Tales from the Frontlines has arrived — a brand new casual play pack inspired by the games we remember most from playing Warmachine over the years! It’s got narrative-driven scenarios, meaningful consequences for campaign play, and missions built to create moments you’ll still be talking about months later.
Designed to provide similar support to Steamroller and the Iron Gauntlet, Tales from the Frontlines includes support for three casual gameplay formats:
- General casual play
- Journeyman leagues
- Campaigns
You can find out more about how these in the announcement article!
How to get Tales from the Frontlines
You can download it for free, right here!
It’ll also be available soon in the Warmachine app, later today!
One more thing: because the Casual Play pack is brand new for Warmachine, it’s super important we learn about your experiences with it to help shape future content. We’d love to hear all about your exploits in the Warmachine Discord — journeyman progress updates, feedback on how you’re getting on with the scenarios, the memorable moments in your games, and we all love a bit of homemade lore too (Sherwin is always happy to discuss lore!).
Inside the Chelmsford Bunker journeyman league!
Speaking of, we mentioned earlier this week that Warmachine’s Lore Master — Sherwin Matthews — was currently playing in a Tales from the Frontlines journeyman league. He’s been playing alongside Creative Director Mat Hart and Game Developer Steve Slatford at their local gaming club, the Chelmsford Bunker.
Well, just in case you needed any more reason to pick up this awesome resource, Sherwin has gone deep undercover to bring back classified information from the league to share with us… over to you, Sherwin!
Hey everyone, and welcome to week three of the journeyman league. Even though we’re only three weeks into a league that will last four months in total, we’ve already seen a lot of games, and I couldn’t be having a better time, in all honesty. It’s wonderful to see so many people playing Warmachine, both new and old, and in particular several Mk.II era veterans returning to our local scene.
I’ll keep you posted how it goes in future, but today it feels only fair to show off some of the incredible models and armies that the other players have assembled for the league as I talk through it!
(Command) cards on the table, I love a journeyman league. I get a real kick out of the fast pace of games, where a single decision can be a stroke of genius that brings victory, or a mistake that delivers your undoing. Either is fine, of course — when there are five or six tables all lined up in a row blasting through games, you never have to wait long to rerack and face the next opponent.
I’m also quite the hobbyist — for me, painting my models is an exercise in really deep diving into my faction. The high level stuff like understanding who they are and why they fight is always the first port of call, but it never takes long for my paintbrush to tease out more individual flavour from the resin. As anyone that has met me will tell you, I have quite the imagination, and before long I’m utterly enthralled, really letting the colours and emergent stories make the army feel intensely personal.
This continues throughout — warjacks track kills with tallies painted on their hulls; my warcaster celebrates surviving a close assassination with a metallic gouge painted onto their armour, and I am definitely expecting to bloody the edges of blades as well! Intimate events like this are perfect for really letting your models take on a character of their own, and tell stories of what they’ve survived just through painting.
TL;DR: you could say that an event that puts painting and hobby as much in the spotlight as playing games is definitely my jam.
Editor’s Note: Try not to encourage him. By the end of the league, he’ll probably have given names to most of the models under his command…
Kishtaar, The Howling Silence
In the past I’ve played quite the variety of armies for journeyman leagues, many of which went on to become my tournament armies. I’ve played Skorne, Blindwater Congregation, Searforge Commission, Convergence of Cyriss, the Four Star Syndicate… even my beloved Thornfall Alliance models began life as members of a journeyman warband. The origin of these armies is nearly always a single model or character that I’ve fallen in love with, and this time around was no different.
That model? Kishtaar, the Howling Silence!
In addition to the normal model, there’s a truly beautiful Minicrate alternate sculpt, dressed in the ancient Orgoth armour from the time of the first occupation of Western Immoren. That said, I’m a huge fan of the normal model. It’s got an incredible sense of intent and dynamic poise about it, where I can just imagine a Death Whisperer flying through the air.
Kishtaar herself I find to be one of the most interesting Sea Raider warcasters. Like her peers, she’s a warlord that has known several lifetimes, as she’s been reincarnated time and time again by her Infernal masters as reward for her unholy service to them. But unlike the other warlords, Kishtaar’s current incarnation is completely at odds with the personalities of her past. As she prowls the battlefield, faint whispers crawl in the back of her mind, protesting her single-minded devotion to the urgency of the hunt.
Reasoning that I’d start with a strong battlegroup and create a hunting pack, I took a pair of Tyrants, each armed with a ripper and a harpoon. Helping to feed them focus and keep them moving is a Vulcar Forge Master and a Warwitch Coven.
Units to support this and take objectives can come in the next stage, when we go up to 50pts in a few weeks. I’m already eyeing the Execrators, and debating whether a unit or two of Reavers are in my future.
There isn’t really a right or wrong way to build a journeyman army, and part of the fun is adapting as you go, based on your experiences!
That’s all from me today, if that all sounds cool to you, go grab Tales from the Frontlines, and start your own journeyman league — I promise it’s fun!
