The Boys in Blue

Hello All,

Time for another update. At our club there is about to start a small league of Warmachine, a fun game by Privateer Press.
For those among you who have absolutely no idea what it is I'm talking about, the game is about battlemages called Warcasters using their powers to control Warjacks, huge steampowered battlerobots with which they smash, crush, blast their opponents from the field of battle. Sounds like fun, isn't it? :-)
There is also a fully compatible variant Hordes where Warlocks control big beasties to do their bidding.

Anyway, the league is based on the Journeyman league concept where people start out with one of the startersets available for each faction and as the league progresses add more models to the army. As I allready had a nice collection of Cygnar models the choice of picking an army wasn't all that difficult. Most of the models weren't/aren't tabletop ready. Some where never finished, others still in the box while some of the older models in the force were halfway a complete revamp. Stripped, primed and one or two color at most. So this league was the perfect opportunity to start finishing these lovely models and make them into an army.

With the league rules demanding that one picks an army and starts out with the starterset, army selection was quite simple. Cygnar, like most other factions only has one starterset, so I could skip army selection completely and start painting right away. The Cygnar Starterset comes with Coleman Stryker as its Warcaster, a Charger light jack, a Lancer light jack and the Ironclad heavy warjack.

The Cygnar Starterset

Commander Coleman Striker

Now the Cygnar army has a reputation for being a rather shooty army. Somehow I don't feel this is represented very well by the units in the starterset. Only one of the light jacks has a ranged weapon. Also the Warcaster, Commander Coleman Striker isn't exactly the most shooty warcaster in the Cygnar army, but in that regard he does fit in with the jacks in the box set. All in all he's a good, versatile caster that can be played in several ways, so he certainly isn't a bad choice to start with. In fact, his generalist approach probably makes him one of the best Cygnar casters during the early stages of the campain as access to the big guns is and will be severly limited during the opening months and I'll need his versatility when facing a wide variety of greatly differing opponents.

He has disruption on both his weapons enabling his to shut down enemy jacks both in melee and, even better, at range. As armies will be very warjack heavy during the first few months, his ability to disrupt may well prove decisive in several of the upcoming battles.

Charger

The Charger light jack is the only shooty element in the starter army. I must say I'm impressed with the Mk2 version of the Charger. During Mk1 he was a very unimpressive jack. Too light for melee, and not very effective at shooting. He still sucks in melee but fortunatly his gun has improved quite a bit.
While he has a nice looking hammer, that's mostly for show or against an soft target of opportunity. He shouldn't be using it very often as he just can't stand up against a dedicated melee jack.
Instead he should be shooting from as far away as possible. He is now capable of making 2 fully boosted shots, making him perfect to blast light jacks, careless warcasters and later on light infantry and any solo's that don't keep a respectfull distance.

Lancer

The next Jack in my starter battlegroup is the Lancer, another light jack. While build on the same chassis as the Charger, this jack has some respectable melee capabilities. His spear allows him to fight at reach distance while his shield increases his durability. Even better is that the shield can be used to destroy an enemy jack's cortex.
However the best thing about the Lancer is that he's one of the best arc nodes in the game.

The last model in my starter battlegroup is the every dependable Ironclad. For a heavy Jack he's quite fast, and his hammer is a very powerfull weapon. He has the ability to knock down enemies near him, making him very dangerous against clusters of enemy troops.
His biggest downside is that while his armor is strong, it's still lower than that of his Khador and Menoth counterparts, so I must make sure he get's to charge in first.