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Over the weekend I picked up the Cygnar Battlegroup (in order to guarantee myself whenever I go to my FLGS I can get a game of some sort in) and was wondering what would be a good next purchase?

I haven't picked up the books yet because everyone I'll be playing against at my FLGS knows the rules inside out.

I'm aiming for a 35 point army when this is all said and done.

In advance, thanks.

Journyman Warcaster, Black 13th or a Squire.

Which units you want to go for will depend upon the style of play you want.

Play some games with just your battlegroup box, then work up through 15 and 25 point games before you get to 35.

Commander Coleman Stryker
Ironclad
Lancer
Charger
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team

15/15

This should do well at 15 points.

From George's 15 pointer add in

Gun mages + UA + Defender/Cyclone
Arlan Strangewayes

Powerboost the Defender, boost the first shot for Crit Brutal, boost the damage roll for 4d6 +15 damage, and hear the lamentations of the women.

Toss in a Stormsmith for non-targetting lightning death fun or a Reinholdt shaped speedbump.

After the 15pts I would go for something generic.

6x Trenchers
6x Stormblades
and a second warcaster.

Ignore specific list builds for new people beyond the utterly immediate need. What you want is a Cygnar army, not a specific Cygnar army. This can only be achieved by getting the geneic stuff and swapping out.

I would buy a second warcaster early, because swapping the warcaster swaps the entire list yet its only one model.

Dont worry about building a killer list, you cant. If you get a custom list from someone here, and nothing else you will quickly find your opponents tailor agaisnt it, you also wont leaern Cygnar. Stick with the generics. Th shortlist to go for I would settle as:

Cygnar boxset
Haley
Defender
6x Gun Mages or Black 13th
6x Trenchers or 6x Long Gunners
6x Stromblades
4x Field Mechanics (maybe)
Journeyman warcaster
Squire

Work out UA and fuill squads later, just get the basics for now. Yes, yes you can do 'better' with one unit and all its toys, but it wont help you in the long run.

I'd pick epic Caine, epic Haley (not regular Haley) or Siege as a second if you're going to do that. That way he gets a solid back up caster in regular Stryker and a top tier caster. xNemo, pCaine, epic Stryker, Kraye, and regular Haley are all more specialist. Sloan is for fun and Darius is for keeping a power armored Mario on the shelf.

First off just let me say thanks. I picked up the black 13th and am getting my first games in tomorrow.

Are the Commando Trenchers any good?

Also is Ol' Rowdy worth it? (may just take him for the name)

The commandos are decent against infantry, they are also the only troops in cygnar with stealth. The are a nice if pricy unit when you add couple of the scatter gunners to the mix. Their problem is that they don't offer anything new to cygnar as there is a lot of infantry shredding already available. The figs are nice though so get them if you like them.

Ol'Rowdy is excellent heavy hitter, he is focus efficient and has nice synergy with both strykers and is great even without them. He definitely is worth the 2 extra points over regular ironclad, but the increased cost means you sometimes don't have the room in list for him.

So after a couple more games I'm looking at getting a box of infantry to keep learning the rules etc. However I am struggling to see a use for them besides shredding other infantry. None of them look like they are meant for handling/taking down Jacks. What am I missing?

I currently own:

Starter Box (Striker, Charger, Lancer, Ironclad)
Black 13th
Journeyman Warcaster

Personally, I'd reccomend the Books. Prime is a good read, and you'll learn the rules better because of having played a few games, so it makes more sense, and the Cygnar book will show you the rest of the army so you can get a feel for it.

Infantry wise, sword knights are a solid cheap choice.

I got the Cygnar book a few days ago.

I was thinking of getting a unit of trenchers and stormblades are any of the attachments worth getting?

I ran Blades in the last tournament I was in and they were monsters, but you have to be smart with them. The important thing to remember with blades is that they are a bit of a glass hammer. They can strike really really hard, but they are not going to be a very effective defensive line. Don't go charging them into enemy fire. I always set them up to counter charge an aggresive enemy unit and I almost always wiped that unit out. Just hide them behind cover, and strike when you get the distance. In the very least they draw the enemy's attention to them, which means you can set up something somewhere else while your opponent stresses about your blades (a black 13th strike perhaps).

All of the UAs for stormblades are worth getting.

the officer and standard bearer are great. You gain assault with the officer and the standard bearer makes all their range attack AOE if they hit. They are lightning based AOEs so the blades are all immune if the blast hits them. Assaulting stormblades are scary.

The stormclad marshalled by the stormblade officer is also a great way to fit another jack into your army without sacrificing the warcasters focus since stormclads get a free focus for being with the stormblades. Also the stormclad is a great jack though pricey.

The gunner is great if you have the officer for the assault order because he can make every other unit auto hit with their range attacks on his target if he hits. You can run three of them in the unit too which now pads that five man unit out and greatly improves their shooting game, which is almost nonexistant if you run the blades naked.

With Stryker the Stormblades have two additional options to increase survivability in Blur and Arcane Shield. You should run them with UA and as phillosmaster said in the second line ready to give beating to anything coming too close. Stryker also has snipe which is a nice thing to add giving them decent range especially when given assault order. I wouldn't give them full 3 WAs as the unit gets really expensive then.

The trenchers are good in shielding the second line by giving smoke clouds. They are decently survivable against shooting when dug in and they have advance deployment which is crucial in scenario play. With CRA they also have possibility to crack some armor.

Another unit to consider is the rangers, they give nice bonus to the accuracy of the shooting and have pathfinder and advance deployment with great SPD to get to places. Swordknights are solid meat shield as Devilsquid said. On the solo front you should really consider Squire, that is the most adored/ hated warcaster attachment for a reason.

Next to a unit you should also consider a new caster IMHO. Playing one caster is nice and all, but to really get a feel for the game / army and it's options try playing a different caster and see how you do. Now I do not know the cygnar casters very well, but maybe someone else can make a comment on a nice alternative. My first thought was caine (gunslinger) but he can't handle to many jacks IIRC...

Siege is the go to guy in my opinion. He is not too hard to figure out and is suitable for different ways of play from gunline to assault army.

Most of the Cygnar casters like to run 1 heavy and one light, they generally lack buffs that would help in running multiple jack efficiently.

Once again thanks for the advice. I was thinking of getting Sloan or Siege (or both) as alternate warcasters.

At 25 points I was thinking something like this:

Stryker +6
Charger -4
Lancer -6
Ironclad -7
Black 13 -4
J. Warcaster -3
Stormblades -5
Squire -2

Eventually I was thinking this:

Stryker/Sloan +6
Defender -9
Charger -4
J. Warcaster -3
Stormblade Inf -5
Officer/Stand -3
Gunners -3
Black 13 -4
(Adding a Stormclad to get to 35)

If I ran Siege I would simply have to drop a gunner. Am I putting too many eggs in one basket?

Depends on how good you are swinging that basket.

Siege is far better of a caster than Sloan is. Sloan's place, IMO is a second warcaster in a multicaster game. Epic Caine is also another strong (probably one of the top 3) assassination casters in the game.

I would seriously consider picking up a unit of Gun Mages and the UA. They most likely will be come a staple unit for you.

3 gunners is probably overkill. 1 or 2 will likely do the job just as well.

at 35 points my tournament list looked like this:

Siege
Reinholdt
Defender (siege's battlegroup)
Hunter (siege's battlegroup)
Trencher Infantry (6 strong)
Stormblades
Stormblades Officer + Standard Attachment
Stormclad (marshaled by the stormblades)

Shoot with Reinholdt, Siege, hunter and defender to force the enemy toward your lines. Use trenchers to lure your enemy close and block models from charging siege. Once the enemy gets into Siege's control area pop his feat. Shoot em up and then charge the blades in to finish him off. If that goes off without a hitch then the opponent was usually too crippled to put up much of a fight after that.

Things I added as the points value grew:

Black 13th
Stormblade Gunners (I only had one for most of the tournament)
Journeyman (for the hunter and arcane armor on the stormblades unit)
a second Defender (for siege's battlegroup)
2 trencher chainguns (charge bait/infantry screen)

As 12thRonin said Sloan is a second rate ranged caster, like Siege lite. The fig is nice, but she is not that great in game play.

Instead of the gunners get Squire, extra focus + extended feat for both Siege and Stryker + extended control area + one reroll per turn to offensive spell with 2 point investment. What is there not to like.

Siege also has a spell that can catch people off guard in Foxhole. I won a game once when I popped off a sniped shot off a defender marshalled to the Dude at his warcaster. He jackwalled around the caster (which I was hoping to get him to do) to try to prevent from happening again. Foxhole'ed the jacks, feated, ground pounder, and a Reinholdt reload later and it was all over but the smoking crater. Between Foxhole, Magesight, and ground pounder no caster is ever safe in his control area.

The majority of the time my games ended with a caster kill because the enemy caster wandered to close to Siege. Magesight is ridiculous with 2 defenders in his battlegroup and reinholdt to reload for Siege. Stealthy casters beware.

Throw in the B13 and you don't have to worry about magesight unless you want to ignore some intervening terrain.

Something else to keep in the back of your mind for next year when the UA Merc captains hit is Rhulic Forge Guard. Cygnar will finally have in faction weapon masters that can bring the pain.

12thRonin wrote:Something else to keep in the back of your mind for next year when the UA Merc captains hit is Rhulic Forge Guard. Cygnar will finally have in faction weapon masters that can bring the pain.

There is no need to wait for Forge Guard as the Cygnar already has Stormblades. The only thing Forge guard have that is missing from Stormblades is reach. Most weapon masters are POW 11 - stormblades are POW 15 when within 5" of the leader so they hit harder than most weapon masters including Forge guard, especially when you count in the POW 14 ranged attacks at effective RAT 7. Stormblades have +1 SPD, +2 DEF and -1 ARM when compared to forge guard and the cost of stormblades with UA is the same as full unit of Forge Guard. I see no benefit in bringing Forge guard compared to Stormblades and they don't bring anything new to the cygnar.

They're far more survivable at ARM 18 and they have crit smite. Arc Shield them and you're looking at Behemoth level armor.

12thRonin wrote:They're far more survivable at ARM 18 and they have crit smite. Arc Shield them and you're looking at Behemoth level armor.

And... they still die to most charging combat infantry (charging pow 12 kills a single wound Arm 21 model on average), models with sniper, models with anatomical precision, etc.

Caster wise, go with whatever ones you like the best The game is close enough balance wise that you'll be able to give a good game with any caster with some practice.

For starting out to learn the faction, I would stick with pStryker, Siege, and pNemo. pStryker and pNemo are all around models that mix well with just about anything you buy. Siege has a punishing ranged focus that seriously hurts enemy armor.

Your lists look fine, though I'm not sure I'd take the full Stormblade unit with Siege (I would tend toward Rangers + a squire).

As for Jack Marshaling, I normally won't marshal anything outside of a light. Heavies usually want a full allotment of focus to kill an enemy heavy and thats not normally something a marshal can provide. Also remember, the Stormblades don't need to marshal the Stormclad to give it the extra focus, so it doesn't really hurt to have it on your caster. However, if you bring Arlen Strangeways along, you can powerboost for 1 focus, get a second from the Storm Blades, and can sometimes find a way to charge without spending a focus (a couple of spells or Hunters Mark from Lanyssa Ryssyl), so you can still get a lot of free focus if you're careful.

Its a bit of give and take -- at small point levels (up to 35) I usually don't marshall. At the larger point levels, anything is game.

Endgame wrote:

12thRonin wrote:They're far more survivable at ARM 18 and they have crit smite. Arc Shield them and you're looking at Behemoth level armor.

And... they still die to most charging combat infantry (charging pow 12 kills a single wound Arm 21 model on average), models with sniper, models with anatomical precision, etc.

Caster wise, go with whatever ones you like the best The game is close enough balance wise that you'll be able to give a good game with any caster with some practice.

That was my point also, you can go with pretty much any unit of given type with your personal preference. I prefer the movement part of the game so I prefer Stormblades over Forge guard and I think I'll look into the Storm cav next to see if they fit into my play style.