Warmachine: Forces of Warmachine: Khador Review
The other night I manged to nick another book out of Bigred’s bag. This time it’s the Warmachine: Forces of Khador book. This hefty tome hit store shelves recently. It’s full color throughout and comes in at 144 pages. The contents cover everything from the faction background, rules for every current Khador unit in the game, concept art, painting guides, and the Tier lists. The background section is roughly 35 pages long, with an additional full page of info in every unit entry, and two pages (or more!) for the Warcasters. Up and coming Kommanders will find a lot of detail on Khador’s military organization, as well as the operational history of the three armies guarding the empire.
A few things really stand out in this book. The first, and most obvious is the full color. Every page has color borders and most pages also have artwork as well. Every unit page has a full color piece of art to go along with it, and there are 20 pages at the back detailing painting techniques for all the major faction colors and showing beautifully painted minis for every model in the faction, including the alternate sculpts for the Warcasters and classic metal Warjacks. The second thing that really makes the book nice is the original background material. For those new to Warmachine, Privateer Press has been at this for seven years and seven different books. Even though every model/unit in this book has been covered before, and even though basic background for Khador has already been described in three versions of Prime, PP still managed to have tons of new information. Even when the information isn’t new, it’s at least described from a new and interesting perspective.
Now a few criticisms. The unit rules themselves are available elsewhere, since you can pick up the card deck for $18.99 which includes rules for everything except the new units. The book does put them in a single easy to read location however. The other downside is the price tag. This one isn’t so much the price of the Khador book itself, but the comparison to the Prime MkII core rulebook which is almost double the size for the exact same price. As a minor quibble, and this is my own personal lament, I wish the the painting/hobby section included more alternative color schemes. The tradditional red scheme is the only one shown, with the exception of the Kodiak done in 5th Border Legion green and Beast ’09 done in white. It would have been nice to see more models done in alternative colors.
So is the book worth the cost? If you play the faction, or you’re a fluff junkie, then yes. The tier lists and all the information make it a great addition. If you only want to read up on the rules to better know your foe, then I’d consider sticking to the card deck. I started out with Khador myself, and even though I no longer play them, I can say that the quality of the book is sorely tempting my willpower and pocketbook.
The Menoth book is due out this next month with Cryx following in May. I’m looking forward to seeing the new background in those. Now I need to get this book back into Bigred’s backpack before he notices it’s gone!
