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Going to try facing a proxy army tomorrow. I'll let you guys know how it goes! In the meantime, post your experience here.

As promised, I finally faced the MKI Retribution over the weekend, and it was definitely an interesting experience. Since my friend is thinking about switching from Cygnar to Retribution, he wanted to try out Dawnlord Vyros with me since he’s already gotten in a few games with Kaelyssa, so I have not had an experience against their denial caster. On the surface, Retribution plays similarly to Cygnar, but the instead of focusing on movement denial (a la Haley), Retribution simply out paces your army through sheer mobility.

DISCLAIMERS
All the information I’ve provided thus far only includes models I have faced. I will refrain from commenting on units that I have not yet seen on the tabletop.

UNKNOWNS
NQ[25] did not contain too much information regarding Retribution troops or solos, so I will not even pretend like I know how they will synergize with the rest of their army. I have not faced the Dawnguard Invictors, but the Sentinels are dangerous weapon master troops with reach and SPD 5.

STRENGTHS (thus far)
Unlike many WarMachine factions, Retribution can run slightly jack heavy, because many of their jack’s can sit on or generate their own focus, which makes coordinated attack from multiple jacks with max focus especially painful. The best word to describe or categorize their jacks is: VERSATILE. The Manticore for example has two open fists and three shots per turn means it is no slouch at ranged or close combat. When paired with the Phoenix and combo them with Vyros’ Bird’s Eye makes them hit & run nightmares. Bird’s Eye essentially allows all models in his battlegroup to have a 360 front arc and when determining LoS ignore cloud effects, forest terrain and intervening models. (Think Skorne Extoller buffing the caster’s entire battlegroup!)

If you look up the word versatility in a dictionary, you should find a picture of the Phoenix. This monster is a SPD 6 heavy jack with 10” AOE3 gun with critical fire & wrathbane, arc-node, has Combustion, reach weapon, open fist, and ability to regenerate its power field (D6 then another D3 in one turn). This guy is a dangerous to both jacks/beasts and infantry alike. Only downside to the Phoenix is that it is easy to disable in MKI, but this vulnerability will be mitigated in MKII.

I don’t know about other Retribution casters, but Vyros is a hand-to-hand monster! With his ability to flank and utilize focus means he is doing four attacks with 4D6 damage rolls, or attacking seven times with 3D6 damage rolls on MAT 8! Those series of attacks managed to tear down a (slightly injured) beast in one round of combat!

WEAKNESS (thus far)
Main weakness I’ve been able to exploit so far is the fact that all Retribution jacks seem to have a glass jaw (in MKI anways). If you manage to follow up with more attacks after punching through the force field, then they go down quite easily. Well delivered one-two punch combos will cause any of their jacks to crumble.

Trying to take them down piece meal does not work, because they simply tuck behind a forest to regenerate their shields (Troll style) and continue shooting at you. The Phoenix managed to negate my free strike damage by regenerating its force field and later arcing spells into me. I had a hard time engating their army until I managed to push them into a corner.

Retribution are very squishy. They can deal out a ton of DMG, but they really cannot take it.

If you play Khador and manage to hit one of their 'jacks, they are probably going to fall apart in one hit.

I tried Behemoth against the feared Phoenix and in one combat the Phoenix fell apart.

It's just a case of hitting them.

Besides the already mentioned glass cannon build of the myrmidons, they are all the same besides their force generated abilities. I haven't found any specific rules for the Retribution yet, but I think a lot of the fragility comes from the force generator. With the Phoenix, having an arc node and the generator, both of those can get knocked out with only 6 damage to the grid. If the generator doesn't count towards the 3 systems knocked out, it would make them slightly more resilient, and since they lose their ranged attacks and special abilities and their force fields would stop regenerating without the generator, they become a lot less of a threat, even if they are still functioning. I doubt this would be the case, but really, the main defense of the myrmidons is ensuring that they destroy the biggest threats before they can take any damage.

On a more critical note, I think some of the abilities are a little bass-ackwards, meaning they don't necessarily fit thematically, unless the fluff puts some explanation behind them. For example, the force ability of the Manticore is +3 strength for a focus point. With that, I would think that it would be much more melee focused and should have the chain attack: smash and grab instead of the Hydra. And with the ranged ability (+1 RNG and POW per focus point) I would have thought it should have the ROF 3 instead of the Manticore. Also, possibly switching the Kinetic Capacitor to the Phoenix. These little critiques of mine, like I said, I think would make them more thematic and more specialized (I prefer more specialized units over generics because it adds more character to the models and the play style).

As a few podcasts have put it, they're a Mark II army in Mark I.

Their fragility is really only due to having lots of systems and fewer damage boxes.

However, their mobility is amazing. I used to play Khador before I left Warmachine due to the Mk1 problems, coming back for Mk2 I'll probably play retribution since I can get that mobility while still having heavy jacks.

We've also only seen the basic caster/jack synergies. No doubt there will be more stuff to boost the myrmidons. I'm thinking that the Arcanist for them isn't just a basic mechanic.

Yep, another post but I just played a few games against the classic cheese Everblight of Seraphs and Angelius.

Being new to the army didn't help as I constantly misjudged their ranges and forgot abilities (could have saved a lot of focus had I remembered that the Hydra both stores focus, and generates its own focus when hit by attacks.

The Carnivean also ripped off my Phoenix's flame sword arm.

It also didn't help that I use the caster Kaelyssa as my main, and besides having a great ranged attack and siphon ability, her spells don't do much to warbeasts, nor much to Everblight.

Although perhaps the biggest problem was I has a consistant problem with rolling above 5, while my opponent was constantly rolling 8-10s.

Anyway, Retribution really is not the stand and fight army. Always take the first turn if you can get it and move forward so that you have room to back up while still firing ranged weapons.

Vanilla Dawnguard of any type are really good, but still vulnerable to the usual stuff.