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Hey all,

I'm new to Warmachine, but my friends and I are going to get into it and we've each picked a faction to play as. I've picked Khador, mostly because I like their models the most. I've heard, however, that Khador Jacks are fairly terrible but that their infantry is quite good. I'm looking to start working on a list - does anyone have any units they swear by? I've been looking through Prime MK2 and I'm considering Sorscha for my war caster, and Widowmakers seem quite good.

Hello! Welcome to Khador, your Juggernaut plushie is on the right and your axe is on the left.

Which Sorscha are you running? I'm assuming that since you've been reading Prime that you are looking at Sorscha1 (or pSorcha) as opposed to e Sorscha (or Sorscha2) as they both play a little differently.

Widowmakers are a very good unit, and so are Iron Fangs and both Winter Guard units. From there you look at support, such as Kovnik Joe and the Iron Fang Kovnik. From there on it depends, but most of our units are decent in the right circumstances.

Ok, first off. Khador jacks are not terrible. They're actually very good. The issue is their warcasters are very selfish and don't have much focus to give them, and what focus they have is buffing infantry. So you'll take 1 jack in 90% of your lists, and there are a few options for that jack.

Khador is an infantry faction due to their warcasters being focused around buffing units, and them having some very very good infantry.

The usual jack choices are as follows,

Spriggan: This is the most common non-character choice. Solid all around jack, hits like a truck, durable, and its got some good shooting and utility in its Flare shot.
Beast-09: All around beatstick character. Fast and munches infantry.
Ruin: Very similar to Beast-09 but in a different way, you run this guy with the Butcher if thats an option to gain his Affinity(Boundless Charge). With Butcher he basically runs himself, as long as he can collect souls. And you can fill him up for the equivalent of 6 focus(3 focus and 3 souls). Doesn't hit as hard as some of the other characters though. You can easily have a game where he never receives a focus from your warcaster.
Behemoth: Dedicated armor cracking. Very focus hungry, but if he touches something it will die. He also has some decent shooting too, and can make both ranged and melee attacks at the same time. Very expensive.
Demolisher/Devastator: Purely a defensive jack. This guy just basically sits around and doesn't die. Bulldoze is also a good scenario tool that situationally will be brilliant. Has very little in the way of actual offensive power though, its fists are quite poor for a heavy. They can kill swathes of infantry if they have to, but it leaves them vulnerable for a turn.

The following infantry modules are pretty standard in Khador.

Winterguard Deathstar: Max Winterguard Infantry with UA and Rocketeers. Kovnik Joe. Kovnik Joe gives the Winterguard a buff and they kill stuff. Between CRA, sprays, and rockets, they are a very versatile unit.
Alt Winterguard Deathstar: As above, but Winterguard Rifle Korps instead of Infantry. This is a more shooting orientated unit as they have no real melee potential, but much longer ranged and better shooting.
Ironfang block: Usually a unit of Black Dragon Ironfang Pikeman(Ironfangs with Black Dragon UA) and an Ironfang Kovnik. The Kovnik gives them shield march, which lets them move faster in Shield Wall. The Ironfangs then just rely on their innate abilities, shield wall, CMA, and having good melee stats to begin with. Because the Black Dragon UA and Kovnik's FAs are both 2, you can actually run this module twice in the same list.
Widowmakers: Widowmaker unit and a Widowmaker Marksman solo. A cheap and effective spot removal module. They basically camp somewhere and shoot stuff. Simple and effective.

Thanks for the responses! I've had some mort thoughts about my list and come up with a few ideas:

Welshhoppo, I was planning on running the standard Sorcscha, potentially. Also, I've been having a look at the Forces book for Khador and noticed some things. So, one of my friends is going to be running a lot of Cryx and I gather that a vast majority of their units have corrosive weapons. Therefore, it seems prudent to take Assault Kommandos, for their immunity to corrosive damage and shield wall ability, as a good anti-infantry option. They seem like a very durable unit, and quite vicious if buffed by Sarkhov's abilities. Also, what are Marauders like? On paper they seem fantastic for jack-busting, but I hear mixed reviews.

Really the only Corrosion you'll see in a Cryx list is Bile Thralls and the occasional spell. That said, Bile Thralls are freaking nuts. But thats a very specific counter to take an otherwise meh unit for.

Assault Kommandos are only good if you only run into Cryx and Menoth and only if you play Vlad, they don't hit very well and when they do hit, it's not very hard.

Maeauders are one of the Dark horses of Khador.

They are very good for a Slam on Demand, but slams are situational. They may will you a game in ten, but the rest of the time they don't do that much.

If you are running pSorscha, I'd say look at Beast 09, or Behemoth. Double boosted bombards on the feat turn quite easily kill a few casters.

Thoughts on Strahkov as a Warcaster?

B-

Not for inexperienced players to tackle.

welshhoppo wrote:Hello! Welcome to Khador, your Juggernaut plushie is on the right and your axe is on the left.

I have to complain about this! I got a Kodiak plushie and I feel cheated!

Crystal Geyser wrote:Thoughts on Strahkov as a Warcaster?

He is good, but you need to learn a bit more about the game in general. I say start with Sorsha. Sorsha 1 (Kommander Sorscha) and Sorsha 2 (Forward Kommander Sorscha) are both similar, but are both very good casters to start with. Have a lot of utility and a lot of infintry buffs that are fantastic to use. Strahkov is actually a good caster, I prefer Sorscha and many others prefer Butcher but he does his own thing from them. While he makes Kommandos better by giving them Pathfinder, but Sorscha 2 can give a bonus to the far more flexible and fantastic Winter Guard.

Crystal Geyser wrote:Thanks for the responses! I've had some mort thoughts about my list and come up with a few ideas:

Welshhoppo, I was planning on running the standard Sorcscha, potentially. Also, I've been having a look at the Forces book for Khador and noticed some things. So, one of my friends is going to be running a lot of Cryx and I gather that a vast majority of their units have corrosive weapons. Therefore, it seems prudent to take Assault Kommandos, for their immunity to corrosive damage and shield wall ability, as a good anti-infantry option. They seem like a very durable unit, and quite vicious if buffed by Sarkhov's abilities. Also, what are Marauders like? On paper they seem fantastic for jack-busting, but I hear mixed reviews.

Don't use the Kommandos when you start. They are good, but a little over costed for what they have. The Winter Guard Infantry have a great mix of shooting and melee when supported properly, the Ironfangs can be more of a brick and melee powerhouse, and both are more reasonably costed point wise. Also, don't worry about corrosion, it's not super common. The most common elemental effect seems to be fire in my experience, thanks Menoth ! Don't get me wrong, they can work well in an army, but not when starting out.

As far as the marauder goes, I don't have one, so all advice is from seeing it on paper. It seems okay Combo Smite is neat, allowing you to shove a target away is useful, but you sacrifice your attacks to do it. It has Khador Jack armor, so it's reasonably high, and the Ram Pistons are decent punchy weapons. I would however recommend the Spirggen. I don't like to be the guy who says "No, that's garbage use this thing I like instead because I am right!" but hear me out. The Spriggen has a reach weapon that is at a higher POW than the Marauder and you gain a bonus on attack rolls from a charge with it which is awesome, a shield arm which is only a couple points of POW lower than Ram Pistons, and you have higher armor with the shield involved, and the shooting gives you moderate POW blast weapons to shoot out, or flares to eliminate Stealth and Camouflage which is a big deal. It also has Bulldoze to shove models before you start the slaughter and whatnot. It is however a few more points costlier than the Marauder.

Marauder:

Pros:
Tied for cheapest in-faction base ARM20 warjack with the Juggernaut.
Combo Smite is POW20, and requires no focus to use. Boosted POW20 is nothing to sneeze at.
Combo Smite does not require that you slam the target in the direction you moved. (This is very important as you can rotate at the end of your movement and combo slam in any direction, potentially resulting in multiple knockdowns!)

Cons:
Combo Smite requires both arms to be operational.
Piston Ram power on its own is lacklustre compared to other in-faction warjack melee weapons.
Lack of open fist limits its flexibility.

Intangibles:
Because of how fiddly the Marauder is to use, he is often a low target priority for the enemy!

Few other side notes:

1. The destroyer included in the starter box is best eventually converted to Black Ivan. The destroyer is unfortunately one of the less used warjacks. PP has greatly overvalued its shooting attack in MK2and its melee ability is somewhat diminished from its original MK1 incarnation. For only 1 point more, Black Ivan gives a lot of bonuses.

2. Despite what everyone has said about the Spriggan, it is a lot of points (ditto with Behemoth, Ruin, Beast 09). While it is supremely flexible, it is NOT significantly more durable than the usual Khador warjacks. I'd get comfortable with the base set warjacks to get an idea of how much punishment they can take before moving on to the specialist jacks.

3. Clamjacks. The two clam jacks have open fists. This is often overlooked and makes them very flexible (although they have to sacrifice their armor for a turn in order to use fist attacks). I'd suggest you try out all the power attacks with the box set warjacks. They are often situational, but don't forget that you have them.


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Regarding infantry:

The standard infantry MAT/RAT in the game is 5-6 (7+ for elites typically)
The standard POW of infantry attacks in the game is 10.

Since 7 is the most common outcome on 2D6 - comparing these to the standard MAT/RAT and POW bring us to the following:

If your one wound infantry's DEF is <13, and/or your ARM is <17, you have what's considered "victim stats", meaning that your model is very hittable and its armor easily negated.

Infantry ARM generally falls into three bands.
T-Shirts (<ARM12)
Medium ARM (ARM13-16) - OK protection against blasts (Blasts ignore DEF!!!!)
Heavy ARM (ARM17+) - Beginning to reliably stand up to attacks

Its important to note that this all goes out the window when you get charged as the extra D6 usually means your one wound infantry is getting pasted - hence why high DEF is generally (but not always) better than ARM

General rule of thumb is to be aware of this when building up your infantry. Often, specialist infantry will not have substantively better defensive stats than regular infantry. They are more expensive however, as they need to pay for their additional abilities. As such, players often eschew these units for units with better raw defensive stats unless their special abilities are necessary for their game plan. Elite infantry with this problem include the Cygnar Storm Knights DEF12/ARM15, and the Menoth Knights Exemplar DEF12/ARM15. They both hit like trucks but their poor defensive stats means that they are usually badly depleted by the time they can actually reach the enemy.

Example: Base winterguard have terrible stats. Their arm, while not great, affords some protection vs blasts. The unit attachment gives them +2 DEF when advancing which pushes them just north of the terrible defense area, making them substantively more durable.

Example: Ironfangs on their own, have medium ARM, but their shield wall pushes their ARM into the "might survive against enemy attacks" range.>

Thanks for the advice on the warcasters and jacks!
I put together a small 25-point list for the purposes of starting out. Basically it's the contents of the Khador battle group plus a unit of Widowmakers and Iron Fangs.

Kommander Sorscha
Destroyer 9
Juggernaut – 7
6 Iron Fang Pikemen (Leader and 6 grunts) - 5
4 Widowmakers (Leader and 3 grunts) – 4
Total: 25



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thoughts?

You've forgotten to include for Sorscha's warjack points. With the leftover points, you can go a number of different ways.

Shooting units have great synergy with Sorcha due to her ability to reduce defense (and thus, shooting accuracy) via her feat and spells. If you want to further this route, I'd suggest:

+1 Winterguard Mortars are very high powered, long range, inaccurate template weapons.
+1 Widowmaker Marksman, he sports a higher powered rifle than his brethren and can increase their mobility.

If you want more hitting power vs enemy armor, you could always increase your Iron Fangs to the maximum quantity and add their unit attachment instead. Both the regular attachment and the Black Dragons have their advantages, though the Black Dragons are more forgiving to play.

On a completely separate note, I have to echo the comments of others that the Winterguard module exceptionally flexible and cheaply costed. For the price of your full unit of Iron Fangs with attachment, you can take a full unit of Winterguard, their attachment and Kovnik Joe. The full unit can combine to add accuracy their short ranged, but surprisingly hard hitting (POW12 base, POW14 if you pair up) shooting (or melee), gains optional spray attacks and the aforementioned "+2 DEF while advancing. Its a unit that is mediocre at both shooting and melee, but isn't terrible at it either. Once you add the attachment and Kovnik Joe's "tough" buff - it is surprisingly durable.

I'd like to stress that you are free to build however you like! The important part is to have fun and play with models you like. Good hunting komrade!


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A few other thoughts:

As a beginner, you are going to get stomped pretty bad at the start as there are lots of interactions to watch out for. Sorscha herself is a strength and a weak point of your list. She will rarely have focus left for overcharging.

She usually relies on stacking high DEF to prevent death. Her native DEF16 is above average for a warcaster and most things will need to boost to hit her. Anything that adds to this makes her very hard to hit (clouds, concealment for +2, cover for +4 (not stackable with the former), and +4 from windrush).

While it might seem great to just stack up as high as you can go, there are a number of things that ignore DEF. Blast damage ignores defense. Sorscha's ARM is low, so boosting blast damage has the potential to damage her quite a bit.

Another major problem is if she becomes stationary or is knocked down, her defense is essentially 0, so watch out for attacks that knock down (example: pKreoss' feat). A common pitfall is to have high DEF but be standing near something that can be slammed into you, knocking you down.

This doesn't mean to hang back with your caster either, since Khador lacks arc nodes, she has to get in there to do her business! Hope this helps! Good hunting!

Given that I've heard pretty Bad things about the Destroyer in general, is it worth picking up the Battlegroup for? Is it at all likely that I''m going to run two jacks in one list, given how focus hungry they are, or am I better off picking up one heavy jack and magnetizing it so that I can run it as various jacks if needed?

While the destroyer is usually lacklustre in most Khador lists, it is pretty good with Sorscha, so YMMV. Her feat/knockdown/stationary effects fixes its low RAT so you'll be hitting at a boostable POW14 from downtown. Most warcasters not camping focus will be badly injured (dice -1 vs the average ARM15) from even an average roll. In melee, it hits weakly compared to other Khador heavies, but on par with many other faction's heavies.

The Juggernaut on the other hand is just a basic melee beatstick. It is cheap and no frills. It has a very powerful melee attack in its ice axe. Its P+S is very high for a basic warjack and its critical effect is extremely strong.

The extent of magnetizing is entirely up to you. The starter box gives you two "Juggernaut" bodies. This can afford some flexibility considering the following warjacks use this as a base:

Juggernaut, Maurauder, Decimator, Destroyer, Torch, Black Ivan. In particular, the starter box destroyer almost always ends up as Black Ivan and the Decimator parts included in the multipart warjack kit almost always becomes Torch. Some enterprising modelers even convert the plastic Juggernaut to Beast09.

Keep in mind that while Khador typically doesn't run many warjacks - there are atypical lists that will want lots of them. Karchev, Vlad1 and Butcher1 have abilities that improve in efficiency the more warjacks you have... with Karchev and Butcher improving focus efficiency and Vlad1 providing a blanket buff and making them surprisingly fast on his feat turn.

Thanks for the tips! Given your advice, for now I'll hold off on magnetizing and just see how the Destroyer and Juggernaut play out of the starter box with Sorscha.

Given what you've said, it seems that the way to run the Destroyer with Sorscha is to use her spells to disable enemy units, granting a bonus to the Destroyer's RAT? Is it better to use that combination until the Destroyer can get in close to make use of its critical amputation ability, or is it best kept at range bombarding the enemy so that other units like the Jugger can get in close?

With your tips, I've made an updated list below (still 25 points)

Kommander Sorscha (+6 Warjack Points)
2xManhunters (possibly - 4pts not included)
Destroyer - 9
Juggernaut – 7
5 Widowmakers (Marksman, Leader and 3 grunts) – 6
Total: 16/25

I still have nine points to spend - what kind of units have good synergy with these? Im considering a pair of manhunters as a bodyguard/support team for Sorscha in close combat, as they can benefit from her Fog of War spell while within her command zone, giving them +4 Def for a Defense of 18, along with dealing extra damage with Weapon Master. In total, a pair of those would be 4 points, bringing me up to 20. Does anyone have any experience with manhunters?

Then, given that I have the Juggernaut for Armor-cracking melee, Manhunters for hero-killing melee and the Windowmakers for long range, I feel as if I am lacking in anti-infantry options. Suggestions for what to spend those five last points on?

The Destroyer is a ranged piece. Use it to shoot stuff that Sorscha has made stationary, which lowers their Def to 5. Which even the Destroyer hits on anything but snake eyes with its gun.

I think your best options is to play a handful of starter box games to get an idea of how the activation mechanics work. The kind of turn-sequence thinking is very different than a GW game due to the importance on activation order (i.e. remember to buff before axe-to-face). The game does not have many "reactive" actions possible, other than taking free strikes vs. enemies leaving melee. As a consequence, the main thrust of tactical play in WM/H is setting up your own combo while simultaneously hindering (usually by killing main pieces or controlling threat range) of your opponent's combo. This is why many lists contain redundancy - usually not by having duplicate units... (generally, you rarely see spam of WM/H units) - but by having units that can perform a similar role if necessary.

To address your points:

1. Manhunters are cruise missiles. They are fast moving, accurate models with two melee weapon-master (+1 dice) attacks (one for each axe). They have stealth, so attacks from over 5" away will automatically miss, meaning that fog of war only helps them in the 5"-0.5" band. They occupy the crucial "2 point solo" area in the Khador arsenal. They are only good at killing, so often Kommanders will eschew them for something a bit more toolbox. They are very good at killing however. If you have your heart set on axe wielding weapon master woodsmen, you should get Yuri The Axe as he gives them a number of buffs while being quite killy himself.

2. Fog of war grants concealment rather than cover. Concealment only gives +2 DEF. In addition, fog of war grants this to everyone inside Sorscha's CTRL area, even enemies.

3. While using rock vs. scissors works great in this game, you have to remember that your Juggernaut will splatter infantry just as well as anything else. It will be grossly overkill, but it can still do it. Sorscha herself can kill infantry just fine as well, although you'd have to weigh the benefits vs. the risks.

4. I have not used the Destroyer much lately, but I usually use it to fire shots of opportunity. If it stands still for the aiming bonus, and boosts the attack roll, it will usually hit even the highest DEF targets and can be used to remove annoying enemy solos. Even firing blind, the deviation from missed blasts might clip enemy models. With Sorcha, it is quite dangerous on her feat turn firing into knocked down or stationary targets.

5. Sorscha has WJ5, IIRC.

Regarding filling up the points: Just take whatever strikes your fancy. Here are the units you should probably not take right away, as they either require a special build, or are somewhat lacklustre:

1. Man O Wars (any of the squads): The shield guys are super durable, but suffer from having not enough offense, and the other two suffer from having not enough defensive stats relative to their cost. They are also crazy slow. I've only had success using them en-masse in sort of a joke army that wins via attrition, but this is not the usual Khador way.
2. Man O War Kovnik: Has very powerful stats, but his slow speed, limited offense and high points cost makes him a hard sell.
3. Kossites: Have some of the weakest stats in the game, dirt cheap, but require some finesse to use.
4. Assault Kommandos: Have weak defensive stats and middling offensive stats. They have very powerful weapon attachments, but pay through the nose to get them. This unit needs support.
5. Cavalry: Khador cavalry is pretty sweet, especially the outriders. They use additional rules, so I'd suggest not investing in them until you have a better grip on the game rules.
6. Berserker/Mad Dog: These guys require specific builds to benefit their special roles. They are cheap, but their stats are similarly lackluster.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you are a 40k guy, see if your opponents will let you proxy: - This will let you try before you buy.

In addition, if you haven't bought anything yet, the Khador All-In-One army box is an excellent starting point. The included models are all very good and faction staples, so you might want to consider that in your research. eSorscha plays very differently from the starter box one, but she is a none-the-less a potent warcaster. (Easily top-5 in-faction).

Thanks Keezus! I think I'll definitely start with the Battlegroup and experiment around. Our play group is extremely proxy-friendly so thats a great thing.

Maybe run a single unit of Doom Reavers with UA? They gain Tough and you pick when they go berzerk. You have the points, throw them on a flank and run them up. Reason being that anything they hit will disappear in a puff of red haze. Your opponent, if skilled, will know this, and will have to prioritize them. Meaning the rest of your stuff is walking up the field to get in position. And if your opponent doesn't realize what they do and focuses on 'jacks, they have the ability to eat his force. I've seen 4 of them (out of a Butcher Tier army) and the Butcher hit almost a full army and destroy it in a single turn. They're good. But the Tier armies are more advanced, and you're better off getting used to how they work as a single unit in a regular force first. Then go out and buy 3 units of em after.

I always find that a single unit is underwhelming. Because they have big red targets on their faces.


And I've seen people run eight units with Butcher2. It's hilarious.

Stacking DEF is a strong counter to the doomreaver horde. They can't kill what they can't hit. In addition, POW10 kills them fairly reliably.