Warmachine/Tactics/Gameplay Basics

The Turn

Each game is made up of rounds, which are broken down into turns (one for each player). A turn is made up of three phases; the Maintenance Phase, the Control Phase, and the Activation Phase.

Maintenance Phase (aka the "Am I on fire?" phase)

This is the part of the turn where you resolve continuous effects ("Am I on fire? Am I being corroded by powerful acids?") and generally clean up after the previous turn; remove AOEs that expire and clean up your spells that weren't upkeeps.

Control Phase (the 'Hmm' phase)

Usually you plan your turn during the other guy's turn, but this is where it starts; refresh and allocate Focus, pay for upkeep spells and generally get ready for shit hitting the fan. This is also the first part of the turn where the differences between Warmachine and Hordes come into play, because this is where the two games' resource systems come into play for the first time.

In Warmachine, warcasters use FOCUS to power warjacks. Every 'caster produces a set amount of focus points, which they can then allocate to 'jacks to enable them to make powerful special attacks, boost their damage output, run, charge, or whatever else - but the warcaster also needs focus to cast their own spells, and "camping" focus - keeping a couple of extra points around - bumps up the 'caster's ARM so that they aren't so horrifically squishy. As a result, Warmachine is a game of resource management; focus is awesome, and you don't have enough.

In Hordes, warlocks have to manage FURY to keep their warbeasts from going out of control and eating their own army. Warlocks don't produce fury points. Warbeasts do, and they produce even more when you try to make them run, charge, boost their damage, or anything else. The warlock's job is to leach this fury away and dispose of it safely, because a warbeast with fury left over is in danger of going berserk. As such, Hordes is a game of risk management; fury is dangerous, but you need it to win, so where's the balance point between "too much" and "not enough"?

Whichever system you're playing, this is where the meat of the resource play happens. Warcasters allocate focus and warlocks leach as much of it as they can. That's basically it.

Activation Phase (Shit Gets Done)

Each element of an army activates individually in their own mini-turns; a model (or group of models) that have activated can move, perform an action, then ends its activation. Alternatively, they can run (double their SPD) to get somewhere quick, and then end their activations immediately after, or fuck moving and get a bonus to hitting things with their shooting.

Actions generally involve one of the following; melee attack, ranged attack, perform a special action/attack.

Attacks are simple: 2d6 + (MAT for melee, RAT for ranged) + modifiers, compared to the target's DEF. If you equal or exceed it, you hit, and roll damage - which, again, is just 2d6 + (weapon strength) + modifiers, minus the enemy's ARM. Like 40k, a lot of infantry models are single-wound, which means that they die if they take any damage at all, but it isn't uncommon for units to have more health than that. Damage taken is marked on the unit's card. Because of this, most Warmachine unit cards are stored in plastic sleeves, and the damage is marked with a dry-erase marker for easy cleaning afterwards.

Special actions are magic spells, abilities or other things that aren't part of your usual soldier's skillset and aren't usually offensive in nature; it's things like repairing a warjack or digging a trench. Some require a skill check (roll 2d6 and pray for lows) while most are just 'okay, break out the shovels'.

Special attacks are... well, special attacks. They hurt people, so they tend to require a check of some kind, but this isn't always the case (the Thunderhead's 'Energy Pulse' Special Attack just zaps everything within 6" regardless of any checks). The most common check you make would be a Magic Ability check, in which case the ability rating (the x in Magic Ability [x]) becomes the RAT equivalent.

Warcasters can sling spells at any time during their activation when they're not doing something else (like, say, in the middle of a run; this prevents drive-bys), burning through Focus to cast spells, enhance attacks and generally being awesome when not rolling snake eyes.

Terrain

Terrain can affect unit actions, being beneficial such as giving defense bonuses, or slowing you down preventing you from reaching a target. You and you're opponent should agree on what everything is before deployment.

Open, Rough, and Impassable

Open terrain doesn't impede progress and lets you move normally. Rough terrain slows movement, and impassable terrain is exactly what it sounds like.

Features

Any piece of terrain that isn't the ground itself is a Terrain feature, like walls buildings and forests.

• Water comes in two types shallow and deep. Shallow water slows you down and can make warjacks stationary if they're knocked down in it. Deep water can hurt infantry and destroy jacks, and prevents most actions.
• Trenches protect against blast damage and give cover as long as the source of either isn't in the trench.
• Forests are rough terrain that grant concealment, and mess with Line of Sight.
• Hills can be either rough or open terrain and elevates models letting them see and be seen over models of equal or smaller size that aren't elevated.
• Obstacles are anything you could climb and stand on top of. Anything you'd need to climb over but couldn't stand on like a fence is a Linear obstacle. Linear obstacles don't slow your movement, but cannot be charged through unless the model has pathfinder. Walls that are less than 1' thick are linear obstacles.
• Obstructions are stuff that can't be moved through or climbed over like a house or really big rock. Obstructions grant a DEF bonus against melee attacks if the target is obscured by it.
  • On a side note theres Smoke. Its not a regular terrain piece but an AOE that can be dropped by certain models. Smoke gives concealment and blocks line of sight to models behind it.

Cover (the shit you hide behind)

Cover, as you'd expect, is a DEF bonus against shooting and magic attacks granted by terrain. Concealment is a smaller bonus that comes from stuff that would conceal a model but not stop something, like bushes or smoke. Cover is a large bonus that comes from stuff that would stop something. The bonuses don't stack.