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So I've been playing Warmachine on and off for roughly three months now with my Cygnar and it's been an interesting experience. I have a strong Warmahordes presence at my local gaming store, with my more frequent opponents being Khador and Cyrx. With Christmas coming up in a month I've been thinking about what my Cygnar army could use.

One of the things I've noticed most often in my games with Khador is the punishment my Cygnar units receive from Winter Guard Mortars and AOE. Even with the high defense of my Gun Mages and B13, it seems like the templates almost always scatter into my Stormnouns or Gun Mages so I'm typically removing much of my army before I can get more than a turn of shooting. Using Seige's Foxhole ability helps this with the protection against blast damage, but I typically can only cover a single unit with allocating focus to my Jacks and with his other spells. In addition, I need to get used to playing Scenario play, since up until now I've been mostly playing Assassination.

Facing this issue with my typical opponent, I have been thinking about getting Trenchers to answers this problem. With their UA they can advance while having Dig-In, thus solving my issues with Mortars wiping out half my army early in the game. With Advance Deployment I can contest objectives sooner and play more aggressively than I would with my fragile Gun Mages or Stormknights.

However I from lurking on various forums I know Trenchers get ragged on for being sub-optimal for Cygnar for various reasons. If they might not be the not the next best option, I have been looking at Boomhowlers with Jonas Murdoch as an attachment. Even with Murdoch the Boomhowlers are cheaper and more durable than a fully kitted out Trencher unit, allowing me to fit in a additional Solo in my lists. With his mini-feat they can dig in and protect from blast damage. Can any more experienced Cygnar players offer advice if this would be a good decision on my part? Would there be any other units one might recommend for purchase?

I'm not a Cygnar player, but I am a Khador player.

I can tell you that when I look at your army on the table there are things that I have to focus on removing. the B13 and Gun Mages have priority. It's worth my throwing 15+ points at them to get them off the table.

The best advice I can offer you is to find places on the board that they can safely contribute to the fight. Hills, forests, behind walls are great places for them to be.

Also you might want to look at some front line troops (tar pits and alpha strike models if you will). Give your opponent something in their front lines to deal with so that they have to choose between what to focus on.

I hope that helps.

if your troops are getting slaughtered by AOEs spread them out. Use your command range to its full. His mortars shouldn't get more than 2 unless he has a very lucky scatter, and direct hits should only be one.

Boomhowlers are a good idea though. They're the go-to Cygnar frontline unit as nothing in faction is durable enough. Murdoch is optional, he's ok but you might want other things instead.

Do you own a Junior warcaster? He's pretty important. He's good just to slap Arcane Shield on a unit and then sit in the back and twiddle his thumbs the whole game.

 Grey Templar wrote:
if your troops are getting slaughtered by AOEs spread them out. Use your command range to its full. His mortars shouldn't get more than 2 unless he has a very lucky scatter, and direct hits should only be one.

Perhaps it is just my inexperience with Warmachine yet, but despite my recent attempts to spread them out I'm still losing significant numbers of Gun Mages. I think I need to get out of the 40k habit of putting models 2' from each other.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Do you own a Junior warcaster? He's pretty important. He's good just to slap Arcane Shield on a unit and then sit in the back and twiddle his thumbs the whole game.

Yes I do. I started with the Cyngar All-In-One Box. I use him in conjunction with Rhupert Carvolo on a unit of Stormknights to give them ARM 18 and Tough, but even then I still find that I'm removing at least half the unit from massed Winter Guard shooting. I've had more success on pstryker's feat turn with stacking all of them to ARM 23 and Tough on a single unit, but the problem in that case is that I have to feat early or the Stormknights simply don't survive long enough to close with the enemy.

Thats a pretty common problem with Stormknights, and the biggest reason they are often considered to be sub-par. They're just too squishy for their cost.

Tough is one of those things that can be hit or miss. Some games you make all the tough checks, others you fail them all and you get no use out of it.

One thing a lot of new players don't do at first is running to get engaged. If you don't have the distance to charge, running to engage can be a good idea. It ties enemy units up in melee, where arm18 can be a little more significant. Try to get the enemy one on one so the WinterGuard can't CMA, this will severely reduce the number of your dudes who die.

And don't be afraid to "feat early". pStrykers feat is one of those that you use the turn before you get into melee. Run all your dudes forward then feat. Your opponent is now faced with a conundrum. If he charges you, he likely does nothing to your high armor. If he stays he gives up on scenario and/or lets you charge him. I suspect you might be trying to use it the turn you charge into melee so your opponent is engaged with your models, but you actually are better served by using it to buy yourself the turn your Stormknights need to get into melee.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Thats a pretty common problem with Stormknights, and the biggest reason they are often considered to be sub-par. They're just too squishy for their cost.

Tough is one of those things that can be hit or miss. Some games you make all the tough checks, others you fail them all and you get no use out of it.

One thing a lot of new players don't do at first is running to get engaged. If you don't have the distance to charge, running to engage can be a good idea. It ties enemy units up in melee, where arm18 can be a little more significant. Try to get the enemy one on one so the WinterGuard can't CMA, this will severely reduce the number of your dudes who die.

And don't be afraid to "feat early". pStrykers feat is one of those that you use the turn before you get into melee. Run all your dudes forward then feat. Your opponent is now faced with a conundrum. If he charges you, he likely does nothing to your high armor. If he stays he gives up on scenario and/or lets you charge him. I suspect you might be trying to use it the turn you charge into melee so your opponent is engaged with your models, but you actually are better served by using it to buy yourself the turn your Stormknights need to get into melee.

I use it the turn before to get into melee, to prevent the Stormguard from being shot to pieces by Mortars and massed Winter Guard shooting. The big problem for me is not facing the Winter Guard in close combat but surviving to reach them. There is also the problem of getting wiped out by AOEs from the Mortars after they finish slaughtering a Winter Guard unit, which happens to me fairly often after the Stormguard finish up through the Winter Guard.

Yes, I had thought that would be a good idea to survive on the way to combat, but I've read conflicting pieces of advice on pstryker from various players about feating too early. It doesn't help that most of my games with pstryker end with assassination by massed Winter Guard CRA.

Gree wrote:
I need to get out of the 40k habit of putting models 2' from each other.

I think this is a big thing to get over. I had this issue myself, and if you go back to 40k this can mess you up too. It will take some practice, but you'll get used to that in time. Really though, don't bunch up as much as you can help it, ATGM have good Command, so you should be using it. And the WG Mortar isn't very scary, the guy is firing at RAT 1 due to Inaccurate and the inability to gain the aim bonus and it's not that scary of a weapon. It's an odd choice for a weapon to see in Khador IMO, I wouldn't use one of those.

Not really. The Mortar is actually quite good. Especially with any caster who can improve its accuracy, either Sorscha can make models Stationary and eIrusk has Fire for Effect which is just bonkers. He often takes 2 and just hot swaps that spell each turn.

Fair enough. I never really think of it like that, I guess it's just me, eh YMMV I guess right? I've always found other things I would prefer Fire for Effect on, I really want to try it on Hernie and Jonne because that sounds either funny or disgusting but I need that greylord character. But Sorcha does freeze everyone which makes hitting with everything easier, so that is a good idea in general.

The Mortar is one of the few Light Artillery units that is actually worth it. Its actually the best FFE target in Khador, except for the Victor once it comes out. AOE4 can get a lot of boosted pow8s. And boosted rat3 can actually hit stuff directly as well. 2 of them together make a great tag team under eIrusk. Thats 2 fully boosted pow16 aoe4 attacks a turn.

When I play Cygnar it is almost always Siege. I know people talk about his ability to hand out foxhole, but usually that is for the first, maybe second turn. After that he is stingy with his focus and likes to keep it for him and his defender/stormwall to shoot things up.

I would highly suggest a tar pit unit and for that unit I would recommend Boomhowlers. I avoided them for awhile since "everyone played them" (even though I only ever say one person playing them), but I finally gave in and my Cygnar game changed dramatically for the better. Especially with a jr warcaster buffing them they are very difficult to take out. If you are running Siege I probably wouldn't bother with Jonas. Take him if you get a caster that has faction buffs (none of Siege's matter).

In a scenario battle your opponent MUST deal with them or you will score a ton of points and/or bog him down tremendously. The more 'must deal with' units you have the harder it is for the opponent to prioritize who to kill.

Also, with the Jr in there, you can move that buff to the Gunmages or even Siege himself once the Boomies are gone. You can upkeep the spell any distance away so have JR hang back. +3 ARM is never a bad thing to have in a list.

Another idea is to get Tempest Blazers. They do similar things to your ATGM, but are much harder to kill with AOEs and much faster. They can probably threaten those mortars pretty early if need be or other things.

More often than not with Siege, his army is to just clear the way for him to kill the opposing warcaster. If that means all your army dies so he can get the one game-winning shot then take it.

In the end, try a few things. It might be easiest to just ignore the mortars early and focus on engaging the enemy and killing everything else.