IMPRESSED AND WORRIED | Warmachine MKIV - Gaming News

So, it's a bit overdue, but if you were looking for my take on the latest news from Privateer Press, that being the announcement of Warmachine (and Hordes) MKIV, here you go.
And... For those of you who have recommended a video with no music, here you go. Let me know if you would prefer this for all videos.
0:00 - Intro
1:35 - Why, oh why, are we doing this?
2:20 - How to blow up the world without hurting anyone.
8:00 - Factions and Armies and Cadres oh my.
10:27 - Where's the beef?
13:39 - Warroom is dead. Long live warroom.
16:52 - Evolve or die.
21:52 - Engineering the future.
25:14 - SKUs
30:58 - Transitioning from MKIII to MKIV and Organized Play.
34:00 - Release Timeline
39:00 - Final Thoughts

[@an12cubMike]

“…a failed side game where they tested a bunch of these ideas before leaving it to die on the vine…” 😂 I suspect PP isn’t going to be sending you any starter kits to review. I appreciate you calling it like you see it and doing it with aplomb.

[@kirkmathes3525]

So many of these decisions should have been done with mk 3. Excited to see how they do.

[@TheVoloch]

For an analog game I really like the analog cards. I don't mind everything will be in the app but as an old dude I appreciate the tactile feel of having cards and rulebooks. So I hope PP will at least provide DL PDF options on their website.

[@theministeroftruelies4655]

100% agree with everything you said this video, amazing considering how awful peoples takes have been on MK4 lately. Subscribed.

[@aleksandrivanchenko6323]

3D printing in US/ EU/ et. sounds awesome, magnets for weapon options - even better! But the speed of new armies released... it's far too slow... can't see how they survive this 😒

[@Tikaru01]

I would love to hear your opinions on the rules. I have only ever done the battle boxes, but i am gathering the prime protectorate army they have released. Also most people seem to miss that the bottom of the roadmap has some info. October this year they plan to release at least 1 army for each Faction from existing models.

[@AlertedDonkey42]

Thanks for the video! The faction, army, cadre breakdown for mk4 reminded me more of the faction, keyword, versatile breakdown of Malifaux than anything warhammer.

[@HowToRollDice]

I was rolling that idea around too, and you're not wrong. I just think Warhammer as an anologie is accessible to the most people. More will get what I'm talking about than if I said Malifaux/Outcasts/Tara/Void. Also scale wise, Warhammer is much closer. Malifaux doesn't really have full units or as large an army on the table, and I didn't want that visual to loose people. But again, on paper malifaux is closer.

[@MadMax-el2el]

With retribution being turned into vampire elves, I am effectively homeless in warmachine. I cannot see myself playing discount cryx formerly known as retribution. I liked mk2 retribution for all of its jank, flaws and lack of a backup plan to assassination. It was my jam. I hated mk3 retribution and it fixed so many of the in faction issues that had been a plague on the army. But I liked the warts, the fragility, the poor attrition. I liked the we got one game plan, It was fun. I either won or lost based purely on jank, my ability to see the assassination runs and not taking bad % chances. Mainly by using rules people typically ignored and under estimated. Weapons locks, throws, pushes and headbutts these were few of my favorite things. Bowling for casters is a great game, lol. All that said I did prefer furry, i found it much more natural for my gaming style, running a beast hot and intentionally letting it frenzy was always funny. I made the tragic and hilarious mistake of picking skorne in mk1 as my hordes faction and they sucked in mk2, my word they were painful. On theme? Sure. Lore accurate? Ya kinda. Thankfully the jank lived here as well and made me a much more dangerous retribution player. So, hopefully they got a good horde faction, coming up, going back to my roots would be fun. Because without Rahn, Garry and kaelyssa I have zero interest in jacks and warcasters. Edit: I don't see how PP or survives the best few years. My local club/play group has fifty members. We have three people that have any interest in mk4 as it currently sits, yes all three have bought stuff from gencon. We have twelve warmachine mk2 veterans that don't care for the offerings PP has put out. Be it no faction representation or trepidation at buying into another PP experiment, looking at you warcaster. Then there is the simple reality everyone is content playing infinity, kings of war, malifaux, battletech and MCP. Most of us play at least two of them. Outside of the club itself every game listed has a thriving local meta with at least two games nights across the city available to them This is not PP vs a flailing GW with a trash rule set and worse attitude. The landscapehas shifted there are options and they are good. All while PP is acting like a new start up, not a twenty year veteran of games development. This is not the PP that took a chunk of GWs market share and made GW blink. PP needs to go read page 5 and remember why they did what they did. Because at this pace page 5 is not the only thing that will be a footnote of gaming history.

[@HowToRollDice]

Wonderful writeup. The two highlights that stood out to me were (allow me to summerize) : 1) I hated MKIII because it neutered all of the weird silliness and made everyone more or less equals in a way that was good for balance but horrible for uniqueness. Sort of like making a whole school of silly kids wear the same beige colored uniform. 2) They need to remember how important it was, and still is, to play like you've got a pair.

[@MadMax-el2el]

@@HowToRollDicethe tldr is not far off, just a minor correction. It is not that I "hated" mk3, my enjoyment of the game just lost all momentum as I was suddenly steamrolling my opponents, because rules say so. The overnight switch of barely eking out wins against my favorite local cryx player to inadvertently just face smashing them was very frustrating on both sides of the table. Assassination no longer being the main game of elves looking to kill all casters was odd, Rahn being so nerfed it was painful. Were all just a negative and frustrating first impression. Real life got in the way limiting my hobby time for the first eight or nine months of mk3, so I really did not have enough games played to have an honest opinion. I had a less than positive initial impression of mk3, the rules changes and faction changes did not sit well with me ret no longer felt like ret. But i had two other armies on the shelf ready too test. So i still had hope looking forward. By the time I was ready to really dig into mk3, the community had moved on. But I do love goofy, odd, quirky or unique armies, I also unintentionally tend towards the locally unrepresented faction or army. Like malifaux I play gremlins, infinity tohaa/spiral Corp or aleph, mcp x-force and spider foes. Even mk2 warmachine skorne, ret and coc.

[@lumbermill8588]

@@actualwafflesenjoyer it was the best era, ironically almost every single female warcaster was an unstoppable force of destruction compared to their male counter parts.

[@marcusmayfield4973]

I got I to the game at the tail end of mk2. Didn't care for how focus was so heavily outclassed by fury. Mk 3 fixed that and I appreciated it. First army was Cygnar Storm knights, later storm Division, and loved it. Got several of my friends into the game and we have several different armies and factions between us. Mk 4 has us all excited, but that damn slow rollout is killing us, particularly the hordes specific players.

[@FMD-FullMetalDragon]

It sounds like this would be a good time for a Warmachine noob to give it a try.

[@alukemckool]

I’m excited for mk4 I’m still gonna play cryx until armies first my faction comes out.

[@truckstation527]

Good video. I agree on some things and disagree on others. I think unlimited will be hugely popular.

[@HowToRollDice]

I think it will be very popular at first by necessity. It will be the only place that 99% of released/owned models can be played. But as prime models/armies get released, and people see the balancing and improved mechanics that those models have access too, there is going to be an exponential shift towards prime. For example, if I came to you and said let's play a pickup game of basketball, but we are going to toss out most of the rules and also I'll be bringing several professional players while you are player with complete amatuers, you'd likely say no.

[@HowToRollDice]

But there's always the chance that I have it completely wrong, which would be nice for most people, myself included.

[@haydencmacdonald]

I was playing 3.5 weekly (And often complaining that the sheer volume of units with bespoke rules made it bloody hard to get into the game) when this happened....Warmachine just died overnight at my wargaming club due to the way it's been handled. The new rules sound dandy, but it'll come down to how fussy the rules for individual units for me. New players buying in and coming to the club are going to find us playing other games, and not interested in playing MK4 because we're not buying new armies. Saying you'll wait until Hordes at minimum is pretty much what's happening here. That 'lurch' in transition from mk3.5 to mk4 could be a killer.

[@nicolastousignant9160]

Many of PPs decisions in the last years have smelled of desperate necessity and this roadmap and manufacturing choice has that aroma. 3d printing sounds like the future at surface level but if i was a betting man I would wager that its a manufacturing/inventory/shipping cost decision. Print on demand sounds like something that would turn them on, considering FLGSs aren't to only ones who got stuck with unsellable inventory, most likely. Not rulebooks, just digital, feels the same. Very little overhead, no warehousing. The long roadmap, I suspect is largely due to 2 things. It doesn't seem like they were ready to launch this edition so much as they needed to shake things up now. The other, I suspect is manucaturing time, 3d printing is pretty long compared to other manufacturing methods and it seems reflected in the stretched out roadmap. I think this explains the abrupt shutting down of the preorders at gencon. I wish them all the success ( the iron kingdoms are the best) but I will genuinely surprised if they actually pull out of this in a better place than they have been these last years

[@aleksandrivanchenko6323]

Thousand Sons and Blood Angels were in the same faction quite some time ago 😏

[@amc6354]

Any further thoughts ? It’s been about a year do you think they are heading right direction ?

[@KaptajnCongoboy]

I't been a full year now and TBH, MkIV has saved Warmachine. We have a resurgence on all continents. Not on the level of Mk2, but Mk2 was competing with fewer companies and a Games Workshop that had not yet learned to smear sufficient levels of lipstick on the pig.

[@amc6354]

@@KaptajnCongoboy I love the minis and have collected all the brineblood stuff but havnt played yet . I do think maybe now would be a good time for PP to do some publicity especially when gw seems to have potentially damaged their ip

[@KaptajnCongoboy]

@@amc6354 They're doing some very good narrative stuff as promos at conventions - I don't know if you saw the enormous Dragon they made last year or the Siege scenario at today's adepticon? I am pretty sure the Giga-entities with very deep pocket (Asmodee, GW) are making it more or less impossoble to break into the usual publicity channels - my feeds are constantly being barraged by ads for games of theirs I have no interest in - so that kind of stuff is an alternative way to promote the game. If you're looking for someone to play against the Tried and True YT channel made a very cool community finder last year (just search for "tried and true warmachine community finder" that is getting quite a few entries with more being added every week :)

[@tabletop.will.phillips]

This was a really great run through. I was a big fan of Warmahordes back early in its lifecycle as a smaller skirmish sized game. I realize the game has been dying on the vine for a long time and hoped this 4th edition, combined with the 3d printing shift, would revitalize it (and even get me back into the game). But the shift to specific armies rather than larger factions and the impossibly long rollout of new models and rules makes me think that Privateer Press has only signed the death warrant for the game, and it's only a matter of time until they have to pull the plug. There's no way the player base will sit around that long for the Mk4 rules to make their way, glacially slow, to their favorite factions. I know I won't.

[@christopherhedge3106]

Love the video, and I would like to hear your thoughts on the new ruleset changes. In regards to the tournaments though, they haven't released the steamroller document yet, and I've heard in various interviews & read some notations in other places that they will most likely be supporting all 3 size games, 50, 75, and 100. And with warjack/warbeast points no longer being a thing, each of those values is pretty much 25 more than right now roughly, so the new 100 is what used to be 75 (which actually turned out to be a little more if you look at the whole point value by including the actual cost of the warjacks/warbeasts and the point value of requisition options. There was a reddit post that showed the comparison which put it into context with the beta armies as they are currently written.) , so maybe 50points will be just fine, which includes more people sooner with the new armies for official events. I love your insight though, and started watching your channel when you addressed the bloat issue a while back, really opened my eyes to how daunting it can be for a new/returning player.

[@HowToRollDice]

Thanks so much for watching and for the input. I hadn't looked too much into the organized play scene since I'm not I big participant in those events. The idea that they would cover all 3 sizes is cool, but I have a feeling it would be short lived. It's sort of like saying 'your brand new tesla has 9 driving modes'! Sure that's cool, and when you first get it your going to mess around with all of them, try them out, but in the end your going to settle into the one that makes the most sense for the widest range of scenarios. Here I'm thinking that's going to be the middle point set. But, I could be pleasantly surprised. Hell the rest of this announcement certainly fits that description.

[@christopherhedge3106]

@@HowToRollDice Ya, I'd be very happy if in the end they kind of reverse what you said, and instead of getting everyone up to a 75 point level to be able to compete, that they focus on 50pts and give everyone the chance to participate ASAP, and then change it later on to 75 once a lot more options are out there. In the end that's less models than a 50pt. that we have in MKIII, so with luck and the way the new rules work, they'll be able to have the games move faster and smoother, giving a much better a experience in the end. Like you, I'm not much of a competitive scene player, I just enjoy playing the game and the lore, and can't wait for the new narrative stuff they are coming out with. My youngest is more into the competitive play than I am. On a recent podcast by Spellstorm Miniatures (episode 82), Matt Wilson gives and interview and talks about how with the way customizing options for a personal playstyle can happen, it opens up a new narrative options with customizing units and character warjacks/warbeasts that we can all have a lot of fun with. Also with scenarios they are going to be coming out with specific rules with the terrain that they would like to see on the table (he also talked about how they will be 3D printing stuff as well for the tabletop as well for those scenarios as well). I think it's a good time to get into the game for a new player, and a good time for those that might want to return to at least take a look at how things are shaking out. Thank you for responding and it's great hearing your point of view on things.

[@KaptajnCongoboy]

I think one of the things the community has to step up on is to organize events that support all size games. We just slid right over into 75 for Mk3 and that was preeetty big even before Themes added more models. Slimming the game size is an important part of this edition.

[@FMD-FullMetalDragon]

Give us a rules video overview. I think this roadmap release is PP taking it's time getting the core of MK 4 set and the web app functional before they begin increasing the amount of armies they release. It's a slow roll out with the potential of a full steam ahead after they see how people react to the new rules. I can see them ramping up army releases once they know the fans like the rules.

[@bobhopfner3812]

I think it would be better to take my models and the One Page Rules and wish PP good luck...Cryx will work fine for Reign in Hell too. I look forward to collecting an actual ton of used metal..

[@dayminkaynin]

What happened to hordes?

[@rainer.1276]

Its still there they just stopped using the needless title and all faction and armies fall under "Warmachine" now.

[@Halrian-Christopher]

I see the end of warmachine is finally at hand... Sad i really enjoyed the lore

[@shadowcaptaincain]

As long as there new models don't use whatever cheap crap they use for their non-metal models. Also if they are going to have all this customization, please for the love of god include instructions on how to assemble them. Their non-metal minis not only being a crap material, were impossible to figure out how to assemble without referencing multiple images online. But these changes are making me want to give a second look at Warmachine.

[@HowToRollDice]

Not only is it a far better material, but to address your assembly point, because they don't have to worry about designing for molds (which is what creates such awkward pieces) their new models come with the least pieces to assemble they've ever offered. For example, a heavy jack, excluding the extra arms and heads, is only 7 pieces. Head, Arm, Arm, Upper Torso, Lower Torso, Leg, Leg. That's it. No front and back clamshell weirdness, no fiddly bits. It's all printed right into the model.

[@HauntedCorpseGaming]

Kind of sad the SFG re-release of Rivet Wars Reloaded has more content and better announcements made by SFG so far and their kickstarter isn't even begin (Sept 6th) yet compared to the supposed relaunch of Warmachine. It feels like all their staff that could make things exciting went to Atomic Mass Games, don't get me wrong I love Emmanuel Class from the days of Removed from Play (podcast) but he just isn't quite charismatic enough to push a new edition; even their primecast the other staff he talked to just sounded confused, I understand its supposed to be a funny bit BUT it comes across as somebody letting all the air out of the balloon sad to say. Privateer Press, get your ass out there and actually do some painting streams for your models, do some in house videos of you playing the damned game.... Don't rely on youtubers to pick up the slack, showing model renders that aren't even painted are SUPER lazy, especially when you show T-Pose concept art..... Be the beast people want you to be and produce the game like you have a pair. :D

[@mrtwinkels7085]

We as a gaming group, sold most of our warmahordes stuff before everyone does it. We have been playing since 2010. We stick to mk3 for now. The new rules so far feel just to much like age of Sigmar. And the two game modes (Legacy and prime) feel like a kick in the balls. You buy, build, paint and customize your models and then you get a "Legacy arena"... In a few month time, more and more old models will be put in legacy until there are onle mk4 models in prime... Fun times...

[@rainer.1276]

Thats not how it will work. All Legacy Prime models will remain in Prime for the duration of MKIV.

[@mrtwinkels7085]

@@rainer.1276 time will tell. Wait for the New anouncements in a few month or 1 - 2 years time. "For ballancing issues in prime we had to move Model X Y Z to legacy"

[@Twr0740]

I just can't see me starting over with Warmachine. I feel cheated that I've invested so much money into the previous reditions of the game and won't be using them. No thanks.

[@HowToRollDice]

Totally understandable. I'm certainly not putting all my eggs in this basket. Quite frankly I'll be leaving my eggs where they are until a handful of other farmers have tested out the structural integrity of this basket. Also... Does this happen to be the Tom Riley that I know?

[@Twr0740]

@How To Roll Dice lol yeah it is. Been following your videos for a little while now. Good to see you on KZbin!

[@ProstheticFitness]

Just might like bad games? Wow how condescending

[@HowToRollDice]

Indeed.

[@richardrobb6937]

What chapstick do you use with all that salt you spew? Lol.

[@HowToRollDice]

Whatever your moms got lying around. But seriously, I do want it kicks ass. That would be great. I'm just not feeling super optimistic at this point. Thanks for watching.

[@tonyhind6992]

lost me at $200. Nope. I am out.

[@HowToRollDice]

Fair. It's a big entry price to try a game.

[@LuisJimenez-pb3ge]

Bye ✌️

[@theworldsays4264]

Tell me you don't follow the Warmachine community without telling you don't follow the Warmachine community - the video

[@HowToRollDice]

You seem like a pretty cool guy. We should hang out some time.

[@theworldsays4264]

@@HowToRollDice I am pretty cool.

[@an12cubMike]

“…a failed side game where they tested a bunch of these ideas before leaving it to die on the vine…” 😂 I suspect PP isn’t going to be sending you any starter kits to review. I appreciate you calling it like you see it and doing it with aplomb.

[@HowToRollDice]

Unfortunately I am a man of principle. So no thumbs up to be bought or negotiated from me.