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.

I think that for the most part round or square isn't too critical of an issue. In most situations you'll be getting similar numbers of models into base to base with either. I think you'd probably have some issues if you mixed round with square, simply because the shapes don't go together too well geometrically. In 2nd edition there are fewer rules related to corners of bases (I think, actually, that corners are no different than sides, unlike in 1st edition), so you're better off in 2nd edition if you want to use round bases. Cavalry - yes, that will really mess with how you can use cavalry. Big deal? Eh, maybe. If your army was all about cavalry and getting lots of them in on regular sized models, it could make that really difficult. If your idea of cavalry is a small group of them operating on the flanks, you ought to find that they still work pretty well. Swing Through is an SA that interacts with "sides of bases" in a way that requires a square or rectangular base. You could house-rule it easy enough. Reach, likewise, will have to be fudged. If your gaming is casual I don't anticipate too many problems, but you will have to re-think some things. That's my take.

Excellent. I read many of his Redwall books and enjoyed them all. He had a great way of crafting a story about courage and sacrificing for loved ones.

Try priming it in a gray color - not too bright of a gray, but it doesn't need to be super dark either - and then giving it a heavy wash with black? You'll get an overall black color with some variation in the coloring as the wash pools in different details? Maybe hit it with a very light drybrush of a gray shade (perhaps the original?) to pick out highlights after?

Out of curiosity, how have people found straight tap water to affect painting? I always use water straight from the tap. The quality is good enough, it's not hard water or anything.. I drink the stuff straight out of the tap too. I've never had any issues with painting that I attributed to the water, but now that this conversation is happening I'm wondering if I'm missing this whole new wonderful world of better painting!

Very good observation about Kurand not being a blaster mage. Typically the Fire and Ice tomes are the more offensive ones, and all of the other tomes are more manipulative and so forth - Restoration with healing things, or Earth with slowing down the enemy's ability to do what they want, and some of the others just weaken enemies or do movement tricks. In my opinion, Mages are what brings this game from mediocre to great. The combat mechanic is dead simple but elegant, and I really like it, but the balance is so tight that you rarely get a big advantage over an opponent. But with magic, you can really affect the battle in big ways and a cunning player can use it to get a big advantage. Speaking of the tight balance, it's a huge advantage for the game. I like that you can pick the models you find cool, instead of having to scour the stats for the broken models and feel forced to take them if you want to have a viable army. Case in point, if I play a Dwarf it usually has a shield. I just like to play up the defensive aspect. But other Dwarf players really enjoy the Berserkers and the really offensive aspect of the faction. Both work very well.

Hi! Sounds like you two are having a blast. I remember my first games of Warlord, and it brought a smile to my face to hear of your first steps into the game. Your experience sounds pretty similar to mine, except we didn't begin with the big nasty Warlords. My first game was Freya Fangbreaker and a half-dozen or so Warriors against Andras and a handful of Overlord Warriors. Good times :) re: Kurand and spells: You'll find that Toxic Cloud isn't actually so good that it'll be the only spell you'll want to cast. One of the coolest ways that spells work now is that they are the best way to inflict negative Model States. Poison is a model state, so you've already discovered a piece of how awesome that is. And I don't mean to say that Toxic Cloud is a bad spell. But Kurand has so many more tricks in his bag. Consider Earthquake or Hold or Beguile. Both of these can really mess with your opponent's ability to do what he wants and can help swing the tides of battle in your favor. Rot is a great spell to cast on a pile of enemies just before your own models go charging in because Disable will prevent them from taking as many defensive strikes. Incite is a great spell to use on your own troopers if you want to charge something far away. And lastly, one of my favorite spells is Mire. It's only single-target, but it costs 0 spell points and Stuns an enemy model. I like to use Mire on either something big and nasty before I use other models to attack it so that it can't crush them on defensive strikes, or else I like to use Mire on whatever an important model of mine is about to attack so that I don't risk getting my big important model damaged by defensive strikes. I think you're uncovering one of the great parts of Warlord: the game is dead simple to pick up, but when you begin using all of the faction abilities and diving into the different spells that are available, you can come up with some really awesome combinations.

How about Faw Dur, or even Eezee Yexpee? I don't know.. I'm finding it hard to come up with serious kobold names :P Isn't the kobold deity in D&D 3.5 named Kurtlemak or something? Does that mean your kobold can be named Kurt? How about Makurt?

My take is that your elves did very well because of the overall low DV's of the Barbarians. Many of them are sitting at DV 9, so nearly half of the elves' arrows were finding targets. It's tough because that doctrine requires you to take only humans; my typical advice would be to mix in a few of the faction's tougher models, but then you couldn't run the doctrine you want to. I do know this, though: If you've got a list that's going to get slaughtered at range, your number one priority is to close to melee range ASAP. Throw caution to the wind and just sprint in as quick as you can. Worrying about cover and all of that will just delay the inevitable. The human list for Icingstead includes a bonus to charge speed, and there are plenty of barbarians with Rush Attack, so take advantage of that. Turn one, every activation should be "Move, Run." A wise opponent with a ranged list should be shooting and withdrawing on turn 1. Given average movement speeds and typical deployment, you started 2 feet apart, you moved 14" closer and they moved 6" away, so on turn 2 you're 20 inches away and they're running out of room to retreat. Also, most opponents won't retreat from your charge, so in that case you are 14" away. That's within Rush Attack distance. If they DO retreat, then you've got to move/run once more and suffer another turn of arrows, but after that they'll have no place to run. If the list is predominantly ranged, barbarians ought to do fairly well in melee against them. It gets harder when the opponent uses lots of archers then something crazy like Mossbeard or the Giant Eagle or some such.

Looks like it's got all the right things. I guess my only critique would be to put Gonda in one of the Kagunk troops. That way Kiakara can bless her troop and Gonda can bless his, and you can get two Blesses out in one turn. The way you have it, you're limited to one. Your 1st troop really is pretty powerful. I like that you've combined magic, ranged and melee. I like the combination of a caster who can Bless and those Harpies with their many attacks. That's a great way to get plenty of mileage out of that buff. I also like how you've mixed weaker, regular, and stronger models into your army. You've got the goblins and the Harpies, then you've got a smattering of Bull Orcs and Gnolls, then you've got Kiakara, the Kagunks and the Hill Giant. That's four pretty serious models and an opponent will have difficulty dealing with A) all 4 tough models while B) managing the numbers you've got. I think they'll find it difficult to effectively deal with all of that at once, and in my mind that's the biggest strength of this list. If they bring all of their heavy hitters to bear against the Hill Giant, Kiakara and the Kagunks can run rampant. And the opponent can't just bunch up their models into four strike teams, hope to take down your big tough models and carry the day, because you've got a horde of Reven that they need to deal with as well! I'd have fun trying different approaches with this list - sending the soldiers on ahead of the big guys as a first wave to soften everything up while holding back Kiakara, Kagunk x 2, and Hill Giant and letting them bat cleanup; Sending the big guys in first to make a big hole and using your Reven to take advantage of the mess the big tough guys made; tossing the whole lot at them at once; holding just one of the big guys back and hoping for the opponent to lose everything capable of dealing with it by the late game.

Well, I've never played as the Reven. But I've faced them on many occasions. Most notably against Quicksilver's Reven. We've got a longstanding rivalry. So, from an opponent's point of view: Goblins really aren't as bad as they look. Honestly. I think many players, myself included, view their stats and think that they're just awful and will get steamrolled. But in actual play experience, I've got to say that I'm always spending more time and effort killing goblins than I think I'll need to, and I always suffer more losses fighting goblins than I think I will. So don't be afraid of including plenty of goblins. The Hill Giant is a nightmare with big meaty limbs. There isn't much in the game that can stand toe to toe with it, and even when you send loads of models at it, the Hill Giant will still do quite well for itself. Enrage is seriously awesome. More dwarves than I care to admit have fallen to crazed Reven Bull Orcs. Buff-stacking is a Reven's best friend. Seriously consider using a Totem of Battle and try to get Bless into your army (Kiakara, Gonda). +1 or +2 will take even low-powered Reven models and boost them into super heroes. Varaug with the Bonesplitter Axe is virtually unstoppable. Pair him up with Ombur Skulltooth and let the craziness begin. Just take a look down Ombur's spell list and drool over the possibilities. Fortunately for me, last time I faced the Reven my opponent was still only feeling out that combo, but it can be incredibly potent.