All quiet

It's been a little while since I last posted, mainly due to the fact that I've started school again (and some commission work that I've been doing).

I have to say I love the fact that Privateer previews models for us with the awesome 360. It looks like the full line is almost completely up, and when it is ill repost them here for you guys, but I'm going to refrain for making any rules comments until we've seen all the rules for them.

RoS vs CoO Batrep

Another Sunday has passed and another round of games for me. As we're pretty much done with our CTA league, we were just playing games to play games, so I thought why not try out my beloved Elves. So after getting photocopies I went a put a list together:

Vyros
- Manticore
- Manticore
- Phoenix

6 Invictors
6 Invictors
10 Sentinels
A&H
Eiryss

749/750

vs

Baldur
- Megalith
- Woldwarden
- Woldwryd

Wrong Eye
- Snapjaw

Dahlia
- Skarrath

Farrow Bone Grinders
Stoneward & Woldstalkers
Gatormen Posse

Deployment:

I won the roll off and deployed first. I had the Phoenix and 1st Manticore a little to the right of center with the other Manticore about 10" away from them. Behind the 2 groups of Jacks were both Invictor units, with A&H in the middle, Vyros behind the Invictors on the right and the Sentinels and Eiryss off to the hold the right flank. He pretty much placed everything in front of me hiding behind a building, with the Woldstalkers opposite the Sentinels.

Turn 1:
RoS - Vyros cast Mobility and then moved to catch the Sentinels with Invoilable Resolve. The Jacks moved up with both Manticores dropping their covering fire in front of the Woldstalkers. The Sentinels ran and both units of Invictors moved up but they were not able to take a shot on anything. And I had forgot to activate Eiryss who was hiding really well in a building.
CoO - Moved everything up. Woldstalkers moved around the templates and shot at the Sentienls, but couldn't get passed their ARM 19. The Warden moved up and Earthspiked the Phoenix knocking it and the Manticore next to it down. Megalith then moved up and Earthspiked the Invictors killing the unit leader.

Turn 2:
RoS - I gave 2 to the Manticore on the ground and upkept IR. Sentinels charged the Woldstalkers and wiped them all out except for the druid. I then moved the left most Invictors up to take a pot shot at the Woldwryd and only did a couple points to it. The other Invictor unit just advanced up. Activated Vyros and moved him up and then cast Mobility. The Phoenix then moved to get a better shot at Baldur but missed. A&H moved up and Aiyanna Harmed the Woldwarden. Then Manticore with 2 focus then moved into Melee with the Woldwarden and in one swing took out both its Mind and Spirit. 4D6 +5 was insane. The other Manticore moved around to counter charge if necessary. And again I forgot about Eiryss.
CoO - Megalith then charged in and caught both Manticores in his melee range and proceed to wail on them both, but failed to disable the first Manticore. Snapjaw then charged in and finished off the already heavily damaged jack. The Warden moved up onto the wreck marker to swing on the Manticore and took out the rest of its field and did a couple points to the hull. while the second Manticore received a charge from Skarath, and took a little damage from it too. The remaining druid ran from the Sentinels and the Gatormen repositioned to charge the next turn. Baldur moved behind the building and stone skined the Warden.

Turn 3:
RoS - Moved the full Invictor unit around to take a shot at Megalith in combat and did a couple points to its body. The Phoenix moved again to catch Baldur and shot with it going wide. Vyros arc'd an Eliminator through the Phoenix onto Dahlia killing her. I then used the 2" place to get Vyros in Charge range of Megalith and feated then charged in, but failed to get rid of Megalith. The Invictors then killed 2 of the Bone grinders giving the 2 focus to the Manticore. Aiyanna moved around to catch Baldur in her no spell zone, and Holt tried to do some more to the Wryd. The Manticore then 2 Hand threw Megalith at Baldur but missed.
CoO - The Wyrd shot Vyros and then Snapjaw took him out in combat.

Impressions -

As my first game not all that bad. Vryos wants/needs more focus to be a serious Jack caster, which to be honest I don't think that's what he is. I truly believe that he is a combined arms caster. You definitely need the mix of troops and jacks to make the most of his feat.

The Manticore was just wow, this jack can seriously put a hurting on anything it comes within 0.5" of and I love the board control that covering fire gives me. I love this Jack. Whereas the Phoenix really didn't need to be in this list. I could have used a Gorgon or even a Hydra (as the Node situationally useful with Vyros).

I deployed the Sentinels way too far away for them to make any kind of difference, and while the Invictors where really nice, there really wasn't many opportunities for them to shoot due to the terrain on the table.

All in all, I think the Retribution is shaping up to be a really nice army, but it's going to be impossible to tell as there is just not enough options right now.

Apologies

I'm going to apologise to everyone for my over reaction to the loss of the ranged flank. I really wasn't thinking clearly and I posted in that state.

The Invictors are a really good ranged unit, the problem I see is that we have at least 2 more ranged units that we need to see the stats for. My other issue is what the Invictors can do, the Sentinels can do better and cheaper.

So again, apologies for the outbursts on the PP boards.

Flank Typo

PPS_DC wrote:
Please add:
Invictor "Flank" should be worded exactly the same as Vyros' Flank.

Thank you.

I understand that they want to keep rules with the same name the same, but the problem that I have with this is it truly reduces the reason to take Invictors over Sentinels.

• Invictors are more expensive
• POW 10 vs POW 12
• In order to get the 3rd D6 there needs to be a jack in melee, increasing the cost of the unit again.

Now I'm not saying that I won't be getting the Invictors, I love the models, but outside of a Kaelyssa backlash list and a themed Dawnguard list, I'm failing to see a reason to take them now. I am sincerely hoping that PPS_DC is wrong and that they are supposed to have flank with their ranged shots.

Forth Round of Reviews

So this is the last article in which I review the previewed stuff in NQ 25. It's been a fun ride looking at everything that we're going to be using come September. In this last article I will be looking at the 2 units and 1 solo that are previewed. Firstly we have our 2 Dawnguard units, the Invictors and Sentinels and NARN (whose name shall always be capitalised), our most bad ass mage hunter.

Dawnguard Sentinels

The Sentinels are our melee experts being P+S12 weapon masters with Reach. The nice thing with reach is it's going to allow us to get more of our models into melee with whatever we're hitting. And for the most part, what we're hitting is dying. A charge from the Sentinels is doing 12 + 4D6 damage against you target, which against an ARM 18 jack they're doing 8 points a piece, which is more than enough for the whole unit to scrap 2 jacks in the turn that they charge.

Normally they are ARM 15 which coupled with their DEF 12 won't ensure that they last that long, but they do have Defensive line which will give them a +2ARM boost as long as they are in B2B. This is really nice as it means that at least half of the POW 10s that are going to be targeting them aren't doing anything. Couple this with Inviolable Resolve from Vyros and we now have a nice ARM 19 brick.

Their last ability is Jack Marshall (1). The is always a running debate as to whether or not jack marshalling is useful. For the most part it's not as jack's will always perform better with Focus. Given that, I still believe that the Hydra is best for jack marshalling as its ability to gain focus outside of a caster is essential for marshalling. Plus the chain attack: Smash and Grab will combo really nicely with the Sentinels as you can head butt that jack down and then trash it with the Sentinels charge. The is also a good one due to the fact that it has a reach weapon (and the only other reach weapon we have is on a node). The one drawback to all these abilities and potential is the fact that they are an expensive unit, expect to drop over a 100 points on a full unit of 10.

::Edit:: I was wrong about the Sentinels having Flank, but it really still doesn't change the overall damage that this unit can put out. They're just a solid melee unit that will fit into any of our lists.

Dawnguard Invictors

What the Sentinels do for melee the Invictors do for ranged. RAT 6 RNG 10 POW 12 is a very nice stat line for a ranged unit, most infantry are going to be taking heavy losses from their shooting attacks. What really pushes the damage out put of this unit is their flank ability, which is worded to work with their ranged attacks, the drawback being you are now shooting into melee, upping the DEF of your target by 4, which the flank bonus and aiming bonuses take care of. The real trick though is to either KD/stationary what you are shooting at; Head butt, slam, throw, arcantrik bolt and then move the jack into melee. Now you are doing POW 12 +3D6 to the KD/stationary target meaning that almost all of your shots are going to hit (barring the odd snake eye roll). Using flank, the Invictors are going to be doing 4.5 damage to an ARM 18 jack, couple this with backlash from Kaelyssa, and your opponent’s caster is going to take a hurting before that jack is trashed.

Like their Sentinel brothers they are only ARM 15, but they also have defensive line. Pushing their ARM up to 17 as long as they remain in B2B, making them a pretty tough ranged unit.

They also have Jack Marshall (1) like the Sentinels, not something I would normally use, but if you do again the Hydra is going to be best, mainly for smash and grab to try and KD your flank target so that you can put the hurting on it.

NARN

NARN is essentially the Melee version of Eiryss. Basically you want to point him in the direction of the enemy caster and let him do his thing. SPD 7 with pathfinder, acrobatics, sprint (when he kills an enemy model in melee he can make a full advance) and advanced deployment mean that he's going to get where you want him to. DEF 15 and stealth will help him survive the trip there. MAT 8 and 2 P+S 11 weapon master attacks with wraith bane and arcane assassin means he's going to hit and put the hurt on that caster. Warlocks will have a slightly easier time as they can still just transfer damage.

All in all he's a nice little cruise missile, but unless my opponent leaves their caster exposed, I'm probably going to use him to hunt down solo's, number 1 being my enemy's Eiryss.

So again, let me know what you guys think. Also, what combos/tactics have you all come up with?

Third round of Reviews

For this article I will be talking about the three light jacks that have been previewed. The Chimera, the Gorgon and the Griffon. One thing to note before we begin is that these jacks only have 6 boxes on their force field and a smaller damage grid as all light jacks have.

Chimera

The Chimera continues the high mobility theme with its ability to be placed anywhere withing 2" during the control phase. Now normally this would just be an interesting ability, but couple this with the fact that the Chimera has an arc node, we now have a jack that opens up a whole range of assassination vectors. It also forces your opponent to think differently when engaging as it can just pop out of combat at the start of your turn.

The Generator also adds some extra protection by adding the number of focus on the jack to it's DEF against ranged and magic attacks, so full on focus it's going to be a DEF 15 jack which puts it up there with the Cryx jacks.

The Chimera does have combo strike and 2 P+S12 open fists. It's not going to be doing a lot of damage but the fact that it has 2 open fists means that you can 2 hand throw whatever is engaging you to disengage and free up that node.

Along with the Phoenix we have some very, very threatening arc nodes, that are going to be able to get places most armies can only dream of.

Gorgon

The Gorgon is an interesting denial jack. The Force lock allows it to keep whatever is in melee with it in melee, but it doesn't have reach, most likely to limit any potential abuses for this ability. I'm still trying to think of uses for this aside for the obvious keep something still while my heavy beats it into its component parts.

It's ranged attack is a RNG 10 ROF 1 POW 10 wraith bane shot that prevents the model hit from charging the Gorgon. It only prevents the model from charging the Gorgon, the model will still be free to charge anything else. I can see it being useful to prevent a heavy from scraping the jack, or to use the jack as a screen for your caster as a medium base isn't the easiest to charge around.

Just like the Chimera, the Gorgon has 2 P+S12 open fists with Combo strike.

I feel like this is a defensive jack, meant to hang around and screen your caster, but I'm not to sure how well it's going to do in that role. It's missing an extended control area to truly be a flanking jack. This is just going to be a jack that I'm not going to figure out until I get some play time in.

Griffon

P+S13 spear with powerful charge and reach. So take a SPD 6 jack, add another 3" for the charge, add another 2" for reach. That'll give us an 11" threat range, awesome. Now add another 2" for a focus (once per turn) due to its ability from the generator. Now we're up to 13". Now we can add either movement hi-jinks from witch hound from Kaelyssa or the extra 1" (2" in MkII) from Vyros' mobility and we have a first strike jack that can go very, very deep into your enemies territory. Oh, and I forgot to mention that it has pathfinder. Now do you want to throw your light all the way out there like that? Depends, never underestimate the power of throwing your opponent off guard. And lets not forget that this is all on an ARM 18 light jack.

What has been impressing me the most about the rules is just how fast our army is. We can play the hit and fade game as well, if not better, than both legion and circle. Let me know what your thoughts are and stay tuned for round four when I look at the units and NARN.

Monday, Monday, Monday

I am still working on part 3 of the reviews for you guys, but I just wanted to give a quick update. I am trying to work on a banner for the site, as well as a small one for the Iron Agenda so that they can link straight here. This is what I have so far:



Now I'm not all that good with photoshop type programs, so adding text has been a little difficult for me, so if any one has any tips on how I can go about doing that, that would be awesome. I don't have photoshop here at work, I use Splashup.

Also, I wanted to share these 2 photos from my game last night. There were taken from my phone so not the best quality, but you can see that one of the dice is laying on its corner.

Year of Ear

Iron agenda just got back to me about syndicating my blog. Awesome. This isn't the year of gear. It's the year of ear

Patience is not my Virtue

Talked to my LGS and I'm going to have to wait until next week for my NQ. Was hoping to get some vassal games in

High serraphim

Second round of reviews

A new day has come, and today I'm going to be looking at Privateers first plastic jacks. Our three heavies. Again, thanks to Demeritus and Loveless from the PP boards for these spoilers.

The is something incredibly important that needs to be mentioned when we talk about any of our jacks, and it's their force field. Yes my friends, our jacks have a force field to help mitigate some of the damage that they are going to be taking from all the other jealous factions. The way that the force field works is that it is a separate damage grid that needs to be filled in before any damage can be applied to the actual jack's damage grid. Sounds a very interesting especially considering how our jacks are actually really squishy once you get past the field. Now the really nice thing about the force field is that it can be regenerated for a focus. As I don't have the NQ I don't know if it's either D3 or D6, but either way this greatly adds to the survivability of our jacks.

The Force Field is tied to their field generator systems (noted by a G on their damage grids). Once the generator system is down the field stops functioning. The field generator also gives our jacks access to some very unique abilities, the number one being a ranged attack.

Hydra

This jack is a Marshalls wet dream due to the fact that if this jack takes damage from ranged or melee attacks it gains a focus up to 3. From the wording it's enemy attacks so you cant pop it in the back to gain a quick 3 focus at the start of the game. The Hydra is also able to retain its focus from turn to turn, meaning that if you end a turn with 2 focus on him, he starts the next turn with 2 focus, and with the fact that he's gaining damage from attacks, you're looking at a jack that is always going to have 3 focus on him until the generator system is taken out.

For weapons it has 2 P+S 14 open fists giving it the full range of power attacks, and chain attack:smash and grab which means if the jack hits with both its initial attacks it can then perform; a throw, a double handed throw, a headbutt, a weapon lock or push. Giving this jack a lot of options when it comes to dealing with your enemy. The Hydra's ranged attack is tied to it's field generator (like all myrmidons), and is basically a ROF 1 handcannon. The nice thing is that it gains +1RNG/+1POW for each unspent focus on the jack. So with 3 focus its a really nice option. Oh, and the gun has wraith bane to take care of those annoying incorporeal running around everywhere.

The Hydra is a really nice versatile jack. While his range option isn't a powerful as some other jacks it's still a threat due to the fact that it has wraith bane on it. The biggest draw of me is that fact that you can over come a lot of the draw backs to jack marshalling due to the fact that it can generate its own focus. True your opponent can just not attack the Hydra, but then you have a P+S14 heavy running amok. Fun times for us indeed.

Manticore

I love this jack, well I love all our jacks, but where the Hydra is more of a rounded jack the Manticore is straight Beatface. He has 2 P+S 15 open fists with combo strike, so we can put out 1 P+S 20 hit, or we can burn a focus to gain +3 STR and have 2 P+S 18 open fists. Consider that most non-Khador jacks top out around 18/19 ARM, that's going to be a lot of hurt. A full focus Manticore can do 20 points on average rolls to an ARM 18 jack when boosting damage.

His ranged attack is a wraith bane ROF3 Handcannon that has a special action called covering fire that lets you place a 3" template anywhere within 12"ignoring intervening models. Anyone entering or ending their movement inside the template takes a POW 12 hit and the template lasts for a round or until the Manticore is destroyed.

I love the fact that the Manticore has a ranged attack for when you get hammered but the lock feats, such as Baldurs or Saeryns feat. It gives the jack a nice second option, but where this jack is really going to shine is going up against heavy ARM targets as it'll be able to put the hurt on pretty much anything it comes across.

Phoenix

Heavy arc node. Yes my friends, we have a heavy arc node. We have a heavy arc node that automatically replenishes D6 boxes to its force field in the maintenance phase. I'm going to say that we have one of the toughest arc nodes in the game now. The fact that it auto regens its field is amazing, and I'm assuming/hoping that we can burn a focus to pump the field back up to full.

The normal solution to an arc node is to engage it as it cant channel then, but the Phoenix gives us a solution to that problem. It can combust, yes my friends it stole the castigators move. The nice thing with it being on the Phoenix, aside from the fact that not a lot of infantry can survive a POW 12 hit, is that it'll help to clear out engaging models and free up the node.

It is also a heavy with a P+S17 reach, auto-fire, wraith baned sword and a P+S13 open fist with crit fire, so it is definitely no slob in melee and its ranged attack is just as nice. Its a RNG 10 POW 14 AOE 3 with crit fire.

This is definitely going to be my go to arc node. Yes the Phoenix is expensive points wise, but what you are going to be gaining for those points is awesome and it is hands down the best looking heavy that we have.

Wow, just wow!!

Welcome to the House Shyeel, a warmachine blog dedicated to the Retribution of Scyrah faction.
This week has been an awesome week for us elves out there with a lot of new models being previewed as well as NQ 25 being leaked on the PP boards. Now granted I haven't personally seen the stats, nor have I had any table time with them, I will still give my thoughts on what has been posted. I will do a more in depth review once I've had a little play time with the army. Also credit for this goes to bothDemeritus and Loveless

This post, I'll start with the most important part of your Army; the Warcaster.

The NQ gives us rules for both Dawnlord Vyros and Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper as well as the MkII rules for Garryth, Blade of Retribution. I'm going to concentrate on the MkI rules for now as there is still a lot of time to play under the MkI rules before we make the shift.

Dawnlord Vyros:

He is definitely a Myrmidon caster, with the standard Jack caster 6 FOC. He has a really decent stat line with a MAT 8, P+S14 Reach sword, DEF 15 and ARM 17. So you're not going to have to worry too much about boosting hit rolls, although you're probably going to want to boost the damage on opposing casters/jacks. Add to that he has flank Myrmidon (unknown if its heavy, light, or just myrmidon right now), he's going to be putting a severe hurting on whoever he decides to go after.

One of his major abilities is the fact that all models in his control area and in his battle group have a 360 LOS and ignore clouds, forests and models for determining LOS. With the fact that all Myrmidons have a ranged attack, this is a particularly powerful ability.

Feat:

His feat is definitely a game changer. The way it reads is for every enemy model killed by a faction friendly model in his control place one focus on a jack in his control. This could very easily max out all the jacks in his control, who can then turn around and start ripping everything in sight to shreds.

Spells:

Eliminator: 3 focus rng 8 aoe 3 pow 13 and for each model destroyed by the attack, Vyros can move 2". This has some awesome potential for either getting Vyros out of danger, or to move him to a better position for a charge.
Hallowed Avenger (see Testament of Menoth): This is far more useful on Vyros than ToM, due to the fact that we're (probably) going to runing a lot more jacks with Vyros.
Inviolable Resolve (see Epic Kreoss): Fearless is always good.
Mobility (see Amon): MKI mobility is nice, but it is a move not a SPD increase, but our jacks are already incredibly fast. The main benefit is the granting of pathfinder, and the getting up for free.
Stranglehold: a model damaged by stranglehold forfeits its movement or action during its next activation. Amazing ability to hold a model in place.

All in all, I like the way that Vyros looks. He's going to push a really mobile army to its limits, so we're going to have to make sure that we don't over extend ourselves.

Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper:

A RAT 7 ROF 3 RNG 12 POW 10 True sighted caster with energy siphon. Wow, just very simply wow. Granted POW 10 isn't going to be making a lot of models sweat, but on a caster or jack/beast with focus/fury on them you're basically getting a free boost. Another really nice ability of her's is the fact that she stole Witch Hunter from Reznik. Again we have another caster that can increase the mobility of our army. Do you really want to cast a spell on that jack, when I have another one close to your caster? I definitely love these damned if you do, damned if you don't casters.

Feat:

Grants everyone in her control stealth and makes it so they can not be charged. Now I'm assuming that the no charge applies to models that ignore stealth.

Spells:

Arcantrik Bolt: 2 focus spell that when a warjack is damaged by it, it becomes stationary for one turn. This is a little more limited than Vyros'lock spell,but when coupled with backlash makes for a really powerful combo.
Arcane Reckoning: 3 focus friendly upkeep that makes it so whenever a friendly faction model/unit is missed with a magic attack, the attacking model becomes the target and is automatically hit and if its an aoe the attacking model has the aoe centered on them. Basically its a castable version of whiplash, nice, but I can really only see it being useful on models with a high DEF as even a 5 FOC caster can hit DEF 15 on a boosted roll. I also wouldn't bother casting this spell if your up against Sevvy, Harby, or the Coven as they have such a high FOC stat they won't be missing much, if anything at all.
Backlash: 3 focus offensive upkeep that says whenever target enemy warjack is damaged, its controlling warcaster suffers 1 damage point. Now, I just want you to sit there for a minute and think about paring this with Arcantrik Bolt. . . . . Got it? Good. Couple these 2 spells with Invictors, mage hunters, any model with snipe and you can very, very easily take out the opposing caster.
Banishing ward same as Zerkova. It costs 2 focus
Phantom Hunter: 2 focus upkeep that allows any model in her battle group to declare charges, slams, ranged and magic attacks without LoS and the affected model ignores cloud effects cover and concealment. Basically the same thing that Vryos does, but on a single model. Still useful on a Node at the beginning to make sure that you can always arc a spell where you need it.
Rift: 4 focus spell that is rng 10 pw 13 aoe 4 and is offensive and upkeep, it treats the aoe as rough terrain and remains in play for one round. Another denial spell that fits really nicely with her feat.

So there we have it. 2 very interesting casters to start our war against the lesser races. Let me know what you all think.

Enjoy

High Serraphim