Warmachine update – Command Cadres & Command Starters

Warmachine is a living game with a long history and, Morrow willing, a long future. As the ones carrying the torch, it’s our job to always be thinking about how best to grow the game in the short, medium, and long term.

Most of the time, that means planning new releases and developments, but sometimes, it means making retrospective updates to better support Warmachine’s future. 

Background

For the newer players, a quick TL’DR:

• A faction is an overarching group based on a region, culture, or ideology, e.g. Khador, Cygnar, Cryx
• An army is a subgroup of compatible models within that faction, e.g. Khador Winter Korps and Khador Old Umbrey
• Factions can have more than one army, as in the Khador example above
• Command Cadres are 30 point forces that can play for more than one army

When the Command Cadres were first created, at the start of Mark IV, the intention was for them to be usable both with the faction’s currently available army and a future army.

However, in practice, the cadres were designed to match the army which was already available. As the second armies hadn’t been developed, plans hadn’t been made for how these cadres would work in a second army. Because these armies can be very different in mechanical and visual style, this can create a major issue.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with Old Umbrey and Winter Korps. The Khador Annihilators Command Cadre was clearly designed to match Winter Korps: a focus-driven steampunk army reliant on heavy artillery and gritty units.

But Old Umbrey, the second Khador army releasing soon, not only has an entirely different vibe — folkloric and bestial forest-dwellers studied in the arcane — but uses fury instead of focus, a fundamental mechanical difference.

Forcing these cadres into armies where they don’t truly belong wouldn’t just break thematic consistency, it would introduce complicated interactions that could alienate new players, and risks wider balance problems for the game.

The best way to resolve this, and bring consistency to the range, is to reclassify some Command Cadres as Command Starters for the armies they were always meant to support.

What’s changing?

The Command Cadres listed below will become Command Starters. This means instead of being playable in both armies for a faction, they’ll be playable in one army (the army they were originally designed to support).

• Khador Annihilators cadre will become the Command Starter for the Khador Winter Korps army
• Dusk Ghost of Ios cadre will become the Command Starter for the Dusk House Kallyss army
• Orgoth Cursebound cadre will become the Command Starter for the Orgoth Sea Raiders army
• Southern Kriels Foulblood’s Armada cadre will become the Command Starter for the Southern Kriels Brineblood Marauders army
• Khymaera Shard Nocturnes cadre will become the Command Starter for the Khymaera Shadowflame Shard army

There is one exception: the Cygnar Storm Forge cadre will become the Command Starter for Cygnar Storm Legion, but in the interests of gameplay balance (and because Gravediggers were only just released) it will also still be playable with Cygnar Gravediggers.

This gives a great entry point for all existing armies, matching the Command Starters for all new armies. 

All other Command Cadres will remain unchanged and will still be playable in both armies of their respective factions.

We understand some of you purchased these Command Cadres expecting them to be playable in more than one army. This wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s one that will help to safeguard Warmachine as an immersive game and world with coherent faction and mechanical identities.

We’re making this change now, before the release of new armies that would be affected, to help avoid confusion or mismatched expectations in future.

Since Warmachine came under Steamforged, we’ve implemented a new development roadmap that looks much further ahead. So, if we make any decisions which introduce new, cross-army models, those will be future-proofed with the roadmap in mind.

We’re grateful for your continuing support and love for Warmachine. Retrospective changes are never easy, but we truly believe this will benefit Warmachine in the long term.