Warmachine? Hordes? What's the difference? Part 2

Last time we looked at war machine in particularly the focus stat and how war casters have a limited amount of focus to spend on both their spells and their jacks. Today we are looking at the hordes side of things and particularly the fury stat, all warlocks have a fury stat printed on their cards the same way war casters have a focus stat but unlike focus they do not gain fury by themselves. Warlocks rely on war beasts to generate fury for them to then leech off the beasts to spend themselves. War beasts also have a fury stat with the most common being 2 for lessers, 3 for lights and 4 for heavies but some heavies can have 5. While war jacks require focus from an outside source war beasts are able to generate their own fury by being forced by their controlling warlock. War beasts can be forced if they are in their warlocks control area(double their fury in inch's) to run, charge, boost rolls, make power attacks, buy attacks so pretty much all the same stuff war jacks need focus for except war beasts can also be forced to use their animus that we will look at later. War beasts may also be riled which simply means you place any number of fury points on the war beast but not exceeding the war beasts fury stat without the war beast doing anything. When forced you place one fury point on the war beast and they can be forced as many times as their fury stat. On the controlling warlocks next turn the warlock my leech fury points from friendly war beasts in his/her control area by removing the fury token from the beast and placing it on the war lock, a war lock may not have more fury tokens than his/her fury stat.



In addition to a fury stat all war beasts also have a threshold stat. If a war beast has fury points left on it after your warlock leeches all fury possible it must take a threshold check and you risk losing control of the beast. A threshold check is when you roll 2D6 then add how many fury points are on the beast if the total is higher than the war beasts threshold then it fails and frenzies if the total is equal or lower than the war beasts threshold then it passes and acts as normal. If a war beast frenzies and a model is in it's melee range then it immediately attacks the closest model doesn't matter if it is friend or foe. If a war beast frenzies and has no models in it's melee range then it charges the nearest model, if it reaches the model it attacks it and if not the war beasts activation ends. War beasts that frenzy do not attack the same way as normal, instead they make one fully boosted(meaning both the attack and damage rolls are boosted) melee attack with their strongest melee weapon and then their activation ends. After a frenzied war beasts activation ends you may remove any fury points on them and may not activate them until your next turn.


Earlier I mentioned that war beasts can be forced to cast their animus, but what is an animus? An animus is a special ability that all war beasts have similar to a spell that it has a range, cost, effect and varies between war beasts. When a beast is forced to cast their animus you place a number of fury points on them equal to the cost of their animus. A friendly model may only ever have one animus on them at a time so if you cast a animus on a model who has already had an animus on them this turn then the older animus will expire. Warlocks may also cast the animus of any of their still living war beasts as one of their own spells using fury points on themselves rather than forcing their war beast.

Just like war machine has support models hordes also have some but instead of granting focus these models are capable of removing fury from a war beast. This is a very powerful ability as it allows a heavy war beast to be forced for 4 fury and then just have your support remove it all allowing even low fury war locks to run a lot of beasts. While some jack support models have to take the jack out of your war casters battle group none of them do so for hordes so you will always have all your beasts in your war locks battle group. Fury support like everything has it's own disadvantages the biggest two being very squishy models and needing to be close to beasts for their abilities. If you are running a lot of beasts on a low fury caster and your support models get killed early you can going to struggle to run your beasts efficiently.

War locks do not gain an increase to ARM for having fury points on them instead they have the ability to transfer damage to a war beast, this is both more and less powerful than war casters camping focus. When a warlock is damaged by an attack they may spend one fury point to transfer the damage to a friendly war beast, the warlock takes no damage the war beast suffers the damage instead and gains a fury point. You may not transfer damage to a war beast who already has fury points equal to their fury stat. This makes war locks hard to assassinate early in the game but they also don't like attrition games because with every beast killed you are not only losing part of your army but also access to their animus a fury source and a transfer target. A war lock can still gain fury even when all their beasts are killed by cutting themselves where they take some damage and gain fury points equal to the amount of damage they choose to take. This should only ever be used as a last ditch effort as doing your opponents job for him by damaging your own war lock doesn't help.

Balancing a hordes list can be harder than with war machine, you need enough beasts to fuel your warlock even after you start taking causalities. You also want to be able to manage all the fury of your beasts from the start of the game. Fury support models obviously help out here but come with the disadvantage of being squishy so another option is to keep a cheap beast back next to your caster for a body guard, transfer target, late game fury generation and preferably a useful animus. This of course has it's own disadvantage of not having all your forces fighting at once.

So that is it for the hordes side of things, next up will probably be army over views or maybe something on power attacks or something else entirely we'll see how I feel.