Introduction
Starting a new game is often a daunting task; with years of
rules to read, understand and memorize. This often means that new players seek
the guidance of others – which, depending on the source, may or may not be a
good idea. Having been into wargaming for almost two decades and a tragic
sufferer of gaming and factional ADD1, I might have something to say
about the process though! In this article, I’m going to (hopefully) break off
from traditional understanding on picking your first faction in this game.
Getting Your
Priorities Straight
A common concept I see often is “play what you like looking
at”. While this is a good rule, I do not think it is necessarily the best piece
of advice to give to a new player. The important first step is to get your
priorities sorted out. To me, there are three criteria:
1) Aesthetics/Fluff – If you pick this as your main
criteria, know that there is a possibility that the model(s) you love looking
at or love reading about/love the concept of might not suit your playstyle, or
might be poor at competitive play. The unfortunate reality is that in almost
any game, fluffy options are often not as competitive, and model appearance
does not necessarily correlate with power in-game.
2)
Playstyle – A complete newbie to wargaming would
not necessarily know their playstyle well, but chances are a veteran wargamer
that is getting into WM2 would at least roughly know their
inclination. I elaborate on my definition of “playstyle” later in this article.
3)
Competitiveness – Some people derive their joy
from winning. Know that if you prioritize this, your army might not appeal to
you aesthetically, and the playstyle might not be to your liking.
The crucial thing to remember is that it is highly
improbable to get an army that fits all the categories. Naturally, you do not
need to go “all in” into one of the three criteria – you simply need to define
from early on what your main priority is, and realize that your decisions may
change over time as you mature in the game. Since aesthetics/fluff is a highly subjective
matter, I want to talk more about playstyle, and competitiveness.
Playstyle
Playstyle is a fairly difficult topic to discuss, so I will
try to convey my thoughts as succinctly as possible.
The first thing to understand is that a good, experienced
player does not have a true “playstyle”. If at all anything, his/her playstyle
is simply “adaptable”. Such a player will know their models, your models, and has
a flexible plan. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and such
players know this concept very well. Effectively, believing you have one fixed
playstyle is a potentially crippling mental block.
So, why do I even talk about this?
While I could have named this “playstyle” category as something
else, I wanted to (hopefully) show a distinction between the “simpler”
definition of the word, and my take on it. Playstyle to me isn’t so much a
matter of “I like shooting” or “I like chopping people with axes”, but rather,
your mind set.
I am no psychologist, but I understand that different people
have different inclinations. Some are more aggressive, some are more patient.
There are those who prefer reliability, while others prefer to gamble. Those
who prefer a simple, straight-forward plan over a complicated yet
equally-effective plan (and vice versa).
In my opinion, the game ultimately rewards three traits: adaptability
(which I mentioned before), patience, and reliability. Patience should not be
confused for passiveness – it merely means being willing to take a longer but
safer route to victory, as opposed to just being a proverbial chicken. This is
why most experienced WM players prefer attrition and/or scenario as a means to
the end, rather than assassination due to its inherent risks. Reliability is a
combination of factors that enables that model/unit to perform its role, and
prominently features in list building decisions.
Talking about which faction is currently the “most
competitive” is opening a can of worms that I’d rather not do. However, as one
would expect from a game that is highly skill-based, simply taking a list from
the internet (“netdecking”) would certainly not guarantee your success with it.
That said, netdecking is not without its benefits – for one, you would be
purchasing what someone else has deemed/proven to be competitive, thus
potentially saving you some money.
The big problem however, is that netdecking players tend to
get stuck in a rut; either they get beaten so many times that they ragequit, or
as a result of their success they become afraid to try new things without
someone else of repute telling them that so-and-so is clearly better than what
they’ve been running all this while. Unfortunately, some models are strong
enough to carry a poorer player by virtue of its strength, making it a “crutch”
that the player may become reliant upon.
So how does one figure out which factions/lists are the most competitive? Research.
MuseOnMinis and
EndGameGaming.net are my recommendations. While the official forums are an active place with occasionally good discussions, keep in mind that there is a lot of bad advice out there which a new player would not be able to distinguish.
Depending on the type of people you play with, remember that coming into the game declaring that you "are in it to win it" might make you a nice, juicy target for senior players that want to remind you of your place in the local meta (i.e. they might intentionally beat you really, really hard). To avoid this, I recommend not declaring your (potential) superiority and to always be courteous and friendly (or at least pretend to be). Oh, and paint your miniatures. That instantly gives you the air of a casual gamer, until you break someone and (quietly) gloat (behind their backs) about your triumphant victory
5.
So Which Faction(s) Do I
Recommend?
In my opinion, the easiest factions for a complete newbie to
start with are Protectorate of Menoth, Skorne, Trollbloods and Legion of
Everblight. The first three I feel are self-explanatory – they are fairly
forgiving factions, the internal synergy makes your combat models very strong,
and is good practice for getting order of activations done correctly. Some may
be shocked at my inclusion of Legion given that it is the “glass cannon”
faction, but I feel that the combination of widely-available good ranged
attacks, incredible Fury management, low model count and overall raw power
makes the faction reasonably easy to pick up. Also, all of these factions
(except arguably Trollbloods) have a “core” of models that are often-included,
making it possible to create new armies by simply swapping the
Warcaster/Warlock and maybe a few of the models around.
The mid-range factions difficulty-wise are probably Khador, Mercenaries
and Cygnar. While I personally find Khador fairly easy to play, an
infantry-heavy Khador army is daunting to pilot for a newbie, and not
necessarily easy to use optimally. Newbies also tend to be attracted to jacks,
and I don’t think jack-heavy Khador is currently the best option for the
faction. They do however have “core” choices, making it a reasonably affordable
faction to get into early in the game. Mercenaries similarly have the potential
to go on the infantry-heavy route, and is one of the better, more flexible
options for a new player to start with. It is however an expensive faction to
play; between character restrictions, Mercenary Contracts and the differing optimal
choices for their Warcasters, be prepared to pay a lot for a solid Mercenary
collection. Also, as Mercenary models/units are balanced with the concept that
many factions can take them, they may not always be on the same power level
than their equivalents in a normal faction.
Cygnar, I feel, is somewhat of a special case. Pre-Stormwall
it was certainly a high-difficulty faction to play, and possibly one of the
costliest of factions to purchase; chances are, your Cygnar collection would
also be a massive Mercenary collection since most of them work for Cygnar. The
difficulty of the faction pre-Stormwall was clearly evident in the negativity
on the forums during that period. Silly thing was, part of this negativity came
from people who complained about not wanting to play Mercenaries in their
Cygnar to preserve their concept of “faction purity”. This is a classic example
of players who place high value in aesthetics/fluff, but still insist on
wanting competitiveness – a concept which I had aforementioned as being unrealistic.
Stormwall fixes many of Cygnar’s previous problems, but runs the risk of
becoming a crutch if overused. Cygnar does remain one of my all-time favourite
factions, and is very rewarding to a skilled player.
The high-difficulty
factions would be Circle Orboros and Retribution of Scyrah, both of which are
exceptionally unforgiving, but not in any way what I’d call “weak”. If you pick
these as your first faction, resign to the fact that you would probably get
beaten into the ground by more experienced players until you finally figure
them out (tens of games later, probably). I personally feel that Circle has
more mileage at the current time of writing, and scales very well with player
skill.
An observant reader would have noticed at this point that I
had left out three factions: Convergence of Cyriss, Minions, and Cryx.
Convergence isn’t out yet, and although I already know most of their rules, I
cannot make any comments until I see them on the table. Minions suffer from a notable
lack of options. Thus, while one could still play Minions successfully, it will
be an uphill battle against the other major factions. It is also unusually
expensive, as a proper Minion player really needs to have both pigs and gators –
sticking to only one of the two is incredibly crippling to the point of practically-uncompetitive;
unless perhaps you are a very experienced player, and got rather lucky.
Cryx on the other hand deserves its own paragraph. While
touted as being very forgiving and thus good for newbies, I am personally fairly
against Cryx as your first faction, especially if you plan to play other
factions at some point. My problem with Cryx is that it skews the new player’s
perception of the game. I should preface this by saying that I do not think
Cryx is overpowered – I just think that what they do is not a proper reflection
of what everyone else can necessarily do. Discounting their (almost) universal
lack of morale checks, incredible infantry and insane armor cracking power, my
main issue is with some of their Warcasters. Long story short, I’m not a fan of
ARM 25-35 Warcasters3, and I think a single spell being able to
potentially kill half an army4 was a game design oversight. Again, I
am not complaining about them being necessarily “overpowered”; I am merely
saying that a player that starts with these Warcasters might find it unusually
difficult to transition into anything else. All that said, Cryx does have other
Warcasters that are still very good, and rewarding to play with. The faction
itself is not difficult to play, and perhaps stands as one of the easier
factions to get into the game with.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the decision is in your hands, but I do hope
that I’ve given you some food for thought. Please feel free to give me
constructive feedback; your thoughts and opinions on this matter. Until next
time!
1 I have played the vast majority of the miniature
games and collectable games out there. I have owned every faction in the game
except Legion, and currently still own and play seven factions. Thankfully, I
think I’m *almost* rid of my addiction towards CCGs :X
2 I will refer to Warmachine/Hordes as WM for
simplicity.
3Terminus. To a lesser extent Asphyxious1/2/3 and
Venethrax.
4Excarnated Bile Thralls
5Author does not claim, nor dispute, to doing this intentionally and maliciously.
*Pictures other than the triangle were taken from the internet, not my own*
