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Hi Folks,
I'm getting back into Warmachine after a break of a couple years. I used to play Cygnar back in MkI but now that I finally convinced several friends to play, a couple of them want to play that faction too. So, I decided this would give me a good chance to branch out to a faction that has interested me ever since I saw their book release awhile back, Redemption.

Problem? I can't decide on a warcaster or a list. So I made up a couple 35pt lists. Goal? To have a somewhat competitive army using models I enjoy. So while I'm not opposed to suggestions I really would like to include Eiryss, and at least 1 MHSF (particularly Myrmidon suggestions, they all seem like generalists to me). I like the Battle Mages too but I realize they don't fit every list. So with all that contextual information, here are my lists.

Ravyn - 35 pts
Phoenix Myrmidon
Hydra Myrmidon
Dawnguard Invictors (Leader & 5 Grunts)
Mage Hunter Strike Force (Leader & 5 Grunts)
Shyeel Battle Mages
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution

Kaelyssa - 35pts (Tier 2 Theme)
Phoenix Myrmidon
Hydra Myrmidon
Mage Hunter Strike Force (Leader & 9 Grunts)
Mage Hunter Strike Force (Leader & 9 Grunts)
Mage Hunter Commander x2
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution
Ghost Sniper

1) So which list is more competitive?
2) Did I miss anything with either list?
3) I'm a little fuzzy on the role of each of these warcasters (I just like the fluff and models). ravyn seems like a solid all-around caster, while Kaelyssa I'm abit fuzzy on. Denial? Assassination?
4) Arcantrik field? Do I remove damage from the top down? Bottom-up? Do i just pick whatever damage cells I want regardless of damage above and below? Seems a bit cheap if that's how it works.
5) Any other suggestions for a new Retribution player? It doesn't seem like much information on strategy, lists, or units exists out on the internet at this point. So far all I've found has really just been here on Dakka.

Thanks for any replies!

Chronowraith wrote:
Ravyn - 35 pts
Phoenix Myrmidon
Hydra Myrmidon
Dawnguard Invictors (Leader & 5 Grunts)
Mage Hunter Strike Force (Leader & 5 Grunts)
Shyeel Battle Mages
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution

Hate to say auto-include, but for Ravyn a full-size MHSF w/ UA is. It's her primary caster assassination for ARM15 or lower casters. Snipe + Feat + MHSF = dead. Invictors haven't worked for me in small numbers, they're just targets and don't have the bodies to use any of their abilities effectively. I'm also not too terribly confident you'll get alot of mileage out of the battle mages, they ideally work best with a screen i.e. houseguard halberdiers. Without something between them and the enemy I don't like their chances.

Kaelyssa - 35pts (Tier 2 Theme)
Phoenix Myrmidon
Hydra Myrmidon
Mage Hunter Strike Force (Leader & 9 Grunts)
Mage Hunter Strike Force (Leader & 9 Grunts)
Mage Hunter Commander x2
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution
Ghost Sniper

Seems traditional, but 1 ghost sniper is kinda a waste, they work best in pairs otherwise they're little more than a nuisance.

As far as jacks, it's hard to go wrong including a phoenix as it does a little bit of everything, but is the most expensive of the batch. I've never been a fan of the Hydra because it just feels like it gives up too much melee for a gimmicky shooting ability and it's focus gimmick gets shut down far too easily by disruption. The Manticore won't blow your socks off with ranged effectiveness, but has the stats to do damage and a nice RoF coupled with the strongest by far melee stats of any ret jack. The array of light jacks is situationally useful, if you need some arc nodes running around the Chimera is solid, if you want to make sure your invictors always have a jack to flank with or need a solo hunter then the griffon is your man, the gorgon has the same wonky gimmick issue as the Hydra in that it could be situationally useful, but will far too often just be a subpar light jack.

1) So which list is more competitive?
2) Did I miss anything with either list?
3) I'm a little fuzzy on the role of each of these warcasters (I just like the fluff and models). ravyn seems like a solid all-around caster, while Kaelyssa I'm abit fuzzy on. Denial? Assassination?
4) Arcantrik field? Do I remove damage from the top down? Bottom-up? Do i just pick whatever damage cells I want regardless of damage above and below? Seems a bit cheap if that's how it works.
5) Any other suggestions for a new Retribution player? It doesn't seem like much information on strategy, lists, or units exists out on the internet at this point. So far all I've found has really just been here on Dakka.

1) current incarnation Kaelyssa's list
2) You missed the Mage Hunter Assassins. The twins really should be in every ret list. I can understand not wanting to take them to be different, but if you want good there's no denying a 2pt solo that can drop casters with a 14" melee threat range is solid.
3)Kaelyssa isn't really a caster for personal assassinations. It's not that she can't do it, just that her stats are a bit flimsy to play up and she doesn't have tricks to get extra threat range. Her energy siphon ability makes her oddly more dangerous to casters camping focus than ones who are empty as both her ranged and melee stats are average-below average so she needs to boost everything. Her most common assassination involves MHSF units in conjunction with putting backlash on an enemy jack. Most of her abilities involve jacks in some fashion (witch hound, arcantrik bolt, backlash and phantom hunter) making her one of the better Mangled Metal Casters. Ravyn is a decent all rounder, with snipe and her feat the MHSF becomes incredibly brutal and vortex of destruction means less boosting for assassination runs on top of veil of mists which lets you move through enemy models. She's got some good assassination tools and a bit of variety.
4)I trust you mean the Ret jacks force field, if so the MKII book explains how they work. You mark off all of the field boxes before moving onto the grid (10 for heavies, 6 for lights), unless something does damage to a specific system (like the shield on the lancer). As a consequence though, the ret damage grids look like a crossword puzzle with letters galore, so systems go down really fast when the shield is down.
5)Not really, the flow of the army is a little odd. If you can hit a ret unit it generally dies pretty quickly, so the army relies on hitting hard and hitting first.

Mastershake wrote:
Hate to say auto-include, but for Ravyn a full-size MHSF w/ UA is. It's her primary caster assassination for ARM15 or lower casters. Snipe + Feat + MHSF = dead. Invictors haven't worked for me in small numbers, they're just targets and don't have the bodies to use any of their abilities effectively. I'm also not too terribly confident you'll get alot of mileage out of the battle mages, they ideally work best with a screen i.e. houseguard halberdiers. Without something between them and the enemy I don't like their chances.

Seems traditional, but 1 ghost sniper is kinda a waste, they work best in pairs otherwise they're little more than a nuisance.

As far as jacks, it's hard to go wrong including a phoenix as it does a little bit of everything, but is the most expensive of the batch. I've never been a fan of the Hydra because it just feels like it gives up too much melee for a gimmicky shooting ability and it's focus gimmick gets shut down far too easily by disruption. The Manticore won't blow your socks off with ranged effectiveness, but has the stats to do damage and a nice RoF coupled with the strongest by far melee stats of any ret jack. The array of light jacks is situationally useful, if you need some arc nodes running around the Chimera is solid, if you want to make sure your invictors always have a jack to flank with or need a solo hunter then the griffon is your man, the gorgon has the same wonky gimmick issue as the Hydra in that it could be situationally useful, but will far too often just be a subpar light jack.

Hrmmm, I'll try and jumble things around a bit as far as Ravyn is concerned. I'll try and move some points around to take the mage hunters to max and add the Commander. Would a minimum size unit of halberdiers work as a screen for the mages or would I have to have a larger squad? If a minimal would work I might be able to move enough points around to make everything fit. Sadly, I may have to ditch the Battle Mages and save them for either a Vyros or Rahn list.

For now I think I'm staying away from the Light Myrmidons simply because, as you yourself mentioned, they are only situationally useful. I think the Griffon is the only one that seems fairly well-balanced. Maybe once I get a handle on how Retribution plays I'll look into using some of the Light Myrmidons.

Mastershake wrote:
2) You missed the Mage Hunter Assassins. The twins really should be in every ret list. I can understand not wanting to take them to be different, but if you want good there's no denying a 2pt solo that can drop casters with a 14" melee threat range is solid.
3)Kaelyssa isn't really a caster for personal assassinations. It's not that she can't do it, just that her stats are a bit flimsy to play up and she doesn't have tricks to get extra threat range. Her energy siphon ability makes her oddly more dangerous to casters camping focus than ones who are empty as both her ranged and melee stats are average-below average so she needs to boost everything. Her most common assassination involves MHSF units in conjunction with putting backlash on an enemy jack. Most of her abilities involve jacks in some fashion (witch hound, arcantrik bolt, backlash and phantom hunter) making her one of the better Mangled Metal Casters. Ravyn is a decent all rounder, with snipe and her feat the MHSF becomes incredibly brutal and vortex of destruction means less boosting for assassination runs on top of veil of mists which lets you move through enemy models. She's got some good assassination tools and a bit of variety.
4)I trust you mean the Ret jacks force field, if so the MKII book explains how they work. You mark off all of the field boxes before moving onto the grid (10 for heavies, 6 for lights), unless something does damage to a specific system (like the shield on the lancer). As a consequence though, the ret damage grids look like a crossword puzzle with letters galore, so systems go down really fast when the shield is down.

2)Twins? Are you referring to Narn and Nayl or the plain Assassins? I had considered Narn (he's 3pts though) but I was worried about having an incredibly small force that could possibly be easily bogged down by enemy units.
3) Awesome. Thanks for that breakdown. It makes planning forces much easier.
4)Ahhhh, somehow I didn't see that each model had a damage field indicator. Nor did I realize that these were covered in the main rulebook. Thanks for that!

Thanks again for answering questions! I'll try and post a couple of revised lists later this evening after I return from an office dinner.

Chronowraith wrote:2)Twins? Are you referring to Narn and Nayl or the plain Assassins? I had considered Narn (he's 3pts though) but I was worried about having an incredibly small force that could possibly be easily bogged down by enemy units.

Mage Hunter Assassins, I just say "the twins" because 2 of them is pretty much the standard starting point for a ret army. for 4 pts, the chance of one-shotting casters is far too good and if you can knock down the caster first to get rid of the hit roll the caster gets turned into confetti pretty reliably (also ignoring tough is worth it's weight in gold). It's well worth the minor loss of a few warm bodies. Narn and Nayl I've had a harder time justifying. Neither has the threat range or damage potential (or ignores tough) that the MHAs do. Narn costs a point more and Nayl can potentially hurt you if your opponent two-handed throws him back at your caster. Not that Narn is bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it's hard to justify 3pts for him when the twins are only 4.

While I agree that every Ret player ought to own two MHA, and that they are wildly fun and effective; I'm going to offer my opinion that they have very little synergy with Ravyn. Yes they are still going to be very nice, but the only spell she has that can function with them well is VoD, and even then it's only a bonus if they don't charge.

Ravyn - 35 pts
Phoenix Myrmidon
Hydra Myrmidon
Dawnguard Invictors (Leader & 5 Grunts)
Mage Hunter Strike Force (Leader & 5 Grunts)
Shyeel Battle Mages
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution

In this force I would advise adding a UA to the mage hunters (but IMO they don't have to be a full unit), the UA pretty much makes the Unit because of phantom hunter and a small unit will still be very effective on Ravyn's feat turn.

I would make the Invictors a full unit though with UA and drop the battle mages.

I think, if you use two heavy myrmidons that you will be happier with a manticore over the hydra.

With the points left over consider an arcanists and whatever solos make you the most happy. Ghost Snipers have a good synergy with Ravyn's feat, but VoD makes pretty much every solo good with her. Even MHA's, who may be the least synergistic are still awesome enough that they will be effective.

I don't have a points calculator with me, so forgive me if what I suggested doesn't add up mathematically.

I'd be lying if I said the MHAs had "synergy" with X, where X is any ret caster, for 2 reasons. First "synergy" isn't a damn word and I refuse to use it in a non-ironic fashion. Second, none of the casters have buffs for them or feats that actively do anything to help them. Rhan is the closest as he can telekenesis spam them into good positions or try to force slam an enemy to knock them down and Garryth could mirage them (although in all seriousness he probably needs to Mirage himself), but for everyone else there isn't any kind of benefit to including MHAs other than a high damage output, high threat range and the ability to get past tough. It's a hard hitting solo for cheap and even without direct buffs they're usually worthwhile investments.

Firstly, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synergy Synergy is a word, and IMO whether you choose to use that word but for a particular context; is not something that concerns me. Maybe you believe language is static? I don't agree.

Secondly, I think MHA are badass and are very effective: but the Ravyn list the OP posted didn't leave much room for solos so he might be better served solos that work better with Rayvn. I just think that Ravyn has less synergy with MHA than any other caster, except maybe Vyros.

I also don't agree that every competitive ret list starts with two MHA, but ymmv. Believe me, I am not arguing that MHA aren't worth their points.

I respectfully disagree that you can have a list the MHAs don't work well in. The model has every ability it needs and the appropriate threat range to assassinate casters or important models regardless of what your army is composed of or what buffs your caster offers. In a gunline it's a legitimate threat that will keep fighty casters and an array of solos at arms reach and in fighting lists it adds an element to go for the jugular while your guys are engaged. There isn't a list or caster I look at and say "Having a model with a 14" melee threat range that can one shot casters or other important models is just going to be useless or unneeded". With all that, though, the biggest thing I come back to is the price. They cost nothing, 2 of them for the same points as a Destor Thane or a point more than Narn is just staggering. The risk-reward relationship is so skewed in favor of them that it's just plain ridiculous.

I wont go so far as to say every list needs two, but you lose a very significant capability without them.

I respectfully disagree that you can have a list the MHAs don't work well in.

Thank you for being respectful. I am not attempting to argue MHAs aren't fantastic units for the price.

I am stating that, even besides the obvious tier lists where they don't work at all, there are other lists where another option may function better due to its interaction with specific other units. This is an opinion you are free to disagree with, and realizing the potential of those other units will likely be more complex than the straight forward simplicty of how the MHA operates and may not always be possible due to battlefield conditions. MHA's certianly have reiability as a strong factor since they don't need much synergy to be awesome.

Mastershake seems to know what he is talking about alot more than Ghostcat.

Also, I find mage hunter assassins and strike forces can be deadly against most things. The strike force has some hard time against low DEF high ARM, though they can take on 'jacks, or more importantly, enemy warcasters. I have Garyth because he is a warcaster... wish stealth! Also, his spell helps strike forces ALOT.