Revision as of 14:22, 18 November 2016

So, you've read the rulebook. You purchased some models (or found some proxy counters or whatever). You know how game goes, and the difference between Fury and Focus. You know how to Activate your units, and you know that a Feat requires timing. The following is a small selection of topics on the game that will hopefully raise your awareness of what is going on between the dicerolls. You can go a long way in this game by creating a balanced army list where the units synergize with each other. Obviously you can read the statistics on each models (and the articles on this site) to get wiser on their properties, but it might still be hard to fathom what the list is supposed to do, and what is meant by "balanced". So we are going to discuss here what is it the game is about. What are you fighting for, what are the common strategies, and what tactics are used to accomplish them.

Objectives

There are two ways to win the game; Victory by scenario or by assassination; fulfilling the scenario objective or eliminating the enemy 'caster. Your first games have likely been using the missions from the core rulebook: Incoming, Annihilation, Seek and Destroy, Throw Down, Mosh Pit, Close Quarters, Hold the Line, Outflank and Reinforcements. These have relatively simple objectives and you can easily play right out of the book, some even with multiple players. In these rulebook missions, there are zones that you need to control, which means you are required to move forward and attack your opponent. This is why people play the game with objectives. A few players prefer to play the game without missions, so the only goal of the game is assassination. Missions add urgency and a reason to get stuck in the game, and even games that are ended quickly by assassination are still often greatly affected by their mission simply by propelling the players to approach each other.

The Steamroller Objectives

Most players use the "Steamroller" format, a set of scenarios that are updated and tweaked by Privateer Press. Most tournaments and a great many casual games too use these rules. If you destroy the opponents Steamroller Objective, you earn control points, and the first player to reach 5 control points is the winner. Often, all flags/objectives will be constantly contested/protected by both players until an opening occurs, and the game ends by assassination.

The Steamroller Objectives adds to the game in a different way than the race for points. The Bunker Objective for example can help against blast damage or the Armory Objective improves the ammo of nearby models. In this format, you choose what objective you want on your side of the table, so you should choose something that synergizes with your army. Naturally, your objectives can affect your army composition, but keep in mind that not all Steamroller Missions have Steamroller Objectives, some merely have flags or zones. So you can't rely on your Objective to have any supporting role in your army, but if it is there, you want to get the best use out of it. The valid Objectives are tweaked yearly every time a new Steamroller is released. They are found in the Steamroller document [1]. The 2016 Steamroller Objectives are:

Arcane Wonder

• It is pulsating with arcane energy, so it zaps enemies who attacks it in melee. Useful against squishy targets who might be able to destroy it, such as weaponmaster infantry with one wound.
• It emits a Null Zone bubble, shortening enemies spell range against models standing near it. So positioning your caster and some support solos behind it might be a good idea if you are doing ranged magic duels or worried your squishy spellslinger might be assassinated.

Armory

• Is reinforced, so does not suffer any damage from low pow weapons.
• May grant magical ammunition to nearby models. Some models with large quantities of weapons love this.

Bunker

• Dugout. Its really, really durable unless you get up close.
• It also makes your nearby guys more durable by making them immune to blasts. An excellent objective for a ranged infantry army.

Effigy of Valor

• Its huge, so it provides cover.
• Its also awesome to behold, so knocked down models get their act together faster. Models with Tough likes this.

Fuel Cache

• Its burning, and you may place smoke to cover a useful spot with a cloud effect. Neat.
• Its burning, so it hurts to get near.

Stockpile

• It can be used to repair or heal your battlegroup. Really useful for your ranged beasts and jacks who are not interested in going near the enemy.
• Also, your guys can be used to take the hits it suffers, keeping it alive longer.

Strategic Concepts

Now, lets take a look at some of the common dynamics that are used by players to understand their games, and what happens on the board. You probably want a balanced list that has enough flexibility to grab some points ( or at the very least stop the opponent from doing so) and finish off the enemy caster if the opportunity arises. When you create an armylist, you want it to be able to cope with a lot of different situations, depending on what kinds of enemies you usually play against. Before you go to war, you might contemplate what sort of strategies and tactics are available to you. The strategy is the over-arching way you are going to play the game in order to win. It also defines what kind of models you want to field. The tactical side of things is represented by your faction's ingame shenanigans, such as possible ways to ensure that you strike first, avoid being hit, or survive a hit.

So, you have quite a few strategic options to choose from. The army will invariably be better at some things, but some times it is not enough to read the cards (or war room), figure out which is the most killy, and then just take that. Your army synergy is crucial, and choosing abilities that complement each other and your strategy. You want your list to be good at killing the enemy, true. You might also want it to be able to limit your opponents options, dictate what they can or cannot do, and survive the retaliation of your clever opponent. Either way, it is a good idea to have a feeling what it is your army is trying to do, and few armies are able to do it all.

Destructive Flexibility

Destructive Power is obviously what the game is about, but it is less obvious once you start analyzing it a little. You could more fittingly say its about Different Ways to Murder Different Things.You want to destroy as much as the opponents army as possible. So this is about the relevant qualities a model may have that enables it to be destructive: amount of attacks, attack accuracy, damage amount and threat range. You want it all, but the balance is the tricky part. The opposite side of the table might just as well field a gargantuan or a devastator or something else that requires a humongous damage output of your most hard hitting models - or it may be a horde of zombies that require numerous attacks to clear. Or it may be a dodgy solo, that might really hard to hit, or even to target it. You want anti armor, anti infantry, and anti-solo qualities. Of course, the model is pointless unless it can deliver the attacks. Better reach and an excellent Speed score helps you deliver those attacks, as do movement tricks such as Counter Charge, Vengeance, Rush and so on. The added value of the models Speed and weapon range gives you the threat range, but remember your potential speed modifiers, such as casting Rush or Mobility, which may inherently change how dangerous a model really is. A model with bad attacks but an outstanding threat range can threaten other models with bad defenses, such as certain support solos. So you want a decent spread of categories, or ways to switch your attacks from category to category. Thresher can turn a single hard hitting attacker into an infantry mulching machine, and the model can now support both anti infantry and anti armor roles in your army composition. Combined Attacks works the other way, turning a great many attacks into fewer and more efficient attacks. All potential attack modifications theoretically allow a greater field of flexibility that modify your attacks, such as Carnage, Calamity, Chiller. The balancing act depends on the spells, abilities and feat of the warlock or warcaster and your support models.

Attrition

Your attrition capacity is related to your destructive power, but really has a lot to do with your defenses as well. If your army is able to stay alive on the board longer than the enemy, you are playing the attrition game. The army might combine really numerous and / or tough elements, or powerful spells that increase the resilience of the army. It can dish out enough damage to remove more of the opponents models than the opponent can remove of yours. This should allow you to gain a progressively better position every turn. At some point this should open up for either the possibility of assassination or gathering enough scenario points to win.

Board Control

Some warlocks and warcasters mainly smash face. Others are able to stand back and through other means dictate what the enemy can and can't do. This can happen through feats or spells, such as the feats of The Harbinger of Menoth, The Old Witch of Khador or Krueger the Stormwrath that dictates tactical limitation around them by punishing and discouraging movement. Since this allows the player better tactical possibilities than his opponent, maneuvering should allow the player to set up assassination or gather enough scenario points to win. Board control is a highly efficient tool that, while in itself it does not assist attrition or destruction, though it may provide scenario victory by denying access to areas or moving the enemy away. But board control is everything that allows you to regulate the position of the opponent, such as throwing enemies, knockdowns and some cloud effects.

WarmaHordes Tactics

WarmaHordes is a game of prioritizing very limited ressources. In conventional war, tactics consists of the actions and reactions on the field. A tactician knows the overall strategy that his forces are built around. Your strategy might be war of attrition by having lots of armor supported by huge quantities of infantry; or attrition by lots of guys designed to die in order to release corpse tokens or soul tokens that empower the rest of your standing army. The tactician must apply tactical choices and prioritize his resources to get the most of the strategy. Conventional tactics are maneuvers such as attacking on the flank, stealth, apply pressure with tanks/elite fighters, suppressive fire, the hit and run, or holding the line. Obviously, game tactics are less elaborated than conventional warfare tactics, but this game is surprisingly full of maneuvers. Many a game has been won or lost due to one side being better at fury/focus management, unit positioning, timing, maneuvering or activation order. Besides this, knowing your dice helps a lot. A good place to start "unlocking" the game tactics is understanding what units are able to take on what without requiring really lucky dice, and how these odds changes if you apply your spell buffs around the board.

THIS ARTICLE IS CURRENTLY BEING ELABORATED (last edit 2016/11/18) This page is under construction and the following areas are being written

• Chaff vs Elites: on jamming, control of movement, unjamming, tarpit, attrition resistant units, screening, imbedding
• Go first or second
• The Number crunching game, on the 7 and 10.5 averages

Boosting and Combining

Warmachine/Hordes has two options that can improve the basic probabilities underlying the two-dice mechanic: boosting attack and combined attacks. Here are some basic rules of thumb as to when either should be considered. They assume long drawn-out battles and target-rich environments. In some situations, removing a priority target without risk of failure (i.e. w. overkill) might be more important than removing a several targets (i.e. efficient dice management). Removing a threat to your caster should always be prioritized, unless you can achieve a win. So as numbers dwindle, statistics become less important, skewing the calculation of quality vs quantity priority.

A. Boosting

The goal of boosting is to increase the chance of rolling equal to or above a certain number. An example of this would be:

• To hit DEF 16 using a RAT 7 model a 9 or higher on two dice is required, which has an approximately 28% chance of happening. This means that the attack will be successful slightly more than once in every four attempts.
• Boosting the roll (and now using three dice) increases the chance of rolling a 9 or higher to approximately 74%. In this case, the attack will be successful slightly less than every three out of four attempts.

1. Ranged & magic attacks: Boosting to hit

Often, the  Warjacks and warbeasts have ranged weapons with RoF 1, so efficiency through purchasing extra attacks is not an option. Models using a Strafe attack should almost always boost the first attack. If multiple attacks through Reloads are an option, buying one may achieve the same result as boosting. Scarcity of focus/fury may also dictate your next course of action. For example:

• A Defender has a high POW, RoF 1 ranged attack. Given its average RAT, boosting is often advisable when trying to beat DEF values above 13 (more than 7) so the high-POW shot is not wasted.
• A Dire Troll Bomber has a RoF 1 [Reload] weapon. Against DEF 12 or lower targets, buying another shot creates the potential for two damage rolls with good chances of hitting (7 or less) rather than a single damage roll that is very likely to hit.
• A full unit of Long Gunners can gain the aiming +2 bonus and fire 20 times if all grunts forfeit their movement, which may be more efficient than investing the 2 focus it costs to use the spell Deadeye on the unit (which boosts all ranged attack rolls) and firing 10 times without the aiming bonus.

When casting spells, most 'casters/'locks with FOC/FUR lower than 7 will need to automatically tack on the cost of boosting to make sure the spell hits. COST 2-3 spells that require a 7 or higher to hit and COST 4 spells that require a 6 or higher to hit should typically be boosted, although this is dependent on secondary effects. For instance, Lord Arbiter Hexeris's Ashes to Ashes is a good candidate for boosting while an AOE spell like Stryker1's Earthquake can be effective even without a direct hit. An edge case for boosting ranged attacks is AOE attacks. Since these attacks scatter rather than disappear when they miss and generate blast damage, they don't necessarily need to hit directly to be successful. Careful placement of the originating model can cut down the scatter to effectively "target" the attack and hit high DEF models without boosting. Beware of models that are immune to blast damage through Girded, such as Praetorian Karax when investing in AOE attacks!

2. Ranged & magic attacks: Boosting damage

When considering whether or not to boost a ranged damage roll, consider the following:

• Is this a RoF 1 weapon or a spell expensive enough to cast only once? If so, boosting may be warranted to get maximum damage out of the attack. Feats or abilities that provide additional attacks will alter this consideration.

• Regarding spells, consider the tradeoff between having additional focus available for casting more spells/buying attacks/etc. and adding d6 to a single damage roll. For example, 6 focus will buy three Arcane Bolt spells that will do an average of 18 damage per hit before ARM, or two of the same with boosted damage rolls that produce an average of 20-21 damage per hit before ARM. That additional 2-3 damage may be important when targeting something that needs to die quickly such as Eiryss1 or a Pistol Wraith, or even having an effect on high-ARM models such as a Devastator. On the other hand, the additional spell could kill an extra warrior model.

• How much damage does the attack need to do?

If the POW of the ranged attack is target's ARM -4 or worse, consider boosting to make sure you put a dent in your target. When POW is target's ARM - 2 or better, you may be doing sufficient damage on straight dice anyway. Of course, there is no such thing as overkill...

3. Melee attacks: boosting to hit

If a model needs an 8 or higher to hit in melee, the expected number of hits is the same when boosting to hit or buying extra melee attacks. Therefore:

• If a 7 or lower is needed to hit, the attack roll should not be boosted.
• If a 9 or higher is needed, the attack roll should be boosted.
• If an 8 or higher is needed, boosting is dependent on whether or not one hit will probably kill the target. If yes, it should be boosted to ensure success. If no, then an additional attack should be bought as it provides me the chance of a double hit and subsequent additional damage (which will get you further than one attack with a better chance of hitting).

A good rule of thumb concerning charge/special attacks is that if facing a tough target, attacks that require a 7 or higher to hit should be boosted to avoid losing the bonus. Chain attacks such as the Seether's Grab & Smash and contingent effects such as Critical effects may also push boosting.

4. Melee attacks: boosting damage

Note that it's often more focus/fury-efficient than indicated here just to overkill a target and put it down on the first attack (or to make sure you finish off a column/aspect).

• Single wound targets:
  • Against low DEF targets, boost if you need an 8 or better to kill.
  • Against high DEF targets, boost if you need a 7 or better to kill.
• Multi-wound targets:
  • If your target will require greater than 5 points of damage beyond ARM to kill/disable, always boost damage if your P+S is target's ARM - 4 or worse. For example, assuming no Paingiver Beast Handlers the P+S 16 attacks of a Titan Gladiator should usually be boosted against an ARM 20 Marauder
  • If an 8 or more is needed to hit, boost damage unless P+S is target's ARM + 1 or better, as it will effectively take more than 2 focus/fury to hit and the boost will add around 50% to the overall damage of the attack (and if I'm doing more damage than that, I look for the fastest way to total the target). In short, if an 8 or more is needed to hit then damage should be boosted as overkill is rare in such a situation.
  • If a 7 is needed to hit, then damage may be boosted if P+S is target's ARM - 3 or better. This is largely contingent on availability of focus/fury.
  • Otherwise, don't boost damage.

5: Boosting for Crits

It's always worth boosting your to hit roll if you really want to get that crit, but even boosted crits aren't reliable. Remember that all 6s hits automatically - which is why the table is weird at the end. You can't be "required" to roll 13 or more on 2d6, or 18 or more on 3d6. All 6's results in an auto hit. Some times, it might be easy to hit that war beast, but you just really want to get that critical hit! Here's a table to help understand how much a boost greatly increases your crit-chances.

B. Combining attacks

As a rule, high-DEF targets get attacks combined at them to ensure hitting, and high-ARM targets get attacks combined to ensure maximum damage. The MAT/RAT and P+S/POW scores of the squad will dictate who leads the attack. When looking to hit, the model with the highest MAT/RAT should lead the attack (this will typically be a UA). When looking at potential damage, a buffed model or a model with a better weapon should lead the attack for maximum results.

1. Positioning

For a model to contribute to a combined attack, it must meet the following conditions, no matter if it is CRA or CMA: > Be able to declare an attack against the target > Have LOS to the target > Have the target within weapon range Large units attempting a CRA may run into positioning/line-of-sight issues, particularly with units such as Long Gunners that benefit greatly from forfeiting movement to aim Units attempting a CMA may also run into positioning issues, as getting sufficient models into melee range for an optimum CMA may be difficult. Medium/large/huge-based targets are naturally easier to CMA with the majority/all of a unit.

2. Combining to hit

All models in a unit should not automatically participate in a single combined attack, as pushing the combined MAT/RAT of the attack too high can waste useful additional attacks. The table below provides rough guidelines of how many models should participate in a given attack for particular to-hit targets. Try to add stragglers to make the groups as even as possible, and as close to the optimal numbers as possible. It is generally better to use too many models in a group than too few to ensure the attacks hit.

• If you need 8 or less to hit, do not combine attacks
• If you need 9-10 or better to hit, combine attacks in groups of 2 warriors
• If you need 11 or better to hit, combine attacks in groups of 4 warriors
• If you need a 12 to hit, combine attacks in groups of 6 warriors (or 5, depending on unit)

3. Combining for damage

This assumes that you are rolling 2d6 for damage; normally a safe assumption for ranged attacks, but many infantry capable of CMA also charge and there are many buffs that can add to the damage of a CRA.

• If the difference between P+S and ARM is 5 or less, do not combine attacks
• If the difference between P+S and ARM is 6-8, make 1 CRA pr 2 warriors
• If the difference between P+S and ARM is 9 or more, make a large CRA, all in.

Note that if a 7 or higher is needed to damage the target, efficiency is tied between 1 and 2 models per attack (elevating 2-model attacks due to the increased chance of hitting).