I thought I'd start a thread for sharing resources with people who are just looking at getting into Warmachine/Hordes. Ideally if you've got links to interesting sites for terrain, useful blogs, painting ideas, tactics, army lists, and the like for things in the Iron Kingdoms, we could start sharing them here. If someone's thinking of getting into the game and wondering anything from how much it'll cost to put a playable starter force on the table ($40) to getting ideas about which armies best match your play style, we could have some answers here. Could also use this thread for general Q&A about the game or just sharing your experiences - what you like about the game and why.
Just to get us started, here are a few of the absolute critical links for someone considering getting into Warmachine or Hordes.
Privateer Press (http://privateerpress.com)
This is the main page for the company that makes the two games. On the right hand side is a blog with generally interesting material from developers, sculptors, painters and etc working for the company. Links to important items are right on the main page. Here are a few highlights:
- The gallery pages for Hordes (http://privateerpress.com/hordes/gallery)and Warmachine (http://privateerpress.com/warmachine/gallery)
(this is the best place to find retail prices for trading and photos of the models) - PP Forums (http://privateerpressforums.com/)
PP staff and 'Press Gangers' are common around here, any rules question you have that isn't addressed in an errata or is just confusing you should get answered here fairly quickly. As always, YMMV, Internet morons exist everywhere and fail at reading comprehension occasionally. - Official PP store (https://store.privateerpress.com/)
This would be mostly for bit orders or lost cards, prices are better with BTown vendors or trades. - Customer Service (http://privateerpress.com/support/customers)
Privateer Press does have excellent customer service. If a kit you bought is missing a piece, just fill out the form and they'll ship the parts to you via UPS in a week or two. Just make sure the form goes through, if you don't get a copy of your ticket via email it hasn't gone through and you won't get a response. I had this happen once and was wondering why I'd gotten no reply.
Battle College (http://battlecollege.wikispaces.com)
Aside from getting actual prices and photos at the PP site, this is probably the most important Warmahordes website out there. This is a wiki-style database covering every model in the Warmachine and Hordes universe in every army, with a discussion of tactics, strengths, weaknesses and synergies of each model. Some models have sparser entries than others, depending on if they're newly released or if they happen to be from an army very few people play. If you're trying to figure out if an army is for you, click on the link for it on the left side of the page. Each intro page for an army has a quick summary of what the army's specialties are. You can also click on each caster to see what kind of forces they favour, and if they fit the type of flavour you enjoy in your armies. Here's an example from the Khador entry.
And within Khador, you can see that different warcasters allow you to play different styles - e.g., if you want an army of mostly warjacks, look for Karchev, or if you like tough, disciplined infantry Irusk could be your man. The game is very modular in that each warcaster/warlock gives you a tremendously different play experience. Some warcasters are far more complicated than others and may be tough to break into the game with, but the battlebox casters (aka starter set) are generally easy to use and allow you to explore most of the tactical options available in the game.What is Khador Like in MKII? (http://battlecollege.wikispaces.com/mkiiKhador)
Khador has the biggest, the toughest, the strongest, and the slowest warjacks in the game. With an armor value of twenty or more, and tons of damage boxes there's not much that the Khador jacks can't stand up to. Khador also has the most combat capable warcasters, and several types of elite troops. The Khador force is a small but tough thrashing force that excels in close combat, and is no slouch at range. Khador's troops are specialized and expensive so in most games you can expect to be outnumbered at least a little, and sometimes a lot.
I won't link each army individually, but just hit up the main page and hit the links on the left hand side to check out your army/armies of choice.
Battle College is located at http://battlecollege.wikispaces.com.
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I've got to get back to real work and away from this distraction, but I hope this will be a useful first visit for anyone considering switching or adding the Warmachine/Hordes games to your collection. Post away if you've got stuff to share or have questions to ask!
-Daniel
