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News from the Front New Releases W ARMACHINE Model Previews Modeling & Painting: Iron Kingdoms Conversion III Guts & Gears: Steelheads The Gavyn Kyle Files: Drake MacBain Skull Island eXpeditions Interview and Excerpt Monsternomicon & Beyond Foundry, Forge & Crucible: In Rare Form In Battle Forged: Warriors T elos Machinations League Season I: Umbra The Convergence Begins Lock & Load GameFest 2013 Events Modeling & Painting Challenge: Mount Up! T errain Building: Khadoran Monument Player Gallery 4 6 12 18 26 38 46 51 58 64 74 78 82 87 88 94
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In Battle Forged
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Table Of Contents
Aeryn Rudel
Editor-in-Chief
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Table Of Contents
Steelhead Tactics
By Jack coleman
Steelheads represent the largest and most organized human mercenary company in the Iron Kingdoms. In game terms, this is represented by their ability to work for all four of the original WARMACHINE factions and their synergistic playstyle that focuses on teamwork and combined arms.
Strength in Numbers
Steelhead Halberdiers are the backbone of any Steelhead army. They are a cheap front-line unit with Reach and Combined Melee Attack. It is important not to let the Halberdiers stat line fool you, as their abilities allow them to be much more effective than they appear at first glance. Set Defense gives your Halberdiers an effective DEF 15 against enemy charges, slam power attacks, and impact attack rolls. By spreading and layering your Halberdiers in multiple staggered lines, you can limit the effectiveness of your enemys alpha strike and trade favorably in the following rounds. With Powerful Charge your Halberdiers gain +2 to all charge attack rolls. This is a significant boost to the units accuracy and is especially potent when paired with Combined Melee Attack (a two-man CMA is MAT 9 and P+S 13 on a charge!). The offensive potential of the Steelhead Halberdiers is exceptional for their cost when combined with good positioning. A cunning opponent will attempt to take out your Steelhead Halberdiers with ranged attacks before they can tie up his forces in melee. The solution to this problem is actually quite simplemore Steelhead Halberdiers! With FA 3 you can field up to thirty Halberdiers in your army at only 0.6 points per model. The goal is to overwhelm your opponent with more Halberdiers than their offense or crowd-control can handle. This tactic is often referred to as target saturation and is particularly well suited to the Steelhead Halberdiers. With multiple units of Halberdiers you can control a large portion of the battlefield, and your opponent will find it nearly impossible to outmaneuver or flank your army. Use your Halberdiers to control the flow of battle by tying up enemy models, blocking charge lanes, and screening the rest of your army while you maneuver for the kill.
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An Interview with Skull Island eXpeditions Author Larry Correia Art by Milivoj Ceran & Andrea Uderzo No Quarter is proud to present the following interview with Skull Island eXpeditions author Larry Correia and an excerpt from his forthcoming novella set in the Iron Kingdoms. Larry is a New York Times best-selling author and an avid WARMACHINE and HORDES player, and his novella Instrument of War will be the first offering from Privateer Press digital publishing imprint Skull Island eXpeditions. For more information about Skull Island eXpeditions go to: www.skullislandx.com NQ: How long have you been writing? Tell us about some of your previous works. LC: My first novel, Monster Hunter International, came out in 2009. It was my love song to B monster moviesthink X-Files meets the Expendablesand it did extremely well. It also got me a nomination for the Campbell award for best new fantasy author. Im up to four books in that series now and a few of them have been New York Times best sellers. I also write the Grimnoir Chronicles, the third book of which will be out this year. It is an alternative-history epic fantasy, sort of a noir 1930s superheros story. Hard Magic won the Audie Award for best fantasy and was a finalist for the Julia Verlanger award for best fantasy novel in France last year. Then Ive got a thriller series that Ive coauthored with Mike Kupari. The first is called Dead Six, and the sequel, Swords of Exodus, will be out this summer. It is about a showdown between a group of mercenaries and some professional thieves during a violent military coup in a third-world country. Other than that I have a bunch of other projects going on, including a Monster Hunter International RPG and short stories in several anthologies, and Ive got sixteen more books under contract. So it has been really busy for the last few years.
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Gorax
A dozen arrows jut from the leathery skin of the gorax and deep gashes crisscross its body. Despite these grievous wounds, it barrels forward. Hot, fetid breath blasts from its slavering jaws as it reaches out to pull you from the saddle and rip you to pieces. Great hulking brutes inhabiting the deep wilderness, gorax are primitive creatures blurring the line between man and beast. The body of a gorax is thickly muscled, with ironhard tendons straining against bones as dense as hardwood. A heavy mane of matted hair grows down a goraxs spine, matched by similar patches on its disproportionately long arms. Its oversized hands have enormous claws, which are ideal for digging or slashing deep furrows in the flesh of prey. A wide maw distended by massive tusks dominates the ugly face of a gorax. Even more terrifying than its brutish physique is the goraxs response to pain. Gorax are not just inured to the effects of injury, they are fueled by it. This paradoxical response drives an injured gorax to attack with ever-increasing savagery until it is forced into a blind frenzy of bloodlust. In its fury, a gorax is strong enough to tear a warhorse in half. Though its primitive features belie the fact, a gorax possesses a cunning mind. They are able to communicate with one another through a rough series of guttural vocalizations and can be taught with some effort to follow simple commands. During the Thousand Cities Era warlords prized gorax for their bestial cunning and response to pain, and used the beasts as front-line shock troops. Directed at the enemy, hordes of gorax would tear across the battlefield unimpeded by ranged attacks. Once the gorax fell upon a column, their strength already greatly magnified by pain-fueled rage, the enemy would quickly be torn to pieces. Gorax too wounded to quickly recover or those too full of bloodlust to easily be controlled were simply put down. The tendency of gorax to attack ally and enemy in equal measure eventually reduced their use in battle, but there are still some who capture and enslave gorax for use as beasts of war. In the wild, most gorax make their homes in natural caverns. They expand the interior of a cave by scraping the walls with their huge claws. Gorax often keep a surplus of meat in their dens and drag half-consumed beasts back to the cavern for later consumption. Gorax are obligate carnivores, though they care little about the source of the meat. Any animal that comes close enough for a gorax to grab is eaten, though they seem to hold human flesh in high regard. Gorax who taste the blood of mankind seek it out, which has caused some of the beasts to move from their wilderness domains into the fringes of civilization. Small villages have been completely depopulated due to a rampaging gorax seeking to sate its gruesome hunger.
Combat
Gorax view all other creatures as a threat or as potential meal, often both. A gorax charges toward the closest target, attacking it with claw and bite attacks. Once injured, the gorax strikes the closest creature it can see, with no regard for its own safety.
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