Steamforged Games has started to preview rules for the Kithguard, the next new faction for its premier miniature wargame Warmachine, and they look like an absolute riot. With models popping in and out of play through underground tunnels, they're guerrilla fighters built like gorillas, and a perfect example of why I find Warmachine so compelling.
The narrative for the Kithguard is great - after years of being displaced from one home after another, the rough tough trollkin have settled in the southern jungles, and adapted their style of warfare to focus on ambushes and asymmetrical warfare. Visually, they mix fantasy with Vietnam war tropes, like the new Warlock Sergeant Hulder Craghorn, a massive trollkin wearing an M1 helmet and carrying a huge belt-fed machinegun. The models are in that sweet spot between serious and whimsical that I really enjoy about Warmachine.
Steamforged revealed the Kithguard's unique faction rules in a blog post on Tuesday. During deployment, the Kithguard player can place three Trap Door markers onto the board anywhere up to the halfway line. Ambushing units can enter the board by springing out of a Trap Door marker, rather than from the board edge as they normally would need to, and Kithguard infantry unit can re-enter reserves by ducking into a Trap Door, letting them zoom around the battlefield unopposed.
Normally, Ambushing with a unit in Warmachine is a much riskier proposition than using the Warhammer 40k ability Deep Strike, since Ambushers arrive far away from the objectives. Warmachine doesn't run for a fixed round count and a high score, it goes until one player kills the other's leader or pulls too far ahead on points, so there's a limit to how long you can leave forces uncommitted in reserves - and threat ranges are universally pretty short. Trap Door markers bring the threat potential of Ambushers way more in line with Deep Strikers in 40k, but there are key differences.
By deploying markers, you're highlighting your target zones at the start of the battle, telegraphing your plans to your opponent and giving them counterplay (importantly, counterplay which doesn't require them to bring a lot of sacrificial infantry screens during list building). Take an aggressive position close to the objectives and your opponent may be able to swarm over the markers and prevent you bringing your models out of them: be too conservative and you'll relax the pressure on the objectives. Trap Door markers are also a finite resource that disappear once a unit has deployed through them, reducing your options as the game advances.
And in a very Warmachine twist, Trap Door markers can have even more uses that come from other models' abilities. Craghorn has the ability Tunnel Network, which means that models within two inches of a Trap Door marker are considered to be within his Control Area. If you're not familiar with Warmachine, the Control Area is an aura around a Leader model (in Craghorn's case, 12 inches) which their most powerful units - huge Warbeasts, like the bomb-yeeting dire troll pictured - must stay inside to be at their most effective.
Craghorn also has an excellent spell, Carnage, which grants +2 MAT (+2 to hit in melee) to friendly faction units within his Control Area. So Craghorn's Trap Doors are little hardpoints on the battlefield where isolated Warbeasts and units can operate effectively even when the big man has to attend to business elsewhere.
Craghorn's once per game feat, Break Out!, uses Trap Door markers aggressively. First, he gets to bring a unit out of a Trap Door marker within seven inches of him. Normally units enter from Ambush right at the start of the turn, so if your enemies are camping on a Trap Door you won't be able to clear them off - but you can activate a unit to shoot those enemies away or reposition the Trap Door if it has the right ability, and then bring on another unit using Craghorn's feat.
If you really need to grab an objective or put some bodies between Craghorn and the enemy, you could even have a unit activate and dash down one Trap Door, then pop out of another one on the same turn using Craghorn's feat. Additionally, up to three units that entered from Ambush get +2 to their damage rolls for the turn. These could be located anywhere on the board - a sniper Ambushing in from the board edge could be extra deadly…
The Kithguard are the third whole faction with a key theme of 'mobility' in the current edition of Warmachine, yet they're not retreading any old ground. There's Khymaera, a classic glass cannon faction with high linear threat that can often ignore terrain thanks to eyeless sight and flight; then Old Umbrey gets asymmetric advantages by creating and hiding in terrain features, and can produce non-linear threats like turning basic infantry models into werewolves. Now we've got great big lumbering trollkin, and what's their superpower? Shovels. Iconic.
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