For those WARMACHINE players familiar with the tabletop rules, you'll feel right at home with Tactics. We've made many gameplay decisions during development, and all but a few have kept us aligned with the tabletop rules. In truth, the existing rules are so well balanced and play-tested that it would be folly for us to modify them too much. Even the slightest change in the rules can cause a cascade of new changes required to fix the problems the initial change caused. Besides some technical limitations, our mindset has been, "Don't mess with it if you don't have to."

WARMACHINE Tactics is played on a grid, roughly representing one inch on the tabletop. With all units aligned to the grid, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Small sized units have a base size of one square. Medium sized units have a 2x2 base size. Large sized units have a 3x3 base size. The important thing to note is that this gives the units in Tactics larger bases to block line of sight and charge lanes.

In Tactics, facing is done in 90 degree increments to stay aligned to the grid. A Unit's facing is just as important as the tabletop. You still have to worry about their front attack arc and openings for back strikes.

For getting ranges and movement distances, we're using true Euclidian distances. This means that a distance measured on a diagonal will cover the same radius as a distance measured directly along one of these axes, but the exact count of grid cells spanning that distance can vary by a small degree.

(For those who want to get technical, the counting works like this: a step along an axis is counted as one unit long, while a step along a diagonal is counted as about 1.4 units long (the length of the hypotenuse formed by the two sides of the square (sqrt(2)).)

A unit's melee reach includes the spaces adjacent to their sides and front, including the forward diagonal spaces. So, technically, the units in Tactics have a slightly longer reach than the tabletop, but this more closely approximates the relationships of the tabletop game's circular bases to each other.

All statistics in WARMACHINE Tactics are displayed in a "Star System"; a ranking from 0 to 5 stars. Zero stars indicates an abysmal rating, where a 5 stars ranking represents the best raw value in the game.
These Star Ratings are directly derived from the tabletop stat ratings.
Note that stats can be boosted beyond 5 stars, for those times when you really want to crush your opponent.

Point values have been doubled from those you might be familiar with on the tabletop. With every warrior unit becoming a solo, the additional granularity provided more vectors for balance. Squads are 50 points, plus your warcaster’s warjack points.

In the tabletop, Warrior units are purchased in large squads of sometimes dozens of individual characters. Unfortunately, technical constraints limit the number of characters we can draw on the screen. Having fewer characters made it necessary to make the Warrior units in Tactics much tougher and act more like solos.

All Warrior units have a pool of health. This makes them able to withstand a few rifle shots or sword blows. One good hit from a Warjack, though, is usually enough to put them down.

Each Warrior unit is moved individually, anywhere the battle takes them. They do not have to stay in formation.

You'll notice that the Warrior units in Tactics have one or more new abilities not found on the table-top. These abilities keep the theme and spirit of the unit while increasing their strategic options in battle.

Since Warrior units do not have to be grouped into squads, they are effectively Solos. This means that when a spell is cast on them, it affects only the individual unit.

Warrior units are not influenced by a Commander, and thus will not break due to a loss of morale.

Any unit, regardless of their type, can participate in a Combined Ranged or Melee Attack, so long as they have that ability. This would allow your Winter Guard and your Iron Fang Pikemen to make a Combined Melee Attack on a target together, with the resulting bonus to hit and damage.

Special Unit Attachments, like Weapon Attachments, are now treated like new Warrior Types. They each have new abilities or weaponry, and can be purchased and added to your squad just like any other unit.

With Warriors becoming tougher, Warjacks also went through a slight change to keep them the awesome machines of destruction they should be.

Warjacks no longer have Systems, and as a result, cannot be crippled by damage. A Warjack is just as strong on their last hit point as their first.

All the tabletop Power Attacks are faithfully represented in Tactics - except for Weapon and Head Locks.

The way weapons and spells inflict damage has been modified to give slightly more predictable results.

Damage is now static value, based on the POW of the attack.

Any critical hit now yields additional damage for the attack. This makes critical hits important, even without a special weapon quality.

A unit’s ARM stat directly reduces the incoming damage amount. An ARM of 2 reduces incoming damage by 2.

Cygnar players take note! Disruption has changed slightly. Instead of disrupting ALL the focus that can be allocated to a Warjack, in Tactics, Disruption only hinders focus allocation by 1 point. However, this effect can stack. This means that one hit with Disruption causes a warjack to lose one focus allocation next round. On the second Disruption hit, that warjack now loses two focus allocation next round. Warjacks suffering from a single point of Disruption are no longer able to channel spells.

Unlike the tabletop, you must have a valid target in order to perform an attack. When firing a weapon with AOE, a target must be within weapon range. AOE shots will still deviate, but you can't intentionally be out of range and hope the deviation will hit an enemy.