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hi, im new to war machine, infact im new to war gaming as a whole. but ive recently been convinced to take it up as a hobby by a friend. and i was wondering which is the best way to start? i was thinking of buying the magnus battle box to start, (mainly because of what ive heard about the renegade WJ) and then maybe get Thor Steinhammer to run a couple of ghordson bashers. but i was wondering if it really is the best tactic to build a diverse merc army or go for say khador and fill some of the tactical holes with mercs instead. anyhoo... thanks in advance for any advice

Either approach is perfectly viable.

The Magnus battlebox is a fine place to start. Even having only one Renegade is perfectly viable (they're really scary when you bring two though).

I didn't buy the battlebox because at the time, I didn't want Magnus the Traitor (I went with Magnus the Warlord) and I didn't want the Talon. Since then I've bought a talon and now wish I had simply gone with the battlebox.

Thor is excellent. He works well with almost any Rhulic jack.

Are there any Merc units that catch your eye?

was thinking maybe the high shield rhulic unit since you can boost their ARM up to a nice amount. but the first thing im getting after the battle box is another renegade. only problem is, my friend is building a cryx army and apparantly (i dont know enough to know if hes lying or not) one of the units or jacks he's thinking of buying can cloak, which apparantly means the renegades rocket wont knock down what it cant see and will only deliver 1/2 damage. another problem ive noticed with mercs is theres no medics

Probably nightmare with stealth, so denegra as a caster. When you miss it still knocks down the target if it is within the blas radius, it just misses when not firing from within 5 inches...

lack of medics?? How about doc killingsworth, a medic. Or if you ment mechanic then dirty meg...

Rockets against stealthed units is a bit of a problem. But that's okay. Because if he's playing Deneghra (or whichever caster has occultation), then it's only going to be one stealth jack and more importantly, not an arc node.

Deneghra lives and dies by her arc nodes. It is definitely not a waste to blast an arc node with an obliterator rocket.

Nightmare can put out an incredible amount of damage, but he's still not as tough as your lights.

A point of tactics: It's generally good to concentrate your damage rather than spread it around. All of Deneghra's spells are shortish ranged. So when the arc nodes are close enough to cast them, they're vulnerable. Whichever arc node is the greatest threat is the one to destroy first.

You may also want to consider MacNaile. He can give a renegade +2 to hit with an obliterator rocket and for a single turn to can add +2" to range for both rockets for a single turn. So if you find his precious arc nodes within your shooting range at the beginning of your turn, you'll have RAT 6 +2 for sitting still and aiming and +2 for MacNaile. So that's RAT 10 vs DEF 15. To be absolutely sure, you can boost the ranged attack roll. You'll need a 5 of 3d6-- this is incredibly likely to hit. Then the bone jack is knocked down and easily hit (and trashed) by pretty much anything.

after which a second or third node will come in...

Remember that nodes can be used on an expendable basis, just like some of cryx troops (mechthralls...). The heavies of cryx may be light on armour, but they hit very hard. If he is using nightmare and denhegra then the thing has stealth on his own. when charging it's prey it will have a mat of 9 or 10 (don't know of the top of my head) and p+s 18. That will wreck almost any heavy with a good charge.

he could also be using goreshade stealth battlegroup or coven (occultation, so a model or unit has stealth). these are very hard to take out without the proper means... I was using an assumption which in hindsight could be wrong...

any chance you can find out more about your friends army??