How To Build A Competitive Warmahordes Army.

Everyone playing Warmachine and Hordes must build an army. It is extremely

important to build your army properly, or you will be playing with a handicap
from the get go. Warmachine is an extremely skill based game. For example,
if you give two equally skilled people two different lists, one sub-par, and
one optimized, the player with the optimized list will win every time (Dice
allowing, of course). This being said, why do we not all just end up with the
same list? Well, that is because a players army is determined by each
players unique playing style. Players minds work differently, and each player
looks for different things in the game. Some people play to win, and some
people just play for fun. There are also those that have fun by winning. In this
article, I plan to discuss how to properly build a tournament army, while still
maintaining your own playing style. Indeed, some prefer assassination style
army lists, or attrition lists, or scenario lists. But which of these is best? There
is no way to tellwith the exception of scenario lists being inappropriate for
Hardcore tournaments. Every list has a counter, no list is undefeatable.
The first thing we must do when we plan to build a tournament capable army
is to pick for which tournament format we would like to build. Do we want to
prepare for a Steam Roller tournament? Or are we planning to attend a
Hardcore style tournament? Once we know for what we are building, we can
then start to pick things for our list. First, we must pick a faction, which is
wholly based on ones playing style. In my opinion, armies like Khador,
Cygnar, Menoth, Trolls and Mercenaries are better suited for attrition and
objective play, while armies like Cryx, Retribution, Everblight, and Circle of
Orboros are better for assassination and scenario. Now, obviously, these are
wide generalizations, because really we need to pick a warcaster to truly
decide what type of army we want to play.
So, the next step is to pick a warcaster for the army of our preference. To do
so, we need to decide what type of army we want to play. This article is not
meant to tell you what army to play, so this is very general here.
Nonetheless, different casters have different strengths and weaknesses,
which is what we are here to discuss. Certain casters are identified as
support, assassination, and control, which roughly coincide with the three
types of army (assassination, attrition and scenario). Control and support
casters will lend themselves more to scenario and attrition armies whether
that be by killing the majority of the opposing army, or by simply stopping
them from killing yours and winning by scenario, and obviously assassination
is meant to destroy your opponents warcaster while leaving the majority of
their army intact. Warcasters that are one man armies (ie: Garyth, Caine,
Butcher) are generally lumped together into the assassination category.

Casters that are control are generally used in scenario armies (pHaley,
eHaley, Deneghra etc). Support casters (pStryker, Irusk, Morvanha) are best
in attrition armies. Think about what you want your army to do, and pick from
there. Some warcasters will fill multiple roles, meaning you can have a
support warcaster playing inside of an assassination army. A very good
example of this is Master Necro-tech Mortenebra who is an support caster
that runs an assassination style army.
So now we should have picked our warcaster based on the information above.
Next we move on to picking the units that best compliment our chosen
caster. Some people will want to run tier lists but they are seldom worth it,
because the restrictions they apply to you are too drastic to really be
worthwhile. In order to pick the appropriate units, we first need to discern the
strengths of the casters. Assassination casters have a plan, and you have to
know what that is. Garyth, Caine, eStryker are all planning to be delivered by
their army to the opposing warcaster, and proceed to do what they do best to
them. Support casters need a lot of units for them to support. Infantry or
warjacks will normally be the focus of support caster lists. Attrition lists will
need very tough units with a plan for survival.
Assassination lists have their assassination pieces sometimes its the caster
or sometimes its a model in the army (Such as Krayes Storm Clad, or the
Mage Hunter Assassin with Adeptus Rhan. Or Mortenebras entire army) Units
that can clear your route to their caster or do the assassination themselves
should be part of our list. House Sheeyl Magister Solos are a very good
example of this. They can push and pull things out of the way, or even slam
things with combo smite. Gun mages are useful for moving your opponents
models. Druids of Orboros are also very good for this. Spells like Force
Hammer, Scourge, and spell that grants true sight are also good at clearing
assassination paths. Units that can attack and then move like House Guard
Halberdiers, Dervishes, and Nyss blighted swordsmen are all excellent
examples of lane clearing models/units.
When enlisting support casters it is important to take quality units over utility
units. For example, Iron Fang Pikemen are extremely potent infantry and
when they are supported by spells like Iron Flesh and Battle Lust from Irusk
they become some of the hardest things to deal with in the game. You do not
need to take a utility unit that supports them thats what your warcaster is
for. With Stryker as our caster, picking Storm Blades and putting Arcane
Shield on them and Long Gunners with Snipe on them makes for a very solid
start to an attrition army based on a support caster. Mortenebra does not
have an assassination run without the warjacks she takes to do it. She needs
fast, high MAT warjacks for her support spells to really mean anything.
Control casters are a little trickier. We need to take self-sufficient units to

properly utilize a control caster, which makes their armies the most difficult
to build. Support casters will spend the majority of their focus/fury hampering
your opponents abilities to do things. Temporal Barrier, Crippling Grasp,
Polarity Shield or some sort of cloud effect spell are focus intensive leaving
only a little extra for your army. Units like Mechano-Thralls are very good in
armies like this as they are cheap, and can tie up a lot of enemy units for long
periods of time if supported by Necro Surgeons. Notice how none of this
particular unit combination requires anything from your caster. Units like
Bane Thralls are good because they have stealth, which drastically increases
survivability while not requiring aid from your warcaster. Units like trenchers
will stop shooting armies from picking apart other things in your army while
they are very survivable in their trenches This is a very good example of a
quality standalone unit. The Great Bears of Gallowswood need no support
from anything to be an amazing unit so they fit well into control armies.
Generally speaking, control based armies will be more infantry heavy and will
have less Warjacks, as they require focus to be used effectively.
Now we should have the basics of our army down. Next, we need to add in
the things we are missing. If our army is very heavily focused on shooting,
how could it be better against close combat heavy armies? Does it need more
shooting to stop them from getting to you? Does it need some sort of meat
shield to get in the way to buy us time? Is our caster going to be protected
against assassination, or will they be hanging in the wind? Do we need more
magic? Do we get shut down by magic? Do we get shut down by shooting?
This is why balancing the army composition is important. Armies focus on one
main thing, but generally speaking, we want to have options to deal with
what your army is weak against. For example, if you have a melee based
Irusk infantry list with things like eEyriss, Spriggans and a Drakhun added in,
these things would be able to help you deal with flanking solos and infantry
units without diverting too much of your main force. Eyriss also adds the
ability to remove spells/disrupt enemies. These examples are not part of the
backbone of an army, but they provide different ways to disrupt the way your
opponents plan to win. An example of a poorly diversified army is one
centered on House Sheeyl Battle Mages going against a Menoth army full of
Knights Exemplar Errants that cannot be targeted by spells. Things would not
go well for the Battle Mages. But if that army throws in a unit of House Guard
Riflemen or Halberdiers, then now the Riflemen/Halberdiers can deal with the
Errant while the Battle Mages do what they do to the second rank of the
army. Diversity in armies is key. Do not put all of your eggs in one basket.
So, we have now built the majority of our army. The last step is figuring out
how we intend to win the game. Do we wish to win by scenario? Do we wish
to win by assassination? Do we want to try both? Whats our plan to do these
things? It is possible to build many armies, but not all of them will have ways

to win the game. They are sound lists they play to the strengths of the
warcaster, they are well rounded, and they have a game plan. Their plan has
no method to effectively end the game. They have no assassination potential,
and no way of clearing opponents off of objectives. Every army needs to have
one or both of these things in order to be a good tournament list, and your
plan should not be just, Well see how it goes. That attitude will cause you
to lose the game.
To recap:
1.

Choose the warcaster/warlock.

2.
Choose what style of army you wish to build toward and for what
tournament we intend to build.
3.

Put in the units essential to your strategy.

4.

Fill in any gaps by strengthening your weaknesses.

5.

Have a plan on how you intend to win.

Once we have done all of this, its time to start testing. Play a lot of games
with a list before you throw it out, and make sure to play against different
styles of armies, and different opponents. Well, thats all Ive got for you for in
my first article. My next article will be over how to reduce the chance of dice
screwing you over and how to properly look at game statistics.