Mk II Warmachine Thoughts

So, while I haven't really be able to play any games in forever, I have been keeping up with the changes to Mk II Warmachine and overall I think the changes are really nice. Things I particularly like:

* I love that warjacks are actually good and cool again. That was primarily the reason I first got interested in the game way back before Prime and where there were only the Battleboxes.

*Warjacks getting +1 MAT/RAT. Nice! One can only hope that warbeasts get this too when they get around to redoing Hordes. I always hated how my beasts had such a tough time hitting things...I basically always had to boost to hit.

* Less special rules and exceptions to rules overall for units across the board. This was a huge turnoff for me (and it's a problem in some ways with Hordes too). There were so many special exceptions to rules, and unique abilities per unit that it was getting impossible to remember everything. Even in games with Scott, as a "new" player, it was really really hard for me to remember all the things his units did. It also slowed down my decision making a lot with my own units, let alone trying to remember what everything else on the other side of the table did. It would be nigh impossible for someone new to wargaming to pick up the game in the state it was in.

* Warjack points for warcasters. Initially I thought that the warjack points could be used to get whole warjacks. E.g. Haley with WJ Pts. +5 could get five additional jacks. That would have been sweet. Sadly, not the case, but still good as it gives most casters a free light, or half a heavy, which is better than nothing.

* Warjacks getting tougher. I always thought that warjacks were pretty fragile when compared to beasts in Hordes. Now they don't die completely until you've marked off every box, which makes them a whole lot tougher.

All in all, there's a lot of positive changes to the game that I like. Things I don't like are the new LOS rules. These just seem obtuse to me...and the old LOS rules never really seemed to be a problem point for me, so I'm not sure why they changed these.

Also, there's a huge amount of whining and crying on the official forums. It's really kind of pathetic and ridiculous. You'd think that Privateer had cut off some players' fingers or something. A lot of the whining seems to be coming from the Cryx players in particular, who got "hit" the hardest by the removal of all the special rules and exceptions.

I for one am glad a lot of the special rules and exceptions were removed. Good riddance.

Anyway, I'm sure once the frothing dies down, people will once again return to sanity on those forums and realize that it's not the end of the world. Looking at all the Cryx units with relatively "fresh" eyes (i.e. I have not followed any rules for anything Cryx since original Prime) a lot of the stuff doesn't seem as bad as people on the forums make them out to be.