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I'm getting ready to place an order for a couple of new warjacks for my Cygnar army, and I'm considering placing an order for a Hunter and a Stormclad. The only trouble is that I've never actually used a Hunter, and I haven't picked up a unit of stormblades. (What can I say? I love my sword knights more). So the questions I'm facing are:

a) How good is the Hunter? It sounds great in theory, but how does it work on the table?
b) Is the Stormclad worth using without stormblades? I know it is more efficient with the stormblades, but I just can't make myself want to use them. At least not at the moment anyway.

Any thoughts?

a hunter is pretty good. Shorter range than a defender though but with AD and pathfinder. But it hurts arm 20 med and heavy bases more than a defender. Higher rat too and has parry.

Same for stormclad. You save on one focus with the stormblades but if you don't need it, it's still a spd5 mat 7 warjack with reach and pow19

The Hunter is interesting, I used to love it, and still do to an extent, but lets take an Arm 20 warjack that you are shooting at.

Assuming there are no defensive buffs, you are at dice-4 straight off the bat, one focus to boost, and you are doing roughly 7 damage, so just over a column.

The problem is how halving things work in warmachine. If that ARM20 jack has arcane shield/something else giving +3 armour, suddenly you are at dice-7, and barely scratching the paint with your 1 shot a turn. Any additional bonuses (shield, etc) just make it even worse.

So it has use when you can guarantee that you are hitting an unbuffed jack, but that'll really depend on your local area I think.

Some casters use it better than others though, that is for sure.

So for curiosity's sake, do you find that you get more use out of a Defender?

 grayshadow87 wrote:
So for curiosity's sake, do you find that you get more use out of a Defender?

Personally? I do prefer the Defender, even against hordes where its hammer loses its best ability. But I like taking the Hunter, because when you do catch a med/large based model out of support it can be effective.

But then I am far from an amazing Cygnar player, a guy at my store who is far better than me often uses 2 hunters in his Kraye list when we have our (almost monthly at this point) mangled metal deathclock tournaments. Along with a Stormclad and Ol Rowdy. So he obviously sees the use of them over the Defender/other shooty jacks, at least with that caster/in that format.

Hunters as I can gather are one of the most widely used light warjacks in the game actually. The PC 6, AD, RAT 7 and Pathfinder do create good uses for them with warcasters like Kraye as noted but also Sloan and even Caine. They are also cheap enough that youc an run a few of them for some good damaging effect I find.

Stormclads were the workhorse heavy for Cygnar until the Stormwall came out as I can gather. It hits hard, has Reach so has good threat ranges, is tough due to a Bucker and has a gun for a pinch. The Accumulator rule on it is more or less free in addition to its other tricks.

I ran a Stormclad and a couple Hunters when I tried running Kraye in a slow grow league once. It did pretty well actually.

And stuff.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the Hunter. Mostly due to the way armor halving with buffs work in WM. They are ok against certain targets and lists---in other lists they just get kind of shrugged at. I consider them one of those jacks everyone says "Oh yeah, the Hunter can do XYZ"---then they never end up in a list.


Stormclads on the other hand---outside of Ol'Rowdy--I consider him the best Cygnar heavy. Hit's like a truck and is durable, very good jack (with or without stormblades) and usually doesn't need much FOCUS.

I might also point out that both Stormclad and Hunter have decent marshalling potential, especially if you include Arlan Strangeways in the list as well (not to marshal them, but to provide a focus to them).

Hunter marshalled to Gunmages means a decent sniper jack, 18" range and Advanced Deploy means you can start hitting targets first turn, and then switch to critical brutal or thunderbolt.

The Stormclad marshaled to swordknights means Pronto on a very competent melee jack, and with Arlan you even get an extra focus. If you happened to have Stormblades in the mix as well, you'd have the equivilant of full focus on top of ronto, but they're not needed to make it a decent melee threat. Plus, reach jack helps Swordknights get Flank.

There are no arm 20 warjacks that can gain access to arcane shield IIRC. At most it's arm 19. Thats arm 22 after shielding, which is -7 for defenders and -7 for hunters AS well. Even if it was arm23 after whatever buff, that would be - 8 for the defender and -7 for the Hunter due to it being 1/2 base armor which is 10 and -4, and then another 3 armor from arcane shield, which is -7. It's still more likely for the hunter to do damage in that case to heavies.

Interesting cases of Shields
Base Arm 19 with Shield and Defenders Ward is 23
--- Defender = -8 Hunter = -8

Vigilant from Menoth - Base 17 with two Shields and Defenders Ward is 23
--- Defender = -8 Hunter = -9

Devastator from Khador - Base 25
--- Defender = -10 Hunter = -7

So if you think about it mathematically, Shields and armor buffs will make no difference to the comparative effectiveness of the shot between the Hunter and the Defender, because both are effected equally by the upping of the armor (otherwise the Hunter would actually have an Advantage against those models). So really, only Base ARM makes a difference in how a Hunter compares.

So, in effect the Hunter shot is equal to the defender shot as long as the target is a Large or Medium based model with a base ARM of 18/19, and better than the defender shot if the base ARM is 20 or more. Shields and armor buffs do not affect this.

Hunter is decent. My biggest issue with it is it worth 6 points?

Early in my career I found it effective and feared by my friends. But later on people found ways around it and in an all comers list it doesn't always seem worth the points. If it was 5 points it'd be a bargain. 6 is right on the edge and you have to look at other options as well.

For use. I found it most effective with a unit of gunmages.

Stormclad is solid. But I ended up with tbe stormwall instead with eHaley.

He is a 6 point gun, Compare him to any other "Guns" in the game and you will see he is right on par, hell even stronger than most of others in the catergory

Especially when you consider his strength, accuracy and range

Hunter being RAT 7, Pathfinder, AD, able to be far away, and ahving the range it does, it is fairly solidly a 6pt. light I think.

To an above post, Ol' Rowdy I blieeve is ARM 20 with his Buckler.

And stuff.

And a single shot gun has a tough time earning those 6 points back on a regular basis in an all comers list.

Of course it depends on who you play. Trollbloods? very nice. Cryx? You might have one or two decent targets at best.

Can I think of good matchups? oh yes. But some poor ones as well.

I have always found the hunter to be pretty effective. The defender is obviously more well rounded, but in smaller point games, the hunter can fill the roll of damaging high arm targets at range for less points. I find it's only con compared to the defender is it's melee capability. Besides that, I think the hunter is great. I know my buddy used to give me headaches when I ran MoW against him and he could put one down every turn with his hunter - the MoW would never even make it into melee with him.

If you are short on points the hunter is the way to go.

The defender makes for a great caster assassin though.

the Hunter works great with a Junior.

Junior put Arcane Shield on something important like normal. And after upkeeping that he has 2 Focus to give out. Thats exactly enough to give a Hunter a fully boosted shot.

And with Extended Control, Junior can hang a little farther back.

its not bad for a fully boosted hunter shot and an arcane shield bot.


With dice -4 and boosted damage, you are looking at a reliable 6 damage a turn to any heavy, that's an entire column on a Khador jack, with potential for a lot more. Its very self-sufficient.

The Stormclad is IMO great with Stormblades and Arlen Strangeways. It will have what amounts to effectively 3 Focus with no support from the Warcaster. You really should use it with Stormblades, its pretty awesome.

Rememberr, Cryx that the Hunter doesn't threaten is Cryx with Tartarus - who is an awesome Hunter target. Cryx also tends to have more medium base casters than most factions that aren't Trolls, and the Hunter is a *terrifying* threat for those casters - they'll camp, and camp hard, because eating a boosted dice-2 bullet to the face is something no Cryx warlock wants to experience.

Now does camping hurt a caster? Depends - Cryx does lean hard on its infantry, so casters don't NEED to camp a lot, but the threat is one that has to be respected.

Plus its Cygnar, which means access to Eyriss.

Tartarus has stealth. So probably best not to take the hunter just for him. And again, the points don't play out if you are trading a 6 point jack for a 4 point solo.

In fact, Cryx has a lot of stealth and infantry so a hunter is probably not your go-to jack against them even with their medium and large base casters.

Not saying the hunter is bad, but I am not convinced it is a great all-comers jack at 6 points. Those 6 points can do a lot of things.

Doesn't the ATGM's marshalled jack get True Sight?

No, only the ATGM via the UA. The UA grants the unit true sight but the marshalled jack is not part of that unit.

Still snipe make hunters range very high and it is very focus efficient .Perfect jack for a Cain army that maybe runing gunmages.