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In your first Ret game (against Issyria) did he have Admonition on anything? Because it doesn't look like he needed it on Issyria and Admo on Imperatus makes him a huge pain to deal with. You need two heavies (or one super buffed heavy) to kill him in one round, but Admo pushes that up to 3 (and you only had 3 that weren't engaged). He heals 17 boxes when he is disabled btw (1 from each system and fully heals the shield), so he is effectively 51 boxes if you want to kill him in one round (he also heals D6 per turn normally) so he is basically a Colossal.
But yeah how many transfers was Baldur on when Imperatus went in? I'm guessing it was 1-2? Unless he had no transfer imo he would have been better off having Imperatus + the Sentinels kill your front row of constucts.
Also surprising to see Sentinels rather than Halberdiers in an Issyria list, the Halberdiers are tougher (ARM20) and faster (SPD6 +2 from their support solo) and hit just as hard on the charge (when they mini feat) but have Reform which would have jammed you up further.

I'm amazed he didn't feat turn 2 in your Ravyn game. Snipe Feat Go isn't as bad as people think, but if he had a shot on your caster with Eiryss and you have two units of Strike Force rather than one then almost any caster in the game should be dead. In any case Rayvn should usually be feating Turn 2 anyway, since her Feat only helps ranged units and by turn 3 units are getting engaged and/or are dead.

Powerguy wrote:
In your first Ret game (against Issyria) did he have Admonition on anything? Because it doesn't look like he needed it on Issyria and Admo on Imperatus makes him a huge pain to deal with. You need two heavies (or one super buffed heavy) to kill him in one round, but Admo pushes that up to 3 (and you only had 3 that weren't engaged). He heals 17 boxes when he is disabled btw (1 from each system and fully heals the shield), so he is effectively 51 boxes if you want to kill him in one round (he also heals D6 per turn normally) so he is basically a Colossal.
But yeah how many transfers was Baldur on when Imperatus went in? I'm guessing it was 1-2? Unless he had no transfer imo he would have been better off having Imperatus + the Sentinels kill your front row of constucts.
Also surprising to see Sentinels rather than Halberdiers in an Issyria list, the Halberdiers are tougher (ARM20) and faster (SPD6 +2 from their support solo) and hit just as hard on the charge (when they mini feat) but have Reform which would have jammed you up further.

I'm amazed he didn't feat turn 2 in your Ravyn game. Snipe Feat Go isn't as bad as people think, but if he had a shot on your caster with Eiryss and you have two units of Strike Force rather than one then almost any caster in the game should be dead. In any case Rayvn should usually be feating Turn 2 anyway, since her Feat only helps ranged units and by turn 3 units are getting engaged and/or are dead.

I actually didn't realize Issyria had Admonition - that makes her even more awesome, haha! Yeah, Imperatus would have been well served to have that on him. Of course, had I known about that, I could have used my Stones to keep him from going anywhere I didn't want him to go. Good information to have though. And, in my opponent's defense, Baldur had zero transfers, as I didn't think there was any way he could get to me through the smoke. He was forced to kill one of my Watchers first for Imperatus to get the charge on my Grove then sidestep, which allowed me to reave one Fury for transfers. And, I don't hate the Sentinels instead of Halberdiers - he gets Vengeance, which is awesome. Halberdiers can hit hard, but won't continue to hit hard after their first turn.

In the Ravyn game, I believe this was the first or second time he played the caster - nothing to be "amazed" over him not popping his feat. I'm sure you have missed the correct turn to pop a feat every once in a while yourself. Easy to happen. Easy to nit pick my opponent's choices, but the fact of the matter is that he did very well in his first game, and had the potential to do much better in the 2nd one. He'll get better, much to my chagrin

Yeah Issyria's spell list is pretty awesome, Admonition to keep a heavy alive/make her almost immune to melee assasins, Crusaders Call to push Ret threat ranges up even higher, an ARM buff and a DEF debuff which also prevents shooting/magic (this spell by itself can shut down some shooty armies). Its just a shame she has no damage output at all by herself and is so insanely squishy.

Sending Imperatus in like that was fair enough if you were on no transfers at the start of the turn, I would expect most casters should have been well an truely in the dirt, 1 initial + 2 brought attacks at POW 19 on Issyrias feat turn kinda hurts. My Issyria list is similar to his, swaps Hyperion for a Banshee and a Chimera (heavy with a knockdown gun + an arc node) and Halberdiers instead of Sentinels. I have found that usually against Hordes you are better off killing off beasts early on even if you can see a way to get to their caster, and have had several instances of this kind of scenario happen with Imperatus (side step to a caster but not get the kill when I could have just killed a heavy instead). Also worth noting Baldur should have been on fire (Imperatus has flaming swords which gets forgotten quite a bit).

The main reason most people run Halberdiers over Sentinels is because of the threat ranges and how it lines up with Issyrias feat turn. On turn 2 Halberdiers can hit something 13+15" up the field (more if they run rather than shield wall T1), Sentinels can hit something 10+12" up the field, and that 6" less distance is a big deal. If you want to feat turn 2 to make use of all the shooting units then usually Sentinels won't be engaging anything (or at least they aren't reaching anything other than a throw away screen unit, which is not what they want to be hitting), if you hadn't triggered Vengance then I doubt they would have been able to get to all your constructs in the zone. Just to clarify I love Sentinels with her (particularly in tier where they get more speed), but if you are only running a single melee unit then I would prefer Halberdiers - Sentinels work better as a second line due to their speed.

Powerguy wrote:
Yeah Issyria's spell list is pretty awesome, Admonition to keep a heavy alive/make her almost immune to melee assasins, Crusaders Call to push Ret threat ranges up even higher, an ARM buff and a DEF debuff which also prevents shooting/magic (this spell by itself can shut down some shooty armies). Its just a shame she has no damage output at all by herself and is so insanely squishy.

Sending Imperatus in like that was fair enough if you were on no transfers at the start of the turn, I would expect most casters should have been well an truely in the dirt, 1 initial + 2 brought attacks at POW 19 on Issyrias feat turn kinda hurts. My Issyria list is similar to his, swaps Hyperion for a Banshee and a Chimera (heavy with a knockdown gun + an arc node) and Halberdiers instead of Sentinels. I have found that usually against Hordes you are better off killing off beasts early on even if you can see a way to get to their caster, and have had several instances of this kind of scenario happen with Imperatus (side step to a caster but not get the kill when I could have just killed a heavy instead). Also worth noting Baldur should have been on fire (Imperatus has flaming swords which gets forgotten quite a bit).

The main reason most people run Halberdiers over Sentinels is because of the threat ranges and how it lines up with Issyrias feat turn. On turn 2 Halberdiers can hit something 13+15" up the field (more if they run rather than shield wall T1), Sentinels can hit something 10+12" up the field, and that 6" less distance is a big deal. If you want to feat turn 2 to make use of all the shooting units then usually Sentinels won't be engaging anything (or at least they aren't reaching anything other than a throw away screen unit, which is not what they want to be hitting), if you hadn't triggered Vengance then I doubt they would have been able to get to all your constructs in the zone. Just to clarify I love Sentinels with her (particularly in tier where they get more speed), but if you are only running a single melee unit then I would prefer Halberdiers - Sentinels work better as a second line due to their speed.

Thanks for the thoughtful response!

Just FYI, he did set Baldur on fire, it just never really affected the game enough to warrant a comment. Hard to include everything, especially when you're writing a 5-game report. Some stuff is going to have to go unsaid, haha!

As to the Halberdiers vs. Sentinels, that is a good point about setting up for a T2 charge. He actually would have been in range to charge with the Sentinels without vengeance - it's why I elected to shoot them at all. I actually vocalized that particular decision in the game. He would perhaps not have been able to get as many bodies onto the rightmost Watcher (the one that died), which is of course problematic for obvious assassination reasons, but all of them would have gotten into melee with one of the Watchers one way or another. My advance deploy on the Watchers + running them into the zone ensured that heh.

I do think that Hyperion + Issyria is strong though, not only because of her obvious feat synergies with it, but also because her Ancillary attack is going to be far more powerful each turn with him than other jacks (at least, I assume - I still don't know much about Ret yet). The ability to remove models consistently on Feat turn with Hyperion's crit (rolling 4 dice, choose the three you want) without even rolling is situationally amazing.

At any rate, enough of my yammering about how awesome that list is - yours also sounds very strong, and well thought out. Halberdiers are certainly a pain as well. So far, I've enjoyed my games against Ret, which is surprising - normally I don't like playing against predominantly shooty armies that ignore certain key rules (look at Tau in 40k if you play that game). Nothing against them yet though. Perhaps that's just because Warmachine is better balanced somehow?

Yeah was just wondering about the fire thing because you mentioned that he was pretty beat up lol.

And yeah I guess its unusual to have targets that Sentinels would like to charge within range T2 - not many armies are going to have multiple tough targets that far up the field. Most advanced deploy units are not ideal targets for POW12 weapon masters because they either miss them or overkill them massively.

Imo the biggest reason Hyperion is good with Issyria is that he is an incredibly durable huge base model for her to hide behind, I find she gets shot to death incredibly often particularly as blast damage can still kill her (and fire). But yeah Hyperion has the single most powerful gun in the game so its definitely the best target for Ancillary (it also has POW 20 fists if its just punching something with the ancillary), its a huge AOE with probably the most powerful crit type in the game, its boostable and even if you miss its still going to kill infantry. POW9 blast damage is getting into the 'can accidentally kill casters' range when you boost it. Ancillary is good for any jack though, the other two jacks she can get good milage out of are Discordia (POW14 max range spray) and the Banshee (POW14 single shot, but does a ranged slam). For me the main thing is that I want to run her with an arc node, which means 6pts disappear straight away.

Its interesting that people have this preconception that Ret is a shooting army. You can certainly build them as a shooting army, but Ret are probably best described as the combined arms faction. Based on my experience Cygnar and Legion can make much shootier lists than Ret. Kaelyssa, Rahn and Garryth tend to run balanced/slightly melee skewed lists, Issyria can run anything (she makes everything better) and Vyros tends to run jack heavy (pVyros often runs a mix of shooty and melee heavies, eVyros is usually very melee focused). Its only really Ravyn and Ossyan who might run what you might consider to be gunline lists because their feats only boost shooting.

But yeah Warmachine is an order of magnitude better balanced than 40k lol, the rules set is both more tactically rewarding (i.e you can do more interesting stuff than just move/shoot/assault) and better balanced at the same time. Having played 40k for nearly 14 years and recently having started Warmachine the difference in the balance and smoothness of the mechanics continues to amaze me. It a great feeling being able to just get a game going in a couple of minutes (find all my models, set up scenario) vs 10+ minutes for 40k, finish the game in a couple of hours vs 3-4 for 40k and having basically zero rules issues (that can't be solved within 30 seconds by actually reading the cards properly).

Thank you for posting the reports and the very interesting discussion those games prompted. (Even if a lot of it went right over my Noob head )

Does your eMorv list add up right?

Powerguy wrote:Yeah was just wondering about the fire thing because you mentioned that he was pretty beat up lol.

And yeah I guess its unusual to have targets that Sentinels would like to charge within range T2 - not many armies are going to have multiple tough targets that far up the field. Most advanced deploy units are not ideal targets for POW12 weapon masters because they either miss them or overkill them massively.

Imo the biggest reason Hyperion is good with Issyria is that he is an incredibly durable huge base model for her to hide behind, I find she gets shot to death incredibly often particularly as blast damage can still kill her (and fire). But yeah Hyperion has the single most powerful gun in the game so its definitely the best target for Ancillary (it also has POW 20 fists if its just punching something with the ancillary), its a huge AOE with probably the most powerful crit type in the game, its boostable and even if you miss its still going to kill infantry. POW9 blast damage is getting into the 'can accidentally kill casters' range when you boost it. Ancillary is good for any jack though, the other two jacks she can get good milage out of are Discordia (POW14 max range spray) and the Banshee (POW14 single shot, but does a ranged slam). For me the main thing is that I want to run her with an arc node, which means 6pts disappear straight away.

Its interesting that people have this preconception that Ret is a shooting army. You can certainly build them as a shooting army, but Ret are probably best described as the combined arms faction. Based on my experience Cygnar and Legion can make much shootier lists than Ret. Kaelyssa, Rahn and Garryth tend to run balanced/slightly melee skewed lists, Issyria can run anything (she makes everything better) and Vyros tends to run jack heavy (pVyros often runs a mix of shooty and melee heavies, eVyros is usually very melee focused). Its only really Ravyn and Ossyan who might run what you might consider to be gunline lists because their feats only boost shooting.

But yeah Warmachine is an order of magnitude better balanced than 40k lol, the rules set is both more tactically rewarding (i.e you can do more interesting stuff than just move/shoot/assault) and better balanced at the same time. Having played 40k for nearly 14 years and recently having started Warmachine the difference in the balance and smoothness of the mechanics continues to amaze me. It a great feeling being able to just get a game going in a couple of minutes (find all my models, set up scenario) vs 10+ minutes for 40k, finish the game in a couple of hours vs 3-4 for 40k and having basically zero rules issues (that can't be solved within 30 seconds by actually reading the cards properly).

Yeah man, it's true! I think it says something about my disgust for Games Workshop that I currently own somewhere around $10k worth of models and have placed highly at several major tournaments in the past four years (and as such am a (slightly) well-known figure in that community, with lots of friends across the country) and I no longer feel like I want to have much to do with 40k. I'm sure that will change at some point one way or another, but Warmachine has been a breath of fresh air. I had been considering either Warmachine or MtG - glad I decided on Warmachine

Thanks for your insights about Retribution. I guess I can see them being combined arms - they certainly hit pretty hard in melee. Just hard to ignore my regular Ret opponent's propensity for ranged assassination. I feel like that probably gets more attention than it warrants, and has led me to a false conclusion. Good to be corrected! The more I play against them, the more I feel like they would be an awesome army to own! I'll have to choose between Retribution and Cygnar when it comes to choosing a Focus-based army

Eldarain wrote:Thank you for posting the reports and the very interesting discussion those games prompted. (Even if a lot of it went right over my Noob head )

Haha, glad they (the reports) can be of use. As to the discussion, I've learned a lot too

tigerstyle wrote:Does your eMorv list add up right?

Heh, it does, though after looking at it just now, I noticed that I have a phantom set of extra Shifting Stones on the list that I've never used with eMorv. I will have to edit that. You can verify in the reports that I only ever used one set of Stones. Whoops!

Nah, its cool, was just wondering as the list you wrote is identical to mine plus a Blackclad and was wondering how that happened