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Warmahordes is on the rise in my area, so I'm browsing the galleries to see if I'm interested enough to dabble. I like the look of trencher infantry and sword knights, but a couple minutes browsing the forums indicates that trencher infantry are niche at best, and I don't see much mention of sword and board sword knights. Any builds or list complement these models?

It looks like Trenchers might be getting a bit of a boost with Haley3, she has a spell (tactical supremacy) that lets them move 3" after their activation. This means you can do things like make a smoke wall and then back up out of it I think, and just makes them a bit more flexible. Obviously they're still pretty niche because they're still only useful with one caster but it's Haley so she'll probably be good

Sword Knights aren't a top-tier choice but it's hard not to get your points worth out of 4/6 bodies in any context.

If I was going to run them I'd probably be eyeballing eStryker.

They're up to Arm 18 vs ranged attacks with Deflection, which means they're functionally immune to most blast damage and POW 10s become very inefficient against them, needing 9s+ to kill. Being inefficient to remove with typical high-volume damage sources (blasts, low POW attacks) is one of the better things cheap bodies can have going for them.

Positive Charge & His feat play nicely with their otherwise hard to enable Flank ability, particularly considering reform from runewood.

At the end of they day they've got cannon-fodder stats at cannon-fodder prices, and cannon-fodder is useful in this game. However a lack of reach and Cygnar's excellent mercenary selection put them firmly into the second string category. This is make them far from useless and even if it's a bit hard to line up 4-Dice damage rolls are always a good thing, just don't expect your opponents to be cursing them loudly.

kooshlord wrote:
Warmahordes is on the rise in my area, so I'm browsing the galleries to see if I'm interested enough to dabble. I like the look of trencher infantry and sword knights, but a couple minutes browsing the forums indicates that trencher infantry are niche at best, and I don't see much mention of sword and board sword knights. Any builds or list complement these models?

All of Cygnar's native infantry (with the possible exception of anything with Gun Mage on the name), are niche. That is because all of them have very specific roles and victim stats and as such you'll only wan't to use them with the casters that support each unit the best.

To offset this we have access to the largest variety of mercenary units of any faction, and since mercenary units tend to be much more versatile than their Cygnar counterparts, you'll find yourself relying on them much more often.

Sword Knights are cheap (6 for 10), and with flank they work well in any warjack list. Work really well with Stryker2.

Talking about Trenchers among Cygnar players will start a fight. At the risk of distilling hundreds of pages of "are trenchers viable?" discussions: they're not bad, the cloudwall is handy, but they're a little overcosted, and most of the time the best use of them is the minimum unit for six clouds.

Stryker3 makes both of them hit pretty hard, though I haven't had the chance to try it.

As someone that has played Cygnar since Prime, I can tell you that Sword Knights are worth getting at least one unit of. They are bodies and are good to use for someone new to the game - if they die, no big deal, they only cost a few points anyway. Throw an arcane shield on them and maybe have Rhupert Carvolo throw tough on them and they become difficult for your opponent to clear out.

I haven't used regular trenchers since Mark II came out. I do have the Trencher Commandoes though - it's the only Cygnar Stealth unit (also, if you have the snipe spell on your caster, these guys can hurl a POW 12 grenade 10 inches) and their weapon attachment is a spray weapon. Regular trencher infantry may become more useful with Haley 3, but then again maybe not. The current meta is people using lots of medium based hard-to-kill infantry (Cygnar doesn't have any) with high armor and in some cases tough. This means that people aren't fielding lots of long range stuff and your pow10-11 long ranged stuff won't even scratch it, so no need for a smoke wall. Smoke can be good to block LOS to your caster, but, it's cheaper to just use Gorman. Outside of smoke, the trenchers have a POW 11 gun at range 10 with combined ranged attack- pretty medicore. Longgunners are better for this as the have a longer range.

If you're looking to run Trenchers and Sword Knights, may I suggest not running actual Cygnar and instead run Magnus2's Bad Seeds? Tier 4 of the list gets a unit of the Knights Ambush.