A Series on Improving Your Warmachine Game

~Chris “Hashmal” Taylor

To read part 1 of our Leveling Up Series, please check out here https://boosttohit.home.blog/2024/08/12/leveling-up/

To read part 2 of our Leveling Up Series, please check out https://boosttohit.home.blog/2024/08/27/leveling-up-2/

To read part 2 of our Leveling Up Series, please check out https://boosttohit.home.blog/2024/09/11/leveling-up-pt-3/

Introduction: Part 4

Hello again! We’re nearing the end of our series on improving your competitive Warmachine game. The last major pole in the tent to address is assassination. Love it or hate it, assassination is the beating heart that makes Warmachine notably different from its competitors. Every game can hinge on a knife’s edge, on one good die roll. It’s the ultimate come-back mechanic and can give someone otherwise getting demolished a shot at victory. It is thrilling, it is exhilarating, and it is stressful. Hopefully we can take some of the stress off of you, who deserves none of it, and put it onto your opponent, who assuredly deserves all of it.

In this article, we’re going to go over the key components (the architecture) of an assassination run. This will include: pros and cons, when to “go for it,” what you’ll need, your pre-flight assassination checklist, and what do to when it all goes wrong.

Why Assassinate? Pros And Cons

The main reason to assassinate the opponent’s leader is simple: you win the game immediately. There is no back and forth in the moment, little counter play, etc. Barring a couple of special rules we’ll cover, your opponent can only stand and watch as you unleash hell on their Leader. Succeed, and you win the game outright. Fail, well… there are cons to that pro.

Pros

A quick way to end the game, especially if you deem the matchup unfavorable to you.
Removes all other gameplay loss considerations: if you can assassinate, you don’t have to concern yourself with scenario or clock.
Can take a match you thought was heavily disadvantaged to a victory.

Cons

A quick way to end the game, as if you fail you’re often in a bad position. Or you might be assassinated yourself.
This is a derivative of #1: assassinations are resource-intensive and often require you to temporarily ignore or outright abandon other game plans to execute. A bad run can make it so that you functionally give a free turn to your opponent, which is usually crippling.
They can take an otherwise fair game away from you with a couple of cold rolls. Proceed with caution!

When To Go For It?

As with articles past, the answer to when you should “go for it” is a frustrating it depends. We’ll get into some of those considerations.

Army Choice

The army you’re playing will dictate how likely or not likely you can/should be in analyzing assassination runs. Some armies are inherently better at it than others, and some Leader options in said armies are as well. For example, in editions past I played the Protectorate of Menoth, a faction with army options that trended towards attrition and away from long threat ranges. They only had a few Leader options that could semi-reliably assassinate and few models in the army to support that game plan, so I didn’t do it much. Playing Cryx or Infernals now, I have access to powerful spellslingers with hypermobile arc nodes, debuffs, and janky melee threat ranges. I consider assassination much more now.

I’d note for new MK4 players, the modern MK4 armies are all quite capable of engineering an assassination run. Some are still better than others, but I feel like every army has the tools to make it happen.

POV: the average Shadowflame Shard opponent experience.

Matchup

Warmachine has a strong element of rock-paper-scissors to it. This is a good thing for the game overall, but it can be tough when you’re in the game itself. Sometimes you’re lined up against a Leader or army that hard counters what your army is trying to do. In that event, keeping an eye on assassination and being ready to pull the trigger is warranted. Angling your army in advance to be ready to pounce isn’t a bad idea in this case.

Scenario

The same above applies to in-game movements. You might have had an even game, but some ish positioning, poor rolls, what have you have happened and now you’re down on scenario and attrition. It might make sense to look for a way to assassinate, especially after a big swing turn as often the opposing Leader had to materially contribute to that swing and might be more vulnerable now than they will be again in the game.

When It’s Right There

All of that said, human error happens. Sometimes your opponent just missed an angle or forgot a rule or something. Sometimes they made a calculated decision.

POV: me assuming I am safe vs. Shadowflame Shard.

It doesn’t happen often, but look out for moments when a run is gift-wrapped for you. You’ll likely still have to put in effort to nail it unless they’re really on the ropes and had to get their Leader extremely busy mid-field, but they happen.

What You’ll Need

The answer to this is simple but nuanced: you’ll need a volume of attacks that can reach the opposing Leader model that help overcome their DEF, ARM, boxes, and whatever resources they’re camping. Make sure you know their stats so you have a solid idea of the power you’re able to bring. We call these attacks “threat projection:” they can be delivered via spells, ranged attacks, melee attacks, and collateral damage and can holistically be described as the threat you can project onto the Leader. When assessing threat projection, you can lump attacks into three buckets: likely to hit and cause real damage; even chance to hit or cause real damage; or unlikely to hit or cause real damage without spikes.

Some things to keep in mind as you look at your threat projection:

Knockdown and Stationary effects are very powerful, as they remove DEF from the defensive profile of an opposing Leader. This enables otherwise dicey attacks to hit all but guaranteed, which can massively increase your realistic threat projection. Look to get any of these attacks onto the Leader as early as is reasonable.
Debuffs are also very powerful, as they increase the accuracy or damage of all other attacks to follow them. The earlier in the run you can get them on the Leader, the better.
Pay attention to how nested your threat vector is for line of sight (LoS) or melee. If you need to succeed three actions in order to get a Heavy onto the Leader, for example, that might constitute weak threat because of how many successes you need to hit before your big success can land.

Focus vs. Fury/Essence

One critical thing to keep in mind when you’re analyzing an opposing Leader’s defensive profile is how much Focus, Fury, or Essence they’re holding on to, or “camping.” Enemy Leaders who think they’ll be in danger often “camp high” as a way of dissuading assassination. What resource they’re camping, also, impacts how likely your run is.

For Focus, you can functionally assess their armor as +5 above what it currently is for the number of Focus they are camping. Note that your opponent chooses when to use Focus to mitigate damage, so nickel-and-dime damage isn’t likely to get them to spend their resources. However, small shots have spike potential here: if you spike a POW 10, rolling way higher than expected, your opponent may be forced to spend the Focus anyway, as any time they can reduce damage taken by 5, they are maximizing the resource’s value.

Fury and Essence work functionally the same way for Leader defense, so they’re lumped together here. Warlocks and Masters can use Fury/Essence to transfer all damage they receive onto a Warbeast or Horror in their battlegroup. This massively impacts the math, as both Leader types are more resilient to assassination as a result. A Warcaster suffers the damage over a Focus spent regardless, making them vulnerable to high spike rolls. Warlocks and Leaders, by comparison, can simply transfer those massive spikes off, leaving them more resilient against less-solid assassination runs. As a rule of thumb, you’re going to need enough attacks to clear through their camp, as each Fury/Essence represents one attack they can pass to their battlegroup Cohort, plus enough quality attacks to overcome their baseline defensive profile. If you only have three attacks on a Warlock camping two, for example, barring an insane roll on all three attacks your odds of success are extremely bad, since they can just eat the one roll that doesn’t kill them and then transfer the other two attacks away.

Pre–Flight Checklist

You’ve got your volume of attacks and you’ve got their Leader in your sights. You’re going for this. Now, let’s not get got. Here are some things you can do in advance of moving models.

Clearly state your intent to your opponent.

This is a big one. Let your opponent know you’re going for it. Let them know what’s involved in it. Be extremely clear about it. This helps avoid misunderstandings on both sides of the table as you commence.

Identify which models will be participating and how.

This is for you and for your opponent. This helps keep your order of operations straight and helps clear up ambiguity for your opponent, who might be wondering how you’re going to “get them.”

When determining order of operations, there are some rules of thumb I go by.

Knockdown and Stationary as early as I can unless that would prevent other attacks from getting onto the Leader.
Debuffs as early as I can.
Army buffs as early as I can.
Activate the Leader involved as late as I can, as their involvement is often a “make or break” point on a run. If their involvement is key to the run succeeding (Feat, condition, debuff, movement, etc.), activate them first.
Ranged attacks and spells before melee, since the target in melee DEF bonus is significant.
Melee threats that can reach past the Leader before melee threats that can only reach the front, so that you don’t block yourself.

Just make sure you actually move the models when it’s time to do so in the right order (I’ve certainly made this mistake before).

Learn what confounding special rules your opponent might have in play.

Knowing what your opponent has that might foil your run is vital. Warmachine is an open information game and if you ask specific questions about models and their rules, your opponent is obliged to tell you. There are cool and not cool ways to go about this.

What is cool is asking specific questions. Say my Tyrant is going to shoot your Leader. I might ask “Do you have any Shield Guards near her or is there a way she can redirect shots, like Sacrificial Pawn?” Then it’s on your opponent to answer truthfully, limited to your specific question. Ask questions about specific run-ending rules. Common ones are Shield Guard, Sacrificial Pawn, Sucker, Stealth, Spell Ward, Sacred Ward, Arcane Vortex, and so on. You can ask “What in your army has Stealth?” or “Do you have Arcane Vortex or another way to cancel spells?” and those are fair and valid questions.

What’s not cool is laying out your plan and then asking your opponent “Okay, what can you do to stop this?” It’s on you as the player to know your rules and what rules would be problematic for you. They are not obliged to tell you how their army works in such a general fashion.

Measure threat ranges in advance.

This goes back to making sure both players are singing from the same sheet of music. Pre-vet and agree on all threat ranges before moving models. Being a tabletop game, minis sometimes get jostled when other things are happening. An errant table bump, a flying tape measure because of shaky hands, these things happen. By pre-measuring and agreeing on all models that can get attacks on the Leader, you agree on the game state in such a way that these little quirks can happen without jeopardizing your run.

I have never had an issue where a measurement was agreed on and then upon activating the model I was asked to re-measure something that was agreed on to be in threat at the beginning of my run but because of shaky hands is now not. If that happens to you, call a judge immediately.

Breathe.

Final step! Assassination runs are exhilarating and stressful. Take a deep breath and center yourself. It helps get rid of shaky hands.

What To Do When It All Falls Apart

There’s no part to write about what happens when it goes right. You win! You feel great! But what about when it goes wrong? Horribly wrong?

Sometimes, there isn’t anything you can do. Some assassination runs involve everything on the table and once you start, there’s no stopping.

Often, though, you’ll find that there are ways you can mitigate the bad outcome, turning an otherwise busted run from a blowout to a frustrating but surmountable experience. Here’s how.

Build Bailout Points

When you’re looking at the order of operations for a run, build in bailout points. These are moments when something doesn’t go your way and you decide to abandon the assassination run. Maybe your run depended on a critical effect that you didn’t get. That’s easy: lead with that attack and then if you don’t get it, game off! I often find that my bailout points are roll result-dependent. If I roll pretty bad on the opening attacks, the chances of me getting enough quality damage through later on drop a good deal, so I’ll bail out of the run should that happen.

Bailout points should ideally occur before your Leader ends their activation. This is because where your Leader ends up and what they’re camping directly impact how likely you are to lose the game next turn. You can still bail out of a run after that, but note that the longer you go into the run, the less likely bailing out of it gets you any real defensive value.

With that in mind, you can also build in your “point of no return.” This is when you’re fully committed to the run and you may as well execute every attack possible. Maybe you rolled ish, a little low, but not enough to abandon the run. Then one or two critical rolls critically missed. But your Leader has already gone, you’re exposed, and there’s not much you can do about it. That point of exposure was your “point of no return.” Since you’re likely to lose next turn anyway, you may as well throw as many dice at the problem as you can to avoid that scenario.

This all assumes that there will be a next turn. If you’re engineering an assassination run because your opponent is about to win on scenario and you cannot stop them, your “point of no return” was the beginning of your turn.

Scenario-Focused Positioning

If you’re worried about a run failing, you can pre-position models that won’t get in the way and aren’t going to do contribute to the assassination for scenario, either contesting, trying to clear, or holding your own. In this way, you force your opponent to still play scenario and can make it so that a whole turn isn’t wasted on a bad run. Pick up the pieces and take what you can.

Conclusion

And that’s it for this edition. Assassination is a wildly fun aspect of Warmachine. I encourage you as you develop to go for some tough runs. It helps to see what works and what doesn’t on the table, so that you can better analyze when to pull the trigger while in-game.

Good luck!