Ready to leave WM - I really hate playing against Hordes

[DrBaltar]

I agree with Ysthrall and VintertheElder. Its the old problem about dealing with high arm Beasts and their alphastrikes. Warbeasts have more initialattacks and can buy lots of attacks. Even a Centurion with Arcane Shield isnt enough to take the dmg of a Carnivean, Titan Gladiator or a Mauler. If your list isnt prepared for that sort of stuff you are going to struggle a lot.
I have played a match against one of my friends who is new to WM/Hordes and even with several mistakes his Trolls (Borka, Mauler, Fennblades) were able to beat me whithout difficulties.
What does this mean for me? Should i really avoid funlists even against new players?

[Sardonic Artery]

Considering the OP hasn't returned since post numero uno, I'll say he's been insulted away.

[R Gordon 1028]

I have been reading with interest. From my view point here is what I have deduced:

Hordes IS a very tough match up for WM

Spend more $$$ on a Storm Strider- (what PP really wants us all to do)

Spend more $$$ on a Stormwall - (what PP really wants us all to do)

Really concentrate on killing a heavy beast, wounding one is having wasted a turn for nought

Kill the support units - use e-leaps as you won't get by the heavies with warriora or jacks

We have a few, very few, casters who work well against Hordes - and the other players will hate you taking eHaley becasue she is ssooooo broken, but their tricks are not

Attrition against Hordes is a losing battle

Caster assinations against Hordes is a losing battle

SR 20xx against Hordes is a losing battle as those scoring rules deny us the time we need .... so....

try and have fun anyway.


Thanks for all the answers

[mrhuettel]

Hordes IS a very tough match up for WM

just a little tougher than WM - i hate playing cryx.

Spend more $$$ on a Storm Strider- (what PP really wants us all to do)
Spend more $$$ on a Stormwall - (what PP really wants us all to do)

or use any of our heaviest hitters at range or in melee

Really concentrate on killing a heavy beast, wounding one is having wasted a turn for nought
Kill the support units - use e-leaps as you won't get by the heavies with warriora or jacks

yes. both is very true. taking out beasts is essential against any hordes faction - to mess up their fury flow is to win the game. eliminating support is nothing specific against hordes (have you ever played strong menoth lists?) but most hordes factions massively rely on their support and invest more than WM factions.

We have a few, very few, casters who work well against Hordes - and the other players will hate you taking eHaley becasue she is ssooooo broken, but their tricks are not

i feel that most of our casters have the means to fight hordes, you just have to adjust and not use those that preferrably crush wm-armies. do not take nemo1 for his voltaic snare or disruption shenanigans - bring him for his feat (boosted pow14 hurts most warbeasts), for disruption field and chain lightning. do not bring haley2 for domination but for time bomb, replication and for pissing off your opponent (but that's always valid). take caine1 to take out their entire infantry and support and teleport back to safety. each of our casters can handle hordes as they are all tool boxes or specialists.

Attrition against Hordes is a losing battle
Caster assinations against Hordes is a losing battle
SR 20xx against Hordes is a losing battle as those scoring rules deny us the time we need

wrong. use our preferred attrition casters, and you'll make an impact - siege or stryker1 or haley1 play the attrition game nicely, as does haley2, blaize with infantry swarms, darius with some heavy hitting jacks and so on. use our preferred assassination casters with their generic assassination support and you'll kill warlocks in late game (as soon as you have decimated their fury) - caine2 laughs at warlocks, as does stryker2 - siege and sloan show them the nasty end of their respective ranged weapons with a smirk and reinholt to reload.
for SR: cygnar can be fast - ADed rangers, pronto'ed jacks, bonded jacks, cavalry (the storm lances are rather strong, imho) - and is more apt at adopting to battle field situations and SR-needs than most hordes-factions.

i do not - nor can i - convince you to stay with our beloved and fantastic game, but it'd be nice if you give the last two pages some consideration and kick some trollblood arse.

[VagrantPoet]

Yeah, the idea that Hordes out attritions Warmachine is woefully incorrect.

Warmachine is filled with units of infantry that can kill beasts. While beasts cost 9-10 points, and make the caster weaker as they die, weapon master units cost 5-10 and often go a lot further. Cygnar's problem compared to other faction is we don't have hard hitting infantry like Khador and Cryx easily do and we don't have a way to make our heavies so efficient they can go against beasts like Menoth. But those are just the easy options.

Forgeguard are amazing, and the ragman/aiyana & holt certainly help with that. Aswell as a lot of control elements that help Cygnar face beasts in the order they want.

[Ysthrall]

MrHuettel, I'm surprised you didn't mention eNemo in that list. I've found him to be surprisingly effective against Hordes, as he plays like a warlock half the time. While some of his spell/gun effects are ineffective vs Hordes, (having played them both an eNemo list running jackheavy feels comparable to an Abysolonia list running beast heavy.

For that matter, his tier 1 list with too many Stormcallers does horrible things to support troops and will give nasty shocks to a fair few light warlocks too ("What's that? DEF 16 and immune to shooting? Irrelevant...")

[whats82]

It's tougher. It's not a lost cause or a losing battle just because of that.

You really should try playing hordes or proxy them a few games to get the feel of the other side.

[Dyoria]

Hordes IS a very tough match up for WM

Not true. It is a different matchup. If you look to beat a hordes army the way you look to beat a WM army then you are already at a disadvantage. Learn Hordes. Learn what is integral to them. Remove that.

Spend more $$$ on a Storm Strider- (what PP really wants us all to do)
Spend more $$$ on a Stormwall - (what PP really wants us all to do)

Not really. I don't own one and I beat hordes lists all he time.

Really concentrate on killing a heavy beast, wounding one is having wasted a turn for nought

No. Damage is damage. The more damage you do, the less wounds they have. The less wounds they have, the greater chance of loosing a spiral. While jacks have multiple systems that can be destroyed, beasts have three spirals. Taking one spiral out severely affects a beasts performance. Depending on the spiral, all attacks (and they have a lot of attacks) loose a d6 on attack or a d6 on damage or the beast looses the ability to force. Softening a beast at range will make it easier to kill in melee. Beating a beast down in melee and not killing it will result in a mangled beast that wont return as much damage. And the other reason why you want damage on the beasts is that the warlock wont be able to transfer as much damage to the beast.

Kill the support units - use e-leaps as you won't get by the heavies with warriora or jacks

So many more options than e-leaps. Learn your faction. That's why you are loosing. AOEs, gun mage pushes, Fox Holes, Ground Pounder shots, GMCA bullets, Magic Bullet, TK, tramples, etc. There are usually only a few of these support units.

We have a few, very few, casters who work well against Hordes - and the other players will hate you taking eHaley becasue she is ssooooo broken, but their tricks are not

Wrong again. All our casters work against Hordes, you just have to learn them. Siege, eCaine, Kraye and eStryker are the best against them, but the rest of the gang is still very useful.

Attrition against Hordes is a losing battle

Nope. Its possibly the easiest way to win against hordes. Like I said, as the enemy units/beasts start taking damage and dying, the enemy army as a whole starts falling apart. Hordes armies are similar to menoth armies, in that they are more than the sum of their parts. They are holistic armies.

Caster assinations against Hordes is a losing battle

Not really. You have to time your assassinations based on his fury score and how full his beasts are. With a caster like Siege an assassination run on a hordes army is actually a tricky way of killing off his beasts. Thanks to his feat, you can throw some serious damage at his caster. Either he dies, or sacrifices a lot of damage on a beast to soak the transfer. Thats when you switch damage dealing to his beasts and kill off or manage them.

SR 20xx against Hordes is a losing battle as those scoring rules deny us the time we need .... so....
try and have fun anyway.

Or you can not resign to losing. You dont have to kill your opponent's army to win in SR2012. You can complete mission objectives.


Point is:
a) LEARN to use ALL of Cygnar (not necessary spend 200$ on 2 models).
b) LEARN how Hordes armies work. The best way is to start one. I felt this way too when I first started, then I bought a Skorne army and now I kill both WM and Hordes equally. (I actually think my record is better vs hordes than wm.
c) Play to win the scenario. You dont have to clear your opponent's army off the table, this isnt WH40k.
d) Dont be negative, if you give up before trying than you are going to lose.

Thanks for all the answers

[VagrantPoet]

No. Damage is damage. The more damage you do, the less wounds they have. The less wounds they have, the greater chance of loosing a spiral. While jacks have multiple systems that can be destroyed, beasts have three spirals. Taking one spiral out severely affects a beasts performance. Depending on the spiral, all attacks (and they have a lot of attacks) loose a d6 on attack or a d6 on damage or the beast looses the ability to force. Softening a beast at range will make it easier to kill in melee. Beating a beast down in melee and not killing it will result in a mangled beast that wont return as much damage. And the other reason why you want damage on the beasts is that the warlock wont be able to transfer as much damage to the beast.

While for the most part a good measured response, the bolded part is patently untrue as a single heal or two can render a warbeast fully operational in a way most warjacks can never manage. A warbeast you failed to kill in melee will be full power, and often that full power is easily enough to kill or cripple a Cygnar jack in a way that genuinely will leave it operating and minimal effectiveness.

[notsoevil]

I've always felt WM has the advantage over Hordes.

More ranged.

More ARM.

More POW.

Sure, Fury is awesome because you can throw so much out there, but WM armies have the advantage of stability.

Once Hordes armies start to lose beasts, they fall apart quickly. That's always my concern playing my Trolls. It is hard not to get your beasts killed which loses you spells AND fury.

[Dyoria]

Patently untrue? Thats going a bit far.

Misleading? Somewhat. Situationally untrue? Yes. It is not a given that your opponent will be able to heal a warbeast on his turn for a many of reasons.

Additionally, healing beasts takes resources/actions/potential away from warlocks and/or support units who would normally be doing other things.

[VagrantPoet]

Grevious wounds. What can Cygnar do to give Grevious wounds? Or indeed stop healing. Sure losing aspects is disastrous, and yeah 'patently untrue' was hyperbole.

But its incredibly rare for it not to be worth a warlock's while to heal up and kill your heavy. Trading your heavy so that the warlock casts one less spell is NOT a good trade. If you commit to kill a warbeast, you basically have to succeed. And this is doable for cyngar. Easiest if you can shoot them and soften them up first. Sometimes you encounter ARM23 Mulg or Kreas, etc and you have to adapt.

[mrhuettel]

MrHuettel, I'm surprised you didn't mention eNemo in that list. I've found him to be surprisingly effective against Hordes, as he plays like a warlock half the time. While some of his spell/gun effects are ineffective vs Hordes, (having played them both an eNemo list running jackheavy feels comparable to an Abysolonia list running beast heavy.

yes, of course. nemo2 is ALWAYS a good choice and especially in jack-heavy games against few-model-armies. highly recommendable!

[Lanz]

I have been reading with interest. From my view point here is what I have deduced:

Hordes IS a very tough match up for WM

No it isn't. Some lists are. Some casters are. But that is true of WM-WM and H-H matches too. Every faction will have hard match ups, and no, WM is not overall threatened by all of hordes. Personally, I've never felt threatened by hordes while playing my protectorate. Ever. Even as a Legion player now, while I appreciate legions variety of awesome rules and tricks, I would still slide them below my Protectorate for sheer power.

Spend more $$$ on a Storm Strider- (what PP really wants us all to do)

Spend more $$$ on a Stormwall - (what PP really wants us all to do)

These models did not exist about a year or two ago. Hordes did. Do you honestly think there was no solution for this before these models came out?

Which isn't to say that either of those models aren't worth buying, and won't help out. They certainly are and they will. They are not the only answer nor a requirement, however.

Really concentrate on killing a heavy beast, wounding one is having wasted a turn for nought

To be fair, healing a beast is only a temporary measure and only allows for a final activation of the given warbeast. A warlock will always invest the 2 or so fury to get a beast back on its feet for a final charge, sure, but they'll still lose the beast after that. A warjack isn't necessarily much different with mechanics around, except generally warjacks have more armor and more boxes than beasts, so if I a beast took enough damage to only have a few boxes left, a warjack would probably have whole columns remaining. Likewise enough damage to kill or severely cripple a warjack would probably kill the majority of beasts outright.

The healing potential of the fury system still does not contest the sheer armor and hitboxes per-point-cost that warjacks have over warbeasts in the area of absorbing damage. The warbeast's advantage is that generally they will remain mostly-functional right up until their death, but it still takes less to kill a warbeast than it does to wreck a warjack.

Also, damaging warbeasts indirectly damages a warlock. An injured beast is a risky transfer target as it chances making a problem worse, a nearly-dead beast is a detremental transfer target which will only soak a bit of damage, while killing a beast, and denying whatever fury that beast had from being collected.

This ties into the assassination bit, which I'll continue further on.

Kill the support units - use e-leaps as you won't get by the heavies with warriora or jacks

If there is anything you have learned in this thread, this is certainly a good place to start. Indeed, killing support helps a lot, and rules like electroleap are ideally-suited to the task.

That said, the bit about warriors and 'jacks is, of course, completely wrong.

Attrition against Hordes is a losing battle

I'm not sure what would give you that idea, and I'd be curious to read whatever thread you were reading to make you beleive that, as you claim to be learning things here.

Attrition is fantastic against hordes. Now, some hordes lists can do attrition really well, in which case you've got the problem of attrition vs attrition, which will boil down to whose attrition is better, moreso than whether its hordes or warmachine. Generally any warmachine list will have access to more attrition than hordes, however, and the endgame can turn in the warcasters favor when it comes down to it.

Caster assinations against Hordes is a losing battle

Backwards again, and here I will continue what I was saying about beasts and transfers and bring up an important point about hordes;

While warlocks can essentially burn their entire fury pool on spells while still running their beasts, they are also balanced around this feature, and are expected to work that way. If you do anything to threaten the hordes battlegroup, you are stealing resources. You are forcing heals, you are forcing transfers. The more beasts you hurt, the more resources you take away from the warlock. The more beasts you kill, the more you hurt the warlock. They have no choice in the matter. Their survival hinges on this balance, and they generally can't afford to just give up beasts, but they can't afford to just leave themselves exposed either.

And that's where assassination comes in. If you can even threaten an enemy warlock, you will hurt their productivity. If they're forced to sit on fury for transfers at the risk of being assassinated (cygnar in particular with their ranged advantage), then not only are they not using all their focus, their beasts aren't using all their focus either, as they can't be transferred to if their fury is full. You don't actually have to be burning resources to try and assassinate either. You just have to force them to be more conservative and that will slow down the entire battlegroup, or force the warlock to make some very risky choices.


Overall, the warmachine advantage is aggression with durability, whereas hordes generally has to go with aggression or durability. In the Warmachine case, the more aggressive you are, the more you force the hordes player to be choosing durability, and then it comes down to whether they take the risk, or try to endure, and how you can match that, which all comes down to how well you play.

[Kisaragi]

Just throwing my 2 cents into the ring.

At our LGS we have a fair few cygnar players and they tend to go fairly consistently (and are generally also cygnar purists) whether it be hordes or warmachine.

I personally don't think either system is better than the other and more comes down to play-style of the player and the army. Just because they don't function the same doesn't mean they are un-balanced, unless you take the point of view that everything in warmahordes is so overpowered it balances out : P.

I've actually been writing a comparison between the hordes and warmachine on my blog just as an extended opinion.

http://central-blogma.blogspot.com.au/

[contrived_rabbit]

I am surprised not many people have mentioned using a full unit of boomhowler. I am fairly new to playing War Machine, but I have had great luck using Boomhowler to tie up 1 or 2 of their big warbeasts. 4+ toughness checks for the win, and I also love long gunners with snipe