Can We Put a Frigate Into Warcry? Probably Not. So We Tried Anyway
Sometimes the best hobby ideas start with a marketplace screenshot
This one began very innocently: Michał spotted a listing on Facebook and dropped it on our chat with the classic “is this actually interesting?” energy.
For Ender, the answer was: kind of, but not urgently. The Arkanaut Company was already covered as part of Spearhead, and while the Grundstok Gunhauler was tempting, it fell into that dangerous category of cool machine we absolutely do not need right now. Especially since the Frigate still hasn’t had its proper moment on the table.
And that is exactly where the conversation stopped being sensible.
“We can just play Warcry with machines”
Michał, naturally, suggested the obvious and completely unreasonable solution:
we can play Warcry with machines :)
Honestly? That was enough to get us interested.
Because yes, by default these kinds of models are not really what Warcry is built for. Warcry shines when it is small, fast, cinematic, and full of weird little skirmish moments. A giant skyvessel ramming people across the board is… not exactly standard design space.
But it is very funny.
So instead of asking whether it was a good idea, we immediately jumped to a much more important question:
Could we make it fair enough to be fun?
Michał fed the idea into GPT and asked it to come up with balanced Warcry-style rules for two ridiculous centerpieces:
- a Kharadron Frigate
- a Skaven Ratling Warpblaster
The goal wasn’t tournament balance or some grand fan expansion. We just wanted something that would let two oversized war machines fight each other in a way that felt at least vaguely fair, while still matching their factions.
And honestly? The first pass sounded surprisingly playable.
The Frigate: flying brick, cannon platform, accidental missile
The proposed Kharadron Frigate came in at 400 points and was pitched as a mobile gunship that could reposition and smash into enemies.
Its profile leaned into exactly what we would want from a Kharadron machine in Warcry:
- Move 6” with Fly
- Toughness 5
- 40 Wounds
- respectable ranged pressure
- a ram attack for when diplomacy fails
The standout bit was the flavor. It wasn’t written as some hyper-efficient blender unit, but more like a durable support piece with mobility tricks and one very funny high-impact move:
- Broadside Volley for extra chip damage
- Aether-Endrin Surge for speed
- Full-Speed Ram for the important tactical option known as sending a boat at someone
The balance summary Michał got back was also pretty believable: durable, mobile, dangerous at range, but expensive and not necessarily the main damage dealer unless you set things up right.
Which, to be fair, sounds exactly like the kind of thing we would want to test.
The Warpblaster: equal points, more Skaven nonsense
Then came the answer from the other side of the table: a Skaven Ratling Warpblaster, also at 400 points.
And this one was gloriously Skaven.
Same general durability bracket, same 12” range, but with a very different personality:
- Move 4”
- Toughness 4
- 40 Wounds
- 10 ranged attacks at base
- risk-reward rules that could make it stronger or blow it up a bit
The abilities were exactly the kind of thing we love in improvised homebrew:
- more dakka through Warp-Powered Barrage
- a sneaky reposition with Scurry Away
- an overcharge mode that boosts output but may hurt the machine itself
- and a big Warpstorm Torrent moment for maximum chaos
That part especially sold us on the idea. The Frigate and the Warpblaster didn’t just look numerically similar — they felt like they belonged to different factions.
The Kharadron machine was stable, armored, and practical.
The Skaven machine was a screaming hazard held together by bad decisions and warpstone.
Perfect.
The real hobby tip here: use AI for quick scenario prototyping, not gospel
Since this is going into the hobby-tips bucket, here’s the bit we actually think is useful.
We’re not treating AI-generated rules as sacred, polished, or automatically balanced. But for quick casual prototyping, this kind of tool can be genuinely handy.
Especially when you want to answer a very specific hobby question like:
- What if we let this non-Warcry model into Warcry?
- What would a fair points cost roughly look like?
- How do we make two silly units feel fun against each other?
- Can we capture faction identity without writing everything from scratch?
For that kind of use, it actually works pretty well as a starting point.
What we’d recommend if you want to try something similar
-
Start with a clear goal
Don’t ask for “balanced rules.” Ask for something narrower, like: make these two models roughly equal for a casual one-off game. -
Anchor it in existing game language
The more you frame things in Warcry terms — Move, Toughness, Wounds, abilities by Double/Triple/Quad — the easier it is to get something usable. -
Balance for fun first
In a one-off scenario, perfect points efficiency matters less than whether both sides get cool moments. -
Keep the faction flavor
This was the best part of the experiment. The Frigate should feel Kharadron. The Warpblaster should feel dangerously, hilariously Skaven. -
Expect to tweak after one game
No first draft survives contact with the table. If one machine deletes the other on turn one, that’s not failure — that’s data.
Also: 500 points + one machine sounds kind of amazing
At one point Michał suggested a simple format:
500 points + a machine
And honestly, that might be the whole idea right there.
Not a full alternate mode. Not a giant campaign system. Just a compact casual setup where each warband brings a normal force plus one absurd centerpiece.
Will it be balanced? Maybe.
Will it be memorable? Almost certainly.
We can already picture the tone of the game:
- the Frigate drifting into position for a heroic ram
- the Warpblaster rolling buckets of dice
- somebody exploding at exactly the wrong moment
- all of us pretending this was carefully designed from the start
So, are we doing this?
Probably yes — but first, Thursday may belong to Spearhead.
By the end of the chat, the practical plan was less “let’s immediately deploy custom skyship rules” and more “we could try Spearhead if we have around three hours, and if not, maybe Warcry.”
Which is also a good hobby lesson in itself: sometimes the wild idea goes into the notebook first, and the actual game night is decided by time, energy, and whether we want a full match or a faster skirmish.
Still, this little exchange gave us a hobby thought we really like:
If the official rules don’t quite support the funny idea, prototype the funny idea
Not everything has to become a serious house-rules project. Sometimes it is enough to sketch a scenario, borrow the game’s internal logic, and test something goofy with friends.
Best case, you discover a brilliant side format.
Worst case, a flying boat worth 1500 imaginary Warcry points rams a ratling cannon and everybody has a good evening.
That sounds like a win to us.