Twelve hundred years ago, the Orgoth – cruel conquerors from across the western ocean – invaded Western Immoren. The strangers set upon the shattered city-states of the divided people there and, after two centuries, managed to ascertain their rule.
It took another four hundred years of enslavement, torment and dominance before the rebels began to fight back. After two centuries, the Rebellion had managed to overthrow the Orgoth. By this time, the people of Western Immoren had learned how to master arcane power, design alchemical blasting powder and craft the great war machines known as colossals. The Council of Ten was formed and the borders of the nations baptised the Iron Kingdoms were outlined in the Corvis Treaties. Still, war would soon ravage the lands again.
As of 606 AR, several powerful nations are preparing themselves for the coming storms. The Khador, a hot-blooded but cold-hearted people, are descended from dozens of nomadic tribes. Their ruler, Queen Ayn Vanar, has crowned herself Empress and the thirst for conquest seems to run strong within her veins. South of Khador, the soldiers, sailors, pirates, smugglers and merchants of Ord have managed to avoid the warfare consuming the Thornwood Forest east of their border. Caught in-between two great nations but unwilling to ally with either of them, Ord is ruled by King Baird Cathor II, who is known as the “Bandit King” since he taxes the wealthy castellans of his country heavily. In the southeast of Ord, the fallen nation of Lael has lost its king and seems destined to be annexed by Khador. Khador’s southern rival, Cygnar, has everything going for it, but its lack of resolve and alternating brilliant and weak kings have made the country stagnate. The primarch of the Morrowan Church wields a lot of influence here, as he whispers his truths into successive kings’ ears, most recently leading to a coup by current king Leto, who threw his brother, Vinter Raelthorne IV, from his throne in the year 594. The fifth and newest of the Iron Kingdoms is the Protectorate of Menoth, a nation of zealots and fanatics that was granted its own government and territories after the Cygnaran Civil War in 482.
Beyond the nations of man, the dwarves dwell in their mountain kingdom of Rhul, east of Khador. South of Rhul and northeast of Cygnar lies Ios, the smallish kingdom of elves. Actual danger is presented mostly by the third non-human kingdom of this region: Cryx. Ruled by Toruk, the great Dragonfather, and his twelve lich lords, Cygnaran kings have not dared to send their armies into the barren lands surrounding Toruk’s seat of power, as nothing around the Dragonfather seems to be able to stay alive.
There are more races, however. The trollkin are well-organised, smart, courageous, capable of enduring great hardship, and… angry. In the past, they have been reluctant to challenge the armies of the Iron Kingdoms, but all of that seems to be changing very fast. There are religious cults aplenty, like the Thamarites, who worship Morrow’s evil sister, and the worshippers of the enigmatic goddess Cyriss, whose cult has infiltrated many great cities already. Then, there are those who follow the ancient primal gods, like the Dhunian shamans and the cannibalistic followers of the Devourer Worm, a god of rampant destruction and natural chaos. The blackclads, an ancient druidic order that reveres an uncontrollable god, seem to pose a threat, too.
Amongst both the trollkin and the druids, a new kind of warrior-mage has arisen: the warlock. These arcane magic-users feed on the fury and strength of the beasts and monsters they control and are able to channel their powers through them, much like warcasters are able to command their warjacks. Their power seems unbridled, and observers have noted they are a match for the most potent of warcasters. Will it be here, then, that the new danger lies? Or will the eyes of the known world have to be directed towards the dragons, who seem to be awakening from their slumber? Long absent, three of these great monsters are now rumoured to stir in the frozen north.
Welcome to Hordes.
Statistics & models
The first concept of Hordes predates Warmachine, the miniatures combat game set in the Iron Kingdoms, a setting which uses the d20 System rules. Warmachine, however, uses entirely different mechanics, and the creative team at Privateer Press soon decided to adopt the Warmachine rules to Hordes, so that both games have become fully compatible.
In this game, each player usually controls a horde, which includes a warlock and his warbeasts, much like players take command of a warcaster and his warjacks in Warmachine. However, it is also possible to include soldiers, other troops, and even multiple warlocks if one wants larger battles. At its core, Hordes is a small-scale combat game, but it is easy to field entire armies if one wants to. There’s no shortage of miniatures, certainly not if used in combination with Warmachine. However, Hordes is a game in its own right and doesn’t need any other books or supplements, even though most players will want to buy expansions that feature more warlocks and warbeasts.
Models are divided into one of two categories: independent models (warlocks, warbeasts and solos) and units (troopers and leaders). Miniatures boosters or boxes always include their own stat cards, which are also printed in the army lists in this book. The stat bar on these cards features the following statistics: Speed or SPD (the normal movement rate in inches when advancing), Strength or STR (added to the damage roll if attacking with melee weapons), Melee Attack or MAT (added to melee attack rolls), Ranged Attack or RAT (added to ranged attack rolls), Defense or DEF (an attack roll must be equal to or greater than the defending model’s DEF in order to hit it), Command or CMD (to pass a command check, one needs to roll equal to or less than this statistic on 2d6), FURY (generated when warbeasts are forced to perform certain actions) and Threshold or THR (to control a warbeast, a player needs to roll equal to or less than a warbeast’s Threshold on 2d6, adding one to the roll for each point of FURY). Warmachine players will note that most of these statistics are the same ones used in the game they’re already familiar with, while Fury is specific to Hordes. This makes it very easy for them to start playing Hordes.
Ranged weapons usually have the following statistics: Range (the maximum distance in inches), Rate of Fire (the maximum number of times a miniature can attack with that ranged weapon when it is activated), Area of Effect (if any, this is the diameter in inches) and Power (the number added to the damage roll). Melee weapons have Special (if any), Power, and Power + Strength (this is the total number added to the damage roll, included on each data card for ease of reference).
A lot of models have special rules. Abilities are always in effect and change the standard rules in one way or another, each warlock has a single feat (s)he can use for free once during the game, special actions can be performed instead of combat actions if the requirements are met and are normally unavailable to other models, special attacks can be made instead of normal melee or ranged attacks if their requirements are met and orders let units perform specialised combat manoeuvres.
The way damage is recorded differs from the Warmachine location-based damage track. Here, we get a spiral with six arms, divided into three colours, each of them representing a different aspect (which is also written near the arms): Mind, Body, and Spirit. When all damage circles of a specific aspect have been marked, the warbeast loses the use of that aspect. When all circles have been marked, the warbeast dies. Most troopers do not have a life spiral and die if they suffer one point of damage.
Base sizes range from small (30mm) to medium (40mm) and large (50mm). The front arc of a model is assumed to be 180°.
Mechanics
Before a horde is created, players first need to choose a scenario and pick an encounter level. The encounter level determines the makeup of a horde, ranging from duel (1 warlock and 350 horde points, with play time averaging 30 minutes) to apocalypse (4+ warlocks and 2000+ horde points, with an estimated play time of 4+ hours). Hordes can only include one model of each named character, but all models also have a field allowance (the maximum number of models or units of one type that may be included for each warlock in a horde).
Play is broken up into game rounds, with each player taking one turn during a single round. However, since Hordes is usually played on a smaller scale than wargames like Warhammer, inactive players don’t have to wait very long before their turn is up. This makes for a pretty fast-paced game, even though it’s not as fast as, for example, Rezolution is.
A player’s turn consist of three phases. During the Maintenance Phase, (s)he removes expiring effects and warlocks’ fury points in excess of their FURY stats. Compulsory effects and rally orders are also resolved. Next up is the Control Phase, in which warlocks leach fury points from the friendly warbeasts in their control areas, spend fury points to keep certain spells into play, make threshold checks for each of their warbeasts with one or more fury points left in them, and resolve other possible effects. The most important phase is the Activation Phase, during which most of the action happens.
All models must be activated once during the controlling player’s turn. This usually happens during the Activation Phase, but fleeing or frenzied miniatures also count as activated. Players may pick the order in which the independent models and units in their horde(s) act. Models move first, after which they perform an action. Of course, models may forfeit movement.
The rules on line of sight, intervening models, screening, elevation, advancing, running, charging and unit formation are all very clear. Units are more effective when they are in formation. Interestingly, units can all adopt various kinds of formations (skirmish, open, or tight, with the alternative being out of formation), but certain special rules do require specific formations. This adds an important tactical level and quite a lot flexibility to the game.
Just as is the case in Warmachine, models can make one melee attack with each of their melee weapons, which makes some of the bigger and better-equipped miniatures real powerhouses. Miniatures may also forego these standard melee attacks to make one special attack or perform one special action. Warbeasts that did not charge can be forced to make a single power attack instead of other attacks (these include headlock/weapon lock, head-butt, push, rend, slam, throw, double-hand throw and trample). Models that did not charge and that are not in melee can attack once with each of their ranged weapons. After all of these attacks are resolved, warlocks can spend fury points to make additional attacks, or force warbeasts to make extra attacks. Ranged weapons cannot fire more times than their Rate of Fire allows for, though. Deviation for area-of-effect weapons is determined by making three rolls (one for the direction, one to determine if the attack goes short or long and one to determine the number of inches), but never exceeds half the distance between the attacker and his or her target. This is a more complicated procedure than games like Rezolution are using right now, but most war gamers will have no problems whatsoever in implementing these rules.
There are rules for combined attacks, weapon crews, taking souls (yes, some models can do this – which is cool), critical effects, continuous effects, cloud effects, and so on. However, most modifiers come into play because of power attacks or special attacks. There aren’t that many situational modifiers, which keeps play simple but a little less involved.
Actually, a lot of the tactical decisions concern the way warlocks use their special abilities. Getting this right is extremely important, as it may very well win you the game. All of this resembles the mechanics used in Warmachine, but there are some seemingly minor differences that make Hordes play out differently enough to justify its stand-alone-game status.
A warlock may spend a fury point to transfer any damage he suffers to one of his non-frenzied, non-wild warbeasts. However, unlike warcasters in Warmachine, a warlock’s power diminishes as he loses the creatures that are under his control. Warlocks never flee and each have one feat they can use only once during the battle, as we already noted. They can force their warbeasts to perform certain actions, but this does mean these creatures will accumulate fury points. While warcasters are unable to heal their warjacks with focus points, warlocks can heal both themselves and their beasts with fury points.
The catch is: warbeasts – unlike warjacks – can go into a fury and attack the nearest target or even their leader if they get too many fury points. This means players will have to be careful to keep some sort of a balance, as every turn warlocks can only leach a number of fury points off their beasts equal to their FURY stat. Warlocks can also discard fury points or cast spells with them, though.
Thus, while in Warmachine, energy allocation is almost as important as it is in BattleTech or Star Fleet Battles (okay, it’s far more important in Star Fleet Battles, but I’m just trying to make a point here), in Hordes, it is far less reliable. If one wants to win a battle, chances are some risks will have to be taken. That’s why the author calls Warmachine a game of ‘resource allocation’, while he claims Hordes is a game of ‘risk management’. He’s right, even though this critic would have liked to see more differences between the two games. Still, having this much overlap in mechanics makes it far easier to pitch warjacks against warbeasts and warcasters against warlocks and that’s a good thing. Also, veteran Warmachine players won’t need to learn a lot of new rules before they can begin playing Hordes… But, a lot of gamers actually LIKE learning new rules. There are advantages and disadvantages to everything, right (well, maybe not to everything).
Factions
After a few pages about terrain and another four covering scenarios, the four different standard factions are introduced. This covers no less than 105 of the 208 pages in the book, and that’s not counting the pictures and painting guide that follow the ‘army lists’.
All of the factions get a nicely-written short story and several pages of history before the characters, units and warbeasts are introduced. This helps readers to identify with these creatures and is also a valuable aid to roleplayers who like the Iron Kingdoms setting. There’s one major character for every two pages and one minor character, unit or warbeast for every page, meaning it is easy to reference this book. Presented here are the trollbloods, Circle Orboros, the skorne and the legion of Everblight, as well as two non-affiliated solo characters and two mercenary units. The background for each faction is different, making it even easier to reference.
Look & Feel
This brings us to one of the other major positives about Hordes. It looks great. The art is top-notch, as we have come to expect from Privateer Press, and care has been taken to provide a nice-looking layout. The diagrams, maps, illustrations and pictures of the models all look great, with not a single illustration actually disappointing – and that’s quite a feat, considering that eleven artists worked on this book.
Conclusion
Hordes is an excellent, fast-paced game. It’s different from many other miniatures battle games because of the symbiotic relationship between warlocks and their warbeasts. This adds a tactical dimension absent in most fantasy wargames. It’s probably a little too similar to Warmachine, but the added compatibility makes up for that. And then, there’s the models themselves, of course. But we’ll keep that for other reviews. This is one to look out for, folks.
Dirk Vandereyken
