"Shouldn't Warjacks "die" with more flair?" Topic

In the game of Warmachine, the hulking stomping magically-controlled engines of terrible destruction are removed from the table and replaced with a wreckage marker. Well, excuse me, but for the game which claims great hardness and aggression, this seems rather… limp, if you'll excuse the analogy. Does anyone play any house rules where the Warjack (a) blows up (b) whirlwinds death for a round (c) staggers in a random direction (d) fires off it weapons at whoever is nearest (e) feedbacks a shock of anti-focus at its warcaster (f) something more violent?

Sounds great! But in a game full of rules lawyers, good luck! It's twin sister Hordes had a similar add-on for finishing moves of mass destruction in one of their summer tournaments. I agree whole heartedly though!

Well, some of the more 'unstable' ones do that as special rules.

Problem is, I think jacks need more advantages, and not disads. IE, infantry mobs are the best way to take on jacks and other infantry mobs. So why have jacks?

Jacks might be good for urban fighting, I could see rules for them collapsing buildings, etc, but, such rules really don't exist, and these kinds of games are rarely played.

Yeah, the Berzerker 'splodes if you give it too much focus. Maybe some others I'm not aware of. I will always play 'jacks in my armies though. Screw infantry. Luckily, I play Magnus and woe to the infantry that tries to surround a circular striking 'jack with 2" reach.

The Deathjack goes ape if it doesn't get enough Focus.

Jacks need Thresher as a special attack

The Trample special attack is probably under utilized as an anti-infantry attack.

That's because it bites.

Agreed. Trample is for emergencies only, or for Warbeasts with good MAT, lots of open Fury, and some boost effects.

You know, like a Warpwolf with Primal and Ferocity going. :)

That said, yeah, you'd think a steam-driven killing machine would be more…explosive somehow, wouldn't you? Adding a rule where a destroyed or disabled 'jack vents steam (like a Kodiak, perhaps) for a turn would go a long way towards making them effective against melee infantry, anyway.

I'm rather fond of randomness in games. I'd love a 2d6 table. A 7 is nil, collapse in a heap. A 2 is nasty to say the least, explodes for damage, knock down, something. A 12 and it fires at closest target with no regard for arcs as it spins to it's death. Other numbers in between.

If warjacks normally exploded they'd be a disaster on the battlefield.

One defective(or rather really old) warjack explodes when fed too much focus.
One low end warjack feeds back on the warcaster when using a homemade arc node.
Cryx has Satyxis who can cause damage they do to jacks trasfer to a warcaster with their razor chain whips flail things.

It might be appropriate to apply this to jacks that carry Menoth's fury or lots of ammo on board. You might even make a case for jacks with electrical weapons, rapidly moving parts (like a chainsaw chain), stored souls, or possibly some kind of "freeze" attack. I suppose you could have them all vent scalding steam if the boiler blows. Pretty soon this will turn into a tactic like the cheap fragile machine gun ammo carrying vehicles in Battletech that existed to ram into a mech and take it down with an ammo crit. People will march their jack into place and try and blow it up. To prevent this the explosion or freakouts have to be RARE in which case they barely effect the game and add unwanted randomness to torunament players.

Frankly I think that exotic catastrophic fall-down tables will just discourage warjack use. And they would also make sucessfull repairs even less likely.

Jacks just aren't warp addled psykers that act like a magnet for daemons. It's a well understood and refined technology.

If you wann do it in house rules fine but I'd like it kept out of any official rules. I don't think warmachine needs its own "rocket arena" or "instakill" variant.

Tanks are pretty well refined, but that doesn't stop them from catching fire now and then.

I wouldn't say that explosions should be RARE so much as a little under 50/50.

Thanks for all the comments. I understand the current imbalance against jacks and in favor of infantry but I thought that Legends was going to address some of that problem. For those player who want more color to jacks being destroyed, they could work up a table that would be balanced with some good and some bad effects. I realize that tampering with any system can sometimes break more than it fixes but I think this tendency is inherent in any gamer who has been around a while. For myself, fun is more important than winning in any case.

Just have it vent steam/whatever in a random direction when destroyed (and woe to whoever is in the way…. :)