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So I'm several games into playing my retribution army and I've started to get the hang of it. I'm confused on some of the units and other people's response to them. Some people have mentioned certain units as good or bad, but I don't understand why. Can someone clarify for me or give their opinion as to why?

First is Garryth. Everyone says he is bad which I can kind of understand. But people have suggested vyros to others and he seems to serve a similar roll as garryth. What makes vyros better than garryth?

What makes halberdiers good? A lot of people have suggested them but they don't seem to have good damage or resilience. For a few points more, you can get sentinels.

What makes destros bad? They seem to have good range and 5 wounds each.

Finally, are invictus or riflemen considered the better range shooter?

I know it is a lot to ask but it will really help me better understand the army. Thank you all.

Garryth has a particular play style that rewards patience. The common theme on the PP boards is that Garryth is not an assassination caster but an attrition caster.. In a competative environment with deathclock, this is not always desirable.

Won't comment on pVyros, out of my realm a little

Halberdiers are cheap and shield wall makes them fairly resilient (13/18) compared to DGS at 12/17 with defensive line. Oh and your riflemen behind the Halberdiers can shoot through them.

Riflemen are general considered to the preferred ranged unit for cost and range. Snipe on riflemen for 24" threat.

Destors are expensive for their role. (both in model terms and list building)

 shamroll wrote:

First is Garryth. Everyone says he is bad which I can kind of understand. But people have suggested vyros to others and he seems to serve a similar roll as garryth. What makes vyros better than garryth?

Vyros doesn't serve the same roll as garryth. Both verions of vyros are jack casters (or warcasters that have lots of spells/abilities to support jacks). eVyros pulls this off by having synergy which combined with a bunch of griffons makes for a really competitive list that you see a lot. pVyros you don't see all that much but still supports jacks rather well between all his spells and his feat.

The reason why I would say that both versions of Vyros are better than garryth is that they are casters that are good a what they are meant to do, and garryth isn't. Garryth is a weird control/assassination caster. He isn't really good at either compared to other casters. He may look good at first glance but delivering him to the enemy caster to finish out the game is much easier said than done. Also his feat is really bad, and is rather useless against a lot of hordes lists. Mainly because it doesn't affect fury, vast majority of lists don't use placement effects and no spell casting for a feat is really bad compared to other feats out there.

 shamroll wrote:
What makes halberdiers good? A lot of people have suggested them but they don't seem to have good damage or resilience. For a few points more, you can get sentinels.

The support for halberdiers is what makes them so good. With their UA and houseguard thane they are much faster than sentinels, have better threat range, hit rather hard on the charge with a full unit and the mini feat, and actually are more survivable vs. range due to slightly better arm and def. Also reform is really good. They are one of best units in ret.

 shamroll wrote:
What makes destros bad? They seem to have good range and 5 wounds each.

Because their abilities don't interact with themselves all that well? If you charge to get benefit from the lance rule then you won't be engaging the target for Unyielding afterwards. You have to aim to get dual shot which means you give up all the greater mobility that being a cavalry model gives you. And also there are just MUCH better units in ret. for the same cost honestly.

 shamroll wrote:
Finally, are invictus or riflemen considered the better range shooter?/

Those two units are both good just different. Riflemen are faster, have the longer range every turn, ranked attacks and can see through stealth with the thane. Invictors are more survivable, hit harder and are better in melee. Which one is better depends a lot of the list really.

Ok, I think I understand better.

I kept thinking of Vyros as a front line attacker but not as a Jack support warcaster. I still get stuck in the 40K HQ mindset where the leader can stand up in front and fight. This doesn't apply to warmachines without a great deal of risk.

Halberdiers need to be used as a group to take down opponents and can be used for great threat range and speed. I keep thinking about how they would do against something like a khador jack but with the UA they can still put out some damage.

For the way I play, I would probably prefer the riflemen. Cheaper and longer range to weaken enemies before they get in melee range.

What are good ways for Retribution to deal with Hordes armies? I've had good success so far with the MHSF and Ravyn but they don't seem as effective against a Hordes army. Especially since Jack Hunter doesn't apply to war beast.

 shamroll wrote:

What are good ways for Retribution to deal with Hordes armies? I've had good success so far with the MHSF and Ravyn but they don't seem as effective against a Hordes army. Especially since Jack Hunter doesn't apply to war beast.

A general rule with a warmachine army against hordes is try to concentrate down their warbeasts. A hordes list loses a lot more from a dead warbeast than a warmachine list does from a dead jack. MHSF are still good against hordes, instead of shooting beasts use them to kill the basic infantry that they brought (the ones with one HP). Even against trolls with a lot of their heavy infantry and beasts, MHSF can still hunt the stonebearers rather well. If you either drop the aura from killing the leader or just kill grunts you can shrink it which makes a lot of troll models easier to kill. Beyond that it really depends on what faction your playing against since the hordes factions can play very differently.

shamroll wrote:So I'm several games into playing my retribution army and I've started to get the hang of it. I'm confused on some of the units and other people's response to them. Some people have mentioned certain units as good or bad, but I don't understand why. Can someone clarify for me or give their opinion as to why?

First is Garryth. Everyone says he is bad which I can kind of understand. But people have suggested vyros to others and he seems to serve a similar roll as garryth. What makes vyros better than garryth?

What makes halberdiers good? A lot of people have suggested them but they don't seem to have good damage or resilience. For a few points more, you can get sentinels.

What makes destros bad? They seem to have good range and 5 wounds each.

Finally, are invictus or riflemen considered the better range shooter?

I know it is a lot to ask but it will really help me better understand the army. Thank you all.

Garryth is (in theory) a melee assassin caster - he ignores the defensive tech of warlocks and warcasters and has minimal support spells for his army. The main reason he isn't very good imo is that he doesn't actually do that job well enough - he can very easily fail to kill casters even with all those abilities and since he is made of paper he won't survive against any return attacks if he trips up. It likely that people are suggesting you run eVyros (the one on the horse) as he one of the most common tournament casters for Ret at the moment - he is a jack caster and is incredibly effective at it. He is very popular because his lists are usually very different from other Ret lists - the strength of Ret is their infantry and having two very infantry heavy lists can be a huge problem if you run into certain (common) armies. eVyros lets you bring a huge number of boxes with high ARM and run it effectively.

Halberdiers are far far better than Sentinels, and it mostly comes down to threat range and your ability to deliver them. In terms of damage they are actually pretty similar to Sentinels if you include the UA (which you always should, they are still 2pts less than the full Sentinels package) - they go to MAT8 on the critical turn with the mini feat which means you can reliably hit high DEF (including things like Angelius/Warpwolves) and with POW14's they only average 1-2pts less than a charging Sentinel. If you do the maths for the entire unit you they come out almost the same, the extra damage per Sentinel is balanced out as soon the Halberdiers land one more hit due to their higher MAT. Sentinels are miles ahead in subsequent turns, but infantry very rarely get more than one charge.
What matters is that Halberdiers actually get charges off, while against a good opponent Sentinels are just complete dead weight. DEF12 is very easy to hit with normal MAT/RAT and ARM17 doesn't protect you very well against average POW shooting. DEF13 on the other hand gets you to the point where average RAT infantry will miss about 45% of the time, and Set Defence pushing them to DEF15 is very hard to hitting without boosts. ARM18 still dies to POW12's, but its largely immune to POW10's. If you combine all this with the speed difference you should see the issue with Sentinels - they never get to anything worth attacking. My Halberdiers with Issyria have a charge threat range of 15" (SPD6 + 2" from the Thane + 2" from Crusaders Call + 3" for charge + 2" reach), which is further than many cav units charge and right on the edge of the range which many units can advance and shoot. Sentinels only threaten 12", because good players won't give you Vengeance. That doesn't even factor in Reform, which is an incredibly powerful ability.

Destors are imo contenders for worst unit in the game, they are expensive, fragile and have possibly the most anti synergistic combination of abilities you can get in a single unit. They are a cavalry unit that has high SPD and wants to be mobile, but they only get two shots if they don't move. They have Unyielding, but no reach. Gunfighter but no Virtuoso. For 11pts they do less work than a pair of Destor Thanes (the solos) - in a best case scenario they get 10 RAT8 shots with RNG10 POW12, the Thanes can move and still get than many shots with 1 less RAT and only have 5 less boxes for less less points. Things look even worse if you compare them to any other Ret shooting unit or any other cav unit in the game. Storm Lance are the same points but hit significantly harder, have potentially twice as many attacks (Assault shot + e-leap and Melee attack + e-leap) and have significantly better in faction buffs.

Unlike the Sentinels vs Halberdiers discussion imo their is no clear cut winner for Invictors vs Riflemen as they have different roles. Invictors are expensive elite infantry, they have better RAT and POW and have comparable RNG on the turn you need it. They also fight significantly harder in melee and are marginally tougher to kill. Riflemen are cheaper and trade the POW for longer range, but their key advantage is that with the Houseguard Thane they can shoot Stealthed models, which is a huge deal. If you are bringing a ranged heavy list with no ability to deal with Stealth you will have problems. I've started putting minimum units of Riflemen into many of my lists (which usually already have Halberdiers + Thane) - all they end up doing every turn is doing a single big CRA into an important solo to remove it.

shamroll wrote:Ok, I think I understand better.

I kept thinking of Vyros as a front line attacker but not as a Jack support warcaster. I still get stuck in the 40K HQ mindset where the leader can stand up in front and fight. This doesn't apply to warmachines without a great deal of risk.

Halberdiers need to be used as a group to take down opponents and can be used for great threat range and speed. I keep thinking about how they would do against something like a khador jack but with the UA they can still put out some damage.

For the way I play, I would probably prefer the riflemen. Cheaper and longer range to weaken enemies before they get in melee range.

What are good ways for Retribution to deal with Hordes armies? I've had good success so far with the MHSF and Ravyn but they don't seem as effective against a Hordes army. Especially since Jack Hunter doesn't apply to war beast.

Halberdiers should still do a number on any Khador jack short of a clam jack (with ARM25), but almost nothing in the game can deal with those things directly until they get force them to open up. An entire unit charging an ARM20 jack is either going to kill it or leave it completely crippled.

Ravyn still needs more than just MHSF to kill things anyway - what charges against Hordes is how you use them. If you don't have a way to directly get their beasts dead this turn then your priority should be removing support pieces. Almost all Hordes armies (and most Warmachine armies to be fair) have some form of support units which sit deep that are vital for the list to function. In particular beast support solos/units like Beast Handlers (Skorne) and Shepherds (in Legion) are vital for those armies to keep their beasts under control - snipe them out with the MHSF and they will start running into issues with Frenzying and maintaining their damage output.