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First off, Legion is usually a beast heavy faction so make sure you are ok with running a smaller number of heavier hitters rather than a horde of infantry (they have some infantry heavy builds/casters, but beast heavy lists are far more common).

Legion are generally rated as one of the top 3 factions in the game (them and Cryx are the two names which regularly mentioned as 'top' factions) largely on the strengths of their beasts. Their main advantage if that they can largely ignore a number of common rules - all their beasts have Pathfinder so they aren't slowed by terrain and they have Eyeless Sight, which means they can see Stealth models and see through Forests and clouds. This second ability means that Legion often skews towards ranged beasts and they can compete with Cygnar as one of the strongest shooting armies in the game, but they still have plenty of melee options (this largely depends on the caster).

I certainly wouldn't call Legion beasts pillow fisted - obviously shooting based beasts like the Ravagore aren't going to maul a heavy jack to death in melee, but the Scythean and Carnivean are both very capable melee beasts (and most of their casters have access to either a POW buff or an ARM debuff) and the Angelius is great hit and run heavy hitter with the Armour Pierce attack. Their beasts are definitely on the squishy side though - Angelius can die to two good hits from a heavy jack/beast (if they can hit of course) and without some form of buff (which can be stripped off) the tougher beasts aren't much better off.

If you are just starting off then you get pLylyth in the Battlebox (who is a shooty but fairly well rounded caster) and I would probably pick up one of the Thagrosh's (who is more melee focused) or Vayl's (who is more of a spell slinger) to give you some variation. On top of the battlebox the first thing you need to get is some fury management solos (because even without adding anything to the battlebox you have more beasts than your caster can handle properly) - either Sheperds or Forsaken. Then look at adding another heavy (Angelius would be my suggestion) and then maybe a unit.

Legion's actually not at all Pillow fisted.

They're Glass cannons actually. Beasts are relatively fragile with only average armor and defense, relying heavily on animi to keep them alive, but they are fast and hit like a freight train.

They also have two of the three best special rules in the game on all their heavies. Pathfinder and Eyeless Sight basically means they pretty much ignore terrain. Leading to their half-joking nickname "Legion of Everbroke"

And the heavies which don't have Pathfinder have Flight instead, which also ignores terrain and lets you fly over models.

Powerguy wrote:
First off, Legion is usually a beast heavy faction so make sure you are ok with running a smaller number of heavier hitters rather than a horde of infantry (they have some infantry heavy builds/casters, but beast heavy lists are far more common).

Legion are generally rated as one of the top 3 factions in the game (them and Cryx are the two names which regularly mentioned as 'top' factions) largely on the strengths of their beasts. Their main advantage if that they can largely ignore a number of common rules - all their beasts have Pathfinder so they aren't slowed by terrain and they have Eyeless Sight, which means they can see Stealth models and see through Forests and clouds. This second ability means that Legion often skews towards ranged beasts and they can compete with Cygnar as one of the strongest shooting armies in the game, but they still have plenty of melee options (this largely depends on the caster).

I certainly wouldn't call Legion beasts pillow fisted - obviously shooting based beasts like the Ravagore aren't going to maul a heavy jack to death in melee, but the Scythean and Carnivean are both very capable melee beasts (and most of their casters have access to either a POW buff or an ARM debuff) and the Angelius is great hit and run heavy hitter with the Armour Pierce attack. Their beasts are definitely on the squishy side though - Angelius can die to two good hits from a heavy jack/beast (if they can hit of course) and without some form of buff (which can be stripped off) the tougher beasts aren't much better off.

If you are just starting off then you get pLylyth in the Battlebox (who is a shooty but fairly well rounded caster) and I would probably pick up one of the Thagrosh's (who is more melee focused) or Vayl's (who is more of a spell slinger) to give you some variation. On top of the battlebox the first thing you need to get is some fury management solos (because even without adding anything to the battlebox you have more beasts than your caster can handle properly) - either Sheperds or Forsaken. Then look at adding another heavy (Angelius would be my suggestion) and then maybe a unit.

Thanks dude!

I just picked up the two player box today and I'm giving the circle models to a friend.

I'm definitely interested in the glass cannon ranged army part, so I guess I should pick up Vayls?

Legion can dish out damage like few others. I always struggle against them more than anyone else.

Vayle is one of their top tier casters. Along with eLilyth, Thagrosh(both versions), and Abby.

eLilyth is their ranged caster though. Vayle is a general support/magic caster.

Just played my first two 20 point games. Won both of them on assassination after what I felt like was clever play, but was very likely just my opponent letting me win my first games :3

Anyway, I enjoyed it a ton!


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Also how do I know which one is Lilyth, eLilyth and what's the 3rd one even called?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Vayle is one of their top tier casters. Along with eLilyth, Thagrosh(both versions), and Abby.

eLilyth is their ranged caster though. Vayle is a general support/magic caster.

So Vayle you shoot stuff with your gun, then use that to fire offensive spells at their Warlocks? That's nifty.

Legion's actually not at all Pillow fisted.

It's all relative. My 3 factions are generally pretty spanky:

1) Cryx: A caster dishing out 15 POW 20 (Effectively) attacks that auto hit after the first.

2) Khador: Caster dishing out up to 13 MAT9 POW16 weaponmaster attacks by himself on feat turn.

3) Skorne: Free solo from a destroyed solo dishing out 4 attacks at MAT8+4D6 at POW14+4D6, the first of which is a thresher.


So, Legion seems kinda pillow fisted compared to that. But catching the Legion beasties is another issue....



Gaz

If for Cryx you are referring to pLiche then the +5 bonus can be applied to anyone really. And if he is casting/upkeeping those then that is fewer attacks for him.

Overall though you can come up with extremes for all factions. That is kind of how warmachine rolls. You can do the same with Legion.

But I agree with those that say Legion is not pillowfisted as a faction. Some models may be, but again, all factions can say that.

Gazzor wrote:

Legion's actually not at all Pillow fisted.

It's all relative. My 3 factions are generally pretty spanky:
1) Cryx: A caster dishing out 15 POW 20 (Effectively) attacks that auto hit after the first.
2) Khador: Caster dishing out up to 13 MAT9 POW16 weaponmaster attacks by himself on feat turn.
3) Skorne: Free solo from a destroyed solo dishing out 4 attacks at MAT8+4D6 at POW14+4D6, the first of which is a thresher.
So, Legion seems kinda pillow fisted compared to that. But catching the Legion beasties is another issue....
Gaz

Generally 'pillow fisted' is used when talking about jacks or beasts, not casters (or infantry for that matter). A heavy jack with less than (unbuffed) POW16 generally falls into this category imo - generally you want a heavy jack to be able to at the very least cripple another heavy if you give it a full focus load, and POW16 against ARM 19 or higher is unreliable damage at best.

Any caster with a weapon can usually punch pretty hard, imo you can broadly separate casters into melee monsters (3Butcher being the obvious one, but melee assasin casters like Garryth also fit in here), allrounders (i.e Rayvn - usually stuff with MAT and RAT 7 with both a gun and melee weapon) and support casters (who usually are spell slingers and can sometimes not have a weapon at all). The damage output of infantry is usually defined by their special rules (Weaponmaster, Berserk etc).

@Stoffer. Yeah most battle box games are going to end with assassination, scenarios only really become worth using above 25pts imo.
If someone refers to a caster with no prefix i.e just Lylyth (or occassional they get called Prime/pLylyth or Lylyth 1) they mean the original version of the caster found in Prime or the Faction book (so http://battlecollege.wikispaces.com/mkiiLylyth in this case)
If someone refers to a caster with and an 'e' prefix i.e Epic Lylyth aka eLylyth (or occasionally they get called Lylyth 2) they mean the epic version of the caster - they will be found in one of the expansion books (Wrath, Colossals etc).
If someone refers to a caster with a '3' prefix (or suffix) then that caster has two 'epic' versions. Often if a caster has two epic version then the third version is either mounted or a battle engine. All 2-3 versions of a caster will have the same basic name, but usually have additional titles (i.e Lylyth 1 is Herald of Everblight, Lylyth 2 is Shadow of Everblight) - casters going epic represents them have significant character development in the fluff.

 Stoffer wrote:

Also how do I know which one is Lilyth, eLilyth and what's the 3rd one even called?

Lylyth or pLylyth is the one that comes in the Legion battle box.
The 3rd one is called Lylyth 3 (or Trylyth, but not on the official forums) and is the one that comes in a sled pulled by reindeer...
eLylyth is the one that is neither of the previous.

Gazzor wrote:

Legion's actually not at all Pillow fisted.

It's all relative. My 3 factions are generally pretty spanky:

1) Cryx: A caster dishing out 15 POW 20 (Effectively) attacks that auto hit after the first.

2) Khador: Caster dishing out up to 13 MAT9 POW16 weaponmaster attacks by himself on feat turn.

3) Skorne: Free solo from a destroyed solo dishing out 4 attacks at MAT8+4D6 at POW14+4D6, the first of which is a thresher.


So, Legion seems kinda pillow fisted compared to that. But catching the Legion beasties is another issue....

Gaz

You don't look at single models when you say a faction is Pillow Fisted or not. You look at them overall. And thats Beasts for Legion.

And seriously? You're using the Kovaas as the example for Skorne? Not the Bronzeback or Molik Karn?

You don't look at single models when you say a faction is Pillow Fisted or not. You look at them overall. And thats Beasts for Legion.

I was just giving some examples, noit listing all 50+ applicable models.

I'd say as a rule that those factions can hit harder than Legion, but Legion has dirty rules, so they're still really good.

I had a game the other night where a Titan Sentry trashed a Ret jack with his 3 initials and 1 bought attack. A legion beast might take a couple more attacks, but the jack would be just as dead, so maybe there's such a thing as excessive force?


Gaz

Well thats a bit of a bad example because Skorne hits harder than anyone and Ret jacks are as squishy as they come.

Gazzor wrote:

You don't look at single models when you say a faction is Pillow Fisted or not. You look at them overall. And thats Beasts for Legion.

I was just giving some examples, noit listing all 50+ applicable models.

I'd say as a rule that those factions can hit harder than Legion, but Legion has dirty rules, so they're still really good.

I had a game the other night where a Titan Sentry trashed a Ret jack with his 3 initials and 1 bought attack. A legion beast might take a couple more attacks, but the jack would be just as dead, so maybe there's such a thing as excessive force?


Gaz

To be fair though the way Fury works a Heavy Warbeast is much more likely to wreck a Warjack if it gets the charge, because there's a lot of tools that let you charge without spending Fury (more than what let you charge without using Focus, and that itself uses Focus from the Warcaster in 99% of situations), and most of them have at least two attacks and sometimes more, and on top of that you can just pump Fury into them with basically zero repercussions to get more attacks.

Fury, by design, is a much more aggressive resource than Focus

Jacks of course tend to have higher P+S on their weapons than beasts do, with a few exceptions.

A heavy jack with P+S16 would be pillow fisted while that is decidedly average for a heavy beast. Jacks tend to average around 17-18 while beasts average around 16-17.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well thats a bit of a bad example because Skorne hits harder than anyone and Ret jacks are as squishy as they come.

Surprisingly Ret jacks are actually pretty similar to Cygnar or Menoth jacks in terms of resistance to system loss, they actual come out ahead when facing a lower number of high strength attacks. The issue is that all 3 of these get compared to Khador jacks, who are a step above everyone else in terms of durability. I would say Cryx has the squishiest Jacks, they have higher than average DEF but crumple if you land a hit. Of course they are usually just cheap expendable arc nodes anyway.

But yeah a Skorne Titan killing any heavy jack isn't really surprising, most heavy jacks will die in a single round to a heavy warbeast (and vice versa, but oddly a heavy jack won't always one round another heavy jack) and Skorne have the hardest hitting heavies around.

It depends. I would actually say that Cryx jacks are a little less squishy because of the high defense.

Cryx and Ret have roughly similar amounts of boxes if you count force fields. In which case the higher defense wins.

Ret jack Defense isn't high enough to matter, and their armor is only average.

Defense is a funny stat. You need to hit 13 before the curve begins to swing in a way that matters. Cryx jacks are at the 13 mark so they've got that in their favor. Defense is also better than extra boxes.

I actually was kinda shocked the first time I realized Ret lights were def 12. The Menoth Devout based Lights are 13 for crying out loud.

I guess it really depends on your faction. As a Ret player myself I find Cryx jacks really squishy, because hitting them with Strike Force just makes them go away (and we have more accuracy buffs than damage buffs). I guess the main point I was trying to make there was that Cryx barely use heavies (other than Deathjack), and obviously their lights are fairly easy to kill (mostly because they are light jacks...).

Ret lights have more boxes than average I guess, and the ones that do get used have additional forms of defence - the Griffon is ARM18 (usually with Circular Vision from eVyros) and the Chimera has Apparition. The Aspis is very rarely used (but is a very good Shield Guard) and the Gorgon is one of the worst jacks in the game. You hit the main point though, Ret only has a single 'pattern' of lights at the moment all based off the same chassis. I wouldn't be surprised if the next pattern we get (which are widely rumoured to be in the next expansion book) is DEF13 base.

Cryx doesn't use heavies besides DJ much because their casters are rather focus greedy and don't want to give it to jacks when they could be casting.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Cryx doesn't use heavies besides DJ much because their casters are rather focus greedy and don't want to give it to jacks when they could be casting.

In theory. However dual Harrower lists or Leviathan with Aikos lists are becoming more popular to combat the high def mitigation of template weapons and electro leap.

Cryx bonejack arcnodes do have a surprisingly nice systems layout. You pretty much have to kill them entirely to take them out.

Also DEF 15 means that you have to have elite, dedicated units to take them out. Also making them very difficult to take out. And since they usually stay at range until needed, cover and concealment also help out against shooting which is about the only way to take them out before they are used.

Though ARM 14 means that anything that does hit them will probably tear them apart and taking out all their boxes is much easier. Though it is high enough to protect them from most AOEs.

So yeah, they may be squishy in that they have low boxes and ARM, but they are one of the hardest jacks to take out.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Jacks of course tend to have higher P+S on their weapons than beasts do, with a few exceptions.

A heavy jack with P+S16 would be pillow fisted while that is decidedly average for a heavy beast. Jacks tend to average around 17-18 while beasts average around 16-17.

You won't typically run a jack full of focus, but beasts can boost or buy attacks every turn with proper fury management (something LoE does pretty well).

In general

Beasts are stronger and more effective than Jacks (but Jack's are cheaper)
Warmachine Infantry are stronger or cheaper than Hordes Infantry

Plenty of exceptions exist, but that is a good rule of thumb

As far as Legion being pillow fisted, honestly they technically are

Considering they probably have the lowest damage beasts post buffs

Things like Gorax and Beast Handlers push beasts into insane levels, and Legion kinda of lack those guys...

However, Legion has a TON of advantages such as superior beast shooting and crazy mobility advantages and natural rules. Not to mention very strong casters with very strong feats!

Legion is one of the stronger factions, but I would not place them in the top 3. I feel Cryx, Cygnar, Khador and Menoth are all superior. Circle are arguable their equal too, even if Legion is especially difficult for Circle. Also those listed might be superior but I do not feel like it is by much.

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Jacks of course tend to have higher P+S on their weapons than beasts do, with a few exceptions.

A heavy jack with P+S16 would be pillow fisted while that is decidedly average for a heavy beast. Jacks tend to average around 17-18 while beasts average around 16-17.

You won't typically run a jack full of focus, but beasts can boost or buy attacks every turn with proper fury management (something LoE does pretty well).

You will on a turn you expect to make it into melee.

But even with that, beasts do have the option of going all out at any time while jacks don't.