I love love love the IK setting. I really do.
However I am disheartened that the rules are done in house as PP has proven again and again, that they are not capable of making good rules or achieve even basic design goals.
When they switched from first to second edition it was because some things had become obsolete and there were ridiculous threat ranges involved where you could shoot beyond the enemy's deployment zone in certain cases. They wanted to change that, yet second edition is ALL about huge threat ranges. *sigh*

Quote from: DominikSchwager;513725I love love love the IK setting. I really do.
However I am disheartened that the rules are done in house as PP has proven again and again, that they are not capable of making good rules or achieve even basic design goals.
When they switched from first to second edition it was because some things had become obsolete and there were ridiculous threat ranges involved where you could shoot beyond the enemy's deployment zone in certain cases. They wanted to change that, yet second edition is ALL about huge threat ranges. *sigh*

I don't think you've ever played Warmachine, and if you have, you've never played another wargame.  They didn't change a ridiculous amount of rules in the edition switch.

Warmachine's weapon ranges are ridiculously small, but the game itself is actually quite tight.  We've been running a campaign for the last few weeks, and it's not our first Warmachine rodeo.

Why would you be mad you could shoot into your opponent's zone?  That's a newbie thing to say.

Long range in warmachine: 16" on a Heavy Barrel and you can augment that to 20" with a spell.

Long range in Warhammer 40,000: 72" on an Earthshaker cannon.  Also, normal engagement range is 24", well into your opponent's deployment zone.

The difference between wargames and rpg's is that wargames are designed to be competitive, and roughly even balance between matches.  RPG's don't do that.

For your information, 2 editions of a wargame in 10 or so years is pretty fucking good.  Hell that's good for an RPG, and you definitely do not run into the same problems with RPGs that scream a new editions, yet you buy new ones anyways.

By this logic you should HATE with a passion every publisher who ever touched D&D or another 3+ edition game.

Quote from: Blackhand;513744I don't think you've ever played Warmachine, and if you have, you've never played another wargame.  They didn't change a ridiculous amount of rules in the edition switch.

Warmachine's weapon ranges are ridiculously small, but the game itself is actually quite tight.  We've been running a campaign for the last few weeks, and it's not our first Warmachine rodeo.

Why would you be mad you could shoot into your opponent's zone?  That's a newbie thing to say.

Long range in warmachine: 16" on a Heavy Barrel and you can augment that to 20" with a spell.

Long range in Warhammer 40,000: 72" on an Earthshaker cannon.  Also, normal engagement range is 24", well into your opponent's deployment zone.

The difference between wargames and rpg's is that wargames are designed to be competitive, and roughly even balance between matches.  RPG's don't do that.

For your information, 2 editions of a wargame in 10 or so years is pretty fucking good.  Hell that's good for an RPG, and you definitely do not run into the same problems with RPGs that scream a new editions, yet you buy new ones anyways.

By this logic you should HATE with a passion every publisher who ever touched D&D or another 3+ edition game.

I was well on the way to be a top 10 player in the german warmachine circuit when university got in the way. Considering that players ranked 78 and 79 made top 10 on gencon I think that says a lot about how competitiv that circuit is. While you americans sit around in one town and play among each other, we travel to a lot of different tournaments, which makes our meta a lot more evolved and a lot more competitive. I also played other wargames on tournaments. So, yes, I have ample experience. Likely a lot more than you ever get in your little club, playing with your friends in "campaigns".
So, that much for your "experience" and mine. Then, there is a fundamental difference between shooting into deployment zones in the different games and that my complaint wasn't actually about shooting into deployment zones. It was about PP setting a design goal and then failing horribly at achieving it.
Also, I never complained about them making a new edition, I complained about them not doing what they set out to do with the new edition.
Also, your examples show that you actually know jack (pun intended) about Warmachine. Yes, an unaugmented Defender has only 21" threat, with caine it is only 26", also true. But let's face it, nCaine is a subpar caster in the current meta, especially when you compare him to eCaine and his 30" "I don't care that you are invisible or behind a wall of jacks" threat or eHaley and her what?  27" 2 Defender shots with 2 focus for boosts? And that is Cygnar, the faction notorious for having lost the threat range game. Shall we try again with someone like Skorne or Khador?
Between good players warmachine was turned into a game of chicken... of course in the american meta one only looks to the P+S of the weapon to determine who is boss...

Quote from: DominikSchwager;513885I was well on the way to be a top 10 player in the german warmachine circuit when university got in the way. Considering that players ranked 78 and 79 made top 10 on gencon I think that says a lot about how competitiv that circuit is. While you americans sit around in one town and play among each other, we travel to a lot of different tournaments, which makes our meta a lot more evolved and a lot more competitive. I also played other wargames on tournaments. So, yes, I have ample experience. Likely a lot more than you ever get in your little club, playing with your friends in "campaigns".
So, that much for your "experience" and mine. Then, there is a fundamental difference between shooting into deployment zones in the different games and that my complaint wasn't actually about shooting into deployment zones. It was about PP setting a design goal and then failing horribly at achieving it.
Also, I never complained about them making a new edition, I complained about them not doing what they set out to do with the new edition.
Also, your examples show that you actually know jack (pun intended) about Warmachine. Yes, an unaugmented Defender has only 21" threat, with caine it is only 26", also true. But let's face it, nCaine is a subpar caster in the current meta, especially when you compare him to eCaine and his 30" "I don't care that you are invisible or behind a wall of jacks" threat or eHaley and her what?  27" 2 Defender shots with 2 focus for boosts? And that is Cygnar, the faction notorious for having lost the threat range game. Shall we try again with someone like Skorne or Khador?
Between good players warmachine was turned into a game of chicken... of course in the american meta one only looks to the P+S of the weapon to determine who is boss...

I think you're a little off base with our "American Meta".  We don't sit around in our little towns, but crossing state lines is a pain.  We're actually pulling in guys from a few hundred miles away with our tournament games.  The "campaigns" are structured as league games to keep everyone playing, not as one-off story games.

Must be nice with all those Euro countries conveniently located within a few hundred miles of one another, you can really get in some play time all over the place.  Try that shit here in the states and see how long it takes you to get to Gen Con from the Southwest.

The rest of what you said is drivel.  You were complaining about stupid shit that's not actually real.  Your numbers you give for stats are wrong.  All of them, everything you said about the Defender (from the range to number of possible shots) and the PP competitive circuit here (which is not managed by PP but rather by our club).

How would you know what the design goals for Warmachine Prime, Mk II were?  You don't seem to know that much about it other than what you can squeeze out of a few paragraphs from a Google search and apply gamer intuition to.  At least it seems that way, because all that is bullshit, I say again.

Oh yeah did I mention our club hosted several wargaming tournaments last year, including ('ard Boyz) - for the state?  As in - the only one.  I know that may not sound like it's a big deal - but in our geographic area that amounted to a convention.  Our sphere of influence stretches about 150 miles in most directions, and get a lot of players from Texas.  In fact, our turnout was greater than the large hobby stores in the biggest city in our state.

With so many Eurobitch players, how do your hobby centers handle them all?  The way it's described there are thousands of rabid gamers, but in the states it's nothing like that in this area.

You don't give examples about what exactly those design goals are that you are mad about, other than the ones you have already given and decided were not the issue.

I think that says a lot about you Europeans.

BTW, for your information I use Lt. Caine.  It's all about placement and timing, baby - just like most other things.  People who claim ridiculous things like your entire post make me sick.

Defender moves 5, shoots 16 (21), 2 for TE on itself (23), 2 for TA (25) and 2 for TE on the enemy, makes 27". That costs 4 for tele and 3 for TA, which means, thanks to the Squire Haley can boost that twice. The second shot obviously comes from TA. Really? You even play Cygnar and don't know one of the basic bread and butter combos.

Also, if nCaine is successful in your local meta (and 150 miles is what... not even 300 kilometers, that is like not going to tournaments that are just around the corner), then you play with either people who go infantry heavy (we like to call them MKI players) and/or people who can't position their warcaster properly.

That, to use your words, says a lot about the rest of your post.

And I gave an example about the design goal, it was lowering threat ranges. They stated that, actually came out and said so, yet threat ranges grew. And once more, I am not mad about any design goals, I only state:
Privateer Press is not good at making rules. To support this claim I use one of their stated design goals "make threat ranges smaller" and apply it to MKII, which has a plethora of high threat ranges. Ergo, they didn't achieve their design goal, ergo, they are not good at making rules.

Also, your post doesn't make me sick, it makes me smile and giggle ^^

I still don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Literally none of that made sense.  TA?  TE??  You're talking some shit right there buddy.

You also assume we used the top lists off the net and aren't smart enough to come up with surprise combos.

Maybe some of that makes sense, by 1st ed standards, but you need to get a Mk II book before you start talking about it.  Some of that shit doesn't work like that anymore, most notably Tele.  You can't use that as threat range.

Max range you can get on the defender is 20".  That's with nCaine's spell Snipe.

I have no fucking idea what the rest of those acronyms mean.  Presumably nothing.

Also, how many tournaments within 300km do you actually attend?  Really?  Damn son.  That's some travel.

Quote from: Blackhand;514013I still don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Literally none of that made sense.  TA?  TE??  You're talking some shit right there buddy.

You also assume we used the top lists off the net and aren't smart enough to come up with surprise combos.

Maybe some of that makes sense, by 1st ed standards, but you need to get a Mk II book before you start talking about it.  Some of that shit doesn't work like that anymore, most notably Tele.  You can't use that as threat range.

Max range you can get on the defender is 20".  That's with nCaine's spell Snipe.

I have no fucking idea what the rest of those acronyms mean.  Presumably nothing.

Also, how many tournaments within 300km do you actually attend?  Really?  Damn son.  That's some travel.

Yes, I agree. You don't know what the fuck I am talking about, and you have no clue what the fuck you are talking about.

I regularly attended weekend long tournaments which were quite a bit farther away.
Also, TA is of course temporal acceleration and TE is of course Telekinesis. None of that comes "off the net" and I never assumed it would after all you don't need the net to put eHaley and a single Defender into the list. Do you now? So stop with the strawman.

And no, nothing of that comes from first edition. That was ALL MkII.
And for the record. The threatrange on a defender with nCaine is 25" (actually 26 with push, but it is kinda daft to have 2 heavies with nCaine ^^). Movement is part of the threatrange. Also, you should perhaps crack a rulebook or read some of your Cygnar cards before you continue that discussion, son. Or do we need to go over eHaley's card (and others?) spell by spell and I explain it to you, son? There seems to be some need for that.

Quote from: DominikSchwager;514064Yes, I agree. You don't know what the fuck I am talking about, and you have no clue what the fuck you are talking about.

I regularly attended weekend long tournaments which were quite a bit farther away.
Also, TA is of course temporal acceleration and TE is of course Telekinesis. None of that comes "off the net" and I never assumed it would after all you don't need the net to put eHaley and a single Defender into the list. Do you now? So stop with the strawman.

And no, nothing of that comes from first edition. That was ALL MkII.
And for the record. The threatrange on a defender with nCaine is 25" (actually 26 with push, but it is kinda daft to have 2 heavies with nCaine ^^). Movement is part of the threatrange. Also, you should perhaps crack a rulebook or read some of your Cygnar cards before you continue that discussion, son. Or do we need to go over eHaley's card (and others?) spell by spell and I explain it to you, son? There seems to be some need for that.

Sorry I didn't answer yesterday, I was busy actually playing Warmachine.

So lets talk this over, shall we?  

Here's what I'm getting from you:  

"Privateer Press' game does not function correctly because they have a shitty staff and don't understand how wargames should be played."

Followed by:

"This specific army is the only way anyone playing this specific faction should ever field, this should occur to everyone without thinking about it.  If not they are fucking stupid because this way that I run this army is the best."

Both ideas are expressed in your posts, in as many words.  However, in reality neither is actually an issue, as they are patently untrue.

You only cite this one warcasters' specific spells, which do not apply to anyone else in the game.  You're really stretching your powers of tactical acumen, not to mention stifling your creative energies with silly ideas of "my army beats ur army no roll" bullshit.

Nobody's pushing anyone.  There is no telekinesis.  I'm not using Haley, or a Reinhold or a Squire like all the other cool kids at your games.  That's just not being creative and who wants to play if everyone has the same army?

You're the only person talking about Haley.  I'm with Caine and the game in general, but you seem pretty fixated on this one warcaster and what she's able to do.  I could give a shit if you think she's best, or what her threat range is.  She's not on my list and I can't use any of her powers if she's not my warcaster.

All those power attacks and spells are a waste of fucking time.  I know you can do a lot of tricks when you set up your assassination run, but those are entirely situational, baby.  Also, I don't really see that such attack runs have changed much at all in Mk II.

I know about all those things, what I'm wondering is how the fuck you think it's relevant to what we were talking about.  

You're talking about an entirely different list - as if we all have to have the same list to do well.  Is that idea comfortable with your competitive spirit?  It must be, it seems to be the reason you no longer play Warmachine.  

Did you lose to some other more effeminate eurotrash at one of those tourneys?  You seem really bitter about the whole deal.

If you've attended all those tourneys and events you should know firsthand what I've picked up reading about other folks events before attempting to organize one.  I know that certain lists pick up speed in the meta, it's like that with all games.  

However, the list you are talking about is THE SAME FUCKING ONE that was pumped since MkII for being top tier.  I don't think that's coincidence, hence the net comment.  Anyone can build that army, but it's not bulletproof and I don't see it as an advantage.  It just contains models I don't care for.  

As proof this is all bullshit, I offer Gen Con Masters 2010 tournament results from Bell of Lost Souls.  This is the first one after Mk II was released, just in case you were wondering.

Also, you started arguing about the placement during the beginning of the game then started talking about threat range for an assassination, which aren't really related.  

Assassinations and the tactics that run up to them tend to take place between turns 3-5.  Your bitch seems to be it's not confined to 1"/5ft squares with 2"/10ft reach and a maximum effective range of less than 12".  Who the fuck wants to play that pussy game?

Do you even know what you're bitching about at this point or are you just barking aloud against ephemera?

ARF ARF!!

Your try to deflect has been noted. It didn't work.

You still have no clue about warmachine. I didn't bitch about a specific caster, I used one caster to show, that you have no clue, what your faction is capable of doing. I did so quite handily, seeing as it took you several posts to actually get it.

It went like this:
Me: Threat ranges got kinda ridiculous in MKII.
Blackhand: That's not true, even a Longarm only reaches 20" with one specific caster.
Me: That is factually wrong. Here is a quick and dirty example of how you reach much farther (and around a corner btw). It is only one of many examples.
Blackhand: I have no idea what you are talking about and all that stuff is probably MKI.
Me: No, read your card, it is all MKII and pretty basic.
Blackhand: Tries to deflect and fails.

Which brings us to this post.

And no, I was not beat by someone using eHaley, I actually like playing her. Like I said, it was an example. I was also not talking about a specific meta or anything like that, it was an example. And in my experience on tournaments player skills is what determines success and we have a couple of players who will win with whatever list they happen to bring.

Also the part you bolded is wrong. Again:

Privateer Press: Threat ranges need to go down in MKII.
Playtesters: These threat ranges get ridiculously long.
MK II: Game is dominated by huge threat ranges.

Privateer Press set out to achieve a certain goal, they did not do so, ergo they are not good at designing rules.
Don't get me wrong, I played with those rules on tournaments and had fun abusing them mercilessly. I especially enjoy telekinesis and its sheer brokenness and I still play warmachine.
That doesn't change the fact that PP didn't accomplish what they set out to do with their rules and I'd rather see someone with actual RPG experience try their hand at it.

And please, do us both a favour and stop with the strawmen and the desperate attempts at deflection.

I wasn't trying to deflect anything.  Not sure what you mean by strawman.  You're way more up on your internet-ese than I.

To all of what you said, whatthefuckever.  You were talking specifics, and I'm pretty certain Privateer Press has RPG experience.

We don't have to talk about it anymore.

I think the real tragedy here is that you two are the only ones who apparently have any desire to talk WarMachine.

Quote from: VectorSigma;514310I think the real tragedy here is that you two are the only ones who apparently have any desire to talk WarMachine.

I hereby name thee Mad Arab VectorSigma, the one who shows uncomfortable truths that are not meant to be comprehended by Man.

Quote from: VectorSigma;514310I think the real tragedy here is that you two are the only ones who apparently have any desire to talk WarMachine.

So we have a thread to ourselves. I don't see a problem with that.

I just meant you guys came out of the gate claws out, could've developed into a great WM friendship.  Or something.

Quote from: VectorSigma;514321I just meant you guys came out of the gate claws out, could've developed into a great WM friendship.  Or something.

Oh, What Might Have Been.