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So, I tested out a PoM army I thought up the other day. I played against my buddy who plays cygnar.

My list consisted of:

Amon ad raza - +6wj
-Dervish - 4
-Dervish - 4
-Dervish - 4
-Vigilant - 4

Choir -2
Vassal - 2
mechanik - 1

Total - 21

My friend's cygnar list:

PStryker - +6
-Centurien - 9

Sword knights + UA - 6
-Hunter - 6

After reviewing his list, he didnt need the sword knight UA. He would have switch the hunter for a hammersmith and the cent for ol rowdy, but he thought that the UA was the jack marshal.

The field:

The field is divided across the center by a small wall, about enough space to fit a pair of heavy jacks behind it. there are about six craters scattered about the field, providing cover to any who are mostly in them. There is also a patch of trees to the far flanks in the center of the map.

The setup:

We rolled pocket threes followed by snakeyes for the starter roll, he ended up with six vs my two on the third roll and let me setup/go first.

I set up the dervishes in a line with the vigilant flanking and the choir in b2b with it. The other solos all hid behind the dervish wall with raza off to the side.

He sets up his forces in a line with stryker in the center, between the cent and sword knights. The hunter is to the far right side (from my point of view).

Turn 1:

PoM: I go first, giving one focus to each jack and casting mobility, then walking raza up to the flank of the wall. I realize here that he has no blast weapons, so the vigilant is basically useless except as a tough to kill target, so I break formation and run the vigilant over the wall and right in the center of the field, followed by the dervishes running into cover behind the wall, gotta love that 14in run. This was after I had the choir hymn passage to avoid the hunter shots. The solos all run forward to stay close to the jacks.

Cygnar: He allocates no focus and casts armor on the sword knights, then proceeds to disrupt the vigilant and put five damage on it with an amazing roll. The cent moves to intercept the wave of light jacks that are going to come pouring into him next turn. This positions the cent in the middle several inches from the vigilant, with the sword knights behind it. The hunter moves to the side and shoots at a choir with boosted hit but fails to kill. turn ends.

Turn 2:

PoM: I stick 2 focus on the dervish farthest to the right (closest to the hunter) and cast mobility and synergy, then I move raza past the wall to take his place behind the vigilant. I somewhat messed up here by not popping feat as all my jacks are in charge range of everything he has except stryker, first time with raza, oh well. I hymn battle on all the jacks except the vigilant as it was out of range. The vigilant walks to the side of the cent and catches two sword knights and the cent in melee. It crushes both the sword knights with the help of some luck on my part. Dervish 1walks into the sword knight officer and cuts him in two after missing the first swing. Dervish 2 walks into the cent and puts 11 damage on it with two pow 17 swords (13+2 from synergy +2 from hymn of battle). Dervish 3 charges the hunter and pumps a ton of damage into him on the charge swing, but misses the two followup swings D: The hunter is left with three boxes left and his axe. The solos try to advance up with the jacks, but without mobility, they fall short, and I cant get the vassal close enough to grant an extra attack to any of the jacks.

Cygnar: He puts three focus on the cent and upkeeps the armor, then he feats, walks stryker to the left flank to get a shot off at the solos hiding behind the vigilant and dervish. he hits and kills the mechanic. The four sword knights wheel around and flank my dervish and put a good amount of damage on it. The cent goes, and finishes the dervish with one spear thrust, then rolls crit on the vigilant. with two focus left, he knocks the vigilant down so that it has 1 cortex box, and 1 right arm box left. The hunter smacks my dervish for six damage with another impressive roll.

Turn 3:

PoM: I really only see one way out of this as I dont think my two dervishes can take on stryker, cent, and sword knights. I keep all the focus on Raza but upkeep synergy. In moving stryker around the cent, he has exposed him to Raza's charge range of 11in. The dervish chops into the hunter and only deals 2 damage leaving 1 box. The vigilant hits the cent but obviously does no damage due to 26ARM. Dervish 3 hits the hunter twice and deals 2 damage total, leaving 1 box. Dervish 1 walks into a sword knight's back and butchers him. Now it is all up to Raza. The charge is in range and Raza starts off with a down right terrible roll for the charge. I easily hit with MAT 10 but roll a 4 for the damage, on three dice! for a total of six damage. I miss the next two attacks leaving me with three focus. At list point, I am getting desperate so I boost hit and land the fourth swing putting another seven damage on him. One focus left for the final swing. It hits, and sticks him with 11 more damage to win the game.

It was a good quick match on a small table. There was no shooting so it didnt matter much and the cover never really came into play. Afterwords, we decided that he would have been better off taking ol rowdy and a hammersmith since the hunter doesnt really fit and he didnt need the sword knight's UA. Stryker wasnt really the best choice of caster either, since he had no use for some of his spells so maybe brisbane or nemo or haley would have been better. Regardless, it was a good game and I love playing with Raza and his horde of dervishes.

Amon can be fun to use if a little bit one dimensional, but with all the movement and positioning he allows with mobility and his feat no game is ever the same.

Agreed. Amon is my favorite Protectorate caster, just for that reason.

I like his ability to run so many jacks and still be effective. I want to try throwing a castigator into the mix. It would give the list some much needed crowd control and a hard hitting heavy all-in-one.

The Templar is a good jack with him, i've heard. Reach and Movement Scenanigans are always a good combination.

On the Cygnar side, anything is better than the Centurion. Rowdy, Stormclad, and the Hammersmith are the best melee Jacks (in that order IMO) the swan has to offer. Sticking a non melee jack on the sword knights is also wasting their flanking ability. They really like having an Ironclad on their hip for that but most of the time, I run them as a 4pt blocking unit.

I'm not a fan of the hunter however. For 3 points I can get a Defender that shoots better, is more survivable, and the enemy running a jack to lock it up is a really bad idea.

Castigators are evil by the way.

Castigator isn't a bad idea for Amon, his two basic attacks at the end of a synergy chain can be awesome.Plus he will clear some infantry, I always seem to get at least one good flame burst out of him.

12thRonin wrote:On the Cygnar side, anything is better than the Centurion. Rowdy, Stormclad, and the Hammersmith are the best melee Jacks (in that order IMO) the swan has to offer. Sticking a non melee jack on the sword knights is also wasting their flanking ability. They really like having an Ironclad on their hip for that but most of the time, I run them as a 4pt blocking unit.

I'm not a fan of the hunter however. For 3 points I can get a Defender that shoots better, is more survivable, and the enemy running a jack to lock it up is a really bad idea.

Castigators are evil by the way.

I gotta disagree on the order there. While Rowdy is good for his points, the majority of games I see him make an appearance, you could've subbed him out with an Ironclad and not noticed a difference. He gets better with Stryker, but never quite matches the Stormclad. SPD 5, Reach, POW 19, that alone makes the Stormclad good and it's not even counting Electroleap, its ranged attack and the ability to get free focus when a unit you'd probably take anyways is nearby.

Hunters depend on the caster and army. When Marshalled by a gun mage Captain, hunters can roll 3D6 for hit and damage without your caster expending focus, which is a good deal for anything with armor piercing. Kraye also makes good use of them. 3 points isn't exactly nothing, in many cases its the difference between a min and max unit or a great solo like Eiryss. Hunters also have higher RAT and average about the same damage as the Defender against heavy targets (against average ARM of 18, they both roll Dice -3) and with parry and pathfinder end up being harder to pin down.

Mastershake wrote:
Hunters depend on the caster and army. When Marshalled by a gun mage Captain, hunters can roll 3D6 for hit and damage without your caster expending focus, which is a good deal for anything with armor piercing. Kraye also makes good use of them. 3 points isn't exactly nothing, in many cases its the difference between a min and max unit or a great solo like Eiryss. Hunters also have higher RAT and average about the same damage as the Defender against heavy targets (against average ARM of 18, they both roll Dice -3) and with parry and pathfinder end up being harder to pin down.

Boosting off the Dude or the warcaster makes the extra RAT mostly meaningless or hitting a Khador heavy on a 3 versus a 4. The Defender is also better against most warcasters and warlocks in the game. Both are still Cygnar jacks so pinning them down usually involves them getting wrecked in one go (moreso for the Hunter) since they aren't the most durable jacks in the game. The Defender can at least blow out the cortex if nothing else in combat. For shooty jacks on a caster, I usually go Defender and 2 Chargers and a Cyclone or a Defender on the Dude.

Don't get me started on Triumph the Insulting Comedy Jack...

To me, the big win for the Hunter is the extended Control Range. Most Cygnar casters have it 24" out, further with a few casters and the squire.

It's really about target selection. The Defender is an "all targets" kind of jack, and the Hunter is "Medium+" kind of jack.

12thRonin wrote:On the Cygnar side, anything is better than the Centurion. Rowdy, Stormclad, and the Hammersmith are the best melee Jacks (in that order IMO) the swan has to offer. Sticking a non melee jack on the sword knights is also wasting their flanking ability. They really like having an Ironclad on their hip for that but most of the time, I run them as a 4pt blocking unit.

I'm not a fan of the hunter however. For 3 points I can get a Defender that shoots better, is more survivable, and the enemy running a jack to lock it up is a really bad idea.

Castigators are evil by the way.

Is marshaling A centurion to a unit of Sword Knights worse then a Hammersmith? I figure that running the Cent up front would help block the hell out of a charge lane and hold an enemy jack in position for the Knights to flank and destroy.

I know that the Hammersmith will do more damage on average, but I figured that the Cent's survivability and reach may make it a good marshaled option.

As far as the cent goes with sword knights I think he is a good but expensive choice, pronto from the sword knights allow him to move 8 in and still activate his shield. No charges against him make him a lot harder to get rid of and reach on his spear makes him good for giving flank to the sword knights.
Flank also works against infantry and such so gives the sword knights very respectable mat vs higher def troops, mat 8 allows them to really lay the smack down on infantry.

I don't think taking a Cent is a good option for anyone sadly. It was a good to great jack in MKI, but is pretty bad in Mk2.

I think prolly the best thing to marshal to a unit of SK's would be a stock Ironclad.

I like Jeremiah Kraye with the Centurion + Full Tilt + Iron Horse = Move 8" and
still activate the Polarity Shield. Iron Horse, Full Tilt and Feat = Charge 11", Threaten
13", impact attacks, boosted melee attacks, +2 to the cavalry charge, and a good
chance of triggering the critical sustained attack.

12thRonin wrote:I don't think taking a Cent is a good option for anyone sadly. It was a good to great jack in MKI, but is pretty bad in Mk2.

I think prolly the best thing to marshal to a unit of SK's would be a stock Ironclad.

while I always liked an ironclad, I think it's a terrible jack to marshal with swordknights. Without reach he almost never threatens more than 2 models and his survivability really isn't that great either. I guess he would be okay to charge up and knock stuff down for the swordknights to hit but otherwise a jack with reach is really the way to go.

Whitekong hit it on the head. The cent was the only jack he could take that had reach for 9pts, plus, it has the best survivability out of any jack cygnar has. if he were to remove the hunter and sword knight UA however, he would only have 8 points left, which means he could marshal the cent, run an ironclad with stryker and take a squire. He never runs stryker and tends to favor ranged heavy armies with caine, so this was somewhat out of his element while fitting perfectly into what I normally play with my khador force.

That's why I like the Ironclad. I don't expect it to do much except set up the SK's for flank. If he gets a knockdown off, the target is in a world of hurt.

Why not marshal a Firefly to the Swordknights? This way it can run into reach range of things, and then the sword knights can charge in. Sure, it's not a heavy, and can take considerably less damage, but it's also less of a point investment into a flanking tool.

He's overpriced for what he will do in that role unless you have epic Nemo and other Fireflies/Stormsmiths backing it up. I like the 'clad for that knockdown chance on the crit hit.

While I'm still a total noob to Warmachine, I love the Hunters - as Devilsquid pointed out, the 24" control range is brilliant and their armor-piercing gun just ends medium stuff and is great for weakening bigger targets.

I actually prefer the hunter over the defender in the lower point battles. The hunter cant take the hits that a defender can and the defender is much better in melee, but against medium/large based models, the hunter has better damage output, except against very low ARM targets. take khador for example, defender is dealing dice-5 against 90% of the jacks, and even less against all but a zerker. The hunter is dealing dice - 4 against 90% of them, while having a better ratio than the defender against the higher ARM models. you also save three points, have MUCH more maneuverability and the hunter can walk out of melee.

The firefly is interesting, but I would rather marshal the cent and stick an iron clad with stryker. Although you could still stick rowdy with stryker and the firefly with the sword knights.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The firefly would get smoked by a dervish however, the cent could probably take on all three and survive for a turn.

Hunter just won me a game versus PoM. I'm not saying they are better than defenders. They are different. I should mention that I am running 2 defenders and 2 hunters in my current list. The defender has more staying power while a hunter is more mobile. The defenders are great for hanging back and shooting with a range attacking caster and counter charging anything that get's too close to the caster. The hunters are great for advancing up a flank to put pressure on the opponent's back field since they have pathfinder + extended control range (and they have parry which is great). I usually pair one of mine up with a journeyman since they have such a tight control range to begin with. The journeyman can stay far enough away from the fight such that I don't have to worry about people capping him.