So your interested in starting warmahordes but you are not sure where to start? Well first up PP has the basic rules for for WM and hordes on their website, here and here, which is pretty awesome. These quick start rules are also included in the little starter sets for each faction that we will look at later, eventually you will want to pick up the main rule book for either war machine or hordes. Yes there are two main rule books but don't worry you don't need both, the hordes rule book does not have the rules for warcasters or warjacks and the war machine book doesn't have the rules for warlocks or warbeasts but you get their rules for free anyway.
Maybe one day I'll take some pics and post them up but the quality of PP books is amazing, the whole thing is coloured. There is plenty of fluff in the book that is pretty interesting and at the back of the book it includes the stats for some of the models for each of the main factions, cygnar/khador/cryx/menoth for war machine and trolls/circle/legion/skorne for hordes as well as a couple of minions and mercenaries. Now this brings us to the forces of x books which are basically a codex for their respective armies, now in 40k you really need the codex if you want to know what your models do. In warmahordes thou this isn't the case because whenever you buy a model you get a card with them, these cards have complete stats for the model you just brought. So you don't ever need to buy the forces book if you don't want too, of course the books are amazing with some nice fluff and rules for everything in the faction including theme forces but you don't need to buy the book when you get all the rules for the models on their cards.
So enough about rules lets move onto what people actually care about the models. I mentioned starter sets earlier so what are they? These battle groups/war packs as they are called contain a single warcaster/warlock and several jacks/beasts and are actually great starting points to help learn the rules. Some of these sets are not the most competitive choices so if you are low on cash I suggest proxying some battles using the online rules/stats and just skipping the battle groups/war packs. The sets are still a great buy and are cheaper than buying all the models separately but you won't always use everything from them. Most battle groups/war packs contain one heavy jack/beast and two lights but of course some of them just have to be different like the legion of Everblight for example, which obivously wasn't content with only having heavies and lights decided to make a whole new class called lesser war beasts and they are the only faction that gets them. You get 4 of these little mouths on legs in the legion war pack and one big hungry dragon/godzilla thing.
My next couple of articles are going to look at the differences between hordes and WM as well as general overviews of each faction which will lead into list building and other stuff or at least that is the plan.
For now I leave you with two very useful links;
Battle college contains information on almost all models in warmahordes and is very useful for learning what models do without buying them.
Forward kommander is a list building site that contains point costs for everything and requirements/restrictions on all current theme forces.
