Play Like You've Got A Pair...
I’ve had an interest in Warmachine for at least a couple of years, and I even own a fair number of models, but this is the first time I’ve ever actually played the game. I had already painted up two different battle boxes, so our factions were pre-ordained: Cryx vs. Cygnar. I had sent my friend the Quickstart Rules from the Privateer Press website, so he had a whole week to familiarize himself with the basic rules. He settled on playing the Cryx, so I took the Cygnar battle force. We set up a mostly clear table with only two pieces of impassible, LOS-blocking terrain. We figured we were going to struggle enough with the basic rules – there was no reason to add the complication of terrain rules to the mix. I also found a couple of reference sheets online (which helped immensely), as well as some token and template sets.
The game got off to a bang (literally) with my Charger firing an opening salvo at one of his deathrippers, taking out its arc node and movement - One less thing for me to worry about. My friend countered by maneuvering one of those nasty little arc nodes into position to catch both of my light ‘jacks in a channeled Venom blast. While the initial damage wasn’t that bad, I never could roll low enough to clear it, and it managed to chip away at both of them all game long.
My Lancer takes a run at Deneghra, only to get his arms chopped off, while I stupidly tie up an Ironclad fighting with a bonejack.
From that point on, the game slowed down significantly, as we both learned our first valuable lesson about Warmachine: boost early, boost often. And if you are going to boost the attack roll, you may as well boost damage as well. I happened to catch on to this just a little sooner than my opponent and he really struggled with getting through the superior armor of my Cygnar forces.
We both got ‘jacks to our opponent’s warcaster on the same turn, and commenced our inaugural assassination attempts. Here’s where we learned our second important lesson about Warmachine: Warcasters are human tanks. Deneghra managed to chop both of the arms off of my Lancer in a single round, while Stryker reduced a Slayer to scrap in two rounds without taking a single wound. In the middle of all this, we both popped our feats, and through general ineptitude, completely squandered them.
This Slayer is about to learn the power of disruption. And then he will die.
Finally, our warcasters squared off, and toe-to-toe Stryker dropped Deneghra relatively quickly, bringing an end to two hours of bumbling, rule-checking combat. That being said, it was awesome. I’m completely in love with the core mechanic of the game, and I love the Focus management aspect. The basic rules are deceptively straightforward, while the different combinations of warcasters, ‘jacks, units and solos make for an almost never-ending parade of possible strategies. I sense there is a lot of ability to tailor an army to match a preferred play style, which is appealing. Even as inexperienced as we were, you sense that there is a lot of nuance to the game, most of it going right over our heads. I’m hoping we can find time to squeeze a second game in before my friend leaves town again at the end of the week. Unfortunately, I think I have just turned what was a background interest into a bit more of an obsession.
"They shout and curse, stabbing wildly; more brawlers than warriors. They make a wondrous mess of things. Brave amateurs...they do their part. " -300
Labels: miniatures, wargaming, Warmachine
