Editing Warmachine/Tactics/Gameplay Basics (section)

==The Turn==
A turn is made up of three phases; the Maintenance Phase, the Control Phase, and the Activation Phase.

===Maintenance Phase===
This is the part of the turn where you resolve continuous effects ("Am I on fire? Am I being corroded by powerful acids?") and generally clean up after the previous turn; remove AOEs that expire and clean up your spells that weren't upkeeps.

===Control Phase===
Usually you plan your turn during the other guy's turn, but this is where it starts; refresh and allocate Focus, pay for upkeep spells and generally get ready for shit hitting the fan. This is also the first part of the turn where the differences between Warmachine and Hordes become obvious, because this is where the two games' resource systems come into play for the first time. 

In Warmachine, warcasters use FOCUS to power warjacks. Every 'caster produces a set amount of focus points, which they can then allocate to 'jacks to enable them to make powerful special attacks, boost their damage output, run, charge, or whatever else - but the warcaster also needs focus to cast their own spells, and "camping" focus - keeping a couple of extra points around - bumps up the 'caster's ARM so that they aren't so horrifically squishy. As of MKIII every warjack in a battlegroupnow "powers up" generating 1 focus for itself. As a result, Warmachine is a game of ''resource'' management; focus is awesome, and you don't have enough. What's important enough to spend those precious tokens on?

In Hordes, warlocks have to manage FURY to keep their warbeasts from going out of control and eating their own army. Warlocks don't produce fury points. Warbeasts do, and they produce even more when you try to make them run, charge, boost their damage, or anything else. The warlock's job is to leach this fury away and dispose of it safely, because a warbeast with fury left over is in danger of going berserk. As such, Hordes is a game of ''risk'' management; fury is dangerous, but you need it to win, so where's the balance point between "too much" and "not enough"?

Whichever system you're playing, this is where the meat of the resource play happens. Warcasters allocate focus and warlocks leach as much of it as they can. That's basically it.

===Activation Phase===

This is the bulk of the game turn, because it's where all your little models actually get to do cool shit like throwing lightning and gettin' proppa choppy.

Models in Warmachine activate in any order the player wishes. Each element of an army activates individually in their own mini-turns; a model (or group of models) that have activated can move, perform an action, and then end its activation. Alternatively, they can run (double their SPD) to get somewhere quick, and then end their activation immediately after, or fuck moving and get a bonus to hitting things with their shooting. They can also charge, which is probably the most important thing to know and will be explained below.

"Taking an action" generally means "hitting or shooting something", but can also mean "making a special attack" or "using a special ability". It does ''not'', however, mean "cast a spell"; warcasters and warlocks can cast spells at any time during their activation, so long as they don't interrupt their moving or action to do so. No drive-bys, but other than that, you can toss spells any time so long as you can pay for them.

Unlike in Warhammer, models always make attack rolls as individuals, and against individual targets (unless they have the Combined Attack special rule, but it's still functionally the same even then). Units do not fire and take hits as one character, so positioning of individual models becomes much more important in comparison, since a single model in the wrong place can really mess up someone's day, be that yours or your opponent's.

Attacking itself is fairly simple: roll 2d6 + (MAT for melee, RAT for ranged) + (other modifiers) and compare it to your opponent's DEF. If you equal or exceed it, you hit, and roll damage. Damage is equally simple: roll 2d6 + (POW for ranged weapons, P+S for melee) + (other modifiers), then subtract your victim's ARM. If you rolled high enough to actually deal damage, your opponent will mark this on that model's damage track (health bar, printed on the unit card and usually tracked using plastic card sleeves and dry-erase markers). If the damage track is filled up, or the unit doesn't have one (usually because they're single-wound infantry), they die. 

Special actions are magic spells, abilities or other things that aren't part of your usual soldier's skillset and aren't usually offensive in nature; it's things like repairing a warjack or digging a trench. Some require a skill check (roll 2d6 and pray for lows) while most are just 'okay, break out the shovels'.

Special attacks are... well, special attacks. They hurt people, so they tend to require a check of some kind, but this isn't always the case (the Thunderhead's 'Energy Pulse' Special Attack just zaps everything within 6" regardless of any checks). The most common check you make would be a Magic Ability check, in which case the ability rating (the x in Magic Ability [x]) becomes the RAT equivalent.

Charging is, as mentioned above, the most important special action that can be taken, since Warmahordes games often swing on one player or the other getting a brutal charge in. A charge basically gives a unit a SPD boost under the condition that they move in a straight line towards their target, and must end the move in melee range. If they don't make it, their turn is over, but if they ''do'', then the first damage roll resulting from the charge is '''boosted'''.

A boosted roll adds a bonus die to the roll, so you'd be throwing 3d6 instead of 2d6. Obviously, boosted rolls are much more dangerous than non-boosted ones, and it's in your best interest to boost as many of your rolls as humanly possible - but you can only boost a given roll once, so no 7d6 rolls for you. 

Both attack and damage rolls can be boosted, but it's often hard to get that extra die. The most common way to boost a roll is by spending focus (or generating fury) points, so boosted rolls are usually the domain of your warcaster/warlock and their warjacks/warbeasts. This makes your big guys the stars of the show for the most part, but, as mentioned above, anybody can get a boosted damage roll by charging their opponent, and some units have special rules that give them boosted dice in other situations. Even the lightest of infantry can do a lot of damage with the proper charge.

Once every model in your army has taken their activation, the turn ends, and your opponent readies up to do the same to you.