Privateer Press Warmachine Colossals (SC)

Terrific gift that was deeply appreciated!

Yes, I said it: Colossals is fluffy.If you're familiar with Warmachine, you know that it's a miniatures wargame about massive steam-driven mecha battling each other under control of warrior-mage warcasters. It's a rich setting, with extensive story-driven plot and background. Mechanically, this book changes the game significantly, introducing the powerful new huge-based colossals, the biggest and most expensive units to grace the battlefield. Privateer Press did an excellent job with the colossals in terms of balance, making them excellent units without being overpowering. Some of the colossal descriptions lack the flavor of previous units (big gun? yawn), but on the whole the colossals are a bright new star in the game.In addition, the book also introduces a new warcaster for each faction. The warcasters are interesting, and generally seem to be strong additions to the game. They also fill in some of the thematic gaps created by the last Warmachine supplement, Wrath. For example, the Cygnar faction receives a warcaster with a theme list that supports using the Wrath-introduced Cygnar battle engine, the Stormstrider. That's a definite plus.And that's basically it for the book. Past the warcaster and the colossals, the book contains a set of rules for playing extremely large-scale battles using full collections of miniatures, and a lot of short stories. Both the new rules and the short stories are interesting to read through, but they are not nearly as exciting as the plethora of new units introduced in a typical Warmachine sourcebook. Overall, I'm glad I picked this book up based on the quality of the colossals and the new warcasters, but I hope that future Warmachine supplements spend more pages introducing the new units that are truly the heart of the game.