Warmachine and Hordes, An Overview

With the recent Games Workshop price rises, gamers around the world (and more locally as well) have been looking for a new miniatures game to play. These days there are a number of excellent games and miniatures lines out there, but the one I've been a huge fan of since they first came out has been Warmachine and Hordes by Privateer Press. So, as a public service (and an attempt to tempt friends into buying a force so I can use mine) I'm going to do some Blogs on both Warmachine and Hordes.

Warmachine is a 28mm skirmish scale wargame where you control a powerful battle mage and their steam powered warmachines alongside infantry and powerful hero characters. Hordes, which was released later, is based on the same rules, and sees you control powerful beasts instead of warmachines. Both are completely compatible and balanced against each other, and later releases has seen some cross over with units. Unless stated otherwise, you can presume that anything I say about Warmachine goes for Hordes as well.


Being skirmish scale, the size of forces are small. A starter game starts at 15pts, which can be as little as 9 models for most factions. The game scales up well to larger point games, with average considered to be 35pts. You can take things even higher, and rules are due to be released to handle massed battles with similar numbers to an average Warhammer battle. However you don't need to play games at that level if you don't want to, and unlike Warhammer, the rules work well regardless of how many points you are playing at.

The rules themselves are robust, with many tactical options. The game encourages you to be pro-active, you find that most factions simply can't play a defensive tactic well. You are either advancing on the enemy, or you are working to take an objective all the time. Fancy picking up a model with your warjack or beast and throw it at the opponent? Well that's just one of the many special attacks that you can make, which makes tactical choices far more interesting.
Each model or unit comes with a stat card which duplicates all their abilities, model profile and provides a place to record damage taken. There isn't the requirement to reference army books during play, everything you need will be on the card. Given this, you only need to have 1 core rule book between the group, you never need to buy the faction book unless you want to (but I do suggest doing so, they are really worth the money).


There are a total of 11 playable factions across the two games, but within the factions are a number of playing styles available, depending upon the Warcaster/Warlock leading your army. Each faction has a number of core themes that are more or less important depending on your leader. 

So why play Warmachine/Hordes over Games Workshop games? This is very much my personal opinion, but I believe there are a couple of big advantages to both games over both Warhammer and 40K.
1) Cost
While individual miniatures might not be significantly cheaper than a GW equivalent, the initial buy in is much smaller, and being a skirmish scale game it means you will need much less mini's to make a force. The battle box starters contain between 11 and 14 points, depending on faction. Add in a unit or character and you have a basic force ready to go! Change your Warcaster or Warlock and the style of play changes, without the need to change the entire force. That being said, the miniatures are generally cheaper, while being still mainly in metal. The new plastic box sets are reasonably priced, and you don't see an annual price rise, they will only raise prices when they must.
2) Balance
The games are much better balanced between factions across the two games as well as within. While the game might only be on its 2nd edition, Privateer Press have always been sensible about play testing. The core rule book contains write ups and rules for the core units for the 4 main factions in each game, while the faction books contain all the models created to date. When they release a new expansion, all factions receive an update at the same time, allowing for balance to be maintained. No more power creep as new codices are released. Everyone gets new shineys at once and no faction is more powerful than another.

Ok, this is a long post, and I've only just touched the surface! I've mainly talked about the mechanics of the game, and I'll go into further detail about what the different units are, and the key differences between Warmachine and Hordes. However, my next post is going to be about one of the other reasons I love these games, the setting. I'll talk about the setting as a whole, as well as a quick overview of the factions.