jdripley

Wow, hey, it's been quite a while since I've even posted in these forums. But I'll give you my perspective as a gamer who loves Warlord but never plays it. I started playing many moons ago prior to the 2.0 reboot. I found it to be a really fun and accessable game that really rewards smart thinking. The basic rules are dead simple, and the complexity comes from all of the different abilities that a model or faction has. So when I started, I had a leader and a bunch of warriors. So did my buddy. We lined them up across the table from each other and had at it. We had loads of fun feeling the tension as models began dying, and in the end, one or two little Dwarves were left and the game was over! We enjoyed how much of a nail biter it was, and were eager to try ranged models, magic, and something other than the basic warrior type soldier. Years later, after many many games, I found Warlord to be a game with lots of staying power. It wasn't the sort of game where one decision would carry the game for you. Instead, lots of seemingly little choices throughout the game compound together to make or break the game. Nearly every game is a nail biter because it's a pretty level playingfield. Yes some models are better, but the in-game cost is calculated good enough that there really aren't many (if any) super over powered choices you can make. That's a great thing. So, I like Warlord because it's a great game where you can agonize over your choices and slowly eak out an advantage over your opponent, and it's also a game where you can have a chance of recovering from a really bad turn. I don't play anymore because there just isn't a local player base. Everybody locally plays Warmachine. That's OK with me because I like that game too. But I still remember fondly all of those great times I played Warlord. It's a great game.

I use glass beads and various small plastic tokens and bits for marking model states and so forth and small d6 for marking damage. As herzogbrian notes, most games similar to Warlord involve quite alot of tracking of spells and effects. I've got a little plastic tray (taken from the cover of a toolbox I've had for ages, originally for nails, screws, and other small bits that need organizing) that holds a dry erase marker, pencil, the full run of common dice plus extras of d10 and d6, and 8 different colors of plastic tokens, plus my 1/2 inch tape. It goes with me wherever I game - at the D&D table I'm mainly using the dice but find various uses for the tokens. When I play Warmachine or Warlord the dice used are of course of a more limited variety, and the plastic tokens get used more often. I've found it to be very handy to have one container with the accessories I need for all of my games, instead of trying to have different sets of dice or tokens for all of the games, or worse still having some accessories that are common to several or all of the games and others that are specific - all kept in different places. It's no fun when you get ready to game and have to wonder where X or Y important bit is.

Just by way of an update, it appears as though they're getting ready to announce a release date. You can join the fun @InnerSphereNews!

For you mech fans that may not know about this: There's a new Mechwarrior game being made! Piranha games is working on it and yesterday they launched a Twitter campaign under the name InnerSphereNews. They're revealing some piece of art, giving a new bit every few hundred followers. So log into your Twitter and follow InnerSphereNews! And if you're not on twitter already, what are you waiting for? www.twitter.com! This looks like it could be a serious butt kicker of a game. Also a trailer - not very current, but very awesome:

I'm not sure if my brush is just junk, or if I'm mistreating it in some way. My brush is a 5/0 Royal Gold RG 250. That's what's written on the side of it at any rate. I think it came in a pack or 4 for maybe 10 dollars. So it's a pretty cheap brush. My problem is that very quickly the tip curls on me, and the bristles tend to fray out and not hold a good point. I tend to use paints either straight from the bottle or slightly thinned with water. I use the cheapo craft acrylics - Americana or Delta Ceramcoat brand. I believe that my painting technique is pretty good. I don't "poke" with the brush, I draw it back towards my fingers so that I'm painting with the bristles flowing over the mini as opposed to pushing towards the mini. Is it just that my brush is cheap junk? Is it that I don't thin my paints enough? A combination of the two? I'd like to invest in a quality brush but I'm concerned that it's my technique and that I'd just destroy a good brush the way I destroy the cheapo brushes. Help!!

Even if it's painted in Hello Kitty colors, it's always a good thing to see a Marauder! Good job on this one.

I found Games Workshop's "How to Paint Citadel Miniatures" to be very helpful. I've seen a copy of it in nearly every local game store that I've been in, otherwise I'm sure amazon would have it. That's how I got my start. The funny thing is, my first miniatures - in my mind - are alot better than many of my current minis. I poured over that book, studied its techniques, and followed them to the letter. No, the result wasn't worthy of a prize or anything, but the paint jobs were crisp and neatly done. Lately I've been in a funk where I just can't be bothered to take all the time to do it right, so I take all of these shortcuts that end up making the minis look pretty sloppy. Some day, when I find my motivation again, I'll re-read that book and try to paint well again. You know what, I think part of it is that I don't prime in black anymore. I used to prime black and it was really fun to layer things up from the shadow to the highlights. Now that I've switched to gray primer it's such a drag to not have a useable base layer of color. Or maybe I'm just making excuses for myself haha!

My opinion here, but this is my take on archery in general: The attack values (RAV) on archers, generally speaking, are fairly low to begin with. 3 or 4 is a common number for a regular soldier with a bow. The vaunted Vale Archers of the elves only have a RAV of 3. Most elites or leaders that I would consider to be real threats on the battlefield have DVs of 11-13, meaning that somewhere around one in 10, maybe 2 in 10 arrows will actually land. That makes the "important targets" pretty tough to take down with arrows. Regular soldiers without shields are perfect targets for archers. Anything with a DV of 9 is hit half the time with RAV 3. In general I initially try to use archers to thin the ranks of the regular soldiers of my opponent - and typically that means shooting the closest enemy models, as most players lead their charges with regular soldiers. So it is less of a house rule issue and more of a realization that within a turn or two those enemies will be in melee, and I'd better try to make my few shots count as they come running in! Later in the game as models begin getting really messed up, if I've managed to keep some of my archers alive, I like to use them to finish off weakened enemy models. At that point I will absolutely go after a leader or elite with an archer, but that's usually the first time I'll try it in a game.

Cool review man! I think you guys will find that as you play more you'll get used to the special abilities pretty quickly. People tend to play the same models often, so pretty quickly you'll realize that all of your templars have deflect and you'll just subconsciously add in the deflect value when you're being shot at by arrows. Some of the other SA's don't come up quite as often as Deflect does (seems like you guys were using a good number of archers, that's a good thing!), but you'll get your head around then sooner rather than later.

This is a female, not that you can tell really... So is this, and you can tell it's female. Leans more towards modern than sci-fi As is this one. All of these are from a new-ish company/game called MERCS. They're a little pricier than Reaper, but not out of sight by any means. More in line with PP's prices.

Kargir - 999 points Troop 1 Toghra the Despoiler Venomspite, Gnoll Sniper x 2 Gnoll Raider x 6 Gnoll Reaver x 3 Musician Troop 2 Hrodash the Painmaster Granak the Butcher Black Orc Marauder x 2 Black Orc Hunter x 2 Black Orc Archer x 2 Troop 3 Torg, Tundra Stalker Helm of the Tundra Beast Tundra Stalker x 2 Other Equipment Luck Stone How about something like that? 23 models - so less than half of the models needed for that other list I posted. All Gnolls in the 1st troop and all Orcs in the 2nd and 3rd troops. I would use the "Wild Beasts" doctrine with this list. With it you can get some crazy things out of troop 1. With the Musician and the benefit from Wild Beasts your Gnoll Raiders can charge with swift attack an impressive 21 inches! I would first cast Bless with Toghra, then advance the Snipers and let them take their shots, and then use Swift Attack to send your Gnoll Raiders out to the enemy. Gnoll Raiders are great shock troopers. The Gnoll Reavers can follow closely behind and exploit the mess that the Raiders make. They'll fold quickly to enemy attacks, but they ought to take plenty of bad guys down with them. Meanwhile Torg and his Tundra Stalkers will be pretty far up field on account of having Ranger - and they hit pretty hard when they get into melee. Hrodash the Painmaster can bat cleanup. Use his Black Orc Archers to aid the Snipers in picking off weakened targets and use the Marauders and Hunters in pairs - one of each - with Granak and with Hrodash - so that you've got two groups of 3 (Hrodash + Marauder + Hunter, and Granak + Marauder + Hunter) so that you can get the Support bonus easily and so that you can land huge numbers of attacks on single targets. Toghra has loads of amazing spells. The easiest trick is the Bless thing I mentioned above, but he can also resurrect, he can bring in summoned allies with Summon Spectral Minions, he can boost up your allies and debuff your enemies... he's a very versatile caster. Also, don't forget his SA "Siphon Soul." Late in a game you can use the remaining damage tracks of your other models to fuel Toghra's spells. Sometimes it can be a huge benefit to be able to cast just one more big spell and it's worth sacrificing one of your models to do it.

I've never played Kargir, but they seem like a really neat army concept to me. I've toyed with the idea of buying into them and have come up with a variety of army lists for the faction. Here's one of my ideas. It's a little bonkers! Kargir - 1000 points Troop 1 Kavorgh Knax Madmaw, Goblin Shaman Warbringer Goblin Sticker x 16 Troop 2 Gologh the Vicious Knax Madmaw, Goblin Shaman Goblin Sticker x 14 Troop 3 Torg, Tundra Stalker Granak the Butcher Goblin Sticker x 13 Troop 4 Brugnungir That's 51 models in all, which is pretty large for a Warlord army. The idea behind it is to jam up the enemy army with a horde of screaming mad goblins while the few more powerful Orcs take advantage of the "Rampaging Orcs" army doctrine to attack from over their heads. Theoretically your opponent will be worn down by the masses of weaker goblins such that when the Orcs actually get to the fight and especially when Brugnungir gets into the fight they'll be too weakened to take down those tougher models. Knax Madmaw is in the list twice and key spells for him would be Hysteria, Rot and Fearsome Demeanor. The idea with them is to weaken and mess with enemy forces before your goblins hit their lines. Of course, it's not necessary to bring such a huge number of goblins. You could build a pretty rough and tumble list using only orcs, or using the Gnolls, that would have far fewer models. That'd certainly be easier on the old wallet!

That was a fun battle. It was sad to see my Stone Spirit crumble. It was even more sad knowing that I still had to face the Hill Giant AND Varaug w/Bonesplitter. And the totem bonus. Many dwarven corpses that day.... many dwarven corpses. I think I may have cheezeballed him on scenario for the win or something lame like that

Actually... and this is a bit ironic based on what I said in the previous post... I find that Warjacks tend to do fairly well for themselves in a dense environment, up to a point. The key is concentration of power. Say a 'jack is 9 points and a unit is 9 points. You can bring all 9 points to bear at one intersection in a dense city if it's the 'jack, but you can only bring maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of those 9 points if it's a unit. My trouble isn't how the 'jack itself performs in a city, but rather how a city naturally breaks up a force and Warmachine demands tight cohesion. The two are at odds. That said, I get your point. If it weren't a game and was reality, I can see an urban environment being really tough on a 'caster and his 'jacks, what with snipers and sappers having the run of the place doing all sorts of sneaky and explodey things to your force.

By way of comparing Warmachine/Hordes to Warlord: The biggest downside of Warlord when compared to Warmachine in my eyes is that there is less overt synergy between models. I really, really like how Warmachine armies boost themselves up. A Warcaster can usually make just about anything in his army be top notch in a pinch. Not that there are not buffs and synergies in Warlord, but they are less pronounced than in Warmachine. The biggest advantage of Warlord when compared to Warmachine in my eyes is the complete feeling of freedom. You can take anything. You can put it anywhere. This is just so handy in so many ways. For example, ever tried playing a "capture the places" type game with a smaller Warmachine army? You're tied to your caster, so you can only effectively make a bid for a few points at once. In Warlord, you can move models to anywhere without fear of being "too far away" and all of that jazz. One similar(ish) part is magic. Some games, magic is only for killing things. In both Warlord and Warmachine magic is often more for creating a situation within which another model can do the killing. The actual mechanics of how many spells you can cast and how quickly are very different - but I like that both games do more with magic than "you take X damage because my mage shot at you." In fact in both games, damaging magic is in the minority! You're far more likely to see casters in both games buffing, debuffing, altering terrain, messing with movement, or creating some condition that affects models. In my eyes, for both games what takes them above and beyond a simple dice-fest is the magic system. That is where some important strategic decisions are made. I also really like the Defensive Strike mechanic in Warlord. It's always a bummer watching an opponent systematically take your army apart without being able to do anything about it until your next turn. In Warlord, if your guy swings a sword at my guy, my guy swings his right back. It makes for a very engaging experience for both players throughout the game. You're rarely just a passive participant. This also helps to mitigate the whole "first strike" issue that many games suffer from - where the player to get some kills in early has a huge advantage. I also find that Warlord plays better with terrain than Warmachine does. Obviously terrain is important for both games, but due to the synergistic nature of Warmachine, you really need a bit of open space in the middle to fit a big block of models into. A cluttered table seriously messes with how a Warmachine army plays. In Warlord, you can have loads of terrain all over the place and the armies will still do fine. This, I find, leads to a more diverse interaction with terrain. You can move an army through an area of dense terrain and fight effectively "street to street" if you need to - where as in Warmachine you really need to have the bulk of your army outside of any dense terrain.