Warmachine’s new Casual Play pack - Tales from the Frontlines (2026)
It’s been a big year for Warmachine already — the January balance update, Steamroller 2026, and now the return of Infernals, Grymkin, and Convergence of Cyriss! What could possibly be next? How about a whole new Casual Play pack?
Today, we’ve got Warmachine’s Creative Director — Mat Hart — and lore master — Sherwin Matthews — with some behind-the-scenes insight into Warmachine’s new Casual Play pack, Tales from the Frontlines!
What is Tales from the Frontlines?
Tales from the Frontlines has emerged from years of games in Iron Arenas, Smogpits, gaming clubs, and on kitchen tables, across multiple editions of Warmachine. Some of our fondest memories of Warmachine come from these games, and it’s those experiences we’re looking to recreate with this pack.
Warmachine has earned its reputation as one of the tightest and most rewarding competitive tabletop games around, with clean rules that reward prep, precision, and sharp decisions. Long may that continue.
But this hobby has always been about more than playing to win. Collecting and painting armies, drooling over incredible models, getting deep into the lore, and spending time around a table with friends are all essential to hobby gaming, and a big part of what keeps us all coming back for more. However, while competitive (or ‘matched’) play has Steamroller and the Iron Gauntlet, the casual side of Warmachine hasn’t had that kind of support. Until now!
What's inside?
Our new Casual Play pack is designed to provide similar support to Steamroller and the Iron Gauntlet, including scenarios and formats that encourage experimentation, story-driven decisions, and making an epic play not because it’s the most optimal move, but because it’ll be one for the history books*
With this pack, you can enjoy Warmachine exactly as you’d like, getting serious about an extended campaign to dominate the Iron Kingdoms (see ‘Warmachine campaigns’ below) or trying out experimental scenarios just for fun.
Tales from the Frontlines doesn’t feature just one casual format, but three:
- General casual play
- Journeyman leagues
- Campaigns
Before we dig in to those, we wanted to take a leaf out of Jamie Perkins’ book from the January update articles, and take a moment to thank everyone involved in playtesting over the last few months, as well as the wider community. You make all of this possible!
*Editor’s note: I’m told “doing it for the ‘gram” is an appropriate phrase here, but not being Gen Z myself, I’ve opted to leave it out. I understand “YOLO” has similar connotations. “Big Leeroy Jenkins energy” was another reference we considered — that one, I understood.
Casual play
The first section includes six new scenarios we regularly play in the office. These scenarios have evolved over time, influenced by Steamroller packs, campaign settings, Company of Iron, and even some of our favourite community-driven formats, like Brawlmachine!
These scenarios are perfect if you want to throw dice at any experience level, from rookie to veteran. They’re designed to work from 30 to 100 points, although Mat will readily tell you 50pts is his favourite, "where the immediacy and fast pace really comes through".
We’ve deliberately kept these scenarios straightforward. The rules for scenario elements and scoring are universal, and once you’ve started, you don’t have to cross-reference additional special rules for objectives moving or being removed from play.
Each scenario also includes a short flavour intro to help frame the engagement, and a small designer note, where we’ve left pointers for you to consider during the game.
Here’s an example of one of the scenarios:
The rules for objectives and caches are the same as you’ll find in the current Steamroller document — leaders, cohort models and battle engines can control the 50mm objective, units and leaders can control the 40mm objectives, and caches are removed when scored and give 2VP.
But that’s not all the casual play section has to offer. When you have a few games under your belt and are looking to mix things up, there’s also a variant rules section. This includes special rules for reducing field allowances, table-wide terrain, weather, and morale conditions that affect the entire battlefield, as well as strategic plans for you to employ against your opponent.
Journeyman leagues
Next up, we have the journeyman league rules. If you’re not familiar, a journeyman league is a system where you gradually build up a larger force, painting and playing games at each stage. Journeyman leagues are a great way for new players to get started with Warmachine, or for existing players to try out a new army.
Although playing games is a key part of any journeyman league, winning and losing takes a back seat. Learning how to play, having a good time, and building an awesome community is most important during the league.
Players have a reason to paint their models each week, and at the end of a journeyman league, every player will have a fully painted army they can play with at their local club or store, or take to events.
Tales from the Frontlines covers how to start a journeyman league, plan each stage, and how players earn league points. It also includes the achievements awarded to players at the end of the league, based on how many points they’ve earned, how many stages they’ve played in, and a player vote for the best painted and most sporting.
It’s been great chatting with you on Discord about journeyman leagues, and we’d love to see pictures from the games and your armies as they grow! Mat, Sherwin, and game dev Steve Slatford are currently playing in a journeyman at their local club, the Chelmsford Bunker, and we'll try to share some pictures from that too, unless they're too busy having fun to remember to take photos!
Frontier campaigns
The final section of Tales from the Frontlines is a full campaign system. With this system, rather than playing individual games, you can link your battles together to represent a much bigger conflict over key territory. To emerge victorious, you’ll need more than raw military might — strategy, resource-gathering, and cunning will make all the difference.
A Warmachine Frontier campaign is played using a round system. In each round, each player will play a single game against an opponent in an attempt to claim territory around their HQ.
Taking certain locations provides essential resources. Each resource (Intel, Supply, and Morale) has a different effect in the game.
Intel helps you use special strategies during deployment and/or the opening stages of the game, like seen above in the variant rules. Supply lets you manipulate dice rolls with rerolls or modifiers during the game. Morale can be used to give stat buffs, or even return destroyed models to play.
The type of territory you’re trying to capture will determine which scenario you play, using the matrix below.
We’ve created these thematic and asymmetrical scenarios especially for this document, to really set the scene for what’s about to take place in conjunction with the flavour text at the top of the scenario brief.
Typically (but not always…) the attackers will be trying to gain a foothold, while defenders attempt to push them back and hold their ground. A great example of this is Street by Street, which is also the scenario most removed from what you’d see in a format like Steamroller. Note in particular that the scenario doesn’t end if leader models are destroyed…
In addition to the above, these scenarios are all subject to the same variable battlefield conditions we mentioned before, adding to your strategic considerations. Expect to see troopers dodging craters from artillery bombardments and falling masonry from crumbling buildings, rolling fog banks and dawn raids to limit visibility, and bonus objectives in the form of lost supply crates.
Campaigns are an intensely different experience to what you’re used to in Warmachine, not only changing the way that you look at positioning and play during games, but also decision-making between sessions — will you consolidate resources, or push for key territory?
When is the Casual Play pack going to be out?
Very soon!
Keep an eye out, as some of your favourite Warmachine creators may be talking about Tales from the Frontlines before it officially releases too. We'll be back again soon with more news on the release date for Tales from the Frontlines. Until then, get excited!
