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A Whole Host Of Warcasters Summon Focus For Warmachine
May 22, 2014 by brennon
See what you think of this mass of new Warcasters coming to the world of Warmachine from Privateer Press. We start things off however with the imposing form of Servath Reznik in a thundering chariot...
Now that is an awesome looking miniatures for the Protectorate of Menoth. It looks like an insane spiked and flaming chassis of death and that's just what you'd expect from these guys. I can see it being incredibly powerful when it's on the tabletop too.
Next up we're into the Warcasters and we have Gastone, Elara and Aiakos for Mercenaries, Retribution and Cryx. I think of these three my favourite has to be the almost Predator-like Aiakos. Next to him I quite like the dynamic Elara even though I doubt I'd ever pick up many Retribution miniatures.
Let's not forget the awesome additions to Khador, Menoth and Cygnar though! Kovnik, Tristan and Allison are heading up their respective factions and even though I should be fully on the side of Kovnik being a Khador player I can't help but love that Allison Jakes model. So much detail!
It will be interesting to see these Warcasters take to the field and of course they will be part of the Warmachine video game when it hits in the near-ish future!
Which Warcaster is for you?
These are really great!! I’m thinking of a cygnar army with JW, Allison and Gastonne 🙂
Seeing these I don’t feel bad for not backing the Tactics kickstarter. these are awesome!
I’m glad they did these for the game as a whole, I’m trying to work out whatose I like more, for the cryx unlike this one more. Poses the question is exclusive =better… An interesting one that.
quick question, would it be a good way to bring new players to the game by using these journeyman warcasters in mini games? i know you have the battelgroups for it but with this it would be a fast 2 or 3 mini game with nothing fancy.
At the very least they’d be a valid alternative. I think the main points you want to cover in an introductory game are Focus/focus, feats, and interaction between warcaster and warmachine.
One thing I like about Privateer Press miniatures is the female characters look like they have dressed for going into combat and not for taking part in a porno movie. I will be getting Allison Jakes for my Cygnar army.
i just got the limited edition ks version, and im seeing how shes been changed and the great detail on the small changes, and your right privateer so sexy but not an armored bikini
But I like wearing my chain mail bikini justin 🙁
Still waiting for my KS models though I do like the dynamic pose of Elara
I think this pose (for Jakes) blows the KS one out of the water. IMHO the Jakes from the Kickstarter felt kind of awkward and with the chunkiness of her swords it didnt really sell the duellist thing for me. The new one is much more dynamic and I lool forward to picking it up at retail 🙂
agreed!
Pretty ticked that these do look better than the ones I got from the Kickstarter…
Journeymen look good, privateer again showing they can deliver some excellent alternate poses. Not keen on the chariot the RH horse seems odd and doesn’t really live upto the art work – seems a bit to clunky for my liking.
Privateer Press do seem to have a problem getting horses right. I absolutely hated those barrel necked monstrosities they put the Tempest Blazers on.
Agreed. Lame copy and paste of the same horse in different factions. C’mon PP!
The storm donkeys, yeah shame as the riders are nice – Daughters of the flames on them are stunning sculpts
Those look pretty good.
Especially that Retribution one, Elara. Love the pose in particular.
The Cygnar one looks great too.
Definitely interested in these.
Some good looking sculpts, but…
“Epic Cavalry Battle Engine Warcaster” is the reason I stopped playing Warmahordes. The meta is moving away from the skirmish game that hooked me and edging ever closer to the battle game I don’t have any desire to play.
While big toys are cool the 20-35 points are where it is at for me. Trend to 50 and 75 I think goes against the strength of the rule set in my view
I think PP could make the larger games work, but the current army-building mechanic just does not balance at that scale of game. The beauty of a 35 pt game is that you can’t take every tool in your toolbox. You have to leave something behind. You have to make compromises when building your force. Every time you start a new game, you’re forced to ask yourself, “How do I open this particular can when the very specific tool designed for doing so is sitting on my shelf at home?” And you know your opponent is asking themselves the same question.
35 pt games are about adaptation. They’re about working with what you have, and finding a way to accomplish your goal in spite of the fact that you don’t have a full set of tools available. 50 pt games can be good too, but they’re generally only really good if you have randomly chosen scenario rules. Again, you can’t bring every tool for every conceivable situation to the table then, even at 50pts. But if you limit yourself to last man standing or some pre-ordained scenario, then 50pts very quickly turns into toolbox kind of game.
The bigger armies are just boring to play. It’s like watching two heavy weight boxers just stand opposite each and trade blows without blocking. There’s no joy in it, you just wait until somebody is pummeled enough to buckle, then you roll the rest of their army up like a carpet. It’s especially true if you try to cram those large armies into the standard 4×4 play area.
In order to get the larger games to be fun, PP needs new army building rules. Just adding up points doesn’t work out. You can bring whatever tools you want and cover all situations. Having some restrictions of army composition at the higher points levels is needed, a force composition chart like every other battle-scale game. There’s a good reason that particular army design tool is used in so many other games at the battle scale.
I am fairly new to Warmachine so I am still enjoying discovering new (or old to others) tactics and scenarios. I am unlikely to ever play a game above 40pts as it doesn’t interest me. So do you believe the base fundamentals (I assume this is what you mean by ‘meta’) of the Warmahordes system has altered by introducing larger point units and games and therefore changes the nature of low point games?
“Meta” is a generic term that gets thrown around a lot, and sometimes means different things. Generally speaking, it refers to the metagame outside of the game, in this case picking units for your army. People sometimes talk about their local meta, meaning the units they most frequently find themselves up against and the tactics they (and others in their area) end up resorting to deal with them. When somebody from one region plays against someone from a different region (often at a tournament) it’s sometimes really surprising what units they choose to bring to the table because in your local meta, you never see those.
Generally speaking, a well-balanced game supports a rich ecosystem of local metas, meaning there aren’t any clearly obvious must-have units that always and every time make it into everybody’s lists. There’s room to experiment and play around and still have a chance at winning, and a variety of different local “metas” is a good sign that a game’s unit options are well-balanced and generally viable. When you see a lot of people from a lot of different places always resorting to the same units and the same tactics, that’s usually a sign that the game has become imbalanced and some units are clearly better than others which reduces the variety people play with.
But there’s more to the meta than just local deviation. The meta is also about the ways unit design can push players to make decisions they otherwise might not have. Ever since colossals were added to the game, you see more and more players bringing them to the table at every points level. That’s a lot of points of possible variety being removed from a lot of lists. Battle engines weren’t this disruptive because most of them weren’t so powerful that they were always the best choice in any list. But the colossals are pretty much always worth their points so they pretty much always get used. And every list you make now has to answer the question, “How do I deal with a colossal?” because that’s pretty much a part of every meta now.
The meta is essentially the elements of a game’s design that determine how players approach the game. The structure of the rules, the design of the units and the culture of the player community are all part of this. Warmahordes is trying to turn into a large-scale battle game. The newer units pretty clearly point in that direction. The newer supplements starting from the introduction of battle engines are clearly laying a path for that. But the main game rules are still very much designed for skirmishes. If this is the direction PP wants to go, they need a third edition.