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My friend and I have been playing a ton of warmachine lately. He plays retribution and I play either khador or circle (tried out a rhulic force recently too).

I just keep running into retribution's ability to simply ignore...everything, and it is pissing me off to no end. I thought it could not get any worse than our last game where he ran kaelyssa+invictors+discordia against my searforge commission consisting of gorten with a basher, highshields, forgeguard, a gunner and steinhammer. While I did pull off the win (it was a mosh pit game) it was still infuriating to have him negate LOS, cover, concealment, camo, stealth, blast damage, and be nearly immune to my shooting (discordia's aura on the invictors make them ARM 19, the same as my shieldwalled highshields). Our last game was a matchup with rahn and battle mages vs morvahna, a gnarlhorn satyr, gorax, and some bloodtrackers. I read his model's and realized that the gnarlhorn would be completely useless since it cant slam his manticore and everything in his army would be immune to morvahna's offensive abilities and feat. /end rant

Has anyone else noticed this? Does retribution have any weakness at all? I just feel consistently frustrated everytime I play against his armies and the only pleasure I get from playing is when the game is finally over, regardless of who won.

do you guys announce each other's lists to each other before you game? because it sounds like he's building his lists to counter yours specifically

You do know that only Kaelyssa ignores all the things you listed and she can give one jack in her battle group phantom hunter (which does not ignore stealth). As to Rahn vs the gnarlhorn- so what if you can't hit his manticore (presumably because of polarity shield). Hit his normal troops with it and slam them into Rahn or just slam Rahn directly. I don't see how Rahn can negate Morvahna's feat or how his battle mages can ignore it.
It just sounds like your having a tough time learning how to use Circle and are frustrated.

Ok, as Leo_the_Rat has pointed out you have seem to got the wrong impression about some of the rules being used against you. Remember that you can ask for you opponents cards at any time. I haven't played against everything in the game and most times something comes up, the opponents says it does this and I'll ask to look at the cards. I'm not doubting them, calling them a cheat but I want to understand how it really will affect my force as I know that better than I know the enemy's.

Retribution have one glaring weakness, stealth. They have no way around it (cept Kaelyssa). Very few of their options have AOE's or sprays so use that if you can. Other than that, pick your targets carefully, so the gharlhorn can't slam the manticore, slam the unit then and follow-up into a clump of enemy. It seems like you might not be playing scenarios so maybe think about the steamroller pack.

KingKodo wrote:
Does retribution have any weakness at all?

I am a Ret player and I can tell you we have numerous weaknesses.
We have a very tough time against Stealth (though Kaelyssa is an exception but only for herself).

Our Jacks are all expensive because they all are combined arms Jacks.
That is they can shoot and can melee, and neither really well (though the Arcanist helps here too).
So if you see an Arcanist take him out first if you can, and then our jacks become very ordinary.

Rahn and the battle mages are immune to blast damage, so, morvahna's feat and her spell cant deal damage to them. All it would do is sprout cover for them...

And yeah, we work together and constantly talk about developing armies.

well theres your problem.

Circle is a finess army that really suffers from hard counters to it's tricks.

try building an all stealth army (eKaya with bloodtrackers come ti mind) and watch his tricks fall apart

I play Ret...and have lost more than I have won.
Mage Hunters are really the only thing that ignore LOS/Cover...but they are still affected by stealth. The jacks....just don't let them charge and they are super easy to kill.

Dawnguard...same thing, shoot the crap out of them before they get to you.

The issue is not circle, this only my first game with them. I play Khador usually and I have played a rhulic merc army against him too. I just find it extremely frustrating that he has the ability to complete negate strategies and meneuvers. I can handle people building a strong defense against them, but being able to completely negate warlock/warcaster feats and spells is just irritating. We will be playing the following lists tonight:

Morvahna
-Gnarlhorn Satyr
-Gorax

Min Blood trackers
-Nuala the huntress

Druid Wilder


Adeptis Rahn
-Manticore

Min Battle mages
Artificer
Artificer

I will post back her with the results.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

theQuanz wrote:I play Ret...and have lost more than I have won.
Mage Hunters are really the only thing that ignore LOS/Cover...but they are still affected by stealth. The jacks....just don't let them charge and they are super easy to kill.

Dawnguard...same thing, shoot the crap out of them before they get to you.

I have beaten him 3 out of four times, but he is also still relatively new. In fact, I believe he has only played six games, whereas I have played about 35-45 games. Most of the games I have won, were extremely close, as in, my warcaster just barely survived his assassination.

It looks like either your number are off or the names you are giving the Ret units are off. Based on what you've written your playing 15 points of circle vs 9 points of Ret.
For your circle pieces you're wasting a lot of points in that very small list. Dump the Gorax and the wilder. If you use the Gorax's animus on the Satyr then you lose the Satyr the next round. The wilder does nothing for you at all. Instead improve your Satyr into a Feral and an argus and a warwolf or a Stalker and an argus . The argus can be used to spray his troops and make them unable to charge or run their next turn and gives them Def 7 for the rest of your turn.
Morvahna's not really suited for playing at this level in terms of her spells and feats since she prefers to have lots of infantry on both sides.

He also has sylys, not sure where you are getting 9 pts from though, artificers are 3 each + 5 for the mages. Thats 11 points + 2 for sylys and 2 for the manticore.

We are two turns into the game and so far I put down both of his artificers and he done some decent damage on my gnarlhorn due to a slam that fell just barely short.

I understand what the gorax's animus does, I just need to make sure I can kill the manticore without getting the charge on it since it is immune to charges. Also - The argus would need a ton of boosting to be effective against the battle mages since they are DEF15 against the spray.

I have been finding the wilder to be very useful, being able to grant the gnarlhorn it's animus without forcing is rather nice as well as being able to stack tons of fury on the gorax to fuel morvahna's healing abilities. Next game, I will almost definately run a feral warpwolf, I just love the gnarlhorn so much, I had to try him out.

i would suggest you weigh the pros and cons of a feral vs a stalker in your list

pathfinder, reach and berserk might be the edge you need

KingKodo wrote:He also has sylys, not sure where you are getting 9 pts from though, artificers are 3 each + 5 for the mages. Thats 11 points + 2 for sylys and 2 for the manticore.

I believe that he mistook the Artificers for Arcanists (I did too on first reading)

How is the manticore immune to charges?
And what warcaster is immune to Feats? I think you're being Had with all these immunities...Ret isn't that great, they just need to be used skillfully.

Rahn has Polarity Shield. Stops charges in the front arc. He also has force barrier and so do the battle mages.

Manticore has Rahn's Polarity shield, most likely. (Or whatever that no-charging spell is)

Frankly, try running one of the more straightforward Circle casters like Kromac or pKrueger. Kromac's Beastial will completely shut down Rahn (no spells means no spells or magic attacks; Rahn can only make melee attacks and the Battle Mages can do nothing) and pKrueger's feat is not blast damage so it will fry a lot of the softer Ret infantry.

With Khador, run pButcher to make yourself safe from MHSF ranged assassination and Kayazy Assassins with UA. Ret has very few mat buffs and little shooting that can circumvent Stealth. Just tank your way through his army.

With Mercs, run Gorten. His feat has a threat range of 14-17" and can suck the relatively fragile circle army into reach of forgeguard blocks. Gun bunnies can also kill the holy hell out of most Ret casters.

Let me get this straight: even though your opponent has a way to counter your extremely intricate "charge and shoot/beat you to death" strategy, you still manage to beat him most of the time. Then you come on the forum here and complain about it? Do you just expect to be able to step on him with no challenge at all?

Searforge also pretty much ignores blast damage and is highly resilient to shooting. How do you think your opponent feels?
And those models that ignore LOS and cover? There's one warcaster, some 'jacks, and some models that would find it extremely difficult to kill your highshields.
And picking one model (Discordia) - a jack which nearly every Retribution player finds a way to fit into their army - doesn't mean he's list tailoring.

Honestly, stop whining. The Ret player has to use every dirty trick in his book just to keep up with you.

sourclams wrote:Manticore has Rahn's Polarity shield, most likely. (Or whatever that no-charging spell is)

Frankly, try running one of the more straightforward Circle casters like Kromac or pKrueger. Kromac's Beastial will completely shut down Rahn (no spells means no spells or magic attacks; Rahn can only make melee attacks and the Battle Mages can do nothing) and pKrueger's feat is not blast damage so it will fry a lot of the softer Ret infantry.

With Khador, run pButcher to make yourself safe from MHSF ranged assassination and Kayazy Assassins with UA. Ret has very few mat buffs and little shooting that can circumvent Stealth. Just tank your way through his army.

With Mercs, run Gorten. His feat has a threat range of 14-17" and can suck the relatively fragile circle army into reach of forgeguard blocks. Gun bunnies can also kill the holy hell out of most Ret casters.

Bestial won't completely shut down the battle mages - they still have 2 melee attacks, with MAT 6, P+S of 11, and Beat Back. Losing the Force Bolt does hurt, but they can still do something - just not much. Rahn without spells is not terribly scary - he can do some damage in melee, but he's just not a melee caster. (Camped with 8 Focus can make him a bit harder to crack, but then he's not doing much with it.) pKrueger would be a real problem - between the feat and chain lightning, one good turn could take out a lot of Ret infantry, and Ret jacks are pretty squishy.

Ret has some weaknesses - among them, Ret is not always equipped to deal with an "in your face" army. When I play Ret, I do much better when my opponent hags back and tries to avoid engaging. When they get on top of my army and start beating face, I don't do so well. Stealth is a huge problem for Ret, since there is a severe shortage of sprays.

Xarian wrote:Let me get this straight: even though your opponent has a way to counter your extremely intricate "charge and shoot/beat you to death" strategy, you still manage to beat him most of the time. Then you come on the forum here and complain about it? Do you just expect to be able to step on him with no challenge at all?

Searforge also pretty much ignores blast damage and is highly resilient to shooting. How do you think your opponent feels?
And those models that ignore LOS and cover? There's one warcaster, some 'jacks, and some models that would find it extremely difficult to kill your highshields.
And picking one model (Discordia) - a jack which nearly every Retribution player finds a way to fit into their army - doesn't mean he's list tailoring.

Honestly, stop whining. The Ret player has to use every dirty trick in his book just to keep up with you.

Hes a brand new player, pretty much every victory came due to him exposing his warcaster and getting assassinated. Also, his list against my searforge didnt even have blast dmg, in fact he would have won that game if he didnt try to assassinate my warcaster and expose his in the process. Hell discordia pretty much wiped out my forgeguard and my highshields on it's own.

KingKodo wrote:Hes a brand new player, pretty much every victory came due to him exposing his warcaster and getting assassinated. Also, his list against my searforge didnt even have blast dmg, in fact he would have won that game if he didnt try to assassinate my warcaster and expose his in the process. Hell discordia pretty much wiped out my forgeguard and my highshields on it's own.

You're obviously not a new player, so you should know that Warmachine/Hordes at very small point levels like the 15-25 bracket isn't perfectly balanced and will inevitably feel rock-paper-scissors, with much of the game coming down to whose warcaster is better late-game.

Play at higher point levels. Your games will hinge less on matchups as you'll have a broad enough spread of units/warnouns to trade models and counter, and more on skill.

Retribution is absolutely not an unbeatable uber faction. Their solos tend to be very flashy and some of their units are quite potent, but their casters are middle of the road and their tricks can be far more matchup-prone than what you're experiencing against him.

I know what you mean. The problem is that we only have a very small window of game time. Usually between 1am and 3am. We played a 25pt battle and it literally took us four days to finish.

After comparing the argus to the gorax, I may take the argus just so I can give my beasts pathfinder...which I still cannot understand why so few of them have it.

The gorax seems like overkill, especially against retribution jacks and especially when he only has one. So far in the game, it has done nothing but feed morvahna fury.

Well we both decided to call the game a draw. He didnt want to deal with morvahna regenerating the blood trackers constantly and I didnt want to deal with my gimped list.

Next game I will try out Kromac with a feral an argus and a min blood trackers unit.

Have you guys found that the blood trackers are extremely good infantry? Their combination of abilities makes them so deadly especially with nuala. My friend actually thinks they are overpowered somewhat. I was debating whether or not to run them or a squad of ravagers, who I actually prefer aesthetically.