Encounter levels

There is one basic prinicple that makes Warmachine and Hordes what it is, it is a skirmish level game. This means that unlike Warhammer, 40K, Kings of war and such other games you are pitting massive armies against each other, you only have a small force comparatively. I have absolutely no problems with this idea, the issue that I have is when the game grows beyond the 35 point level (or 36 if you play in German tournaments) the game stops being a skirmish game due to the amount of models and units on the table. At a skirmish level you rely on army wide synergy and combos so x does this which helps y to do what it does making it easier to achieve objective a, where as once you get to the point beyond that it becomes more and more how can I deal the most damage to my opponent while trying to not to lose my important units.



Now I like a straight forward beat down your opponent game as much as the next gamer, but having left Warhammer 40K on the turn of 6th edition (Due to playing an assualty Space wolf army in a shooting based edition, not to mention all the fliers), I found myself worried that as the point scale goes up the likelihood that Warmahordes was going the same way. However, I just played my first 50 point game yesterday (tournament practice, using Zerkova's NQ tier list) and inspite of all my previous thoughts the army wasn't clunky and wasn't a straight forward beat the living tar out of the opposing army, there was a great deal of strategy involved (although I maintain the board kind of forced that, with three hills forming a U shape with some gaps in to create bottle necks). In fact I actually have to say I feel like I enjoyed a 50 point game more than a 25 point game, simply because there were more options available to me than normal and I could spread out the army to cause as much trouble to my opponent's army as I could with out worrying about getting flanked.

I maintain that above 50 points the system doesn't work as well, both my opponent and I agreed that given the FA restrictions the only way to play at 50 points and up is to start using Colossals and that in my opinion would make it incredibly clunky especially for the Warmachine players using a large infantry force who now have to close in on the Colossal fast and hope not to get killed in the two turns of being in range of it while trying to do as much damage as possible. Alternatively you can completely ignore it using many tricks that are available to each faction, namely light cavalry, flung down the flanks and towards the caster, forcing your opponent to make tough decisions, lose the game or lose a unit or two to your opponents advancing army. There are other methods of dealing with colossals especially if the opposing caster sits with the colossal between you and them, Retribution have a spell that allows them to see through the colossal, Cygnar have Seige's Fox Hole spell, we have Irusk's Airburst, Zerkova's Ghost Stone, to a lesser extent eButcher's feat granting your army effectively a second activation.

On a tangent briefly, Warmachine: Vengance has been spoiled, bring us Stryker's third incarnation, Bane Thrall Cavalry, a new Retibution caster and character jack and most exciting for Khador players lButcher, and what looks like a unit of Khadoran Argus. I'm hoping it'll be around September for a release date, with Cyriss being released later this month I feel it'd make sense to have a little space for players to breath before jumping into the next big release.