Mk. 3 Cygnar List Thoughts Pt. 2

The last couple of days have been crazy dojo time! Lots of ideas, lots of lists, lots of discussions with fellow Cygnar players. From the immediate shock of trying to get a grasp on the new lists we've come a little further and have found a couple of concepts that are interesting.

Let's start with a couple of the modules and synergies we've identified and we'll look at specific list suggestions at the end of this blog post.

Ah, Trenchers. At first, I was not that impressed, but then a fellow Cygnar player recommended I take a closer look at the full module: Max Trenchers, UA, Possibly Grenadiers, Trench Busters and Finn. It's an expensive module, but it's also something we never had in Mk. 2: This is a fairly self-sufficient configuration! It's so strong and independent of buffs that you can run this, or a variant of it, with a wide variety of our casters. What made it tick for me was when I started running some numbers on how badly these guys can put the hurt on stuff even as heavy as a Khador jack. Consider this: 2 Trench Busters assaulting a run-of-the-mill kissed Khador heavy in melee range of a Trencher will pretty much destroy it. The Trenchers themselves aren't too shabby either with Brutal Charge taking them to PS11, unbuffed. With buffs like Kiss or Positive Charge they become something out of this world and the variety of tricks the Trenchers have provide a flexible unit. Go to ground and especially cautious advance help these guys stay fairly safe against a lot of the current infantry hate, including Khador's plethora of High Explosive shells that have come out as a part of Mk. 3. While you might not always want to run the full setup as detailed above, it's good to keep in mind just how powerful it is and how versatile it can play. While clouds are not as potent as they used to be due to changes in what can see through them and not, there are still plenty of cases where a cloudwall simply blocks off your opponent entirely, as we have come to know and love in Mk. 2 with Haley3.

I believe these guys will see way more play time now and I think that it's a good thing to actually have a core of the army that is supposed to be the core based on the fluff and works that way on the tabletop as well. I am very excited to try out Trenchers in Mk. 3!

Stormblades! More precisely, Storm Knights. With the Stormclad having an improved accumulator and the Stormblades + Storm Lances receiving buffs, this is an interesting new era for our Storm Knights. That is before we even factor in the inherent synergies between these guys and the Firefly, which is now a pretty interesting choice in lightning-oriented Cygnar lists. With all the infantry hate out there I'm still a little hesitant to call these guys the bomb just yet, but they certainly received a lot of buffs and synergies. Consider running Stormblades with 2 Stormclads and Arlan for example. With a single focus from the caster you have 2 fully fueled jacks. As with the trenchers, the beauty of this is that the synergies are caster-independent. True, certain casters help infantry more so than others (and Stryker2 looks very interesting now!), but the core traits and synergies here are exclusively between the units and jacks.

Between the Trencherboat and the Stormboat we have a couple of building blocks that I think will see a lot of action in the weeks and months to come. It's impossible to say without playtesting where these fit the best and just how universal they are, but I think it's a big step in the right direction to try and make our choices work outside of certain caster combinations. In Mk. 2 I found this to be one of our most limiting factors.

Let's move on to a couple of other interesting observations and configurations!

That, my friends, is the head of the Morrowan warjack Gallant (creds to those of you who recognized it!). What's so interesting about Gallant? At first glance he seems like he was one of the in-faction jacks that got the worst deal of Mk. 3. Looks can be deceiving. Upon closer examination and looking at a couple of other cards, I find this guy highly interesting. The thing is that Harlan Versh has received a bit of a buff, multiple buffs actually, which means that our dear Gallant can be taken on Jakes and be fully fueled with Sidekick up -and- Energizer. That's a DEF15 beatstick, fully fueled with extra threat range. Make that DEF17 if you play him with Haley3 (we'll get back to that). A common problem when designing Mk. 3 lists with multiple beatsticks is that, outside of certain casters, you only have 1 Arcane Shield to go around. Gallant, with his excellent base DEF, offers an alternative approach which lets us ARM-skew one heavy an DEF-skew another. With Versh & Jakes I believe this is a very interesting inclusion, which again works well regardless of caster. Assuming you want that extra beatstick, that is.

In a meta heavy with warjacks my thoughts immediately turned to Sword Knights. A unit with so much potential that unfortunately has a tendency to die before they can do their work in Mk. 2. In Mk. 3 they swapped their previous ARM-buffing ability for a DEF-buffing one, which is absolutely brilliant for them as quite few things in the game care about a small ARM-buff to 1-wound infantry. In my experience most lists have trivial ways to deal with Shield Wall, even. Anyway: Sword Knights are probably not as ubiquitous as the modules dicussed above, but consider for a moment that they can move to DEF17 with Haley3, aside a DEF17 Gallant.

The lists I discussed in my previous post was deliberately extreme to provoke some thoughts and see what options we have. With a little more theorymachining and dojoing I feel like we are approaching more refined and lists that are thoroughly discussed. I'll start listing out a couple of the ones I find interesting and finish with the ones I intend to start first.

Haley3 Defense Skew. You have probably guessed the main parts about this list based on the paragraphs above. Anyway, let's see specifically what it might look like!

Haley3 
- Ironclad
- Ol' Rowdy
Junior
- Charger
Jakes
- Gallant
Harlan Versh
Sword Knights (max)
- UA
Trenchers (min)
Ragman

Haley3 kind of has a luxury problem now: She wants to do something with her focus besides casting spells! With Revive nerfed and the increase to battlegroup points, the Echoes suddenly often want to fuel jacks! I think you will often find that you have multiple focus to spend on jacks, hence the inclusion of 2 heavies in her battlegroup. The Ironclad here is optional and I can see both Squire (which I truly don't believe is auto-include here at all), Rhupert, Arlan and Trench Busters being viable alternatives. The list revolves around 2 heavy beatsticks at DEF12/ARM23 and DEF17/ARM19 alongside the cheap and expendable Ironclad. Playtesting surely needed but this looks interesting to me. Notice how this list largely relies on the caster-dependent synergy to create a DEF-skew on choices that go from great DEF-values to amazing DEF-values.

Next stop: Stryker2! In light of the Trencher boat I think mr. patriot might have found what he needs: An element that helps him close in and do some work without having to blow the feat super early. Take a look at this:

Stryker2
- Squire
- Ironclad
- Ironclad
Junior
- Firefly
Jakes
- Gallant
Harlan Versh
Trenchers (max)
- Ua
Trench Buster
Trench Buster
Alain Runewood

Admittedly this would also be a great opportunity for Sword Knights but I think that they suffer under infantry hate in this context as taking both them and Trenchers seem too much. I could be wrong though! Regardless, this list is based off of my attempt with Stryker2 in Mk. 2 and I believe the trencherboat might be just what he needs. Double Ironclad is a little iffy in terms of focus efficiency. Perhaps Stryker is better off with Stormclads because of accumulators. It is my belief though that Positive Charge (and similar buffs for that matter) is inherently better with cheaper options because the relative increase is bigger.

Nemo3, the lightning master! This caster I believe we will struggle with for a long time before we find the perfect balance. With his battlegroup-efficiency and extreme damage output potential, it is easy to go overboard with this guy. The challenge lies in finding the right amount of utility, support and damage.

Nemo3 
- Reinholdt
- Dynamo
- Thunderhead
Junior
- Firefly
Trenchers (max )
- UA
Trench Buster
Trench Buster
Aiyana & Holt
- Murdoch

Nemo3 is perhaps one of the better candidates for a Stormboat. One of the things I believe Nemo3 has to do is be absolutely devastating on feat turn. To maximise that I wanted Aiyana + Holt. This is an expensive combo and I think you end up with a fairly fragile army core. However Trenchers help offset this and they also synergize well with Kiss. Perhaps though it's best to ditch both options in favor of Storm Knights. As it is now the list is very tight and taking another approach might open up points for support like Arlan, which could surely come in handy.

We are nearing the end of yet another blog post that became way longer than I had thought. Anyway, I'm back to my pair from the last post: Haley2 and Caine2. While the casters above look interesting and have lots of potential, I believe Haley2 and Caine2 possibly cover the overall matchups best. I know, it's a very call to make, but you gotta start somewhere. Haley2 excels at dealing with battlegroups. In my experience she is the best in the game at doing so. Despite SPD debuffs no longer preventing charges and her bond disappearing, I believe she will maintain this aspect. With her incredible versatility there are multiple ways to build her but on paper I keep returning to the same list I proposed last time. I am having trouble seeing how I can improve it (although I did swap Anastasia for Mechaniks as I think they are well worth the cheap cost now). Perhaps playtesting will show me otherwise:

Haley2
- Squire
- Thorn
- Stormwall
Junior
- Charger
Gun Mage Captain Adept
Field Mechaniks
Aiyana & Holt
- Murdoch
Black 13th

Not much new to say here. This simply needs to be playtested. The intended matchups are still as follows: Protectorate, Cryx, Convergence, Trollbloods, Skorne, Minions, Khador. It could be that Caine is a better choice against e.g. Cryx and Minions. Again, playtesting needed!

This leaves us with Caine2. Caine2, like Nemo3, is highly complex. I don't know if I'll ever stop dojoing lists with him. With him being a machine on his own and our army having so many elements that work well on their own, he can evolve in so many different directions. For the following reasons I have centered on a core for him with a Stormwall, Rangers and Aiyana + Holt. First of all, Caine does not like to run jacks. Caine wants to spend his focus himself. With the increased warjack points he either has to take a Colossal or 2+ Warjacks to max his points out. Thus we are left with 3 options: 1. Take the Colossal. 2. Find jacks that don't really need focus allocation to work well. 3. Go with the jacks that have accumulators. A combination of 2 and 3 is of course possible, e.g. Hunter + Stormclad. Okay, second premise: I want my battlegroup to help out against heavy ARM-stuff. Although my intended matchups with Caine don't include the anticipated worst offenders, ARM-skew is still very much a thing. Without upkeep removal in a jiffy from Eiryss2, consider Issyria with Hyperion + Imperatus for example. It takes a good while to chew through. Furthermore I believe we will see quite a few variants become rather hard to shoot down at a distance. Examples include Cygnar behind a cloud wall and Vyros2. So I want anti-arm stuff that help out in combat as well. However I also want to further enhance Caine's strength: The ranged game. There could be flawed premises here and perhaps in fact something like double Stormclad is what he should run with a stormboat army. Anyway that's what I settled with for now, so Stormwall it is.

That left about a fourth of my points to spend as I pleased. This was trickier than I thought as it's just not enough to get a "package". I had to make some difficult choices. In the end I've settled for a bit of a reduced trencherboat. The idea is that I get a bit of everything from that world: Cautious advance, clouds, the Buster helping out etc. On top of that playtesting will hopefully show me what I need more of.

Caine2
- Reinholdt
- Stormwall
Junior
- Charger
Aiyana & Holt
- Murdoch
Rangers
Trenchers (min)
- UA
Trench Buster
Arlan Strangeways

To finish this post I'd like to take a quick look at my choices. From the lists above you can probably see that I'm more inclined to believe in the trencherboat than the stormboat. On paper I gravitate towards this because I view it as more flexible, better suited to deal with infantry hate and it shoots longer. I know RNG10 isn't much to write home about, but a big CRA can still put a dent into most things without necessarily committing the unit to combat. Playtesting will definitely show if this is a biased opinion that is not fundamented in what actually works. Hopefully I'll get my first pseudo-Mk. 3 game this weekend!