Infernals

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Infernals art.jpg

Infernals are evil beings from a mysterious realm that is beyond both Caen and Urcaen; Caen being the mortal world in which Warmachine and Hordes is set, and Urcaen being essentially the afterlife world.

The inhabitants of Caen lack deep knowledge of the Infernals, only knowing that they are ruthless predators with a thirst for mortal souls. Infernals will go to great lengths and may offer tremendous power to those who betray and offer up the souls of their own species or other intelligent creatures.

They have moved in the shadows of civilisation for millennia, but they have now come in force to claim the debt humanity owes them for receiving the gift of magic (that helped free mankind from its Orgoth oppressors). While staved off by the Wicked Harvest, the Infernals have not been deterred, and are here to reap the souls of two-thirds of humanity.

With the power to summon their beasts and warriors right into combat from their own Infernal plane, nothing like these creatures has ever been seen on the battlefields of the Iron Kingdoms before.

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Mini-Faction
 As with all Factions released after 2013, Infernals has a much smaller range of models than the pre-2013 Factions. The upside is that it's easier to complete your collection, the downside is that list-building has less variety.

As an in-game counterbalance to this low variety, the synergies within the Faction are strong and/or models have uniquely powerful abilities. Some Mini-Factions even have rules that affect the core rules of the game.

Soul Stalker

Infernals for Beginners

Aesthetic

Agathon, Voice in the Darkness

An Infernal army can be broadly split into four model groups

  • Infernal Masters - reminiscent of "Greys" with slender, overlong bodies and large heads. Except for the big guy who just looks badass.
  • Horrors - very Lovecraftian with plenty of claws, tentacles, and deformed alien bodies.
  • Lesser Infernals - same as Horrors, but at a smaller scale. These Infernals use the regular unit/solo rules (Horrors and Masters have custom rules).
  • Infernalists - Human mortals who have devoted themselves to the Infernal Masters. Lots of spiky armor, tattered cloaks, etcetera. Oh, and big masks a-plenty!

The look was established in the 2005/2007 Monsternomican books (published for the Iron Kingdoms Role Playing Game).

Playstyle

Infernals' playstyle is dictated by their unique rules (see below) namely their ability to summon multiple horrors every game, and the way they need to spend resources + sacrifice parts of their army every turn just to stay in play.

This makes them play very fast and rough. Infernals peak in power at about turn 4 and never want to see the late game - upkeeping lots of horrors is difficult when all your cultists are dead.

The Infernals Faction has powerful solos, decent units, and somewhat average horrors. The horrors average-ness is offset by being able to summon what you want, when you want, where you want. You can summon a very robust frontline, a near endless stream of hard-hitting contesting models, or simply create a transfer target to make your Master harder to assassinate.

It's a delicate balance to play, weighing your need to spend essence on summoning and upkeeping horrors, versus spending essence to cast spells. Then, after the first few turns, your "easy" sacrifices are all used up and you need to weigh up which of your powerful solos will next be sacrificed for the greater bad.

Starter Sets

All-in-One Army box
Zaateroth, the Weaver of Shadows

As a limited faction, Infernals do not have a traditional starter set or Battlebox. They do have an all-in-one army box, but it is a limited production run. If the availability of the previous army (Crucible Guard) is any indication, you can expect the all-on-one box to be difficult to get ahold of from about 2020.03 onwards.

The contents of it are:

  • Cultist Band
    • Leader & 5 Grunts
    • 3x Dark Sentinel (weapon attachments)
    • Master Preceptor Orin Midwinter (command attachment)

Starting Infernals

Omodamos, The Black Gate

Obviously the army box described above is a great place to start, and beyond that you'll want to expand your roster of horrors and solos. Horrors because summoning is the main, and most powerful, mechanic that Infernals have and it's a lot less powerful if you don't have a swiss army knife worth of different tools to summon in. Solos because, as a faction, Infernals live and die by their solos - they're excellent and incredibly powerful models.

William "Spell my name right" Cruickshanks recommends this as a buying guide to create a competitive 2-list 75 point force:

Desolator

In regards to the Hearts of Darkness theme - which requires you to buy a bunch of non-Infernal models to use it - it's not essential to have a Hearts list if you want to play Infernals competitively. Infernals have very much been balanced around Dark Legacy, and don't rely on having a Hearts list to cover their weaknesses. Obviously if you like the look of Hearts, or already own models which you want to put in Hearts, then that's fantastic. But do not feel obligated to buy into Hearts "as well as" Infernals.

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Line of Sight article : Brawlmachine List Building - Infernals
In 2020.11 Phillip Melvin, one of the LOS authors, wrote an excellent article for how to start Infernals. It is based on the newbie-friendly Brawlmachine format (25 point limit).
The article contains a different list for each Infernal theme, and advice on how to expand those lists beyond 25 points.

Unique Rules

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Tip !
This section is very brief on purpose. A longer explanation is given on our Infernal Faction Rules article, or you could go straight to the source by reading the core rulebook (which you can download from the PP site.)

Masters, Horrors, and Essence

Griever Swarm

Infernals introduce two new model types to the game, Infernal Masters and Horrors, which are the Faction's equivalent to warcasters and warjacks respectively. These models use essence instead of focus or fury. You can spend essence points pretty much the same way as focus (to buy attacks, cast spells, and so forth) however it has a couple of advantages (it doesn't expire every round, and Masters can use it to transfer damage instead of reducing damage) and one notable disadvantage - the main way to replenish it is by sacrificing the human models within the Infernal army.

Summoning Horrors mid-game

Dark Sentinel
Lamenter

The other defining characteristic of the Infernal Faction is the Masters' ability to summon one new Horror every round. There's a few hoops to jump through, such as spending essence points and sacrificing a Marked Soul, but you can summon any kind of Horror, you're not limited to what's written in your army list. Being able to adapt the army you're using to better to suit your current opponent and the current gamestate, with what is essentially "free points" - well let's just say it's a very powerful rule!

Theme Forces

Howlers

Dark Legacy

Dark Legacy is the "pure" Infernal force and includes all the Infernal models available. It represents the invading armies of the Infernal Masters themselves, and makes heavy use of the Marked Soul rule found on human Infernalists.

The models allowed in Dark Legacy are:   [Show/Hide]

This list was last updated: 2019.07   (Edit)

Infernals

  • The entire Infernal faction, including all their Partisans.

Mercenaries

  • Up to one solo
  • Up to one unit
    • None yet

Hearts of Darkness

The Hearts of Darkness theme is very different to Dark Legacy. It doesn't allow the Infernal Masters or most of the Horrors (you can still get access to Lesser Horrors and/or Light Horrors by taking Princess Regna). Instead you choose one of the available "corrupted" warcasters, and you then then get access to all of that Faction's warjacks, plus up to 2 units and 3 solos from that same Faction to supplement your Infernal units/solos.

The models allowed in Hearts of Darkness are:   [Show/Hide]

This list was last updated: 2020.05   (Edit)

Infernal Masters

  • None

Infernal Horrors

Warcasters

Warjacks

  • Any non-character warjacks that are from the same original Faction as the warcaster.
  • Character warjacks can be taken, but only if they have a bond and they're in their bonded model's battlegroup.

Units

Solos

  • Up to three non-Partisan non-Archon solos that are from the same original Faction as the warcaster.

Structures

Mercenaries

  • No "extra" Mercenaries allowed.

Models

Lord Roget d'Vyaros

Infernal Masters

Horrors

Structures

Infernal Gate

Solos

Valin Hauke, The Fallen Knight

Units

Model Gallery

Here is a link to the entire Infernals Gallery

Mercenaries that work for the Infernals

Last Updated: 2019.01

  • J.A.I.M.s
  • Everyone else that will work for Infernals is Partisan [Infernal].
  • Note that Infernals have wide access to models from six other Factions via the Hearts of Darkness theme force, and one of those six is the Mercenary Faction.

See also Category: Infernals Mercenary and/or Who Works for Whom.

Other

Trivia

Umbral Guardian
  • Infernals invaded the internet first
    • On Privateer Press' forum, they have a specific subforum for asking questions about how the rules of the game work. Although anyone can answer questions, there is a team of official volunteers that have direct contact with the lead developers and can answer questions officially on the dev team's behalf. This team have been known as Infernals, for as long as the rules forum has been in existence.
    • The Infernal theme force, Dark Legacy, is named after this forum's most active volunteer Infernal. He has also organised a bunch of large conventions, is the admin of the Facebook Infernal group ... in all respects, he is super excited about this Faction.

Official Short Stories

See Lore - Source Material#Short Stories

Deep Lore

Refer to the Iron Kingdoms wiki (separate fan-site).

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