So, Warmachine Is A Pretty Neat Game Actually

As some of you may know, I work at the LFGS in my town. Being the massive tabletop nerd I am somewhat unofficially in charge of the tabletop section and so I always try to introduce new people to the hobby and keep our offerings nice and diverse. One thing I have been trying more this year is organizing events and Demo Days; In spite of the oppressive heat today, we held just one such a Demo Day, the game? Warmachine. 

All the miniatures you could play with at the event.

I organized this event with the help of two local players who have been trying to ignite the local community on their own. They had hung up some flyers at our store's board and I reached out offering them the space to give Demos. Fast forward three weeks to today and we set up two tables for people to come in and just try their hand at the game. The forces on offer were the Cygnar Gravediggers and the Dusk Elves of House Kallyss. One person even brought their own Khymaera Shadowflame Shard cadre to play with (you can see them in the background). The event was quite the hit and we had multiple people from all age groups play a round. All the while I was doing my usual work and occasionally asking about the game, you see I did not know squat about Warmachine. I mean I was aware of its existence, I had received a flyer for it and Hordes back in like 2016 or so and read the elevator pitch. In 2018 I even bought the old MKII Khador Battlegroup from the LFGS before I worked there(I cut those poor Warjacks to bits). Besides that though I had never read anything about the lore or the rules. First thing I learned was the distinctions between armies. I had just assumed Cygnar was one army, or Khador too. Turns out it is a faction yes, but it is divided into two armies you can play which both draw on the faction as a whole. For example the Gravediggers are the rough military/Army side of Cygnar, while there are also the Storm Legion which have a lot of electricity based gear. 

One of the tables displaying some of the larger miniatures

Later in the day when the main buzz had died down I decided to take the plunge and try playing the game. I wanted to play the Gravediggers, because they had Warjacks and these mechs did kind of fascinate me. I had the rules explained to me and I think they are really nice, but also really complicated. The Datacards I was given had the stats, weapon profiles and unique special rules all printed out, but stuff like 'Pathfinder' or 'Tough' were represented by a tiny symbol above the stat line(running boot for Pathfinder and three nails for Tough). I assume this is comparable to Warhammer where universal rules are just named, but not explained since you are supposed to remember them. In any case, we played the game and I had a lot of fun. I actually felt like position mattered and the order in which units activated was important. I still ended up losing, because I left my leader exposed and the enemy leader charged in and just kept using all their 7 Focus to repeatedly melee attack. In my defence though, I had killed every other model in their army. 

In the end I had a really fun day despite working and the unbearable heat(seriously, make it stop!). I even ended up taking a little something with me. Due to the rapid decline of Warmachine under Privateer, we were left with a bunch of really old Warmachine kits in our basement. We had taken them out to put on a display table for the day and in the end I grabbed this Cygnar Firefly. I assume this guy is for the Storm Legion going off his electricity based weaponry. I am not sure if I want to actually start collecting or play Warmachine per se, but I think I might try painting something from it. If anything this is me doing right by the two Khador Warjacks I mutilated back in the day. Thanks for reading!