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I'm curious as to what the opinions are regarding the least useful minis that Cygnar has to offer. Specifically, I'm wondering what the thoughts are on the least useful warcaster, warjack, solo, and unit choices for Cygnar.

Any thoughts?

Least useful is hard to pin down, even some of the underused and overcosted selections have uses. For instance, I never really field gun mage captain adepts or field mechanics because of their inefficiency compared to similar choices but they both are clearly effective enough to be called useful if you are willing to pay the points.

I suppose in my opinion it would be long gunners. They are just too one-dimensional in their board control role for my tastes. They would be great at shooting but nobody is stupid enough to walk into range of two pow 21s. In a game all about movement, positioning, and efficient damage this unit loses half of their attacks if they don't stand perfectly still. All the while you pay the points for their full power -not a sign of a good mobile fire base.
Katherine Laddermore is probably ranks on the useless list too. A sad fate for such a great model.

I would say the least used are the weapon platforms. You can see a chain gun sometimes, but I haven't ever seen storm tower until I bought one for my eNemo tier list and same goes for trencher cannon.

Least used caster seems to be Sloan, as she brings little to table that Siege cannot do better.

Of the solos least used is sadly Kathy, she is only worth the points as 4th storm lance and even then there are many ways to spend the 5 points she costs. I have planned on painting my stormlances on the spring time and then I will run some games her leading the lances and see if there is any reason to include her in my lists.

There are a lot of models that are only usable for couple of casters or combos in cygnar, but the above are what ranks as least usable IMHO.

Warcaster has to be Darius. Nobody familiar with Cygnar even argues anymore, they just begrudginly accept it. His only real gimmicks are the crane which can place a warjack out of activation which is solid to be sure, but requires a special action to do, so it messes up his activation a good bit and his feat which repairs Cygnar jacks. The ultimate problem with his feat is that Cygnar jacks aren't terrifically difficult to kill in one turn for most armies even with defensive buffs and if you opponent just plinks away at one jack at a time instead of spreading the love getting real mileage out of the feat is close to impossible. The ultimate failing though is that for a caster who looks like he wants jacks, he does alarming little for them and has a low focus stat to boot.

Solos has to be the Squire...no not even. Trencher master gunner. He has one special action *Artillerist for all those Cygnar AoE's lying around (both of em), a second one called close fire that has never been used in the history of mankind, and a spray with a decent RAT. That's literally all you get for 2 pts. With Siege he has some interesting applications since Explosivo and Artillerist can give pretty much anything +2 RAT for hitting hard targets, but when a unit of Rangers can do the same thing along with giving your entire army the +2 RAT it raises the question of why you should even bother...a very good question.

Storm Tower and Trencher Cannon are locked in a duel to the death for least useful unit. Storm Towers are slow as Christmas (bad analogy this time of year) and lack an AoE, so it's direct hit only and it has the always terribly Light Artillery special rule to boot. Trencher Cannon is better than the storm tower, but that's like getting gold at the special olympics. It has Advance Deploy, so it has a better shot of starting turn 2 in a good firing position and being Dug In can make it something an opponent won't want to waste shots at. It also has a unique feature for Light Artillery in that it has 2 grunts and both are armed, only with military rifles granted, but armed nontheless. Although for all that it's 3 pts and the cannon itself is lackluster as hell.

For the jacks, Hammersmith takes the worst heavy (wohoo SPD 4 with no reach and MAT 6, it's like a Khador jack without all that heavy armor or boxes). If he can get there, the Hammersmith isn't terrible, but compared to the Ironclad, Stormcald, Rowdy and Centurion, you can do much better on a melee heavy in Cygnar. Light is kind of Toss up. The Firefly has a cool ability to conduct with the Storm guys making their preferred method of attack easier without risking a solo made of tissue paper with one hit point running at the enemy, but that's really all it does. It's gun is pretty trash and melee isn't much better for an suprisingly high price tag of 5pts. The Grenadier on the other hand has a gun that isn't utter trash as it at least has decent (not great, but decent) POW on the gun and a AoE with an ability to take extra shots if you have trenchers around, but it's still really short ranged, the melee is trash and a side of toast, getting the extra shots means a 6pt unit at a minimum and it also joins the 5pt club with the firefly. Take a Charger for a point less or a Hunter for a point more since both are far better at shooting.

Dais wrote:I suppose in my opinion it would be long gunners. They are just too one-dimensional in their board control role for my tastes. They would be great at shooting but nobody is stupid enough to walk into range of two pow 21s. In a game all about movement, positioning, and efficient damage this unit loses half of their attacks if they don't stand perfectly still. All the while you pay the points for their full power -not a sign of a good mobile fire base.

The other side of that coin is they're great at area denial.

No doubt about that. The issue is how we define useful and how useful is area control when it takes up 10-12 points? They are great at the one thing they do but their narrow scope of application and lack of utility disappoint me.

People talk bad about the trencher cannon and master gunner but they do at least provide options in how you play them and what you can hope to achieve. Whether it be covering a flank against light infantry and helping an avenger hit separately, or clearing enemies out of melee with your own models safely together you can at least adjust how you play them once you have made contact with the enemy. For me tactical options = usefulness.

I'd argue that its not even the lack of options, but more the fact that to really make them hit that sweet spot requires building a list around them with a good number of buffs. For instance, Long Gunnners with Snipe have an incredibly board control area at RNG 18, which means they can effectively strike at 23 inches out. The problem of course is that they need Snipe to make them hit this sweet spot, and they're priced with the spell in mind... when we really only have it on two casters.

Deadeye support is also something that makes Long Gunners amazing, taking them from mediocre accuracy at RAT 7 while aiming to amazing with a boost. Being able to pump out five 2 man CRAs with boosted attack on the move is quite powerful, but limits your choice in casters that you can take.

Really, Cygnar ends up paying a heavy cost for a lot of its high volume, low accuracy troop choices like Long Gunners and Trenchers. The higher utility, survivability, and maneuverability of Arcane Tempest Gun Mages for the same cost is hard to beat in smaller games.

Interestingly I've actually seen the pendulum swing the other way once you start going into unbound level games. ATGM are nice, but ultimately get shredded quickly by the huge numbers of AOEs that can get thrown around, and they simply don't project as *much* force for the limited numbers of buffs you can throw out into your units. A large block of trenchers can deal with quite a few troops and protect a large chunk of your army with smoke, and long gunners begin to shine in a support role where they are kept behind quite a large number of troops, and the jam of bodies on the other side of the board means that suppressing fire turns from an annoyance into a massive hazard for troops trying to move through a choke point. I've seen a Cyclone and a unit of Long Gunners keep about 40 points of troops from advancing through the only clear terrain gap on one third of the board, forcing them to contend with ruined buildings and rough terrain which slowed the advance considerably.

Mastershake wrote:Trencher master gunner. He has one special action *Artillerist for all those Cygnar AoE's lying around (both of em), a second one called close fire that has never been used in the history of mankind, and a spray with a decent RAT. That's literally all you get for 2 pts. With Siege he has some interesting applications since Explosivo and Artillerist can give pretty much anything +2 RAT for hitting hard targets, but when a unit of Rangers can do the same thing along with giving your entire army the +2 RAT it raises the question of why you should even bother...a very good question.

The Grenadier on the other hand has a gun that isn't utter trash as it at least has decent (not great, but decent) POW on the gun and a AoE with an ability to take extra shots if you have trenchers around, but it's still really short ranged, the melee is trash and a side of toast, getting the extra shots means a 6pt unit at a minimum and it also joins the 5pt club with the firefly.

I have to disagree with the above choises Mastershake, you are so wrong with Grenadier that it hurts. The three shot combo from Grenadier doesn't need the 6 point unit, you can get it with 2 points by tagging the chaingun to grenadier. This nets you 3 POW 12 AoE 3 shots a turn from 3 advance deploying figs with the chaingun shots as bonus. You can see where the enemy deploys and drop these guys where you need them, but out of enemy advance. If/ when you have Aiyanna, Gorman or Ragman in your list the POW gets assassination potential and if you are playing Siege this brings so much hurt to the enemy on the feat turn it is funny.

Trencher master gunner also brings options to the table and is usable in many cases, but his inclusion is really dependant on the army and I would say he is not going to fit in many lists under 50 points. Incidentially two master gunners also gets the 3 shots from Grenadier at 9 points for the whole combination, but it is not as good deal as the pairing with the chaingun.

Why are you trying to figure this out exactly?

A Model/Unit's usefulness is going to be based on how you attend to use it and how much you cater a list to that purpose.

If you want to run a AoE spammy list with Grenadier's then a Trencher Master Gunner is great, but it's not a model that you put in just because you have 2 points left over at the end.

Unsupported a Hammersmith looks 'meh' but in the hands of pNemo and Lanyssa Ryssyll it can be moving 7, charge 12, depending on how you buff it it could be dropping POW 19's or be at ARM 22, and if Nemo tossed 5 Focus on it, it's the closest thing Cygner will get to having a Bronzeback.

Metsuri wrote:I have to disagree with the above choises Mastershake...

I don't really care. Disagree all day, doesn't make them good choices or cause them to magically appear in tournament lists.

Metsuri wrote:...you are so wrong with Grenadier that it hurts. The three shot combo from Grenadier doesn't need the 6 point unit, you can get it with 2 points by tagging the chaingun to grenadier. This nets you 3 POW 12 AoE 3 shots a turn from 3 advance deploying figs with the chaingun shots as bonus. You can see where the enemy deploys and drop these guys where you need them, but out of enemy advance. If/ when you have Aiyanna, Gorman or Ragman in your list the POW gets assassination potential and if you are playing Siege this brings so much hurt to the enemy on the feat turn it is funny.

Yes, I forgot that there's a million trencher models...doesn't really change the Grenadier having poor range or needing extra points tagged onto a model already not worth it's cost.

Metsuri wrote:Trencher master gunner also brings options to the table and is usable in many cases, but his inclusion is really dependant on the army and I would say he is not going to fit in many lists under 50 points. Incidentially two master gunners also gets the 3 shots from Grenadier at 9 points for the whole combination, but it is not as good deal as the pairing with the chaingun.

Giving +2 to hit to a random buff to a single attack type in an army that's only has a few of those typs does make the model less useful than pretty much any solo in Cygnar.

One lesson I've learned is that no matter how underpowered something is, someone will always defend it, but some models are just weaker than others.

Mastershake wrote:One lesson I've learned is that no matter how underpowered something is, someone will always defend it, but some models are just weaker than others.

I think everyone, everywhere can agree that Cryx Drudges are outright bad.

Are we talking about least useful or all around worst here? I've been focusing on least useful in my above posts. I do agree the trencher cannon is worse all around than long gunners but it's cheaper and brings a little more utility so it has more uses in my eyes. The long gunners doing their one thing really well still makes them better overall than the trencher cannon doing 3-4 things poorly.

I was thinking about the least useful, rather than all-around worst, units when I started the thread. I hadn't really thought about it at the time, but I suppose there is a considerable gulf between usefulness and whether a model is "good."

Well its a hard question, in the end its down to what works well as an army, so all units have something to offer.

Kirbinator wrote:I think everyone, everywhere can agree that Cryx Drudges are outright bad.

Damn right! They offer nothing over Mcthralls except maybe resilience to blast, which is mitigated by their increased cost. They're also Allies with no mercenary option.

I want to love them, bit it's so so hard.