Where Should I Start?

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If you're interested in playing Warmachine and/or Hordes, there are many people willing (and wanting) to help you.

Choose a Faction to play

Read our Faction Overview article to decide which Faction appeals to you (a Faction is essentially an army where the soldiers all belong to the same country, culture, or species).

What do you need to start playing?

Battlegroup boxes contain everything you need to start playing (except the spray template and circle templates). They're damn cheap, too. There's one available for (almost) every Faction.
Battlegroup boxes are also known as "Battleboxes" or "Starter boxes".

What you need is:

  • A copy of the rules.
    • The core gameplay rules can be downloaded here
    • Rules for specific models can be downloaded here
    • You can also get the rules via the official Warroom2 app (see below).
  • Models
    • (See Starter Products for a description of some of the boxed sets available.)
    • At least one warcaster or warlock
    • A few warjacks or warbeasts
    • Units, solos, battle engines, and structures are all optional
    All the models need to belong to the same Faction, you can't use a mish-mash from different armies (normally ... there are plenty of exceptions though).
    See Faction Overview to help you decide which Faction you want to start with.
  • Some "real superglue". Due to the materials used in the production of (most) Warmachine/Hordes models, "normal modelling glue" (polystyrene cement) doesn't work.
  • Six-sided dice. At least 3, preferably 5.
  • A measuring tape (marked with inches)
  • A set of templates. 3", 4", and 5" AOE circle templates, a 10" spray template, and a 4" x 0.75" rectangular wall template
  • A set of tokens to mark in-game effects (small bits of scrap paper can do in a pinch)
  • Some terrain (medium size pieces of scrap paper can do in a pinch)
  • A 4' x 4' (1200mm x 1200mm) playing area
  • An opponent


What you'll probably want is:

  • A decent set of tokens. You can find either 'Faction sets' with every token pre-labelled, or blank sets that let you use whiteboard markers to write labels each game. You can find a bunch of that stuff from LOS's sponsor Broken Egg Games.
  • A decent set of templates, measuring widgets, and terrain. Again, you can find a bunch of that stuff from Broken Egg Games.
  • The unofficial list-building Conflict Chamber website
  • The official Warroom2 app.

Warrom2 app

This app does a lot of things:

  • It is the official list-building tool.
  • It contains a copy of all the model rules
    • These model rules are automatically updated whenever an errata is released.
    • New models will be added whenever they are released (depending on how many Faction decks you bought in-app).
  • Can be used to record damage models suffer during a game.
  • Contains a copy of the core rules (this feature is laggy as hell, I suggest you just download a pdf instead.)

Warroom Cost

You can download the app for free, and it comes with a few models per Faction for free (including the models from the battleboxes), but most models require in-app purchases.

  • Faction decks vary in cost from $7 to $13 per deck, or you can make a one-off purchase of $165 to get access to every Faction - including every future Faction too. (Prices in USD.)
  • Once you buy a Faction, any future models released for that Faction will be auto-added to your account.
  • Mercenary and Minion decks are a separate purchase.

How much does an army cost?

It depends whether you're building for the smaller, newbie-friendly, 25 point Brawlmachine format or the more competitive 75 point Steamroller format.

I've priced up nearly 60 different Brawlmachine lists and they mostly sat in the $200 to $220 range. That's in USD, at full retail price - obviously your costs will drop if you get secondhand models and/or wait for a sale.


When it comes to 75 points though, it's not simply triple the cost. For one thing, with the way bonus army points work in this game, a 75 point list is actually only about twice the size of a 25 point list. Secondly, when you start playing at 75 points you start including more of the expensive models (dollars per point) for various reasons.

In general, though, a single 75 point list in Warmachine is roughly the same cost or slightly cheaper than a single 2000 point list in Warhammer 40,000.

Find other players

Official Training Videos

These videos were made in 2016, so keep in mind various rules updates have happened since they were recorded. But the core gameplay is mostly unchanged, so they're still good videos.

They're about 45 minutes long:


You've just finished reading one of the articles in our Introduction series. The other articles are;

Once you've finished those, you may want to check out the Basic Training series.

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