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So I'm new to the game, and we have a pretty established player base in my area so I thought the best way to jump right in would be the all in one Cygnar army box. I've heard it's one of the weaker boxes but I like the models. Can someone give me an idea of how the list that comes in the box plays? What are its strengths and weaknesses etc. Thanks in advance for the help.

I'll caveat this by saying I am not a Cygnar player.

I think I would keep the Avenger as part of Siege's battle group. The defender can be marshaled to the gun Mage UA, since it has the higher native RAT and the rune shot can put its main gun at crazy range, or for a high pow push back shot. This also gives more focus for Siege to camp or cast with.

The journeyman would be like a super solo, giving out arcane shield to the storm guard or one of the heavy jacks.

The storm guard themselves I think are the 'weak' part. They would play the jamming part of your list, but they're sorta slow and still kinda squishy. With set defense and arcane shield they're not terrible at the job (being 14/18 vs charges), but they'll be vulnerable to a lot of the infantry hate that's out there.

You'll need to be very cautious about when you feat. You halve everything's arm in your control, but that's not a huge distance. You'll want the squire to be extending that and you might have to keep some camp on to discourage assassination runs afterward. But you could have the Jr. Cast AS on Siege and if you're only powering one jack, you'll be fine.

The gun mages are awesome for killing most lighter infantry. For what you can't kill, you can always thunderbolt to try and keep away from objectives.

So strengths I think would be some quality ranged shots (helped by Mage sight), followed by a good feat turn to take down the heavier stuff. By that same token, outside of feat turn there isn't a ton to crack high arm. You also don't have a lot of ways to boost attack, so you're relying on the above average MAT/RAT of the storm guard and gun mages (respectively) to hit things.

Hope that helps some.

I agree with nova spike, but I'll add a few thoughts:

The boxes come with the full kit, not just the parts for one jack, so you're no locked into the Avenger. I'd consider going centurion for more beef.

With stormguard, consider ordering the silverline upgrade kit from privateer press. Same points cost as the base stormguard, but with better synergy with the rest of this list.

Thanks guys, that definitely gives me some stuff to think about. Is there another caster that would be better suited to this group than Siege? Or is this made for him?

Definitely agree about making the centurian.

Silverline can be good and do the same job (losing set defense for no charging and getting crit knockdown vs electroleap), but I think you could buy a whole unit of Boomhowlers for an overall better jam unit.

If you wanted to stay Cygnar (boomhowlers are mercs), really stormguard or silverline are fine.

As for other casters, I'm not confident enough to give solid suggestions, but I think you could easily plug one of the strykers or haleys into this and still be good.

The 35 point boxes go out of their way to include building block units and solos, while avoiding the contents of the battle box. So adding a battle box with Stryker, charger, lance, and ironclad would give you a lot of options and really mesh well with it.

The box is a good value, if only because it gets you two very useful jacks, the Gun mages with UA, a squire, and a journey men, along with one of the better Cygnar casters in Siege. Stormguard are a bit of an odd choice, and not something I'd consider a real cornerstone unit, but the rest of the box is aces.

Cygnar, despite being the poster boy faction, is odd in that much of their best stuff is still in metal. The top four Cygnar jacks in terms of overall utility and power, are Stormwall (resin/metal collasal), Stormclad (metal heavy), Old Rowdy (metal character heavy), and Hunter (metal light). Due to the price constraints, none of those are going in the all-in-one box. Gun mages are metal, but are in the box. I'm a bit surprised they went stormguard over Stormblades in this box, as stormblades are both iconic (Mk1 Prime, yo!) and more generally useful.

Between an Avenger, Thunderbolt shots from gun mages, Fox Hole, and Ground pounder this list has crazy options to open LOS for an assassination gun shot from Siege and the Defender. Add Reinholt for 1 point to double Siege's damage output. Your opponent will be constantly stressed to keep his caster safe.

I'm going to get my first games in with this list this weekend. I did get reinholt in there, by switching jacks around. Going to try to play the list as an assassination list and see how it goes.

So I played with the all in one box Saturday for the most part. Took out the avenger and the gun mage UA and added a Lancer, Charger, and Reinholt. Ended up winning the first game against Cyriss via assassination, losing the 2nd game to Cryx via assassination, and won the 3rd game against Cryx on scenario. Not a bad day, and I felt like the list was pretty competitive, even though I made a couple personal changes to suit what I wanted to do. Good job on PP for putting decent models in the box, and not just stuff they wanted to get rid of.

What does the lancer bring for siege?

 motyak wrote:
What does the lancer bring for siege?

Well, I'm a pretty new player, so I don't know the "correct" answer. What it did for me in my three games this weekend, was give m an arc node to throw rift through, and give me a jack to help out my front lines tie things up, while I got siege, the charger, and JR's defender set up to make assassination runs / destroy the 120mm objective in the scenario we were using (the one from the new book coming out).

Mind you, my group and I are pretty new at warmachine. I'm the newest member, but none of the other guys have played more than five or six months.

What jack / unit do you think would be better there? (I'm sincerely asking, no snark here)

 squall018 wrote:

 motyak wrote:
What does the lancer bring for siege?

Well, I'm a pretty new player, so I don't know the "correct" answer. What it did for me in my three games this weekend, was give m an arc node to throw rift through, and give me a jack to help out my front lines tie things up, while I got siege, the charger, and JR's defender set up to make assassination runs / destroy the 120mm objective in the scenario we were using (the one from the new book coming out).

Mind you, my group and I are pretty new at warmachine. I'm the newest member, but none of the other guys have played more than five or six months.

What jack / unit do you think would be better there? (I'm sincerely asking, no snark here)

There is no "correct" answer mate, I was just asking what you found he brought to the list

I guess I've just always seen siege played at my store differently to that, after the focus for foxhole and whatever jack he has to do some shooting, as well as his shooting, he doesn't have the focus left for a rift to be tossed around. But if you're just running him with a charger, I guess in the early turns you would have focus for rifts. Personally, I'd prefer the ATGM, as they are very good against a lot of the stealthed troops out there with their UA, and for scenario play (thunderbolting a heavy out of a zone with a bunch of tiny dudes is always fun), and are just generally fantastic. Can I ask why you weren't keeping them in? Is your meta full of heavy jack lists? I could see them being less useful then. Or if they just don't gel with the way you play I get that too. Another good option is something to remove defensive spells that have been applied to enemy models, especially armour buffs since they are so annoying on your feat turn.

Don't worry about questions appearing snarky, we'll all just take it as honest questions I'm sure

Oh, and off topic, but since you said you were new, one thing to remember for siege, which is a common mistake, is that it is only the first one of the turn that gets the halved armour. The rest go against full armour. So make that first shot count! Also, the process for halving armour is something a new group could be stumbling on, but just as easily you could have that down as well. Just an example, a Khador Juggernaut is ARM 20, and under your feat it'll be ARM 10 for the first shot. A Cygnar Centurion with Arcane Shield is ARM 24, and under your feat it is ARM 15. This is because it is ARM 19 base, which gets halved to ARM 10, before the effects of its shield (+2 ARM, so ARM 12 now) and Arcane Shield (+3 ARM, so ARM 15 now) are applied. Just a little thing to consider when running siege.

So I kept the ATGM in the list, just took out the UA. They were certainly helpful, and I intend to keep using them.

The early turns I simply gave the Charger one focus to run to where he needed and that was it, so I had focus for spells. I like rift because it slows the enemy down to allow me to get off a few more shots in, and allows me to get the alpha strike in usually. I don't use it to actually hit things, just to put the rough terrain around the board.

That being said, you are correct that I was playing his feat wrong. I didn't realize it was just the first shot against each model, but after rereading it, I realize you are 100% correct. That certainly would have changed the outcome of the last game I played, so that is good info to know. We did get the armor only being halved off the base though, so at least we got that right!