3 things you wish you had known when you first started playing Warmachine / Hordes
1. Which armies were the best to learn the game - Having played WHF and WH40k for a few years, I never really looked into any other tabletop games. I knew of the existence of Warmachine, but never thought of checking it out. The first army I picked was Retribution. I picked them because I had played the Tau in WH40k and really like the futuristic look of the warjacks. I did not realize that Retribution was one of the latest army to be release and would be very difficult to learn. It also did not help that the main army I would face for a long time in my meta was Legion. I won very few games while losing many to an overpowering army. It was this reason I switched to Circle. Although Circle is not near as easy to win with as Legion, it has epic casters and a better set of tools to learn from. It was interesting to switch from Focus to Fury, but I found that the Fury mechanic fit better to my play style. I was also able to blame myself for loses much more readily than I would with Retribution.
2. The existence of the deathclock and scenarios - When I started playing, my meta only played open time games and caster kills. Since I had started with Retribution, this caused me a lo of frustration trying to figure out how to get a enemy army's caster with the tools in the Retribution army. Part of this also included my need to better understand the overall game. I have found that with scenarios, kill zone, and scenarios, the game allowed for me to use more thank one strategy and left my opponent guessing as to whether I was going to the scenario win or a kill. It was before this that I switched over to Circle, and I found really enjoyed the game since. I still have Retribution and plan to play it again eventually, but I have been having too much fun with Circle to worry about trying again yet.
3. The types of gameplay available - Only in the last few months my meta has been enjoying playing mini tournaments on our own. Lately it has been grow league play starting with 15 point and then 25 and 35. This way of playing has helped me to get a better understanding of each of the Circle warcasters. By playing multiple people with the same list while that list grows to include more and more models, really helps you gain a better understanding of each of their strengths and weaknesses. It also lets you test out caster with different jacks and beast to see which combinations have the best synergy. This would be much more difficult with Warhammer given the game and list mechanics. I have had a lot of fun while learning this game, it just took a few months to really see how much fun it is, and how much I would enjoy it more than those "other" games.
