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I've now played two games of Warmachine, and in both cases, I've gone from having a good game to losing, both times because I haven't been able to keep my caster out of harm's way.

First Game
Frankly, the first game was the more foolish of the two. My opponent (Heavens_Wings, here) and I have been playing 25 point games, me with Kraye, him with pVlad. In the first game, we were running pretty even until I charged my Centurion through his Winter Guard screen and into Vlad. While I didn't kill him that round, it was looking pretty good that I would do so on my next turn. Here's where I was particularly foolish. He had sent in Drago for his assassination run and I was holding it off with 2 Hunters. Drago was nearly down for the count (or so I thought), so, confident in my ability to kill pVlad on my next turn, I charged Drago with Kraye. Doing almost nothing to it. Sad panda. On his turn, he does some blistering damage with Drago on Kraye (some great rolling) and then finishes him off with a mortar blast.

Second Game
Second game, I was doing a better job of controlling the tempo until I lost pEiryss trying to get her away from HW's Destroyer - really trying to take advantage of Kraye's run and gun. Up to that point, though, I had cleared out a solid chunk of his list to no losses of my own. His Berserker made a failed charge on Kraye and was left hanging. His Gorman was in position to Black Oil both my heavies or a Hunter or Kraye on his next turn, so I wanted him gone.

Since I wanted to dedicate both my heavies to the Berserker and the Hunter (having been oiled the previous round) could only safely move, the only model I could use to dispense Gorman was Kraye. I also needed to move him out of the way of the Ironclad's charge path, yet keep him close enough to the Centurion to keep it in control range. This put him more forward than I wanted - within charge range of Vlad, but I hoped that he could survive at least a round from Vlad. I figured that with Parry and Pursuit, I could outrun him. I killed Gorman with Kraye's carbine and then charged the Berserker with my Centurion and Ironclad and scrapped it.

Not surprisingly, on his turn, my friend charged Vlad into Kraye with Blood of Kings and Boundless Charge - he did a bunch of damage, but I still had hope that Kraye would survive. What I didn't expect was Heavens_Wings firing his Destroyer's Bombard at Kraye with Vlad right next to him. Vlad had no damage at this point, so he wasn't worried about killing him. But a solid damage roll from the Bombard finished off Kraye. It did a few points of damage to Vlad, but Kraye was done.

Lessons Learned
1) Keep Kraye in the back, stupid!
2) Because of this, Hunters with Kraye are silly good and I need to take advantage of them more.
3) I'm an aggressive gamer, generally on the offensive rather than turtling or castling up, but I'm realizing that particularly with the mobility inherent in Kraye's list that I need to use that to offset the fragility of the models. Rather than moving up to the take the shot on Gorman, I should've pulled Kraye back to keep him out of the charge range of any of Heavens_Wing's models.

One thing to remember about Kraye is that he's cavalry, and benefits from all the rules therein...including drive by attacks.

So he could move 3" forward, shoot Gorman with his carbine, and move 5" back.

There's a lot of schenanigans that Kraye can do with the cavalry rules...

Aw, crap. Yeah, he could've done that, huh? I've been enjoying taking advantage of Light Cavalry with the Hunters to do that sort of tactic, but I didn't even think about being able to use drive by attacks to be able to do that with Kraye. Thanks!

Kraye is hard to keep out of harms way as the large base hard to hide. I think Kraye starts to shine in larger games as he is a jack caster in the end and you can only with so many jacks in the smaller games. He definitely is a caster to be kept in the back and his jacks especially hunters doing the heavy lifting.

Death By Monkeys wrote:Aw, crap. Yeah, he could've done that, huh? I've been enjoying taking advantage of Light Cavalry with the Hunters to do that sort of tactic, but I didn't even think about being able to use drive by attacks to be able to do that with Kraye. Thanks!

Not a problem. A lot of folks forget that because he's the only warcaster that has the cavalry rules.

Another Cavalry Schnanigain: Say Kraye is in combat...you move up .002", make your melee attack, then skedaddle back 7.008". Sure, he has parry (i think?) but why not make your attack if you can.


You can also get a bokur to block charge langes and shield guard, though Kraye can't hide behind him.

Devilsquid wrote:You can also get a bokur to block charge langes and shield guard, though Kraye can't hide behind him.

Or sentinel, which is only one point more and gets to benefit from the light cav movement.

Very true....

Well, if you have the extra point.
Else, the Bokur is cheaper and hits a lot harder.

I didn't pay too much mind to ride by attacks, but looking at it in that light...seems to crap on light cav's 'bonus'.
Anywho...I'm still tinkering with my "fast list"... I'm hoping to some day go really cav heavy:

5 Soulhunters + Wrathe
5 SH Cav + Stannis

Should be fun...too bad they don't 'actually' use trample rules .

If you put that with eGaspy and a unit of speed Satyxis, there is a special place in hell for that. I like it.

Yea...w/ Raiders it's only a cool 33 points with the mobile cloud generator .

Actually, I am using Soulhunters and Raiders with pGaspy.
pGaspy can advance 6 and port 8 for a cool 14" 'move'...not even counting charging or Death Ride or pushes.

SH Cav would really need flanking SH Halberdiers to make the most of them.
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As for keeping Casters alive.
Yea, if you can't seal the deal don't put the caster in danger. Every turn risks caster kill in which you don't finish off the opponent.

Sanctjud wrote:I didn't pay too much mind to ride by attacks, but looking at it in that light...seems to crap on light cav's 'bonus'.

From a function perspective, yes, but from a mobility perspective that 5" bonus is pure gold. I mean, Kraye can move-shoot-move for a total of his 8", but a Hunter doing a move-shoot-move for 11"? That's nothing to sneeze at. Again, I'm coming at this from a 40k background where, to me, this is nearly the equivalent of the Tau's ability to jump-shoot-jump (6", shoot, 6") which can be pretty devastating.

As far as Kraye being a jack warcaster, the 25 pt list I ran for the second game was:

- Kraye
- Centurion
- Ironclad
- Hunter x2
- pEiryss

I was worried that my lack of infantry was going to be a major problem for me, but the army worked surprisingly smoothly without it.

I think the issue is, it's shoe horned into caster kill and not so much about scenarios...which is the ultimate balancer to shooty/kiting sort of lists.

Sanctjud wrote:I think the issue is, it's shoe horned into caster kill and not so much about scenarios...which is the ultimate balancer to shooty/kiting sort of lists.

As I've learned from reading some threads on PP's forums, yeah. At this point, Heavens_Wings and I are still getting a feel for the game. I don't figure it will be long before we start getting into some scenarios.