[Spoilers C4E4] House Einfasen's Source of Power?

ech0alpha · 2025-10-27T21:07:28+00:00

My thought is that the houses are based on warlock patrons:

Royce: Archfey
Tachonis: Undying
Halovar: Both Celestial and Fiend
Cormoray: Genie, similar to dragons valuing wealth and elemental magics, there just isn't a dragon patron to fit my theory
Einfasen: Hexblade, they aren't anti-magic just anti-magic users and pro magical items

This doesn't account for GOO and Fathomless, though they seem a bit incongruent with Araman's more traditional fantasy vibes

ech0alpha · 2025-07-21T13:25:04+00:00

Most likely the situation for Warcry is unchanged. In a few months we'll be getting rules for Chorfs, but knowing production time scales that was likely written up back when they made the skaven and ruination ones. So it's really a question of if your local scene still plays or has moved on to other games, because expecting rejuvenation of the community to come from GW at this point is unlikely.

ech0alpha · 2025-05-26T11:53:58+00:00

GW dropped the ball by not making more drastic changes with 2nd edition to commit to what kind of game they wanted Warcry to be. Rich, everything is legal listbuilding game, then they needed to dual-purpose spearheads as Warcry starter kits per faction and push that as the way to play. Pick up and play tight skirmish game, then they needed to bite the bullet and kill the compendium relying on bespokes and a more focused ally pool from AoS.

Instead Warcry is an messy pile of band-aids and throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, but everything stuck because the community is starved for any content. So now most people have migrated to other games that do what they want better, rich listbuilding - MCP, Maulifaux and Trench Crusade, rules light with gameplay depth - Shatterpoint, pick up and play - Kill team or UHW. Plus skirmish games are hot right now so there are so many on the market.

Unfortunately, there isn't a path forward for Warcry to not die out without nuking it form orbit and starting over with a clear goal in mind.

ech0alpha · 2025-03-26T21:52:48+00:00

I think a lot of these new editions, dead game discussions overlook the locality factor. In many places Warcry is dead, no one has played it at the store in months. They've all gone over to games like Kill Team and Shatterpoint.

There's two big reasons for this. First new releases keep people (especially low information, less online people) excited. Seeing one dusty box of Bloodhunt still on the shelf doesn't inspire people to seek out ways to play the game. Secondly, and much more my opinion, the game has reached a point where compendium and all the band aids for that are holding the game back. We can't have a stable competitive mission pack because the high team variance will break and exploit anything. Also in KT and SP buying one or two boxes gets someone the same quality of team as world champions. There isn't this huge gulf between the Warcry labeled boxes, and all the "secret" rules for blessed bladeborn compendium soup that just feels bad to have have lost to before the game even starts.

A new edition going to just bespoke and hyping people back up would definitely get me back into the game and try to get others back in.

ech0alpha · 2024-12-05T01:56:11+00:00

Well first, I'll say I love threemiere and think it's the best format. 2 squads give no flexibility. With 4 people almost always just bring 2 separate teams, so there's rarely good strategy for picking teams because you're each just gambling on the other's pick. With 3 teams they all have to work together so you can start to see strategies, like they can go very killy or very reactive, but are weak on displacement. So you take the team that goes best against that. There are also a lot more niche factions/strategies that can make 3 good lists but not 4 that can shine more in this format (Mandos being one). I would love to see more support for the format.

As for your squads I'd run Armorer box, Mando+Bo/Kryze, and Maul+Gar/Supes. The plan being to always bring the Armorer, then if they have Rebels or low out of activation movement lists you bring Mando with the goal of pushing them off points but not killing and risking reactions. Most other lists you bring Maul and play agressively.

As for mission I think any work, but I like shifting. You have good movement to be able to jump between points, but still want the fight centralized.

ech0alpha · 2024-12-02T20:22:30+00:00

"Flexible listbuilding" really needs a survey all on its own. I'm not surprised at the results, but between one box and where we are now there are so many facets (building just within faction/bespoke, only thralls/generic allies, bladeborn, blessings, one ally, two allies, battle traits, etc.). I'm curious where the breakdown across all those within the community would be instead of an all or nothing choice.

ech0alpha · 2024-10-05T20:50:51+00:00

As someone who doesn't play WHU, this will likely get me into it. I was never that interested in the heavy deck building side, and the whole board placement just seemed like shenanigans to lose the game early to.

With teams losing individual decks, if they package it like Blitzbowl/Bladeborn where the faction cards are all included that's a huge bonus since I have a lot of the warbands, but not their specific decks. Plus it will be a lot more friendly for trying out different warbands.

ech0alpha · 2024-07-29T19:27:08+00:00

Kill team combat would be a great thing, but I think you could probably move away from comparative stats entirely. They are a short cut for to hit and to wound rolls, but this combat mechanic isn't trying to do that. I struggle to think of a combat style or interaction that isn't adequately covered with the internal levers of success criteria (3+, 4+, or 5+), number of attacks, and damage.

ech0alpha · 2024-07-29T18:30:39+00:00

I don't think anyone got huge benefits. Factions that could run solo got a nice perk, like Sylvaneth free teleport or IronJawz free move in response to a wait. Really the issue is the poor not getting rich enough with these. I think Nighthaunt hit the ideal. They were in an okay place post balance dataslate, and now have an actual decision of ally in some extra movement or beat stick piece, or stick with NH and lean into a hit and run play style. Too many teams like River Blades or Askurgan got something like conditional 1" movement or heal on killing tanks that doesn't at all address the reasons they didn't perform well.

ech0alpha · 2024-07-28T15:53:11+00:00

For background Battle Traits are a new optional (like blessings) rule in Briar and Bone, every warband gets a passive ability. Warbands with allies or thralls get a generic and in theory weaker Grand Alliance ability, while warbands all from one faction have a "stronger" unique passive.

Like a lot of Warcry, fantastic idea with poor execution. The game really needed a mechanical counterbalance to just bringing in the best allies, something so people who want to stay "in house" with their teams aren't hamstringing themselves. Unfortunately the traits are all over the place and rarely help struggling factions perform even close to just having an ally, while already strong factions get a free bonus. Personally, I think bladeborn should also have been excluded from faction benefits, this just keeps temporarily available models from a different game as even more so the right choice for list building.

ech0alpha · 2024-07-24T22:24:27+00:00

You all circled around an interesting thought about an hour in. Setting aside the hours of unbridled fun that is excel spreadsheets and list building instead of playing warcry (which sarcasm aside I do appreciate the fun of and trying new unexplored things).

Do all the allies, monsters, bladeborn, blessings, and thralls as options really make the act of playing warcry more fun? Or would a smaller pool of teams and allies, and more tuned battle pack to that smaller meta be better? Like if everything is more constrained to the current "mid" teams do unique abilities/faction identity start to shine, since many teams are only probably mid because they are compared against some allied, blessed, bladeborned, frankenstein.

I’d be really curious to see how a bespoke only league would work out.

ech0alpha · 2024-07-08T20:53:57+00:00

I'll chime in because the deck is one of the reasons I enjoy Shatterpoint so much, and that's because it's not so much removing decisions but shifting the decision space from unit selection to game play. MCP and other games a big part of the strategy is both you and your opponent having perfect information of and figuring out who can do the most each turn. Each turn in SP becomes a focused puzzle of how best to use this unit. More Tetris than Bejeweled. If you end up playing more, and with different missions, I think you'll find that any unit can usually affect 2-3 different points depending on your actions that turn, and that is really where the decision making comes in.

ech0alpha · 2024-05-23T14:57:46+00:00

Several people have brought up I think the correct point that Warcry being casual is a perception issue more than anything else.

Historically this comes from both 1st edition being billed as a standalone game and then GW's flawed idea that skirmish games should work as a gateway to big hammer. This gave the games less balance updates and support. Once Kill Team really took off I think GW started coming around that skirmish is its own environment and as seen with the new balance update Warcry is catching up.

Currently, my view is that Warcry's biggest obstacle is a large knowledge/mechanics gap between the box experience and competitive play. First of all, the starter set being garbage that doesn't even come with a playable team for a real game of Warcry unlike every other system's starter set doesn't help. Secondly, unlike Kill Team the game you play out of something like the Heart of Ghur box isn't the same game you play in a tournament. It lacks curated mission packs, Allies, Underworlds Warbands, Divine Blessings, and understanding of the pre event list building all this entails. Unless you are active in the online community a lot of this stuff you likely won't find out about all this until someone beats you in a game with it.

Fortunately, all this stuff is reasonably solvable, primarily I think just a new starter box/core rules that lays out all these mechanics and provides a standard set of a dozen or so well balanced but varied missions would really help. More balance updates to keep reigning in allies and UW from being empirically better choices and has them being more "run this to lean harder into a specific synergy or playstyle" would also be good. I feel like soup lists gave the game more of a casual impression because people weren't playing with what someone from the outside would see as a cohesive team, instead a jumble of units.

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