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I am a newcomer to the game (veteran of 40k).

I love Warjacks and I love to blow my enemy to pieces. I am seeking some advice on starting a faction that will let me use a lot of jacks and be quite shooty. I have no idea which do this best, but I am open to playing any of the factions! From what I have read, Khador seems to be the best Jack army..? Any feedback is welcome!

*points towards Cygnar* you will find what you want there. I'll let the experts take it from here.

I don't know what your sources are but reconsider them. Khador is if not hands down the worst 'Jack faction in the game, certainly tied for a place on the bottom. The only reason Khador brings 'Jacks, is that you can't legally field a list without them.

If you want 'Jack heavy generally, Protectorate of Menoth or Convergence of Cyriss are you go-tos. Cygnar has great shooting 'Jacks even if you won't run a ton of them.. the Stormwall is one of the best gunboats in the game.


Cygnar: You get the stormwall. You get great shooting infantry as backup, and a lot of spell support for extending the rounds you spend gunning.Your shooting game is strong and can be 'Jack centric, but 1 or 2 pieces will always be your anchor. Read: Stormwall is near auto-include.
Prteoctorate: You viably run a lot more gun jacks, though with lower accuracy & pow. You get a gak ton of AoE power in return. This faction has multiple casters that would be happy taking 4+ 'Jacks with guns. Shooting 'Jacks have very good melee game as a backup plan.

If you like lighting and cannons, and one big 'Jack go cygar.
If you want higher 'Jack count (Heavies & Lights), with AoEs, Fire, and Versatility go Protectorate.

Also, if you come from 40k, Menoth has the advantage of basically being the Imperium of Man.

Chongara wrote:
I don't know what your sources are but reconsider them. Khador is if not hands down the worst 'Jack faction in the game, certainly tied for a place on the bottom. The only reason Khador brings 'Jacks, is that you can't legally field a list without them.

If you want 'Jack heavy generally, Protectorate of Menoth or Convergence of Cyriss are you go-tos. Cygnar has great shooting 'Jacks even if you won't run a ton of them.. the Stormwall is one of the best gunboats in the game.


Cygnar: You get the stormwall. You get great shooting infantry as backup, and a lot of spell support for extending the rounds you spend gunning.Your shooting game is strong and can be 'Jack centric, but 1 or 2 pieces will always be your anchor. Read: Stormwall is near auto-include.
Prteoctorate: You viably run a lot more gun jacks, though with lower accuracy & pow. You get a gak ton of AoE power in return. This faction has multiple casters that would be happy taking 4+ 'Jacks with guns. Shooting 'Jacks have very good melee game as a backup plan.

If you like lighting and cannons, and one big 'Jack go cygar.
If you want higher 'Jack count (Heavies & Lights), with AoEs, Fire, and Versatility go Protectorate.

Well I think I will go with Cygnar. Menoth is a little to odd for me to be interested in. I like guns and lightning, and the Stormwall looks beast.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dementedwombat wrote:
Also, if you come from 40k, Menoth has the advantage of basically being the Imperium of Man.

boo death to the emperor!

 Turock wrote:
I am a newcomer to the game (veteran of 40k).

I love Warjacks and I love to blow my enemy to pieces. I am seeking some advice on starting a faction that will let me use a lot of jacks and be quite shooty. I have no idea which do this best, but I am open to playing any of the factions! From what I have read, Khador seems to be the best Jack army..? Any feedback is welcome!

Firstly, welcome to the iron kingdoms. Don't forget to take your complimentary goggles and warcaster plushie.

With regard to your question - you want a jack heavy faction that shoots a lot.

Tharn you say khador fits the bill. Let me disabuse you of this notion. I play khador. They're a great faction, but jack heavy is something they cannot generally claim to be. Khador are an infantry centric faction. There are exceptions. Most casters like one or two jacks, and a handful (karchev, butcher and harkevich mainly) can run multiple ones well. Harkevich even lends himself we'll to a ranged game. But make no mistakes - they all want infantry. An whilst khador have some great ranged tools (winter guard riflemen, widowmakers, and some extremely good artillery) going with a ranged only approach is a foolish move. And that's true for all factions. This is not 40k. You cannot gunli edit fro. Your deployment zone. All armies need tarpits and melee bruisers. This is especially what khador excels at. Khador jacks tend to function as mobile artillery more so than gunships.


The big thing to take away is that warjacks might be war machines, but they are not warmachine. Jacks are cool - no mistakes - but they don't dominate the game or the faction rosters like gw space marines. Spam works in 40k but it does not work here. Infantry for a warmachine army are vital.

Now, with regard to factions who can field ranged jacks, is look at cygnar. Stormwall, defenders, hunters etc. they play an excellent ranged game. Cygnar also has access to numerous jack marshals so they have effective ways and means to run jacks outside of a warcasters battlegroup, but again, these will be backed up my infantry.

If you're getting into the game, I'd recommend going with a faction starter box. Cut your teeth with the battlebox level games and learn your way around the fundamentals before you even think of going for a 35pt army. Play lots. Expect to lose lots too. If possible, join a journeyman league. This game rewards a slow steady build up instead of jumping in at the more standard levels of play.

Cygnar, Retibution, and protectorate can offer what you are looking for.

Cygnar has better guns on their jacks and more ranged options but tend to have a hard time providing focus to all of those jacks. The gun mage officer is also an outstanding jack marshal for ranged jacks. It can also be difficult to set up a front line robust enough to delay fast enemy melee specialists.

Retribution is primarily an infantry faction but all their heavy jacks have guns and all of those guns have interesting special effects. They have a lot of trouble running multiple jacks and getting accuracy buffs but their infantry can back up a ranged emphasis.

Protectorate has fewer options and shorter range than cygnar but they have better jack support and much tougher front line. They have only one jack marshal in the entire faction though, so they have to rely on their casters and support crew for all their tricks.

Khador can bring fairly good shooting, but not many jacks.

Cryx has a dismal selection of ranged options -the worst shooters in either game.

Convergence run jacks amazingly well and they have a fair number of ranged options but the faction isn't fully released yet and their ranges tend to be on the low end. You can certainly get something to work with them but they are so new you'll find little to no guidance.

Well I think for now I will give Khador a shot considering the game is melee centric.

However I will probably purchase a Cygnar battlegroup in the near future!

Btw if you want to focus on the bigger models you could take a look at Hordes. Especially Legion of Everblight plays fairly beast-heavy (Beasts are the living equivalent of Warjacks) and they tend to be shooty too.

Heard that neraly all Scyrah jacks have a ranged weapon.

 Turock wrote:
Well I think for now I will give Khador a shot considering the game is melee centric.

However I will probably purchase a Cygnar battlegroup in the near future!

The game really isn't melee centric, its mostly a balanced mix.

You use shooting to soften the enemy up before you finish them off in melee. Cygnar is the only faction that has dedicated ranged jacks(IE: Jacks that should never really be making melee attacks if you can help it) about every other faction's jacks are either melee only or jacks with a good gun and a good melee weapon.


Cygnar would probably be best for you. You can run plenty of shooting jacks because they don't lose as much by not having Focus available.

So you could have a Caster running 2-3 warjacks.

The Junior warcaster running a shooty jack like a Hunter.

Gunmages with UA marshaling a Defender(With the Runeshot abilities this gun becomes nasty)

You also have Arlen Strangeways who is both a Jack marshal and a mechanik at the same time. Plus he has an ability to give a jack a free point of Focus.


You can run plenty of Jacks in a Cygnar list if you take advantage of all the Jack Marshals they have available.

 sing your life wrote:
Heard that neraly all Scyrah jacks have a ranged weapon.

The heavy ones all do, yes, with, I think, one exception. The light ones don't with, I think, two exceptions. I haven't really played much of anything, but the Scyrah faction faction myrmidons have a very strong aura of support. Well except the Phoenix which can do most "roles" decently.

If you present someone with an archetypical model or models, Scyrah won't get a jack, they get Mage Hunters. Annoying assassin bastards that ignore spells and terrain and that are generally good at harming jacks and casters.

Snipe-feat-go is surely the iconic Scyrah list. Its also the most annoying. I hate Retribution with a passion because of that list.

It depends on what you mean by jack heavy. Cygnar can definitely bring some shooty jacks to the table, but *any* army will want a mix of jacks and troops.

The nice thing about Cygnar is you have a few nice options to run a shooty jack other than the caster. The Gum Mage UA is one of, if not the best, jack marshal. Strangeways is nice and not just as a marshal. And the Jr. Warcaster can run a shooty jack pretty well and brings a nice buff to the table. Plenty of other jack marshals as well.

And there are plenty of shooty jacks other than just the Stormwall. Defender is probably one of the best. But you have Avenger, Hunter and Minuteman. And while they may not be top end the charger and sentinel are both interesting and not unusable.

Cygnar also has a few very shooty warcasters lead by Seige and eCaine. Neither of them like many jacks in their battlegroup, but as mentioned before we have plenty of jack marshals.

Cygnar also has the best access to mercs and the new Merc Jr Warcaster will allow you to take him and just about any merc warjack including a Mule which is an interesting option. Mercs will also give you access to some great tarpit units to protect your shooters.

IMO, if you want a shooty Cygnar list I would start off with Seige as your caster.

I haven't played much Khador myself, but have played against them a lot. I think Harkevich is probably your caster of choice. He seems to be able to run multiple shooty jacks. But you sill still definitely want troops to back them all up. And Khador has some really good ranged troops as well.

Overall it is important to realize that the names Warmachine and Hordes are a bit ironic. Warmachine armies tend to only want 1-2 jacks. While Hordes armies tend to want a bunch of beasts and less troops. While there are exceptions to every rule this is a strong tendency.

Even more important to remember...A 35 point can usually be had for under $200 (a chunk of money, but not too unreasonable for most employed gamers), especially if you go jack heavy or base your list on the starter box. So it is really easy to have a khador and cygnar army. I have 4 armies myself and the starter box for a 5th. Everyone I know who plays at least semi regularly has at least 2 armies they could play at 35+ points. So don't feel like you are locked in by your initial army choice.