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Alright, so I'm looking at all the warmachine/horde factions and I have no bloody clue how each play. Anyone care to fill me in?

You can get the Warmachine rules (simple version) here

Essentially the game boils down to your general (A warcaster for Warmachine or a warlock for hordes). Your general is the center of your army. Basically if he dies, you lose! In Warmachine your warcaster allows you to power up large steam powered robots called Warjacks. The warlock does something similar for warbeasts in hordes. On top of this you have infantry, cavalry and random oddball stuff like mechanics or snipers.
Each warcaster has his/her own set of abilities such as increasing a unit's armour or speed and one special ability called a Feat. The Feat can only be used once per game and is usually a game winner if you activate it at the right time. Units often have their own unique abilities, such as being able to perform special manouvers or even cast some spells. Trying to find good combos is an important part of the game though some factions are better at this than others.

Each faction has a different play style which is further modified by your choice of warcaster which usually come in Shooty, Fighty and Spell-Casty varieties.

As for the factions, in Warmachine there are 6 factions. (The comments from here on are my opinion based on games played, though I haven't played that many).
Cryx - Big gribbly nasties. Lots of undead and soul eating monsters. Their 'jacks are very quick and nimble.
Khador - Big, slow and hit like a freight train. Their 'jacks are walking mountains of steel and about as fast.
Menoth - They like purging stuff with fire and buffing their own units with a lot of synergistic abilities. Their warjacks seem about average from what I have faced.
Cygnar - Quite shooty and lots of cool lightning cannons. Their 'jacks seem to be good at everything.
Retribution - Lots of funky abilities. Their 'jacks all have force shields which is pretty cool.
Mercenaries - Very varied. I've never actually seen them played as a separate faction.

I know very little about the hordes factions. Sorry.

Very, very broadly:

For Warmachine:

Cygnar is the most "balanced" faction, pretty good at most things with nice solid warjacks. They have a reputation as the "shooty" faction, but it's probably more correct to say they're best at a combined arms force - it's really hard to win a Warmahordes game by shooting alone. Their element is electricity, and you will learn to love painting glowy blue effects with 'em.

Khador is the "beatstick" faction, with very well-armored, very hard-hitting 'jacks and troops - small, elite forces are the name of the game. Get up, get stuck in. Their element is cold.

Menoth is the "buff" faction - they're all about the synergy, and they tend to do it very well (to follow up on Primarch's comment above - their 'jacks are, in fact, pretty bad as-is, but can get very killy indeed with the right buffs). Their element is fire, too, so they get lots of explosions and flame throwers and what-not.

Cryx is the "debuff" faction. They're relatively speedy and hard-hitting, but tend to have armor on the low side. Lots and lots of denial effects, plus masses of cheap undead troops (which sometimes explode). Their element is acid. Lots of green glowy bits. Woo, scary!

For Hordes:

Some folks try to shoehorn a given Hordes faction into a single Warmachine faction's role, but actually it's rarely that simple.

Trollbloods are sort of "Khador + Menoth" - tough, slow-moving, hard-to-kill units and beasts that tend to rely on buffs to realize their full offensive potential. They're the only Hordes faction with gunpowder, too, and have some fair-to-middling shooting.

The Legion of Everblight is almost anti-Menoth - very little synergy at all. Very fast, alpha-strike assassination tactics are their classic strategy. Background-wise, they have certain links with Cryx, and there are similarities in their units as well, especially the "high damage, low armor" bit. They also ignore the most rules of any faction.

The Circle Orboros is all about movement, with highly mobile units and good ability to deny enemies movement. Taken individually, their beasts and units can neither take nor deal a whole lot of damage, but they can set traps to fight the enemy on their own terms.

Skorne are slow-moving, well-armored debuffers, the most "military" of the Hordes factions that will put you in a world of hurt once they get into hand-to-hand - many of their abilities and debuffs center around pain, even.

As a relative newbie, here's my take on it:

Hordes: dunno - only ever played one game, and that was against Everblight. ToD kinda ran em at me in a "raaaargh" kinda way, and I kinda pulled a stealth maneovre thingy and befuddled those poor excuses for dragon worshippers into a hole in the ground.

Warmachine: Only played against a few factions, but have read all the faction books.

Cygnar: shooty, and kinda spelly. Balanced. They strike me as the ultramarines of Warmachine, but only cos theyre blue, most likely

Menoth: Burn!!!!!! Menoth love their fire (when applied to heretics, burning of). And chainsaws. Menoth are pretty damn hurty, up close. They also shut down spellcasters well.

Scyrah: Fancy doodah weapons and stuff. Never played against em. Their warjacks get energy shields. big girls' blouses that they are...

Khador: stomp. Hard as a steel bucket full of nails, with a cannon ball in the middle. Honking huge great warjacks, blokes with guns all over the place. The shooty, tough army. Think Dwarves and you wouldnt be far off, i reckon.

Mercs: bit of a mixed bag, really. Never played against em.

Cryx: The cool faction Obviously, this is the one I know best. Cryx can be quite varied, actually. Your options are:

undead horde. Use a warcaster that can sac his own troops for power boosts, and supply him with large units of cannon fodder to chew on. Also useful for just throwing at the enemy.

Slinky: you can take lots of stealth units or ethereal units. (this means theyre either hard to shoot, or impossible to shoot, btw). Also potentially lots of magic stuff. I like this build.

Stinky: zombie pus horde. Think nurgle, but more explosive. I like this build, too.

Or, you can go elite, and take some really pretty damn dangerous H2H units and just go for the throat.

tbh, the big thing with WarmaHordes is your warcaster. Which warcaster you choose really does determine how your army plays. The options i listed for Cryx could probably be applied to otehr armies too, given the right caster. Thats what makes it such a fun game. You can buy a couple of casters, and have freedom to play around with totally different army builds.

Probably not the most useful post in the world, but hopefully I helped a wee bit. You could look here for some more detailed ideas.
http://battlecollege.wikispaces.com/

Thanks that gives me a much better idea of what is what.

Tactics wise looks like Menoth, Khador or Legion of Everblight would be my top choices. Now I just need to play a few games.

Something to consider, if you're the type who considers such things in army choice, is that Menoth is very well-represented in the local meta-game.

I've also been pondering a faction shift, and could probably be persuaded to part with my Everblight force if you were interested (after playing a few games, of course).

That might be a real possibility. We'll have to see

Colonel Voss wrote:Thanks that gives me a much better idea of what is what.

Tactics wise looks like Menoth, Khador or Legion of Everblight would be my top choices. Now I just need to play a few games.

Khador ROCK. At least, I think they do. 10 games, 8 wins, 2 losses. The first was to M_i_J's Cryx in our first ever game of Warmahordes. The second was to Underdweller's Menoth where she managed to buff up all her units to the point of making them unkillable.
Warmahordes is a very tough game to get a draw in.

Vossy - play a few games with the same faction under a different caster, just to see how it shifts the dynamic. Itd be a shame if you picked a faction based on a few games with teh same caster then discovered that most of that factions casters are completely different.

I'll be taking this slow. I just did a wayland order for FoW and some GW stuff, so I won't be investing anytime soon.