Warmachine/Tactics/Advanced Tactics

THIS ARTICLE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. STAND BY FOR MORE ADDITIONS OVER THE FOLLOWING FEW DAYS.

So you think you've got a handle on the basic idea of Warmahordes, but you want to know more before sitting down and drawing up an army list for purchase. Well, that's what this page is here for: to give you an idea of how to make the rules of the game work for you.

For the purposes of this article, most actual units and army strategies referenced will be Khadoran, because Khador is simple at its core but has enough variability, both in terms of strategy and in special rules, to cover a broad base. Specifics will be kept to a minimum, but even those ideas which refer to specific Khador units or abilities should be easily adapted to other factions by reading the appropriate Tactics page and observing the difference between the two.

So. Let's begin.

The Fundamentals

Yeah, that's right, fucker. We're starting at the beginning. You've read the rules, but you don't understand the rules, and that's where all strategy begins. Whether it's chess, boxing, or any other competitive setting, any serious player will tell you that being an expert is entirely reliant on having a solid grasp of the basics. Chess players have openings and responses to study. League of Legends pros have creeps to farm and wards to buy. Football players have... well, we aren't entirely sure what they do, but we're damn sure it's grounded in the basics.

So we're gonna start at the very bottom: reading unit cards.

Unit Analysis

The first thing you need to be able to do in order to git gud at Warmahordes is to be able to look at a unit and understand its capabilities. This isn't as simple as looking at its card and seeing the numbers printed there. It's about knowing what those numbers mean. What can this unit reliably hit? What will it not hit? How badly will it hurt unit X? Unit Y? Is it best used as a tarpit or as an assassin? If it's on the enemy team, how do you deal with it? If it's on yours, how do you maximize its efficiency? Does it love terrain? Does it need wide-open spaces? What can it deal with? What can't it deal with?

Once you've learned how to really read a unit card, you should be able to tell at a glance what any given model is capable of, even if you haven't seen it before. This will allow you to predict your opponent's strategy and to perfect your own, giving you an upper hand.

Stats and Averages

The first thing you'll notice when looking at any given unit card is its stat line. This is a big part of understanding the unit's capabilities. It isn't the only part, and for some units it's not even the most important part, but you still need to be able to look at it and understand what it means.

Every unit in Warmahordes has the following stats:

• SPD: Speed. How far the unit can move, in inches, when taking a normal turn. Moving your SPD is called making a "full advance", and is the first part of any given model's activation. A model can also choose to forfeit its action to "run", moving double its SPD, or forfeit moving at all in exchange for a +2 aiming bonus to ranged attacks. When charging, you can move up to your SPD + 3".
• STR: Strength. How strong the unit is. This is mostly unimportant, especially for infantry, as your damage in melee is equal to your STR + your weapon's POW, and this value is almost always printed separately for each melee weapon as "P+S", so you don't have to stop and calculate it for yourself. A few special rules make use of it, though, particularly when warjacks or warbeasts make Power Attacks.
• MAT: Melee Attack. How accurate the unit is in melee combat. This stat is important for any mainline infantry, particularly if you intend to use them as a tarpit, since it plays a large part in determining how effective you'll be in a brawl. Having incredible P+S doesn't count for jack if you don't connect. On the other hand, this is largely unimportant for a lot of primary ranged units, since getting into melee usually means that you've already screwed up.
• RAT: Ranged Attack. How accurate you are at range. Important for any unit with a ranged attack, obviously.
• DEF: Defense. How hard you are to hit. Anything trying to hit you has to beat your DEF first, which makes this stat your first line of... well, defense in combat. Having a high DEF makes you very hard to kill with standard weaponry, whether in melee or at range. On the other hand, it offers no protection against explosions and other auto-hit damage sources, and being knocked down or made stationary will effectively nullify any DEF you have.
• ARM: Armor. How hard you are to hurt once something actually connects. Having high ARM means that a lot of attacks will simply glance off, whatever the source. However, high ARM will only get you so far against massed fire; eventually, something will get through, and there are a lot of attacks in Warmahordes which can hit with devastatingly high POW. Be sure to avoid these if you want to survive.
• CMD: Command. How well-coordinated the unit is. This is primarily used for determining how far apart models in a unit can spread out; every member of the Winter Guard Infantry has to stay within a certain number of inches of the unit leader, equal to that model's CMD rating. If a model in a unit is outside of its leader's CMD range, it basically loses a turn and has to try to get back into it, you also cannot target a unit with friendly spells or make free strikes while a unit has a member out of formation.

Each weapon a model has will also have its own statline printed on the card. Ranged weapons are denoted by a pistol icon, and have the following stats:

• RNG: The weapon's range, in inches. You can't pre-measure this before committing to an attack, and if the target is out of range, you automatically miss. Get good at eyeballing.
• ROF: Rate of fire. The maximum number of shots that the weapon can take per turn. Most of the time, this is 1, particularly for infantry. The only way to get extra attacks is via some sort of special rule, like Dual Shot or Reload, This means that weapons with a ROF greater than 1 are usually restricted to warcasters, warlocks, warjacks, and warbeasts.
• AOE: The diameter, in inches, of any blast template used by the weapon. Many weapons are single-target and do not cause explosions, so their AOE will be denoted with a "-" symbol. Those that do cause explosions have the size of that explosion marked here. If this weapon misses, the explosion deviates (travels a little bit in a random direction), so it might still catch somebody in the bang. If the attack hits, the primary target takes a full-damage hit and everyone, friend or foe, caught under it takes a half-damage one, called blast damage. If it misses, then everyone, whether they were the original target or not, only takes half damage.
• POW: The damage rating of the weapon. Roll 2d6 + POW to find out how hard you hit.

Melee weapons only have three printed stats: POW, Range, and P+S. Of the three, you'll be using P+S the most. It stands for "POW + STR", and is the total damage dealt by the weapon (since you add your STR to the weapon's POW in melee), pre-calculated for you. Its POW is only printed in case some special rule needs you to use it. all melee weapons come in one of 4 ranges. 0.5" for most ranged infantry and light jacks/beasts, 1 inch for all heavy warjacks/beasts and most melee infantry, 2" for models with spears/polearms. There are also a handful of models that have a 4" reach but that is only during their activation.

Every model also has a health stat, also referred to as "hit points", "wounds", "boxes", etc. This is usually printed at the bottom of the unit card as a row of little boxes that can be filled in when the unit is dealt damage. When all boxes are filled, the unit is destroyed. If no boxes are printed, the unit has only one health point and is destroyed as soon as it takes damage. Most infantry models have only one health point. These are called "single-wound infantry".

Warjacks and warbeasts track their health a little differently. The details aren't important right now. Suffice to say that they tend to have a shit-ton of health, but as they take damage, they will become gradually less and less effective. They may become less mobile, lose the ability to make special attacks, or just hit much more weakly.

Warcasters and warlocks will also have a FOCUS or FURY stat (note that, when this is typed in ALL CAPS, it denotes the stat, while anything else refers to the points of focus or fury acquired and spent during the game). This determines how much mana they start the game with, the maximum size of their pool, and how far their wizardly influence reaches. Every warcaster or warlock has a control area - a bubble of influence - around themselves, with a radius equal to twice their FOCUS or FURY. This is the maximum distance at which the warnoun can manipulate the focus/fury fueling/generation of his/her warjacks/warbeasts. If you made it through that last sentence sane, congratulations. It is also the greatest distance at which they can use arc nodes. Warcasters refill their focus pool, up to their FOCUS, at the start of every turn; warlocks don't generate FURY on their own, and can only handle a number of fury points equal to their fury stat at once.

The final stat that you will see in Warmahordes is exclusive to warbeasts, and is called Threshold, or THR. This represents the warbeast's ability to deal with fury; any fury points that the warlock doesn't manage to take away mean that the warbeast has to make a roll against its THR, with each fury point left making it harder to succeed. Fail the roll, and the 'beast goes crazy, chomping down on the nearest model, whether friend or foe.

Now that you know what each stat is, it's time to learn how to judge a unit's capabilities by its stat line.

The first thing to know: in Warmahordes, an "average" stat means "bad at this". This isn't always true, but it's so common that it might as well be. An example "average" stat line is as follows:

GENERIC INFANTRYMAN

SPD	STR	MAT	RAT	DEF	ARM	CMD
6	5	5	5	12	12	8

GENERIC RIFLE

RNG	ROF	AOE	POW
10	1	-	10

GENERIC SWORD

POW	P+S
3	8

This is about as bog-standard as it's possible to get, though no unit in Warmahordes actually has this specific statline. Most of your infantry will be a variation on it, though. The "average" FOCUS or FURY stat is about 6 or 7, depending on your army of choice, with 6 being slightly towards the lower end of the scale but a bit more common (5 is rock-bottom low).

All of the above are about the benchmark for your average human foot soldier in the world of Warmahordes. Specific armies will favor some stats at the expense of others, of course; Cygnar likes to focus on shooting, so its units tend to have higher RAT at the expense of lower MAT. In contrast, Menoth's Exemplar infantry are heavily armored and well-trained, so they have higher ARM and MAT, but lower SPD, while their Holy Zealots (which are just random fucks who decided to grab a couple Molotovs and ALLAHU AKHBAR) have even lower MAT and RAT. Despite all this, though, the above is what is generally accepted as "average" stats.

It's also what is considered the basis for bad, at least as far as combat stats (MAT, RAT, DEF, ARM) go. Its SPD is good (6 is solid, 5 is slow and where most warjacks clock in, 4 is painful, and 7 or higher is great), its CMD is fine (though not spectacular), and its weapon POW is fine for anti-infantry work, but any unit with this combat statline would be chucked in the bin immediately, barring some seriously redeeming special rules. Seriously. Your average human sucks. The above statline is bad. But why is it bad?

Because of dice.

Dice and Combat

The thing to remember is that Warmahordes works on a 2d6 system. An attack works like this:

• Attacker rolls 2d6 + (MAT for melee, RAT for ranged, FOCUS/FURY/whatever for magical attacks) + other modifiers. If equal to or greater than target's DEF, the attack hits and we go on to the next step. If not, barring it being an AOE attack that deviates onto another valid target, the attack is over.
• Attacker rolls 2d6 + (POW for ranged and magical, P+S for melee) + other modifiers - target's ARM. Anything left over is applied as damage.

The average roll on 2d6 is 7. Half the time you'll roll higher. Half the time you'll roll lower. This means that a unit with the standard RAT 5, shooting at a target with the standard DEF 12, only has a 50% chance of connecting. Not exactly fantastic, I think you'll agree. From this, we can draw up the following:

MAT and RAT Value Meanings
Score	DEF Hit On Average	Found On
9	16	The best of the best
8	15	Officers leading elite units
7	14	Elite units dedicated to the role
6	13	Specially-trained infantry
5	12	Standard infantry
4	11	Jagoffs with no training
3	10	Slugs

So, barring special circumstances (like special rules or the aiming bonus), you shouldn't rely on anything below MAT or RAT 7 to reliably connect with whatever you're shooting at, unless it's a particularly easy target like a heavy warjack (since they tend to have DEF 10 or thereabouts due to being fuckheug, and pretty much anybody can hit them). A 6 is okay. 7 is good, even great. 8 is rare, and 9 is almost unheard of. If you're rocking a 6 or lower, though, expect to rely a lot on aiming or other bonuses if you want to actually hit anything consistently.

You can also read the above chart the other way around: 12 is pretty low for DEF. 13 is solid, 14 is great. 15 or higher is getting absurd; 16, 17, 18, or even (Emprah help you) 19 is getting fucking ridiculous and you're probably That Guy who fields Kayazy Assassins and puts Iron Flesh on them just to fuck with people. 10 or 11 means almost anything will hit you.

POW and ARM are a bit more difficult to lay out that simply, since they're also greatly influenced by how much health the model has. ARM becomes exponentially more valuable as your health track becomes larger. However, there are some broad categories which ARM values can be said to fall into:

ARM Value Meanings
ARM Score	Average POW to Break	Single-Wound Infantry	Multi-Wound Infantry, Solos	Warjacks/Warbeasts
22+	16+	This will almost never happen.	You are absolutely stupidly hard to kill.	You're a Khador player to the bone, and nothing short of a tactical nuke will take you down.
21	15	This will almost never happen.	It's going to take absurd amounts of killing, probably from dedicated melee infantry, to end you.	Super-heavy 'jack. Only dedicated ARM-crackers can threaten you.
20	14	This probably won't happen.	Concentrated fire from dedicated heavy-weapons teams is the ideal solution.	Pretty solid, but beware heavy-killers. Typical Khador heavy warjack ARM.
19	13	You're in Shield Wall and wearing several buffs to boot. You're a nightmare of a tarpit.	Super-heavy solo. You're a tough one, but beware anti-solo options and assassins.	Standard heavy 'jack. Solid, but not unbeatable. Beware charging heavies.
18	12	You're a serious pain in the ass to remove and can soak up a hell of a lot of bullets.	Still tough, but starting to look breakable. Watch your flanks.	You'll soak most infantry fire without more than a few scratches, but other heavies are dangerous.
17	11	Standard heavy infantry. A decent defensive line, but concentrated fire will remove you from the board.	Standard heavy solo. Stay cautious and you'll survive.	Standard light 'jack. Paper, so far as actual anti-armor fire is concerned.
16	10	You're pretty resilient against blast damage, but a direct hit will take you out.	Starting to look squishy, son. The Mage Hunters are watching.	Still surviving anti-infantry guns, but only barely.
15	9	Standard medium infantry. Survives blasts, dies to direct hits.	Stay hidden until the time is right. You're a juicy target.	Keep out of LOS if you don't want to explode.
14	8	Mortars are starting to really scare you, and any direct hit is death.	Standard anti-infantry guns can kill you easily.	Absolute glass. Keep moving or die.
13-	7	Standard light infantry. Anything that connects kills.	Standard assassin solo. Anything that connects kills.	This doesn't happen. (Lesser warbeasts beg to differ).

Again, the above is just a rule of thumb, as each faction has access to different POW and ARM ratings. Menoth's Temple Flameguard can break the scale for a turn or so under the right circumstances, while Khador's Winter Guard bring POW 12 guns to the table as a matter of course, so they can crack harder targets more easily. This is just a guide.

Still, it's worth noting that the average anti-infantry rifle in Warmahordes comes packing POW 10. In fact, this is so prevalent, particularly in Cygnar (seriously, they're drowning in the damn things), that RNG 10, POW 10 guns are generally referred to as "Cygnar Tens", and are consider the baseline for anti-infantry ranged options. Any squad of rifle-wielding infantry probably has something like RNG 10, POW 10.

Because of this, infantry with ARM 16 or less tend to be seriously threatened by direct hits. If an infantry model has ARM 15 or below, it will probably have to rely on its DEF to keep it safe from Cygnar Tens. Hugging cover and breaking LOS with terrain is vital for keeping such infantry alive.

Meanwhile, most artillery in the game brings something like POW 14, which means that infantry caught in the explosion will be taking POW 7 hits. This makes ARM 13 or lower very susceptible to blast damage, and even ARM 14 isn't going to survive long against sustained barrages. However, because blast damage does not have to roll against your DEF to connect, the only defense light infantry have against this is to spread out and try to minimize the number of models caught in each explosion.

So, as you can see, "average" stats in Warmahordes mean that you have only a 50% chance to connect with a man standing out in the open, and that even a passing breeze will cause you to explode and die if it actually connects. For infantry with standard stats, combat is a coin flip: heads you die, tails I die. This is obviously not what you want to do, so remember: average sucks. If you want your units to be effective, you need to beat the curve.

Special Rules

And this is how you do it.

Barring the model in question just outright having whatever high stat you need it to, you'll have to rely on the unit's special abilities to make it work. In fact, even if it does have excellent stats, you probably still want it to have a couple special abilities to back those numbers up. Remember, average is bad. Everything that you have that sets you apart from the bog-standard vanilla is good, and some of the more common special rules are actually considered almost mandatory if you want to be considered good at what you do.

So here is where we'll go over some of the more important special rules and abilities, and what they do to make your unit more effective. These aren't all the different special rules you'll find in Warmahordes, but they are generally the ones that you'll come across most often, and the ones that you'll care most about.

• ADVANTAGES

Advantages are special abilities that a unit or model has on itself. They are printed as a series of icons on the bottom of the unit's stat line.

• • Advance Deployment

This model or unit deploys after everything else has been put on the table, and gets to deploy up to 6" forward of the rest of the army. You'll usually find this on speedy, sneaky types, like Khador's Widowmakers or the Retribution's Mage Hunter Assassins. It isn't unheard of to find it on frontline infantry, though, such as Menoth's Exemplars Errant. It makes the unit much more mobile and is very important in scenario play, as it basically lets the unit reach the center of the table a turn faster, which can be vital for capturing and holding vital points. It can also be used to react to your opponent's deploy and place slippery units on an unguarded flank, to threaten his warcaster or warlock.

• • Arc Node

This advantage is exclusive to warjacks. Even warbeasts don't have it, so Hordes armies will have to do without, which is a shame - it's one of the best advantages a warjack can have, and generally accounts for quite a lot of the 'jack's total cost. A warcaster usually has to cast spells from their own position, which means that they have to be fairly close to their target. This can be risky, since the warcaster is a priority target for your opponent. With an arc node on the field, though, this is no longer an issue: the warcaster can channel spells through the 'jack carrying the node. This can more than double the range of some spells, and allows your warcaster much more freedom of positioning while also increasing their battlefield presence by a ridiculous amount.

Unfortunately, you can't channel a spell through a warjack that's engaged in melee, so be sure to keep the node carrier safe. Even if the unit it's engaged with is the most fucking abysmal melee combatant ever and stands no chance of actually killing it, a lot of node bearers lack the means to quickly clear tarpits, and you're taking that 'jack for the ability to throw spells from across the table, not for a subpar melee unit. Almost all arc node carriers are light warjacks, too.

• • Combined Melee Attack and Combined Ranged Attack

These advantages are functionally the same thing, just for two different types of combat. You'll only ever find them on units, so no solos, warnouns, or whatever joining in, but a unit that does have it can be a real terror for your opponent. This lets two or more of your unit members call a combined attack on the same target, granted that they all have line of sight and are in range. In exchange for sacrificing their individual attacks, the one attack that these models make is extra-powerful: it gets +1 to both the attack and damage rolls for each participant, so even a minimum combined attack of two models is firing at +2. This makes combined attacks scarily accurate and capable of punching through much higher ARM values than the unit's normal POW would suggest. It's one of the most valuable combat abilities you can have.

• • Eyeless Sight

True sight, basically. You ignore cloud effects (see The Basics on terrain for why that's important), forests, concealment, and Stealth when making ranged attacks. This is an excellent ability all around and makes it much harder for your opponent to avoid your ranged attacks.

• • Gunfighter

You can use your ranged weapons in melee combat. Really just makes it so that some models, like the Cryxian Pistol Wraith, are never caught unarmed.

• • Incorporeal

You ignore terrain and models when moving, so you can basically walk through anything you want, and only magical abilities (or weapons with Magic Weapon) can hurt you. Any time you attack, though, you lose Incorporeal for a round. This makes some units incredibly hard to deal with for certain armies, and is particularly important for Cryx, as it provides a lot of their survivability and mobility. It's a powerful advantage that should not be underestimated.

• • Pathfinder

You ignore rough terrain penalties to movement and can charge across some obstructions. Simple, awesome. You want it.

• • Stealth

Anything shooting at you from more than 5" away misses. Makes you pretty hard to remove with standard ranged options, but AOEs can still deviate onto you, so you're not invincible.

• • Tough

Functionally a 5+ invulnerable save when you die. Succeed and you're just knocked down. Handy, but not something to rely on too heavily.

• WEAPON QUALITIES

Advantages for your weapon. Printed on the weapon stat line, obviously.

• • Blessed

This weapon ignores enemy spell effects that increase the targets Def and Arm. Really good for vs factions that rely on buffs like Cygnar's Arcane Sheild.

• • Continuous: [Effect]

You set people on fire or douse them with acid. Fairly straightforward, really. Handy for clearing infantry quickly on AOE weapons; even if the main attack doesn't kill them, the fire generally will.

• • Critical: [Effect]

Same as Continuous, only it doesn't apply unless you roll doubles for damage.

• • Damage Type: [Element]

Actually not something you want to see, since it doesn't actually do anything except make it so that a model immune to that damage type doesn't give a fuck about this weapon. The upside is that this is usually accompanied by some other special ability.

• • Disruption

A warjack hit with this weapon loses all focus, does not power up in the next maintenance phase and cannot be allocated focus.

• • Magical Weapon

You can hit Incorporeal models. One of the most important and widespread weapon properties in the game. Almost every warnoun has a Magical Weapon, and it's a rare army list that isn't packing it on at least a few other things as well. If you don't have it, expect to struggle hugely against Cryx.

• • Open Fist

Warjacks and warbeasts only. Basically, the more Open Fists you have, the more special attacks you have access to. A great bonus if you can get it, particularly if you can get two.

• • Reach

One of the most important weapon qualities in the game. Reach weapons have four times the melee range of standard ones: a whopping two inches, rather than the standard half-inch. This allows you to engage models without being engaged in return and greatly extends your charge threat range. You really, really want this on dedicated heavy-cracking melee units.

• • Shield

A bonus to ARM against attacks from the front so long as the Shield weapon is still online. Very nice and makes a unit with it surprisingly durable.

• • Weapon Master

Generally second only to Reach in terms of desirability for any given weapon. Weapon Master gives you a bonus die - not a boost, so you can still add more dice on the charge or by spending focus - to damage rolls made with it. This means you'll be averaging 10 on your damage rolls rather than 7, which makes you much more threatening.