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

To read part 4 of our Leveling Up Series, please check https://boosttohit.home.blog/2024/09/26/leveling-up-pt-4/

Introduction: Part 5

Greetings! We are at the end of this series of articles, having gone through base concepts for elevating competitive play, improving scenario, and putting together an assassination run. This final article is a grab bag of topics. Some things didn’t neatly fit into the structure set up previously and some things are expansions of what we’ve gone over already. If you’ve been reading along this long, thank you! I hope that what we’ve covered is useful and has already led to some table-time improvements.

For this last article in the series, we’re going to look at piece trading and clock management. If there are other topics you’d like to see in the future, leave a comment or hit us up on social media. 

Piece Trading

This was briefly covered in the first article of this series. To review, “piece trading” is a term that has its origins in many older games, like chess, where you exchange one piece on your side for an opponent’s piece, removing it from the board. Warmachine is very much a piece trading game. Like chess, you are looking to remove your opponent’s pieces from board positions to open up an endgame/win condition (scenario or assassination) and, usually, this dictates giving up some of your own pieces to do so. Unlike chess, because each player moves their entire army in a turn, you can present a puzzle to your opponent wherein they try to maximize their trade value, minimize yours, and answer back with a puzzle of their own for you to answer on your turn.

In considering piece trading, it’s important to keep in mind some terms we’ll be referring to throughout this section. Covered from our first article:

• Trading up: when something of lower value takes something of higher value with the assumption it will be removed afterwards.
  • e.g., in chess, a pawn taking anything that isn’t a pawn; a knight taking a rook or a queen; etc.
  • In Warmachine, this would be like an 8 point unit removing a 12 point Heavy.
• Trading down: when something of higher value takes something of lower value with the assumption it will be removed afterwards.
  • e.g., again in chess, a knight taking a pawn.
  • In Warmachine, reverse it and have the 12 point Heavy take an 8 point unit.
• Cheating a trade: taking something of value and losing nothing. This is often accomplished through ranged and arcane attacks, though can occur through opponent misplay or by forcing bad board presence via scenario.
  • e.g., chess once more, taking a piece and sacrificing nothing, not even board position.
  • In Warmachine, this would be what happens when your opponent plays a serious ranged piece, like Carver2, and shoots your pieces off the board without recourse on your end.

A clear path to victory is maximizing your trade ups, minimizing your trade downs, and cheating trades wherever you can. This will lead to an attrition advantage, which is when you have more pieces on the board than your opponent. Attrition can then be leveraged for a scenario advantage, where you can or do score more points than your opponent, or an opening to make an assassination run.

Note: I bolded and underlined this for a reason. Warmachine has many more rules than chess. In chess, a queen is the same for both players. Balance is obtained through equivalency in material: each player has the same pieces. This is not how Warmachine is balanced. One army’s Heavy is not the same as another army’s, units are different between armies, and even in armies players pick and choose from a host of options that leads to different selections on the table. Warmachine uses points as its balance point: in theory, similar levels of points are balanced against each other in terms of functionality. One term as a new(er) player you’re likely to hear is “making its points.” This situation is when a model or models trades in such a way that they remove at least the number of points they costed. A 13 point Heavy that takes another 13+ point Heavy, or removes other models roughly equating to or exceeding 13 points has “made its points.” 

Making points is a simplistic way of viewing piece trading. I strongly caution that this is only one facet of piece trading that ignores many other intricacies of the game. There are times where trading down or not trading at all are the correct moves. Viewing the value of a model on its ability to “make its points” can miss the forest for the trees. Try not to do this.

Trading Up and Down

As above, a general rule of thumb is that trading up = good and trading down = less good. There’s nuance here, though.

Engineering trade-ups helps swing attrition to your favor. There are a few ways this can be done. 

One way is to weaken an expensive piece with shooting or attacks that don’t require you to commit to positioning that would result in them being taken by your opponent, then finishing off the target piece with something cheap, like a light warjack or a sturdy combat solo/unit, that will be taken as a result of engaging. While several points’ worth of material went into dealing the damage, you’re only risking a limited number of points’ loss in reprisal. Nearly every army can do this. 

Another way is to leverage buffs and debuffs so that cheaper pieces hit hard enough to threaten expensive pieces. An easy example is in Necrofactorium, where 6 point Mechanithrall units can be buffed (and the enemy debuffed) enough that they hit hard enough to take even 20 point heavies off the table. This method, however, is army-specific and will require an understanding of your pieces’ capabilities to maximize.

Trading up is generally good and when possible recommended. The only point of caution is not to execute trade ups at the expense of losing the game, like abandoning guaranteed and necessary scenario points for a juicy kill.

Trading down, on the other hand, isn’t something you typically need to engineer. Your opponent will be happy to have you spend high amounts of points to kill relatively few of theirs and will provide ample opportunity to do so. Now, trading down is, simplistically, less good than trading up. There’s a reason it’s “less good” and not “bad,” however. Trading down is often the right call, either by necessity or circumstance. 

There are a couple mental parameters I use when gauging a trade down.

1. Do I have to make this trade? What is the cost if I don’t?

This covers the “necessity” reason for trading down. Just because your opponent puts something of lower value in your face does not mean you have to kill it. Assuming your opponent is savvy, however, there will be a cost if you don’t. 

Sometimes the cost is simple: you have an 8 point unit tied up by a 6 point Light Warjack that’s not impacting the board in any other way than holding your unit up. While you might want to kill it with the 12 point heavy you have nearby, you don’t have to. The cost is that your 8 point unit doesn’t do much, but neither does their 6 point ‘jack.

Sometimes the cost is significant: you have a 10 point Heavy in charge range of your ‘caster or sitting on an objective. The cost is putting your Leader in danger or not scoring potentially game-winning or vital scenario points. In this case, you likely have to deal with it, and sometimes that means bringing a 16 point solution of your own over to do so—one that’ll then be at risk later on. It’s not ideal, but better to safeguard your game now and deal with that later than lose it now.

A final consideration: can you delay the trade? Sometimes you can jam up the piece your opponent has put forward such that a more equitable trade can occur later. This could free up your more expensive model(s) to go get work done elsewhere and temper the trade down into an even trade. Same parameters apply, however: don’t throw the game just to mitigate a bad trade.

2. Does the trade down now put me at an advantage later?

This covers the “circumstance” reason for trading down. Sometimes the right call is to have your 30 point Colossal kill a 1 point Mechanic. Determining when this is the right call requires a holistic assessment of your “game state,” or where the game is at at the point of time you’re considering the trade down. In the absurd example here, say a Mechanic is sitting on an objective that can be scored by a Cohort model. Nothing else is in contesting range. There isn’t much for the Colossal to do on this turn. And the Colossal can take that point and be relatively safe from reprisal. In that instance, while you might be more useful in a point-per-point tradeoff elsewhere on the board, it might make the most sense to take that silly trade, secure a scenario point, and force a response that might not be ideal from your opponent. Circumstances have led to this trade down being the right call.

Another example is when you can pose a hard question to your opponent by forcing them to expend significant pieces to punish your trade down. This is often done with high threat range pieces attacking flanks where the opposing force doesn’t have many models. Sending a 13 point heavy into a flank to kill a 6 point unit may be the right call if your opponent can’t bring much to bear to stop you from doing that or would have to shift a significant amount of their own pieces off of critical points (scenario, protecting a Leader, etc.) to take your piece. This trade down makes sense because it sets your army up to capitalize on your opponent responding to the trade down and can transform a trade down into a cheat if your opponent doesn’t respond (because then your 13 point heavy gets their 6 point unit for free). Again, circumstances have led to this trade down being the right call.

Cheating Trades

Cheating trades are the gold standard for piece trading. Getting something for nothing is a great way to swing attrition to your favor. Keep your eyes up for opportunities to do this. The most common way is via attacks at range—ranged weapons or arcane attacks. The longer range of non-melee attacks mean that you may not expose the attacking piece to a situation where they would be removed. If your 30 point Colossal can remove a 3 point solo from range (and didn’t have better targets to shoot that turn), they should! If your ranged Cohort can kill an opposing Heavy from a distance without getting charged and removed in return, that feels great for you and bad for your opponent. Cheats are almost always down to army composition—some, like gunlines, are better at cheating than others—and model abilities. Abilities like Run ‘n Gun, Sprint, Refuge, Spirit Door, Reposition, and other after-action movements are strong because they can let you apply your maximum threat range to an activation and then remove yourself from reprisal afterwards.

Similar rationale to trading up and down above applies here, however. Just because your Colossal can cheat that solo doesn’t mean they should. The gun you’re firing at that solo might do 12 points of damage to a Heavy that might matter in later turns. However, if that solo was scoring a scenario point and now isn’t, it becomes a much juicer shot doesn’t it? It’s a judgment call on your end as to what the best use of your limited actions in a given turn are and how they can be best applied. There’s no primer here: play games and you’ll see these situations pop up often. Practice is the best teacher.

When to Start Trading?

Initiating a piece trade is dependent on board position ultimately, but can be broken down into first player vs. second player.

First Player

If you are the first player, you will typically begin piece trading on Turn 2 but fully commit to it on Turn 3. This is because you have game tempo in terms of board position: you deployed first and went first, so have set up a baseline of threat ranges that your opponent must consider. However, you lack scenario tempo: since scoring does not begin until immediately after the second player takes two turns (called the bottom of 2), the second player will likely be out of the majority of your threat ranges on your Turn 2, leading to a few cheat trades possible but otherwise usually equal or trade downs, if any at all.

As the first player, it is imperative that you make sure your opponent cannot score your close objectives (the ones on your side of the board). You don’t have much say in their ability to contest your objectives, since they go right before scoring first happens, but you should make sure that they can’t score yours without immense investment. Contesting their objectives is tougher: you will likely have to sacrifice a piece to do so, which begins the piece trading schema with them likely trading up, cheating, or at worst equal trading. It might be more valuable not to contest and let them take initiative on piece trading, depending on how many scenario points they can get at the bottom of 2 (and how many you’d give up). It also might be more valuable to trade down or give them a trade up if it positions your army to capitalize on Turn 3. A favorite move of mine, as an example, is to charge a Soul Stalker into the middle of their army (an Infernals Heavy, SPD 7 with Pathfinder). It might not get much of anything, but it’s solid enough that it ties up their middle line, forcing investment to remove and setting me up to trade well the following turn with multiple charges.

Second Player

As the second player, scenario is the driver that dictates when you initiate piece trading. You may be able to scoop some trades on the first turn, usually via ranged attacks, depending on how aggressively the first player positioned. You will likely begin the majority of the trade schema on your Turn 2, however. It doesn’t make much sense to give too many trade options to your opponent on Turn 1, because until Turn 2 there isn’t any reason to take and hold points (beyond basic positioning to make sure you’re not forced off of them on their Turn 2 before you move). During your Turn 2, like the first player you should primarily focus on taking and holding your close objectives. Barring a significant overextension from your opponent, this should not be hard to do. You can then look to contest your opponent’s objectives. Since scoring happens at the end of your Turn 2, you have the game tempo in scoring more points first. This is where trading often begins in earnest, as you will present pieces to your opponent that contest their objectives that will then be taken so that they stop doing that. The second player often sees some trade downs or has trades cheated against them on Turn 2 in order to gain a scenario advantage. Depending on how aggressively the first player went on their Turn 2, however, you may be able to cheat some trades and trade up on others. 

Once the sides have joined, piece trading becomes the name of the game, with each side jockeying for board control while looking for ways to open up assassination or lock down scenario victories. Special rules, Feats, and the like all confound this typical game flow, which you’ll experience as you play more. They are too individualistic to cover in this article series. Perhaps in a future series…?

Clock Management

I’ve touched on clock management in prior articles. It’s being covered last in this series because while it’s absolutely vital to improving your competitive play, it is also the easiest skill to build. If you play games on the clock without considering anything else in terms of clock management, you will naturally improve over time. There isn’t any secret tech here. You become more fluent with your army’s rules and abilities as well as how they play on the table. You become more experienced in what your opponents are fielding and how you can play against them. You become more practiced at measuring and naturally execute measurements quicker. You just get better at interacting with the game better, and thus your clock management gets better.

Here are some tips for how you can get better faster than you naturally would otherwise.

Play on the Clock

This sounds silly: you want to improve your ability to play in a timed game, why wouldn’t you be playing with a clock? As someone who’s seen multiple metas rise and fall over the years, there’s an easy answer: not everyone wants to. Just because you want to get more competitive and improve your play in a tournament setting does not mean that your routine opponents want to. And you know what? They don’t have to! But that doesn’t have to stop you.

You can always play on the clock, even if your opponent doesn’t want to. Take out your phone, open your Stopwatch app (or download one), and set a timer for yourself. Pause when it’s your opponent’s turn. That way you get the benefit of playing on the clock without sacrificing quality time spent playing against good people. Sure, they won’t lose on clock, but you can get a gauge of how fast you can play a game and push yourself to improve regardless. If you can play 6-7 turns in 60 minutes at 100 points, trust me: it doesn’t matter how long your opponent takes because you’re doing great.

Play the Same List

The easiest suggestion: if you want to improve on clock and you’re making that your focus, just keep playing the same list. You’ll learn its rules and how it works and don’t have to sweat alterations or deviations in-game: you know what it does. It’s not the most exciting from a holistic creative game standpoint, but we’re interested in building fundamentals here. This isn’t playing a football game; this is doing wind sprints up and down the field. This isn’t playing a concert; this is practicing scales. You get the metaphor. When you get to the point where clock isn’t a routine loss condition for you, then switch it up.

Play Down 

Another simple thing you can do: play down on clock vs. your opponent. Let your timer run down 10 minutes before the start of the game and play with less clock than your opponent. If your opponent isn’t using a clock, chop 10 minutes off your timer at the start. This forces you to act faster in general. If you can do well in 50 minutes, imagine what you can do in an hour!

Play the First Three Turns

This requires a willing opponent. If you want to drill clock, play only the first three turns of the game. Time yourself and see if you can do better. The first three turns of the game are the longest: you have the most number of models on the table, the highest number of activations, and the greatest number of decisions to make. After Turn 3, decisions become easier either because there are fewer activations to execute or you’re in such a commanding position that fewer of them are vital. You can drill yourself to get faster on Turns 1-3 repeatedly, which will help your play speed improve overall.

Get Practiced in the Two Minute Drill

I call this the Two Minute Drill. It’s a football term for when you’re playing with little time left and are driving towards a win. In Warmachine, it’s when you’re short on clock (10 minutes or less I’d say) and don’t have the game resolution buttoned up (win or loss). In football, a Two Minute Drill often includes fast plays, rapid actions, no huddles, and hurry-up snaps to get the offense moving, keep the defense off balance, and get quick points in. It’s pretty similar for Warmachine:

1. Activate only what you need to in order to get points to either stay in the game or eke out a scenario advantage.
2. Sacrifice attacks just to run and contest.
3. Rapidly move from one activation to the next.

You can slow play earlier turns to get practiced in a short clock scenario. It can be pretty high pressure: stay cool and collected and make sure your actions are clearly understood. But personally I find it really fun and the hallmark of a close game. If you can get practiced in short clock scenarios, you can win close games over opponents who aren’t.

Conclusion

That is all for Leveling Up! I hope this series of articles has provided you some insight on how you might improve competitively at different facets of Warmachine. This game has a rich competitive tapestry and hosts so many events full of wonderful opponents. I hope to see you across the table at them soon. And when you clean my clock, first round’s on me.