Warmahordes: My First Impression

Alright, so after buying my 25 point Skorne army and getting it built, my friends were more than happy to teach me how to play the infamous Warmahordes.  I was a bit intimidated, as it was a system that I haven't touched in about a decade, with all kinds of weird rules.  The first game was my Skorne against some Gatormen, and I had Wongchen helping me so I wasn't totally screwed.  After that, I played against some Trolls, then two starter-box games against Khador and Cygnar, and then another 25 point game against Everblight to finish the day.  After these games, I think I'm ready to talk about my first impressions of the system and the game itself.

New Player Friendliness

It could have been my experience specifically, or maybe my choice in army, but I felt that as a new player, this game is extremely convoluted.  Each model has it's own unique abilities that it can either cast on itself or another warbeast, or I could have my caster cast it by using his Fury.  Multiply that times 4, then add in the Paingivers with their host of abilities and pillow pants, you end up with an overwhelming number of choices that each model can do.  The addition of POW attacks on top of all of that really means that you have to know a lot before you know anything about the game.  Now, after a while, I got a bit more used to what abilities each guy had and I started to get the hang of using the synergy of my army, but I think at first, it can be extremely intimidating.

Options

Each army seems to have a plethora of different and effective ways to play, and the synergy of units and it's importance becomes very apparent, very quickly.  Even though I have a ton of choices to make, not all of them are useful all the time and some I used almost every turn. One thing that caught my eye was that it seems that most units are really only useful when you build an army around them, there seem to be very few, if any units that can hold their own without having to have support from a couple other things.  That's not necessarily bad, but it means my usual habit of just buying models and playing with the ones I like will probably lead to some really bad builds.  The good side is though you get a lot more details and interesting effects that I like in a skirmish scale game, such as throwing my enemy warjack into someone else, knocking people down, etc.

Nit Picking

First of all, I really hate that you cannot design your own Warlock/Warcaster some how.  I don't want to play some characters story which has already been written, I really enjoy creating my own characters with their own narrative.  I suppose I'll have to get used to it though.  Another thing I don't like are the lack of meaningful scenarios, the chess mechanic of killing the king to win isn't bad, and it was quite fun, but one thing I really like about 40k/WFB is that I don't know exactly what I'll be doing going into the game until it starts.  I understand that there are scenarios that can be played, but the opinion about them seems to be fairly negative.

Overall Thoughts

In general, the game seems much better than it did those oh so many years ago when I first picked up some models to give it a try.  I had a lot of fun and enjoyed the fact that I could play many games in a day, and each time it was totally different.  I'll definitely be playing this a bit on the weekends.  I'm planning on getting a Bronzeback to finish off my 35 point list, then maybe some Gatormen.  I'm sure you'll see some pics soon of my first painted Titan.