‘Warhammer: The Old World’ – The Five Best Warmachines
Sometimes, in Warhammer: The Old World you want to make things go BOOM! These are your best Warmachines for doing that.
We’ve all had our hands on The Old World for a bit. The game is starting to shake out. We’ve gotten a decent look at what is good and bad and how people like to play. Today, we are continuing our series looking at the best units from various categories. We’ve looked at basic core infantry, elite heavy infantry, monstrous infantry, and ranged infantry. That’s covered most of the infantry in the game, which leaves us to take a look at some other unit types.
So today, let’s switch things up and take a look at the big boom sticks, the game’s warmachines. While this type of unit isn’t what it used to be, it can still be deadly. Just a spoiler: There is no Steam Tank today, as it’s not really a warmachine. We are also only looking at the core nine armies; Legacy factions will get their own look late on.
5. Hellcannon – Warriors of Chaos
Now the Hellcannon isn’t technically a warmachine, its a behemoth. However, it fills the role of a Warmachine and fires like one and really is one, just with some slightly different rules. So I think it’s fair to put it on the list. The Hellcannon has some good things going for it. It’s got a very powerful attack, that causes Panic. You don’t want to get hit by it. It’s also one of the harder “warmachines” to kill, as it’s got a ton of wounds and can be pretty good in combat. All of that makes it quite deadly.
On the other hand, it’s got a few major drawbacks. First off, it’s pricy, clocking in as one of the most expensive units in it’s class. And… well its a risky unit. It basically has 2 chances to misfire a turn. Rolling a 1 on the misfire chart causes it to blow up and hurt everything around it. An unlucky first turn of shooting with one could devastate your own army. These downsides really hold it back.
4. Hellblaster – Empire
The Empire gets access to a lot of warmachines. A lot of them, are OK, and some aren’t even worth taking. Of the pile of Empire big guns, the Hellblaster really stands out as the best. Now, it’s not the most reliable weapon. It makes a random number of shots and has to roll to hit. It’s easy for it to get a lot of extra minus to hit as well, making it inaccurate. However, it can get a LOT of shots. Some decent rolling can see you putting out 20+ shots with relative ease. Even needing to roll to hit, you can get a decent number of hits with this, and throwing some buffs, such as using an Engineer for better BS can help jump you up a notch. It also has pretty decent hits. The Hellblaster isn’t going to be the best for taking down big models, but it can really put the hurt on a unit.
3. Border Princes Bombard – Bretonnia
Though limited to the Bretonnia Exiles Army of Infamy, the Bombard is, to me, the best cannon in the game. Stats-wise wise it sits between the normal cannon and the Great Cannon. It’s effectively a Great Cannon, with the range and S of a normal cannon. However, those things are the pretty unimportant stats, as S8 is normally more than enough to wound on a 2+ and 48 inch range is pretty much all you’ll need.
For these slight downsides, the Bombard is 25 points cheaper than a Great Cannon. On top of that, the Bombard has its own misfire table, which is just better. While pretty similar to a normal table, on a roll of a 6, the cannon still fires, though it’s a short shot, and it can’t fire next turn. The chance to misfire and still hit your target is overall pretty great. So it is basically cheaper and slightly better in the ways that count, Great Cannon, and found in a very surprising place (Bretonnians).
2. Bolt Thrower – Dwarfs
Bolt Throwers in general are one of the weaker warmachines. They just don’t hit as hard as most of the others and have to roll to hit. In some situations, this can make them more reliable than other machines, but a screened target makes them worse. On the other hand, they tend to be very cheap, and it’s pretty easy to fit some into a list and have them plink away at the enemy. Of the various bolt-throwers out there, the Dwarf version has to be the best.
At it’s base, it’s just a bit over the others, with LD 9, Stubborn and MR (1) making it a little harder to take out. Of course runes are what really pushes them to be better. In particularly being able to upgrade them with the Rune of Skewering, which gives them +1s and doesn’t allow armor saves to be taken vs their attacks. While this makes them more expensive, they are still pretty cheap and much better than others in their class.
1. Doom Diver – Orcs & Goblins
Speaking of warmachines that are better than the others in their class, we have the Doom Diver. The Doom Diver is a stone thrower. However, once shot, you can move the template d3 inches to correct for scatter. This just straight-up makes it more accurate than any other stone thrower around. A more accurate stone thrower is a better one. Stone Throwers hit pretty hard, and getting hit by one isn’t a joke. For that reason, I’ve put the Doom Diver up here as number one. However, given that Warmachines aren’t that amazing right now, I wouldn’t say it’s that far above the others, and there is probably an argument for almost any machine on this list to be up at #1.
Let us know what you think about the list, down in the comments!
