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Hey gents, got a request for you. I am currently in the process of luring a friend of mine into Warmahordes, and I know Retribution is so far up his alley it is practically in his spare bedroom. Trouble is that other than the aesthetics, I don't know much of anything about the army, and only play Hordes so far myself. So my question to you gentlefolk is this:

Where should he start as a newb to both Retribution of Scyrah and Warmachine? What combo of 'jacks, caster and units will be easiest for him to use with a little success and give him a good feel for things? I play Circle, so anything that smashes Bloodtrackers and Warp Wolves probably wouldn't hurt him much. He doesn't do much table top gaming, but does a lot of board gaming and video gaming, and has a good mind for sneaky combos and over thinking things in general.

I look forward to your replies good sirs!

I don't have much experience with ret, but I do know the easiest combo to use is probably Ravyn. She's a total one trick pony, but a great one. She will also be decimated by Kaya and her stealth, but most stealth armies dominate ret. Also warmachine is WAAAY easier to teach then hordes, the fury mechanic is way more complex then focus.

Rahn and Ossyan offer the most complex of strategies are are probably their best casters with Rahn just being the best. From what I have seen the Mage Hunter Strike Force is a trap of a unit to buy, while the Sentinels w/ UA and Halberdiers w/ UA both are solid melee units. The pheonix is like a staple jack for Rahn and Hypnos is like an auto-include for Ossyan, but it depends on your style of playing him. I have no clue about the other casters, but I think Discordia and the Banshee(seems great vs warmachine due to its wail and incredible vs hordes due to crit grievous wounds) are both really solid jacks and Wyshnallyr is incredible for Rahn or Ossyan. They have some interesting solos as well.

Just my thoughts on the faction, not sure whats the best for starting the faction not knowing anything. Would depend on which caster he likes IMO.

Something like
Rhan
-Pheonix
Max Sentinels + UA (you put polarity shield on this unit)

Seems incredibly solid and very simple for 15 points. Also introduces warcasters, warjacks, arcnodes, and infantry. Would be a bugger to play against too as polarity shield at 15 pts is pretty insane.

I have only been playing for about a year, but I started with Retribution. Rahn + Battle Mages + Phoenix was my favorite winning combo at first until I started running into hard counters that shut down magic (Menoth). I then started using Ravyn + MHSF+UA with some success, but then again ran into too many stealthy armies (Cryx) that dominated me. I lately have been running Kaelyssa as my primary caster and really like how it's been working. Kaelysa seems not as match up dependant and has a bunch of useful abilities versus WM and Hordes. I like running her with a full group of Sentiniels + UA as the core and build up from there. The Phoenix is the myrmidon I run the most, but Discordia is also fun to run.

Starting with Retribution was a bit tough, but after lots of practice I have been winnning more. Heck, I even managed to win against Cryx a few times out of a 100.

I gues it's easier to say "is weak against stealth" than to quantify the statement and is much easier for players who don't have a good grasp of the army to understand, but just because the army has very little that directly ignores Stealth doesn't make it weak against it. I wouldn't say Ret is the best anti-stealth army ever, but if you're really going to make a statement that an army that has easy access to AoE spam and where most of their ranged units also fight (MHSF loses a point of POW, but gains CMA and Invictors go up to MAT 7 with possible Flank) "is weak against stealth" your standards need to be adjusted because most armies fit that mold.

I'd also heavily disagree Ravyn is a one-trick pony since Vortex of Destruction and Locomotion are great spells and Veil of Mists is still good. She'll also end a good portion of your games personally. I guess if you're regularly ending games on turn 1-2 it may seem that way.

Then again, I've been playing Ret for a while, so maybe I've just gotten too used to making the best use of the toolbox the faction brings to the table.

In general,

Rahn is the most newb friendly caster. Just read up a good bit on the mechanics of Pushes and Slams, and you're good to go. He's very straightforward really, just upkeep Polarity shield on a fighting unit (Hlaberdiers or Sentinels), use Telekinesis to move around key models like the enemy caster through Arc Nodes and Throw Force Hammer at things you need to knock down. Just save the feat until you can TK the enemy caster into a position where battle mages can drag them and you're good to go. He's a caster that gets mistakenly listed as complicated, but when your fighting anything without magic defense, he's actually anything but with most games ending to a combination of TKs/Force Hammer after an Arc Node runs into position.

Garryth is caser than can be attributed entirely to personal taste. I would call him fun, but not really good. He's about average as far as casters go, but wants to be far enough up front that if you don't know threat ranges he'll get pasted very fast.

Ossyan is an interesting caster. He's not complicated, but list building for him gets bogged down really fast. His feat buffs ranged attack damage, but from turn to turn he has very little to help out range. Quicken is much better on melee troops and Admonition is much better on jacks that want to fight. It's easy to get stuck trying to find a balance between range and melee. Overall though, he wants Stormfalls because AoE spam is good, but AoE spam when you can have an extra damage die is great (as are Brutal Damage shots). Ossyan's biggest problem is just not getting killed since if he's using his gun or his feat he's dangerously close to the enemy and often spending focus. He's currently the hardest caster to get a feel for when you can get away with coming forward since when he does he wants to spend focus and he's got an unimpressive stat line.

Kaelyssa is just good. She's got a red herring in her spell card called Backlash that people focus too much on, but she's also got great anti-spell tech from Banishing Ward and Witch Hound. Then she's got Phantom Hunter and True Sight so it's impossible to keep kaelyssa from rolling dice on your caster if you're in range. She's got that amazing gun (and more rarely used, but still awesome sword), and two solid offensive spells to spam via Arc Nodes. But all of that is just gravy, her feat is great in scenarios and solid in non-scenarios. Overall she's got a light learning curve where players have to learn that Backlash almost never works and melee troops love Kaelyssa's feat, but she's got a toolbox to handle most threats.

Vyros is a caster that seems better on papaer than in practice. His win condition is usually hitting things with his sword, but he has no delivery system. Bird's Eye is a cool ability, but Ret has very few jacks that can get anything productive out of the ability since almost all are saddled with RAT 5. Mobility is always nice to have, but Ret jacks already out-threat a lot, so it ends up collecting dust more often than you'd think. All in all Vyros is a Battlegroup caster, but most Ret jacks are really expensive for what they do because of a multitide of abilities that may or may not be relevant to a given game. He reminds me of Reznik if Reznik didn't have a feat, lots of cool stuff, but nothing the army wants or needs.

Ravyn has been mentioned previously. She runs a ranged list generally (and one of the best in the game). I've had a lot of success with her, although as a ranged caster, you have to be good with threat ranges and good at eye-balling distances since her 12" control area is only a little over half of most of her units threat ranges. In general she likes only having one jack unless it's above 50pts and that jack is Discordia. It's easy to just call her Snipe and Feat and knock off for lunch, but her spell list has a number of good spells that all can be applied in a variety of situations and she herself is no slouch when it comes to killing most targets and has built in threat range buffs in the form of her stupid array of natural abilities. She can be pretty newb friendly, but there's enough to the caster that you can still get more out of her when you get better at the game. Then again I may be biased since she has won me awards at national events.