This week Will Shick turns over the Convergence blog series to one of the lead developers for the Convergence of Cyriss, David “DC” Carl. DC will be blogging about some of the bigger elements of the faction, starting today with the Convergence battle engine.

The Convergence of Cyriss battle engine is a truly remarkable machine. Our initial discussions about this model established it as something that would be simultaneously exciting and terrifying from a development standpoint. The grand design for this clockwork monstrosity was a wondrous machine capable of using servitor satellites to continually reconfigure its capabilities based on their positions.

The first draft of the model rules was rejected for oversimplifying the interaction between the machine and its servitors, and the second was rejected out of hand for being entirely too complex. After going back to the drawing board a couple of times, we eventually found a great balance between both extremes and began to hammer the battle engine into shape through the playtest process. At different stages, the servitors’ positions have controlled just about every stat you can name on the machine or its weaponry. After a lot of focused testing and many rounds of revision, we finally found a sweet spot both in terms of the machine’s power level and its complexity.

Convergence of Cyriss players should be really excited by these machines, designated Transfinite Emergence Projectors, and their Permutation Servitors. As planned from the start, the position of the Permutation Servitors has a massive impact on how the Transfinite Emergence Projector functions during a game of WARMACHINE, but we chose to limit their configuration rules to the Projector’s weapon. Unadjusted, its aperture pulse is a SP 10 weapon with POW 10 and Auto Fire [2]; not shabby, but also not too impressive by battle engine standards.

So I’m sure many of you are curious about how exactly these servitors work to configure the Transfinite Emergence Projector. Without further ado, I present the Firing Formulae rule: When this model makes a ranged attack with this weapon during its activation, determine the position of the Permutation Servitors this model put into play. For each completely within its left firing arc, this model gains an additional die on its attack rolls. For each completely within its right firing arc, this model gains an additional die on its damage rolls. For each completely within its back arc, this model makes an additional Auto Fire attack.

As you can see, this variable functionality lends the Transfinite Emergence Projector a great deal of flexibility. Need to deal with high-DEF targets? Grab some additional attack dice. Looking to crack some high-ARM targets? Focus your servitors on adding damage. Or do you just need to destroy a lot of fodder troops? Use as many attacks as possible. And then there are all the possible combinations in between. No matter the situation, the aperture pulse weapon on this one battle engine can get the job done in service to the Maiden of Gears.

I suppose there may be a few of you out there who will be disappointed that you won’t need to do non-Euclidean geometry to determine the projector’s DEF and tensor calculus to determine its ARM, but I hope most players will find this to be an elegant implementation of our great machine and its servitor satellites. I know that I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a couple Projectors to add to my Convergence of Cyriss forces.

In addition to seeing Transfinite Emergence Projectors in Forces of WARMACHINE: Convergence of Cyriss or on the gaming table, you can also find these clockwork death engines in the pages of the upcoming Dark Convergence novel from Skull Island eXpeditions. Dark Convergence follows up on the events of The Devil’s Pay, which some of you may have already read, and shows the Cygnaran response to the moves made by Aurora, Numen of Aerogenesis and her Convergence forces, as well as the escalating conflict between these two armies.

–Configured for the Convergence,
DC