Like all WLAF teams, the Machine played American rules football, 11 players per side on a 100-yard-long/53+1⁄3-yard-wide field, rather than Canadian rules football of 12 players per side on a 110-yard-long/65-yard-wide field.

The Machine filled a void created by the folding of the Canadian Football League's Montreal Alouettes in 1987.

The NFL had also played two international preseason games in Montreal in 1988 and 1990 during the Alouettes' absence.

The end of the WLAF's North American operations was soon followed by the CFL commencing its own U.S. expansion experiment, which lasted for three seasons.

The Alouettes had been revived by the owners of the Baltimore Stallions, the most successful of the CFL's American franchises, who upon shuttering their U.S.-based team relocated their football organization to Montreal.