Warmachine/Hordes (Warmahordes)

I've played Warmachine on and off over the last 8 years or so, and during the majority of that time the game was in a similiar boat as l5r, A extremely small community of passionate fans, but its really hard to support a game with such a small niche community, especially when all the games you play are in the same position. I tried to get the local Warhammer guys to convert but they where too entrentched. I eventually gave up on WM even though i thought it was the best hobby game around, and that includes L5r. Well over the last few months Games Workshop officially killed Warhammer Fantasy. The few friends I had still playing fantasy finally converted to WM, which renewed my interest in the game.

I was surprised to find out how much the game has grown since I last played 4 years ago. Regular play nights have 20+ people showing up. The local hobby stores take turns hosting tournaments each week, which means there is a tournament every weekend. There are Dozens of active podcasts, tons of battle reports consistently going up on youtube and they even have official commentary from Privateer Press employees for thier tournament curcuit games. People always talked about how great the community was for l5r, but they don't hold a candle to the WM community. L5r players where nice in person, but they weren't active participants of the community that didnt do anything to enhance and better the game, especially the top end players. In WM the top players activily post strategy articles, host podcasts and are engaged with the other players.

The game also has atight, well balanced ruleset with active errata and rebalancing, and tons of room for growth and cusomization as a player. The game was also created by Matt Wilson, the artist who was responsible for creating L5r.

This is the most most I've enjoyed a game since we started l5r in celestial, and if you guys are looking for something to replace l5r now that's its dead I would suggest WM.

Here are some good resources for the game, i'll add more as i think of them:

-Astra Power Rankings: http://www.astragamingteam.com/blog/2015/9/4/astra-warmachinehordes-caster-rankings-september-2015
 A good read on the environment by some top players.

-Discount Gaming: http://www.discountgamesinc.com/tournaments/tournaments/search/s:Cygnar
 The website keeps trop of lists from major tournaments.

Podcasts

-Hand Cannon Online: http://handcannononline.com/
 Tons of Podcasts here. Definately Check out Removed From Play, they have a really good series on List analysis, i can't recommend this enough.

-Chain Attack: http://www.chain-attack.com/
 The New Players Series is also amazing and goes into what to expect when facing different lists.

-Oz Machine: http://ozmachine.podbean.com/
 A generic podcast by some top players.

-Muse on Minis: http://museonminis.com/
 One of the Longest running Podcasts in the game.

My Cryx army has been sitting in its case collecting dust for weeks because of school obligations. I'm hoping once October is out of the way I'll have some more time to play though. Warmachine is definitely one of the better minis games around.