect generally thrown at the Long Gunners. As it turns out, combined melee attacks from a single maxed-out unit of Long Gunners eats through pretty much every known armor-skew list there is.


WELL, ACTUALLY...

I can see some of you already raising your hands in protest. So, let's get to the point: Don't trust what you read on the internet blindly. A lot of people write a lot of things that are wrong, partially right, or just right in the context of their specific meta game. Take Stryker1 for instance, his feat has been described in turns as "so powerful it is broken" to "useless, with all the fire and corrosion coming in on the front line units". I don't think either side is lying - unlike me, in the three paragraphs above. Those were fabricated out of thin air, in order to make my point:

Don't Trust Anything Written On The Internet Blindly.

Not as far as tabletop is concerned, and not as far as anything else is concerned, actually.


MAIN

Let's talk about Feats today.


TO FEAT OR NOT TO FEAT?

I distinctly remember from my early games that Feats tormented me. Should I feat now? Should I keep it for later? What if I need it later? What if this turn is the best turn to use it and I'm letting this opportunity go by?

Starting with Cygnar, trying to make sense of Stryker1's Invincible was pretty bad. It helps if you've got an offensive feat. It's easier to use an offensive feat to your advantage as a new player, I believe. Even better when it's a self-reliant feat. Goreshade1, Caine1, Caine2, Feora1, these are all pretty straight forward. As close to point and click as we're going to get in this game, I believe.

Haley1, Kreoss1, Butcher1, Stryker2, these are not exactly self-reliant, but they still happen on your own turn, so they should be easy, right? Except I always struggled to time Haley's feat right. Part of my army was always out of range, another part of my army was going down meanwhile, meaning the longer I waited, the less models I would have left to use Blitz on. And back then, it wasn't exactly easy to prioritize. Today, I feel more comfortable saying this unit firing on that enemy unit has priority and should get the feat, if possible. And I still mistimed it in my last game with Haley, getting off three extra shots from my Blazers while the Stormblades and the Stormclad I really wanted to use the feat on ended out of range somehow...

Now, let's make things even more complicated: Stryker1, Severius1, Old Witch, Haley2, Skarre2, partially Deneghra1 and Irusk1. These feats are reactive. They happen in your opponent's turn. Back in my early games, I've seen Stryker pop his feat only to see the enemy retreat and wait another turn to hit the alpha. Kind of frustrating...

How the heck is a new player supposed to know when the enemy is going to hit him hardest? If he's still struggling with figuring out when his own army might get a good punch in (see Haley1 above)?


MASTERING THE FEAT

I noticed, however, that Stryker's feat got more manageable the moment scenarios came in, because scenarios force the game into high gear early, and you you can't just draw back and withdraw from zones as you like. Which holds true for far more feats than I first suspected. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but the essential turn in many games comes in round two. And turn two feats have become far more common than I first thought. Now, don't get me wrong. There are feats and there are feats. Some are very precise tools that accomplish something special and should be timed perfectly, i.e. Caine2. Others however, like Irusk1 and Stryker1, are more like unaimed AOEs raining down, precise, unguided, doing something, probably. These are generally the hardest to grasp for a new player, in my opinion, and if you have trouble timing them, it's not a bad policy to pop them preemptively in turn 2. Just like taking a Squire with your Warcaster. It's a useful policy while you still figure out the bigger stuff, as long as you eventually get around to revisit these policies.

Learning a complex game like Warmachine is all about compartmentalizing, about knowing what con concentrate first and what to focus on later once you got the essential basics. This is one of these things.


MAIN
FIRST
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Today I want to talk about Space:


AS THEY MAKE THEIR WAY ACROSS THE ̶U̶N̶I̶V̶E̶R̶S̶E̶ TABLETOP

I already talked at length about threat ranges, overlapping threat ranges, zone denial. etc. Let's look at these again in the context of an actual game:

Last week, my Cygnar squared off (the "square" here being a 48" by 48" gaming table) against my pal's Protectorate forces. Set up was done, I'd managed to deploy more compactly than I used to, even though we were playing incursion (yaay for me!), and first turn was about to start. Here was what I saw across the thinly terrained table, from left to right:

A Forest, Knights Exampler (melee monsters that kill elite hard targets), Deliverers (long-range AOE-lobbers that threaten light infantry), Cinerators (more heavy knights), Zealots (more AOEs). Ignoring the warjacks and everything else in the second line for a moment, I found myself staring at what seemed like a cluster of overlaying threat ranges threatening everything I got, both the light ranged and the heavy melee units. This only got more complicated when his Warcaster started laying down a smokescreen in front of his army...

Comparing notes after the game with my opponent, something I can't recommend enough, I got to see the same moment (between deployment and turn one) through his eyes:

Across the table, up center, stood a powerful unit of Forgeguard rocking ARM 21, threatening all his heavy units. They were flanked on both sides by Gunmages and Blazers that threatened his army with vicious hit & run needle strikes from range. Add hated Eiryss, a Minuteman hungry to run into his forces and shred face with a rain of grenades and a powerful ranged caster trailing the Forgeguard in the second line, and my opponent felt his approach routes denied just as much as I did.

The game itself became pretty intense, with some bold moves early on on both sides, aiming to overcome the initial standoff. This piece is not about the game, however, it's about the initial standoff.

My point is this: Both our armies controlled the space in front of them. I didn't want to put Eiryss a few inch from the right table edge, but the presence of the Deliverers in the very center of the table in combination with the utter hatred of her by my opponent left me little choice. I couldn't advance across the center and take potshots the way I wanted to with my Gunmages (mounted or otherwise) either, because of the AOE threat right in front of them. The units not threatened by the Deliverers all lived in fear of the elite knights framing the Deliverers on both sides. Which meant they could operate within the Deliverer threat ranges, but could not get close enough to do their own thing without the counter-thread.


ACROSS THE TABLETOP

Again, threat ranges and overlying threat ranges and area denial are just part of the equation. Position in general is key to this game. We already talked about SPD 4 models jogging across the table, trying to get where they need to be in time. We talked about zones and zone control, about match-ups, about terrain you had to hug or avoid. Like in chess, sometimes it's worth trading a piece for a good position on the board.


SPREADING OUT

But if there is the board on the macro scale, then there is the unit formation at the micro scale. One of the most important formations in my mind is the anti-AOE spread in which every model in a unit is positioned about 2" away from each other, forming small triangles. The difference between seven Gunmages spread out like that and seven Gunmages clumped together B2B is often seven dead Gunmages after a single AOE.

However, spread out like that, the second line often gets denied their shots, because the unit is operating at extreme range, or because there's only a narrow firing gap between terrain and intervening models. Either way, I've repeatedly been tempted into close clumps, sacrificing my own models in the process. This happened in said game against the Protectorate once again; My opponent used scattered ruins and smoke to deny all LOS to his army except for a tight cluster of 5 Zealots visible inside the smoke. It felt like the perfect spot for an Arcane Inferno. I guess it was, as I killed all five in a single strike. This was the turn before my opponent's feat turn. He brought back four of his five dead Cinerators (my Forgeguard had bravely advanced into the smoke and taken their hammer to the fanatic knights) behind my Forgeguard in nasty proximity to my Caster (who barely survived the charge). He also brought back two Zealots in close proximity to my Gunmages. Close enough to lob firebombs right into my cluster of ... burnt corpses, as it turned out.

There's also something called the Fan. Essentially, you position a small portion of your melee unit ahead of their comrades, baiting your opponent into a charge. Those select few might die, but the rest of your unit is then in position to take on your opponent. In a way, it's the Chess / Punishment principle writ small.


COME THE CASTER

One of the oldest dilemmas faced by Warmachine players is the question where to put their caster. As the queen, you want him at the front doing damage, as the king you want her in the back, screened by the rest of your army. It's another question of space and positioning, again.

What helped me a bit here is the concept of Backfield, Midfield and Upfield Caster. I'm not going to explain which caster is which, if you need help, ask the veteran faction player of your trust and they will certainly help you. But just knowing there's usually a general idea how far upfront each caster needs to be should be reassuring.

Just don't overestimate what Upfield caster means. My last two games with Stryker2, both played against the same fledgling player in my gaming group, both ended with me winning the War of Attrition before losing Stryker...


BE ZEN

In high school art class, we were once supposed to draw our own hand. My art teacher told me something that blew my mind (ten years later, when I understood what he meant): If you have trouble painting the hand, paint the space between the fingers instead!

By the same token, start seeing the empty space on the tabletop.

I can't say more on this, however. Like any Zen puzzle, it can't be explained, just experienced.

(Although I can only recommend the consumption of green tee in long, slow sips as you look thoughtfully at the horizon while you send your men to die for your p̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶q̶u̶a̶r̶r̶e̶l̶s̶ eternal glory.)


GO SEAGNAR SEAHAWKS

I already explained the similarities to chess, with threat ranges, denied space, models covering each other. Let me give you another metaphor:

Warmachine is American Football, your Warcaster is the quarterback trying to throw the ball, while your army is the offensive line protecting him against the "pass rush" by the other team's defense. Except the ball is focus the quarterback tosses to his teammates for small gains (and sometimes for the big game winning touch down drive, or he might keep it and charge forward himself) and both your offense and defense are on the field at the same time.

Also, my favorite team/faction wears dark blue and and is operating out of Seattle.


ONCE AROUND THE ̶U̶N̶I̶V̶E̶R̶S̶E̶ TABLETOP

Let me finish this one with another snapshot of my game against the Protec army from above: Annoyed by both the smoke screen and the tight frontline of overlapping threats, I ended up running my Blazers around the enemy army. By turn two or three, I occupied the open space behind my opponent, forcing him to turn part of his army around. Remember what I said about seeing empty space? Zen.


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