Meta (from the Greek preposition and prefix meta- (μετά-) meaning “after” or “beyond”) is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter. 

If you’re anything like me, the first time you heard the word ‘meta’ it was probably attached to the word gaming, you usually heard it playing RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, and it wasn’t something you wanted to be accused of.  Meta gaming meant using your out-of-character knowledge to make in-character decisions and was typically most loathed when it was done for personal gain.  But I digress, many of you dear readers may not be as nerdy as I am and perhaps the first time you heard it was in the Warmachine and Hordes community where it gets thrown around so often.   If you listen to any of the multitude of podcasts on the subject (including the brilliant and amazing Lost Hemisphere Radio Podcast) you’ll hear the term thrown around a lot, but what does it mean to you?

The way people in this community use the term it basically means ‘the style or styles of play that are most advantageous and/or successful within the current rules, accepting the current range of models available for play’.  In other words; whatever is working right now.  That is the basic concept of Warmachine meta.  It is different from place to place and highly affected by the size of group playing the game at or in any given event or community, but it’s a fascinating concept and it’s a neat experience to travel to Cons, tournaments and even just stores outside of your local in order to see other metas.  Something that I have been noticing more and more recently is the trickle down from the national meta to the store level meta, probably because of the massive increase in the popularity of Warmachine podcasts these last few years.  People hear casters or other models reviewed poorly or read that they are bad on the forums and simply dismiss them without a further look, instead favouring options more popular on the forums or among the top national players.  On the one hand I think this is great because it gives payers everywhere a chance to try out a list or some tech that one of the best in the world put together, but on the other hand I worry that newer players may get sucked into the whirlpool of competitive play before they have a chance to bask in the glory that is the storyline, themes and narrative of the Iron Kingdoms – and of course the basics of the game itself.  It’s important to get a firm grasp of the basics before diving into last year’s Warmachine Weekend winner’s Masters list.  You want to remember that the game is fun too, and keep it that way for yourself and others as often as possible.  That’s most of what I want to address today but before I get too carried away:

~ Customary Establishment of Nerd Cred ~

Subject:  Dan Gillman
Forum Tag:  FACE_DOOM_II

• Former GW employee and one time player of Warhammer 40k and Fantasy (reformed)
• Avid RPGer (D&D, Pathfinder, IKRPG)
• Qualified Hobbyist
• Worked at a video store in high school
• Can quote almost all of Willow verbatim
• Listens to non-fiction audiobooks about history while driving
• Has a ponytail?

 

Ok now, tradition sufficiently honoured, where were we?  Ahhh Yes, the game is fun!  Right?  That’s why we play it.  Sure we are men or women and we are competitive and bloodthirsty and we want to wreck face but the ideal is still to end up laughing with your opponent more than yelling at them isn’t it?  Well this is a lot more difficult to do than most of us appreciate at first.  It is a stressful game when it gets serious, and some of the greatest skills you can pick up as a new player are how to both win and lose like a gentleman/gentlewoman.  Watching your models get wiped off the table is tough and some matchups are like pulling teeth but how you react to those things is still completely within your control.  Now I’m not a certified expert but I’ve played in and attended many tournaments and I have observed that the people who enjoy the game the most and argue and bicker the least are the ones who focus on having fun and let the victory follow if it will.  Tim Banky said something recently on the LHR podcast that I though was very insightful and I’ll surely misquote him but it was somewhere along the lines of, “…it helps to understand that the person across from you is going through a similar struggle and having a similar experience to yours…”.  It was during a discussion about how, if you put the effort in, you can walk away from a table better friends with someone than when you walked up – and this has happened to me several times, once or twice starting long standing friendships.

 

 

So what does having fun have to do with the national meta?  Hang on I’m getting there!

I think there are a couple of key factors to having fun while playing Warmachine and Hordes and they are as follows:

• Laughter is contagious.  Be funny, laugh, make jokes.  You don’t need to babble incessantly and this should be toned down in tournaments when you don’t know your opponent but even then it usually makes for a more relaxed feel to the game.  Doing this breaks the competitive tension and helps remind you and your opponent both that it’s a game you’re playing, warjacks and warpwolves aren’t real, and there’s not any legitimate reason to want to punch someone in the face over it…unless they’re cheating…just kidding…mostly…
• Use what you like, and don’t fear the unknown.  Every faction has a few ‘go-to’ casters, infantry units, solos and heavy hitters that you’ll see plenty of but they also all have a massive stable of other interesting selections that you shouldn’t be afraid to dive into.  Models that you enjoy or that suit your personal play style will very often work better for you on that merit and it’s easier to have fun with troops you enjoy fielding.  Buy the Forces of book for your faction, read the fluff and all the unit entries and try to find combinations that you like the idea of.  You’ll be surprised at the results more often than not.  A caster that you like the feel of and have a good deal of practice with can usually perform better for you than one you don’t like that the interwebs says is broken.
• Expect Casualties because they’re going to happen.  I haven’t seen too many games in my years in the hobby where one player loses almost nothing and the other is obliterated.  I’ve seen it yes, but not often.  In a typical game losses are heavy on both sides, so accepting that some or most of your pieces will be killed is a big step in not being upset when it happens.  Expect things to die, make plans without them as often as possible and then be pleasantly surprised if your opponent fails to murder them.
• Don’t stress about the dice.  This one is the toughest.  Whether it’s your dice getting ice cold or your opponents getting red hot it’s a tough challenge.  It’s hard to take when they just keep getting ‘above average’ rolls and you just keep getting ‘below average’ rolls.  One of the best ways to deal with this is to understand that ‘average rolls’ are a relatively thin concept in mathematical terms.  Yes, more 5-8’s are going to come up then the low and high numbers and 7 is the most likely combination but those things are only reliable on a very long curve.  Each time you roll the dice the percentages refresh, so if you roll a 4 it’s important to remember that it doesn’t guarantee your next roll will be high.  Really it’s best to just not worry about it.  You can’t control the dice so even though it’s very, very hard you have to just let it go when they don’t go your way.  It’s also not very sportsmanlike to credit an opponent’s victory to dice.  If you have trouble accepting bad dice then a 2D6+ based game is probably not the best choice for you, as spikes will happen, especially when more dice are added to the equation.  Let the luck be the luck, and try not to whine about it no matter how challenging that might be.  This is a good time to refer to point 1, because making jokes about your own models dice failures can both relax you and make your opponent feel less awkward.  It’s only slightly less painful to watch your opponent’s dice fail than your own because it robs you of some of the glory earned in a proper victory.  Granted I love to see those snake eyes come up on an important charge roll against my favourite model but I don’t want that to be the ongoing theme of the game.  So next time the dice start rolling heavily in favour of one payer or the other, try not to get too sadfaced about it because your opponent has likely also recognized it and likely also doesn’t feel great about the situation.
• Remember that it’s a game.  Sure you’ve heard this before, probably many times, but how often do you think about it when you’re playing?  When your opponent measures something and you stand up and remeasure and then argue over an eighth of an inch are you both still having fun?  Ok so this stuff really matters in competitive play, and you will sometimes have to call someone out and feel like a jerk but when you are having casual games it’s much healthier to let that stuff go.  Play for the experience and the hilarious and exciting moments the game provides, and not for the win, because you will lose a lot more games than you win as a new Warmachine player.  Being able to enjoy and learn from a loss is the greatest accomplishment in this game, in my humble opinion.

So here’s where the national meta comes in.

 

 

As you start playing the game you’ll notice patterns in your group or store or even broader area.  People will always include an out against a certain rule in their lists or one particular style of list like armour skew or infantry spam will be what you see most.  Whether you want to be affected by these trends or not you will, and if you play in tournaments (even at your local store) you’ll want to know what works and what to watch out for.  This is your meta.

After you’ve gotten used to it you might decide to go to a grand tournament or a masters event that gathers several different locals together, and there you’ll see other metas.  You’ll get to see what’s the baddest of the bad and the best of the best at other stores and clubs and what scares them into taking silver bullet solos and specific tech against certain abilities.  This is also probably the first time you’ll run into a popular list from the national meta.  For me it was Epic Butcher tier 4 but for others it’s Asphyxious2 or Epic Lylyth or Siege or Kreoss1 or any of the standard ‘surprise you’re dead’ lists that you see a lot of the bigger the tournament you’re at.  This is where the balance factor of the game that I am such a big supporter of starts to fall apart.

I personally feel like a lot of models in this game are underplayed due to pervasive rumours on the internet.  In my experience a decent player using any caster they like and have experience with can make that model work well.  The trick though, is that some models, especially casters and locks, really require a good player to be competitive, where the top tier versions take little or less effort to achieve good results with.  Because the game is already so tight and stressful at the highest levels not many players want to risk taking a really unique, janky caster that’s complicated or high difficulty when you can drop a much simpler one that is just as capable of winning or often more.  This is the problem.  As a new player if you start to choose your warcasters and warlocks based on what Jason Flanzer or JVM or Will Pagani are playing then you might miss out on another option that is much more suited to your play style, and lose out on a great deal of fun.  You might not get to enjoy all the thematic glory of this game, or appreciate the fun little synergies some of the rarer units and solos can put together.  You might only ever consider playing a few casters from each faction because they are the ones that consistently show up on the final tables of the national circuit, and in doing so miss some of the most fun tricks and most gorgeous models around.  What I’m trying to say is that if you get too caught up in what is ‘the best’ you miss out on a lot of stuff that might be as much fun or more for you, and until you’ve honed your game to the quality of guys like Flanzer and JVM try not to worry too much about what they are playing.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are going to play in tournaments then you need to understand and prepare for the meta you are going into; but before you jump to the standard net-deck options to solve the problems you know you’ll face, pick up your Forces of book or open up War Room and see if you can’t find your own answer, one that works with your play style.  When I approach list building for a tournament these days I follow a fairly simple formula, and I would encourage you to try it out.  It may not win you every tournament right away but it will probably help you enjoy your experience more, and why not? After all – you’re paying for it.

I start by selecting a caster that I like the style and story of.  When I first started collecting I would go out and buy that caster, now I have most of them in my faction so I just rotate through every few months.  I carefully read their abilities, spell list and feat, and then start asking myself what are their strengths and weaknesses, and how do they win.  The things I determine to be their strengths, I focus on.  The things I feel like they are weak or worse at I basically ignore because I think it’s usually a waste of points to try to make a caster do something well that they are bad at.  Instead use those points to further support what they are good at.  If your chosen caster has good battlegroup spells then run lots of beasts or jacks, if they have good infantry spells then take your favourite infantry.  Try to find models and units that have built in synergy with your caster so you don’t have to work too hard to make them good at what they do.  That done, play some games and read all your rules and try to figure out what hard counters there are for your new list.  See what the casters that counter you have in common, and what weaknesses that group has and base your second list off of those things.  If possible choose a caster you really enjoy playing for this role, so that if your day isn’t going well you know you have a fun option on your tray.

 

 

Here is an example.  I recently took Void Seer Mordikaar as my primary list to the Hobby Kingdom’s store wars event.  I read him as a caster who is all about survivability, positioning, denial, and precision strikes at your opponent’s support pieces.  In light of that I take a lot of tough infantry and beasts with heavy armour so that it’s hard to clear my models out of the zone.  The list wins by scenario or spell assassination if I can pressure my opponent into exposing their caster.  It’s major weakness is purification, as Mordikaar needs his upkeeps very badly.  So for my backup list I need something that doesn’t care much about purification because that is what it’s going to face.  I chose Master Assassin (Epic) Morghoul for this role, and gave him Aptimus Marketh so he didn’t have to cast his own upkeeps (therefore not worrying about purification).  The rest of the list was Gators and Nihilators, who need very little help and several beasts who cast their animi on each other including Molik Karn.  Karn combos well with E Morghoul because giving him grievous wounds against a Warlock isn’t very nice and he provides a good focus for your opponent as the Master Assassin creeps closer and closer with his Arcane Assassin Mat 8, POW 12 weapon master attack and a fan that causes blind.  He is a good example of a caster who I never would have bought had I consulted the internet but instead I read the Skorne book, picked him up, lost a lot of games and learned how to win with him.  I went 3 and 1 on the day for a 4th place finish and the debatably ‘worst warlock in the game’ got me 2 wins.

If you build lists like this not only will you discover fun and unique combinations that you can proudly proclaim as your own, you’ll usually get at least one game per event where your opponent has no clue what your caster does, and that’s a situation where you can grin deviously and tap your fingers together like an evil genius as you plan to show them exactly what that strange little model does.

So that’s my advice to new gamers and grizzled veterans alike; focus on the fun and enjoyment first and you’ll be surprised how quickly good results follow.  Pay attention to your local meta and the broader metas you play in, but don’t be a slave to popular opinion and never fear trying something new.  Play what you want to play; what gets you stoked to play, and you might just care less about whether you end up winning or losing.  If you made it this far thanks for reading and I hope you can take something useful from it.

Best of luck out there wargamers, and keep laughing.

– Face_Doom_II