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Do they get taken that often? What kind of casters/locks do they work best with? I'm just curious because I understand jacks, and units, and solos, but I never really looked at the battle engines. In a lot of ways they just feel like something halfway between a heavy jack and a colossal, but without the support options available to either of those. I just can't see when you'd take one over either a heavy + support or a colossal and remove something else.

The Cygnar one and the retribution one get play in my area now and then. The Khador and circle ones looks interesting, but I've never seen them in use.

The Cryx one is considered pretty bad.

I don't know much about the Menoth one or the other hordes ones.

And Lylyth3 is a cool model to paint like santa claus. But again, not really up to date on her rules or if she is any good. I think she is the only battleengine/huge based caster so far.

Battle engines are actually more in the conceptual role of big offense heavy solos rather than warjacks of any sort. It kind of helps to think of htem like that.

The Protectorate one seems to see the most play in the tournament regime. The Circle and Retribution ones are the next most seen I think.

After that they drop off a bit, mainly I think in part due to having been a bit eclipsed in awareness by colossals and gargantuans. But there is a good spot for most of them to at least try, save maybe the Skorne one (which does compete with beasts and doens't do it well) and the Cryx one (which sees the most use I think with Skarre1 and that's about it).

And stuff.

They cost about the same as a heavy jack.

The Menoth battle engine is one of the best engines there is. Its got a powerful longish range gun and 3 very useful abilities. They all revolve around damaging itself so a mechanik to follow it around is pretty much mandatory.

They're another piece that may or may not fit into the battle plan. Each does a different thing.


The Menoth engine is a good infantry clearing piece and its also good at control(one of its abilities lights every enemy within 2" on fire and pushes them 4" away)

The Cygnar engine is better at straight up killing stuff, and its fairly survivable in melee thanks to its repulsion ability.

The Troll engine is a gun platform, so is the Khador one.

The Skorne engine is a bad joke. A very bad joke.

A local Khador player runs a Vlad3 tier list with two Gun Carriages. I've never played it, but it seems to work for him.

I love Battle Engines, I think they rock.

I throw my wraith engine into lists occasionally as a curve ball. People tend to fear it because they don't really have any exposure to it. The league model was better because it generated its own souls.

It is lacking in the gun department, however. Only BE with that issue unfortuantely.

The Protectorate Battle Engine is amazing. It does just about everything.

Thanks to at-will, "basically free" boosting the gun easily threatens heavy-armor (17-19) and moderate-good DEF (14-15) without any outside assistance aiming or other such nonsense. When it's tag-teamed in with Reckoner Flare, pSevvy's Eye of Menoth, pKreoss Feat, Rhoven or other common support elements and it becomes crazy.

Magic Weapon & Admonisher really help bring the gun to the next level, giving you a wider selection of targets and always ensuring you'll hit at least 2 targets probably 3. in terms of just # of models hit, it's like having AoE 4 but being less reliant on spacing. The leaps are POW 10 which is better than most blast damage, also magical and get around targetting restrictions.

The only guns that reliably threaten it are boostable POW 14s+ which aren't often seen in volume and won't make an appearance at all in many match ups. It's also fire immune which says goodbye to a lot of shooting from 2 factions.. This means it has staying power, so long as you can keep it screened.

The gun alone is reason enough to bring it, but on top of it has a 4" repulsion ability, which can a major be a big deal in some scenarios especially in terms of defending the zone or objective on your side of the board. Doors of Judgement can make the order to kill things in problematic for the enemy, since the factor has accurate weapon masters and troops with good AoEs on their basic attacks.

Honestly the thing would probably be playable at 10 or 11 points. At 9 points it's an insane bargain. It's helped by being in the same faction with the Reckoner & Redeemer and some above average tar-pitting ability.

I've started using the Wraith Engine with Scaverous.

It's fun; either they ignore it and it debuffs/munches infantry, or they focus on it and have to commit resources that could be working on killing something more important.

 fishy bob wrote:
A local Khador player runs a Vlad3 tier list with two Gun Carriages. I've never played it, but it seems to work for him.

I love Battle Engines, I think they rock.

I believe the Khador Gun Carriage counts as cavalry. So Vlad3's bonus applies to it. At least I think that is what the Khador player was trying to explain to me the other day.

It is indeed cavalry.

Skorne Battle Engine is one of the best paper holders around

It's also one of the coolest models in the game.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Do they get taken that often? What kind of casters/locks do they work best with? I'm just curious because I understand jacks, and units, and solos, but I never really looked at the battle engines. In a lot of ways they just feel like something halfway between a heavy jack and a colossal, but without the support options available to either of those. I just can't see when you'd take one over either a heavy + support or a colossal and remove something else.

A general rule of thumb is a caster who can give it a good buff or a caster who needs heavy ranged support but doesn't have the focus to spare.

I did actually know about the Skorne one, because one of the podcasts I listen to did a bunch of "Siege Animantarax" memes. The two that I can remember are:

"gets eyeless sight from an extoller...can no longer see target through the banes"

"Goes great with Mordikaar...as an essence blast target"

They're fun.

The Craters from the Gun carriage are aggravating to deal with.

Magic gun from the Menoth one is gross.

Knockdown on the Troll War Wagon's gun is sweet when you can
pull it off.

In most cases, you have to build for the battle engine to
be in your list. A War Wagon likes having an Impaler to snipe
it's knockdown gun. The Storm Strider likes having other lightning
elements in its list. And so on.

I've run my Cygnar one at lower point games (up to 35) with pStryker in a Journeyman.
When it hit man it sizzled.

great for hitting mechanics running behind jacks or clearing massed infantry out of zones, and even better hitting those damned high def solos with a well placed electroleap from a trooper/jack nearby.

Mine never got damaged once, so no bonus power tokens.

As constructs having mechanics repair them is great (except the living ones)

I've played once against a cryx one which took a bit of killing and have seen others take them.
Collossals and gargantuans are still rare in my local meta but getting more common.

the throne of everblight is OK with p thagrosh, spiney growth and thags aura give it effective armour 22 iirc.

The menoth one is very strong aswell, easily the most competitive

George L. wrote:
the throne of everblight is OK with p thagrosh, spiney growth and thags aura give it effective armour 22 iirc.

The menoth one is very strong aswell, easily the most competitive

eThags too. Dragon's Blood, Spiny Growth and Tenacity can make it go up to ARM24.

Rhyas is great with the Throne too. Feat+Slipstream and/or Masscre gives it Molik Karn threat ranges. Occultation is also just rude on it.

I do like my Wraith Engine, though it Is probably right near the bottom of the ranking of Battle Engines because of its lack of ranged weapon.

Retribution one is good as well. It's not yet done anything especially memorable like some of the sweet games my Wraith Engine has pulled off, but I've not used it as much yet either.

Between the two I do think the Wraith Engine is capable of putting out more serious damage than the Space Tick, but it's also a hell of a lot more likely to die itself. Space Tick has more toolbox options though.

 Grimtuff wrote:

George L. wrote:
the throne of everblight is OK with p thagrosh, spiney growth and thags aura give it effective armour 22 iirc.

The menoth one is very strong aswell, easily the most competitive

eThags too. Dragon's Blood, Spiny Growth and Tenacity can make it go up to ARM24.

ARM 23

You can't have Spiny Growth and Tenacity on it at the same time because they are both Animuseseses.

PhantomViper wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

George L. wrote:
the throne of everblight is OK with p thagrosh, spiney growth and thags aura give it effective armour 22 iirc.

The menoth one is very strong aswell, easily the most competitive

eThags too. Dragon's Blood, Spiny Growth and Tenacity can make it go up to ARM24.

ARM 23

You can't have Spiny Growth and Tenacity on it at the same time because they are both Animuseseses.

Never knew that. I play WM forces than Hordes. Despite owning a legion force...

PhantomViper wrote:

Snip

....Animuseseses.

Thank you for making my day sir.

I really like the Storm Strider Model and I'm thinking of buying it for some long range firepower.