How to play Hordes; A Tutorial with many pictures.

[Vaul]

Hi Guys,

The two games known as Warmachine and Hordes are in fact one single game for all intents and purposes, Warmachine is a sub-category of this game that includes 6 of the playable factions while Hordes is the counter-part category with the other 5 factions.  The core rules that all of these factions use to battle each other are the same with some subtle exceptions - some of the mechanics that control how the leader of your army uses resources and interacts with the main pieces in your army are different depending on whether you are using a hordes or warmachine faction.  However they are 100% compatible, and if you are starting out - all you need to do is consider all 11 factions and pick the one you like best.  

To simplify the matter, this tutorial will involve two Hordes factions, so we can completely ignore the rules which apply to warmachine factions only.  The purpose of this tutorial thread is to make the demo rules for this game easier to understand.  Although i'll pretty much only be touching on things that you can get by reading the pdf, the rules themselves can be hard to get your head around without any illustrative examples and diagrams.  But the best way to proceed is to both have a copy of the PDF rules open to refer to while reading through this thread.  It is only a few pages long and can be freely downloaded from the Privateer Press website right here: http://privateerpress.com/hordes/the-game

1:  As with most tabletop games, there is a core rulebook that governs the rules all armies use when fighting a battle.  There are also army-specific rulebooks which show you the specific rules for all of the models in the particular faction that you are playing.  In this photo you can see from left to right: the core rulebook (called 'Primal') for the overall game, although this particular book does not include the few extra rules required for warmachine armies.  Next, the 'Legion of Everblight' rulebook, provided by Ian, and thirdly on the right - my own book for the 'Circle of Orboros' faction which I play.



2: Warmachine & Hordes games are played on a square tabletop area of 4 Feet by 4 Feet.  As we will see later, your units typically need to stay within a set range of the army leader (known as a warlock or warcaster) in order to act at their maximum potential.  This sort of space is more than enough for a tactical, position-based game with a lot of strategy and tactics to consider.  

The players roll off, the highest deploys everything first, 10" in from one side, and then the opponent does the same - the person who deployed first then starts.  The game then proceeds in a turn by turn basis - but there is no upper limit on the number of turns the game can take.  However, some games involve scenarios that prevent one player from running away and hiding and generally prolonging the game.



3. Every model has a set of statistics that determine how well it can do things on the field, but also a set of special rules as well as a structured capacity to take damage - meaning that when a model is injured but not destroyed, it may lose some of its functions.  When you purchase models, they come with a card that allows you to quickly refer to all of this and record sustained damage by using an erasable marker to put marks on a plastic sleeve that the card is stored in.  More on this soon - but it is worth noting that despite the game having some complexity, it is very quick and easy to play when you have these cards on hand.



4.  Hills don't block line of site in this game, but they do add elevation.  An elevated model (a model standing on elevation such as a hill, that is) is harder to hit with ranged attacks, and can also see over obstructions (and be seen back).  In this example, kaya (in green) is on the hill, and is harder to hit when Lylyth takes a shot at her.  Kaya is also able to see over the two models standing together in front of Lylyth since Kaya is elevated.



5. Forests DO block line of site, but you are allowed to see through 3 Inches of a forest.  For those of you who played Warhammer Fantasy during 7th and earlier editions, the forests in warmachine & hordes work exactly like that, only with a 3 inch 'see-through' range instead of 2.  Forests also cut the amount you move in half as well, unless you have some kind of ability that allows you to move full distance through a forest anyway.  In this example, the big Feral Warpwolf cannot see Lylyth.  However, Lylyth has a special rule called 'Eyeless sight' and can ignore the forest completely, allowing her to shoot at the Warpwolf despite being in the middle of the woods.



6.  In every game you play, you'll have a single model that leads your army called a Warlock (If you are playing a hordes faction).  In Warmachine, that model will be called a Warcaster.  A Warlock or Warcaster is a powerful model that casts spells, attacks, and controls other models in your army.  To win the game you must kill your enemy's warlock or warcaster, which creates an exciting dynamic - you'll always have the option to muscle your way through the game, keeping your guy safe while you muscle over and kill the enemy army, and eventually the enemy caster.  Or, finding a clever way to get through the enemy line and assassinate the enemy caster in the midst of his or her troops.

In Hordes, your Warlock has a FURY stat, in this case the Circle of Orboros Warlock is called Kaya and she has a FURY of 6 as shown on her card.  FURY is the amount of resource she has to use and starts the game with a number of tokens equal to her FURY.  She'll be able to use these whenever she wants when the game starts, to do all sorts of things.  You can represent this with a dice, or using tokens, or however - so long as it is clear enough to your opponent.



7. The game begins, and the Circle of Orboros player goes first.  In Warmachine and hordes, you must completely move and attack with one model at a time.  This happens in a phase called the 'activation phase' in which most of the gameplay takes place.  So, you choose one model, you might move with it, you might also attack with it, and you might also use some abilities or spells, but after you have finished with it, you can't do anything with it again until your next turn.  Many tactics in this game require you to think carefully about the order in which you 'activate' each model.

Kaya (in the green cape) spends two of her 'fury points' this turn, to cast a spell.  On her card, the rules say that she is allowed to cast the spell 'occultation' by spending two fury points - this will give her a rule called stealth, which will protect her from any enemy ranged attacks that are fired from 5" away or further.  I've shown this by placing two of her tokens on the card in the picture, but in a real game all you need to do is to tell your opponent you are spending the fury, and showing Kaya's remaining fury somewhere next to her model.

Now, here comes one of the most confusing things about the Hordes rules, something that doesn't always come across as intuitive when reading the quick-start rules, and one of the main reasons I wanted to make the tutorial in the first place: when one of the beasts under Kaya's control needs to do something beyond it's basic ability, it must be forced by it's warlock (kaya) - it gains a point of fury instead of spending one.  This can be shown in the picture - the two beasts on either side of Kaya have been forced to 'sprint', which means that they move at double movement.  They aren't normally allowed to do this, so they must be forced - therefore they pick up one fury token each.  This doesn't happen to Kaya if she sprints though.  

I'll explore this further as the tutorial continues, but for now the point is that Kaya begins the game with Fury tokens that she spends if she wants to do something special, while the warbeasts under her control create fury tokens when they want to do something special.



8. A Warlock's FURY stat also determines what the Warlock's control range is.  That control range is double the fury stat, so in the case of Lylyth here, with her FURY of 5, her control range is 10.  She'll only be able to control beasts that remain within that range, so that's why you often see games of warmachine and hordes visually as two sparse blobs of models moving across the table.  In this game there only two types of unit though - warlocks and warbeasts.  In bigger games you'll see infantry and solos, which can operate at full efficiency outside of this 'bubble'.

Importantly, you can measure your Warlock's control range at any time.  This means that you won't have to guess ranges if they concern situations very close to the warlock.  It also means that if you run a Warlock with a high FURY stat, you'll be able to pre-measure longer distances.  This isn't as critical as it might sound on paper, but it does help.  Warlocks with low FURY aren't any weaker than their higher FURY counterparts though.



9. The Legion of Everblight take their turn, and everyone moves up.  Lylyth starts the game with 5 fury tokens, and doesn't have a lot to do with them - she's allowed to discard them if she wants, and we'll see why she might want to do that later.  Her beasts move up and are sprinting, so they each gain a point of fury.  The big 'Carnivean' has two points on him, because he has cast his 'Animus' (a spell that the carnivean has, but Lylyth doesn't) which requires him to be 'forced' for an amount of two fury points, which is why he creates two points this turn.



10. Circle of Orboros turn again.  Now that the game is into the second turn, we start to see some involvement with the other two phases in the game - the maintenance phase and control phase - the two other phases apart from the main activation phase.  In this case Kaya makes some actions in the control phase, and this is where she is managing spells and fury, some rather abstract actions which don't really move the physical models around or affect the enemy.

First, she is able to 'leach' fury points from warbeasts in her control range.  This is how she replenishes fury spent on spells and other things in her last turn, and is the reason why warbeasts need to create fury tokens for her to leach when they can.  Warbeasts have an upper limit to the number of tokens they can create in each of their turns, so when you play, you have to manage this correctly.  

So, Kaya starts by leaching fury tokens back up to her maximum of 6 (she can't leach more and go above that).  Last turn, she had to spend two fury to cast occultation, but it is classified as an upkeep spell, so now she only needs to spend one point to simply maintain it.  Warlocks tend to have at least one upkeep spell on their list.  

All three of her warbeasts have had to sprint, so since she still has 5 fury she won't need to leach up all 3 of her points next turn in order to get back on 6.  For this reason, she discards two fury, so that she can leach exactly the number she needs in order to have full resources available.  If she doesn't leach all of the fury points back from each beast, they might frenzy (depending on a 2d6 roll, plus the fury left on them at the start of the turn, referenced with a threshold stat, such as 9 for example).  If a beast frenzies, it will attack friendly models if they are the closest to it - which in this case they are.  So Kaya plays it safe.

[Vaul]

11.  In the Legion of Everblight's turn, Lylyth attempts to cast Parasite on the enemy Feral Warpwolf.  She'll need to spend 3 fury to do so, but since she leached back the 5 points that her warbeasts collectively created in her last turn, she can do this with 2 to spare.  Parasite affects an enemy model, and it's also an upkeep spell (just like occultation) - so if the -3 ARM that the Warpwolf suffers is not enough to bring about it's demise this turn, Lylyth can upkeep it next time to continue the pressure.  It also adds to Lylyths own ARM by 1 point, so she might want to upkeep it for that as well.



12. Lylyth moves up and casts parasite on the Warpwolf.  It is a range 8 spell, so note that she can measure her control range of 10 first, making sure the beast is in range before she throws dice to cast it.



13. Two 'shredder' warbeasts are sent in to attack the Warpwolf now that he is suffering from parasite.  This is why Lylyth activated first this turn, to weaken the Warpwolf for when the shredders went in.  A model charges it's full movement distance plus 3", however the shredders can be forced a fury point to gain an ability called rabid, which gives them 2" more movement, as well as boosted damage and attack rolls (that's where you add an extra dice to the normal 2d6 you throw when making attacks and resolving damage).  

So in this photo the shredders gain two tokens each, one each for charging (they must be forced to charge) and one each for both using rabid.  They won't be able to do anything above and beyond these special actions this turn, as they have a FURY stat of only 2 - which they cannot exceed.



14. The first shredder rolls to hit, normally 2D6 plus MAT, looking to equal or beat the enemy DEF.  Because of rabid in effect, it's 3D6 - so it easily hits.  This photo is about what happens NEXT - the damage resolution.

The Shredder's weapon power plus it's base strength is 10, and as you can see the dice roll is 3,3,6 - a total of 12.  10+12 is 22, so for every point that this figure exceeds the enemy model's ARM value, the enemy model takes a point of damage.  The warpwolf is normally ARM 16, but it has an ability called protective plates, one of three options it can choose to take each turn (since it had no need of its other options last turn - either more speed or strength, it was using it's armour bonus) - the warpwolf is at +2 ARM for a total of 18.  

22 exceeds 18 by 4, so the warpwolf takes 4 points of damage.    ...but we've forgotten about parasite!  Since that was in play, the warpwolf would have been at a -3 ARM, so the net result after all that is 7 points of damage.



15. The next step is to apply the damage.  Every warbeast has a damage spiral - this means that although it can only sustain a certain number of damage points before it is removed from play (like 'wounds' in warhammer), those points are categorised, so once it loses too many points from a certain category, it will also lose a function relating to that category.  The Legion of Everblight player controlling the shredder rolls a die, which comes up as a 5.  This means that the damage is recorded as 4 black dots on the part of the spiral labelled 5.  Once 5 is filled up with sustained damage points, you move on to 6, and so on.

There are three areas to the spiral.  So if the shredders attack again and fill up areas 5 & 6 with dots, the 'spirit' area will be gone, and in that case the Warpwolf wouldn't be able to be forced to do special actions and gain fury tokens (unless it was healed so that part of that spiral was unmarked).

Yes, I know - there should be 7 dots there, not 4.  Parasite, duh.



16. Here's how the Legion of Everblight turn ended up.  Both shredders are in combat, having damaged the Warpwolf and used the maximum FURY they had available to do so.  The Carnivean has gained a point, and so has the other shredder over in the forest - he gained an ability called pathfinder by being forced to use rabid, allowing him to move through the trees without penalty.  Lylyth has kept a point for herself - she can actually spend this if necessary during the enemy turn, if she suffers damage - and transfer that damage to a friendly warbeast hadn't already reached it's own FURY limit.  This is called 'camping fury' - a safety play.

Note that Lylyth will not be able to leach up ALL of the fury tokens on her beasts next turn.  This is known as running your beasts 'hot'.  She'll have to choose which beasts to leach back tokens from, leaving some of them with tokens remaining - they'll then take frenzy checks.  However, she'll be able to leave the guys in combat with the remaining fury, and if they frenzy - they'll be doing so against the enemy models instead.  Alternatively, and more likely, the Circle of Orboros models will destroy the shredders in the next turn, so that problem will go away regardless.  A warlock can also 'reave' fury from a warbeast that dies while in it's control area, meaning that she will essentially leach those tokens but during the enemy turn at the time of the model's death.  She can choose not to, however.



17.  Bam! Kaya steps up and batters the shredder - it dies.  Note that you don't actually put the model on its side like that in a real game, this was done purely as a visual aid for the tutorial.  Kaya's plan here is to activate first, so that the Warpwolf will be free to run over and attack the Carnivean without being obstructed by the shredders.  However, Kaya can only kill the first one, she'll need one of the other models to do the work there - but that means that the Warpwolf can activate later on, still.



18.  ...So she sends an Argus in.  This two-headed Warbeast moves in around Kaya to get to the target, boosts his attack roll (to ensure that the chances of missing the shredder are especially low - Kaya even has a special rule increasing the Argus' chance to hit) which requires a token to be added, and  boosts his damage roll as well.  It has a second head so it can make a second attack with that one, boosting to hit for another token.  It could have just rolled to hit without the extra die and boosted damage instead - a choice one must make when calculating the odds.  You'd ask how likely it is to hit, and how important it is to hit, etc.

Despite the Argus getting so angry, it still fails to kill the Shredder.  At this stage the Argus has reached it's FURY limit of 3.



19. This leaves the Warpwolf with little other options other than to kill the puny shredder himself.  No tabletop wargame would be fun without at least some element of luck.  As you can see here, he is a rather high MAT 7, so in order to reach the DEF 13 of the Shredder, he'll only need a 6 on two dice.  But on top of that, all warbeasts controlled by Kaya (as opposed to any other warlock that might lead your circle of orboros army) gain +2 when rolling to hit.  So the warpwolf only needs a 4.

But he rolls a 3.



20.  The shredder isn't getting away that easily though!  The warpwolf has not just one paw full of mighty claws, but a second one as well, AND he can bite stuff.  He can also be forced to attack again with either claw or his jaws if he hasn't already hit his maximum FURY for the turn.  So he simply attacks again and rips the other shredder apart.  Unfortunately he can't do anything else this turn, as normally a model must move first, then attack, and if it attacks first it needs to have forfeited it's move.



21. Rawr!  The other Argus springs out of left-field, being the only Circle of Orboros model that hasn't activated this turn.  He barrels into the carnivean, gaining a fury point in order to charge.



22. He uses his combo-strike attack, which we saw earlier.  This can always be found on the model's stat card.  Careful though, the carnivean had previously put up a defensive ability called spiny growth.  This means that the carnivean will be tougher, but you must also remember to resolve d3 points of damage on the model that attacks it.  Big guy makes for quite a thorny meal.  



23. Lylyth responds.  She has a ranged attack (her bow) which she decides to use.  In this photo she's measured 12" to the argus on the hill, which is the maximum range of her weapon.  She's not normally allowed to measure more than 10" for her control range, but of course we need to measure after she declares to fire, to check whether she is in range with the bow.  On her card it says her bow's RoF (rate of fire) is 2 - so she can fire it twice.

The argus has a high DEF and that is even higher due to being elevated on the hill, so Lylyth boosts her dice roll to hit.  She does hit, so she then boosts damage on it as well.  This has cost her two fury tokens so far.  However, she must spend a point of fury to buy her second shot, so if she wants to save her fifth point for later, she'll need to choose between boosting to hit and boosting damage when she uses her 4th.  She makes a lucky un-boosted hit, then boosts damage, taking her down to her last fury, which she camps on - just in case.

The argus has a SPD of 7, so in it's next turn it can charge 7+3=10, so won't be within melee range of Lylyth.  

She still needs to be careful though, as the argus could simply move 7 towards her, then fire it's ranged weapon (magical bark!!!) another 6.  That's 13, and since she's already fired a range 12 bow, she could be in trouble.  However, if the argus is very lucky with damage on it's shot, she can use her last point of fury to transfer that damage over to the carnivean - and avoid losing the game.

[Vaul]

And that's it.  The rest of the game wasn't played out, but you can see that there would be a few potential outcomes;

* The carnivean and remaining shredder move up, eventually destroying the circle warbeasts and then overpowering kaya, while lylyth stays safe at the back
* The legion troops + Lylyth herself all look for ways around the enemy warbeasts and go in to assassinate kaya even before her pets are laid low
* The circle forces weather the carnivean's attacks and strike back to kill it, and then advance in unison to hunt Lylyth down too
* The circle forces find a way to assassinate Lylyth without having to deal with the carnivean

Not all of the quickstart rules were demonstrated here, and I didn't even get to making examples of how the warlock's respective 'feats' operate.  But there will be batreps in future, so watch out for them.  This game showed two starter set 'battleboxes' for two factions fighting against each other, a great way to get into the game.  But this is a low points value (11) and the tournament standard in nz is 35.  At higher level games, strategy and tactics become a lot deeper and more involving - and rewarding!

I hope this tutorial has been helpful for people looking to get into hordes and more importantly, to understand the quickstart demo rules on the PP website.

Here they are again: http://privateerpress.com/hordes/the-game

[Hausdorff space]

Nicely job.

[Monkey King]

That was really informative sir, thank you so much, I understand a hell of lot more about the whole gameplay now, off to go get some models me thinks

[Placator]

Great job on the tutorial, provides a good view of game mechanics. Looks like an interesting game to play. Might have to give it a try.

[Chris]

Well done Luke.

If people are interested me and Daryl are booked to sit down and do a learn to play in practice at club this Sunday.

[Vaul]

I actually got critiqued over on the PP forums when I posted this, had to make some edits because i'm a noob ^^

Also, Lylyth can fire twice without buying attacks right?  And she can't buy a third attack due to her RoF?  I think I got it right but wasn't 100% sure.

[Hausdorff space]

Also, Lylyth can fire twice without buying attacks right?  And she can't buy a third attack due to her RoF?  I think I got it right but wasn't 100% sure.

Not quite: it's one free shot, buy a second.

You get one attack with each of your weapons (but you generally cannot make both ranged and melee attacks); after which you buy extra attacks, up to a weapons RoF in the case of ranged attacks.


Didn't notice you posted in the PP forums... will go have a look.

[Vaul]

In that case i'll edit the last photo and caption of my report, otherwise it shows Lylyth not buying her second shot - I suspected this might be the case.

[nik_]

Brilliant comprehensive intro - I feel like I know how the game works now, which is great. Still not too tempted to start playing though

[Vulkaan]

This is awesome

I am in fulls wing of assembling my Trollbloods, so this only helps to build my desire to play