I wanted to call him a "John Woo Film Protagonist" but everybody in a John Woo film has the same basic flavor.
Lieutenant Alister Caine is a two-pistol slingin', moody, insubordinate jackass of a warcaster. I decided to buy him because he was cheap, and he looked like a lot of fun. He is a lot of fun.
Stats:
Caine has some extraordinary stats. His speed is incredible at 7, making him one of the fastest warcasters in the game. His melee attack and strength are abnormally low, but this is offset by his awesome ranged attack score of 8. Caine hits even the fastest light infantry on average rolls, and he can hit other fast warcasters (16 defense is common on quicker 'casters) if he aims (forfeits his movement to get a +2 bonus to ranged attack rolls) most of the time. His armor stat is ridiculously low, and he doesn't have a lot of damage boxes, so any hits are going to hurt and even blast damage can get to him. His defense is unusually high at 17, which can make the difference against non-area attacks. His focus is the low end of average at 6, and because of this deciding how to use Caine's focus each turn can be tough.
Caine has a special ability called Range Amplifier. If he's the point if origin for a spell he casts (so any spell not cast through an arc node like the Lancer) it gains +5 range. That's awesome.
Spells:
Caine has two awesome upkeeps in Blur and Snipe, both of which I talked about in my Stryker post. Blur adds defense against ranged attacks for a unit, and Snipe adds range to a unit's guns. Caine can of course use them on himself as well. Blur would give him a whopping Defense 20 against ranged attacks (great against ranged armies), and Snipe makes his guns even more effective.
Caine also has the Deadeye spell, which gives a model or unit an additional d6 on their first ranged attack roll that turn. This isn't an upkeep, so it can be cast on multiple units per turn and will stack with an upkeep spell on the unit. So Caine can give an extra attack die to every shot the Black 13th make, for instance, and all while under the influence of Snipe.
Offensively, Caine has a spell called Thunder Strike. It costs 4 of his 6 focus, but it's an impressive attack. It hits a model with a power 14 attack and it slams that model d6 inches directly away from Caine. Models that are slammed and models hit by models during a slam are all knocked down, so Caine can get an accuracy buff to his troops to hit the slammed model or whatever was hiding behind it (warcasters should be wary of hiding behind their 'jacks with Caine lurking around).
Lastly, and most irritating for opponents, Caine has a spell called Teleport. Teleport moved Caine to a spot within 8 inches of his position and ends his activation. So Caine can hit and run like crazy, walking his 7 inch speed and then teleporting back to safety behind a screening unit after making some pistol attacks. This particular spell irritates the hell out of some players.
Weapons:
Caine has a sword, but he's terrible with it and should never ever use it willingly. His real bread and butter are his twin spellstorm pistols, a couple magical-weapon hand cannons with 12 inch range, power 12, rate-of-fire 2 stats. Using his focus and impressive 8 RAT, Caine can fire 4 reasonably accurate and decently damaging shots each turn. That clears out a lot of infantry. If he gets a bead on an enemy caster he actually has enough focus to boost 4 damage rolls as well, and "boosted power 12s kill 'casters" is an idiom that experienced players often chant to newer players.
So Caine himself can be a decent assassin.
He's like MAT 4 with a power 8 sword, so if the enemy can engage him, chances are he's in some serious trouble.
Feat:
Caine's feat is called maelstrom. His front arc extends to 360 degrees and he makes one normal spellstorm pistol attack against every enemy model that he can see within his control area (focus stat x 2 or 12 inches). He ignores intervening models, so squishy units hiding behind tough units are getting shot as well. All of these attacks are boostable.
It's a lot of infantry hate, really, though I have seen Caine wreck a light warjack with decent damage rolls on his pistols. He's a one-man show during the feat, and it can gain accuracy bonuses just like other shots: he can forfeit his movement before the feat to get a +2 aiming bonus. It also suffers normal penalties, so shooting into melee will be at the usual -4 penalty (represented in game as a +4 defense buff for units engaged).
Normally the feat gets popped early, so Caine's troops can focus on other problems. Also,Caine will hit more than half of most enemy forces on his feat turn, so he's good at attrition battles. If the forces have already clashed then he loses some accuracy, which could make it fougher to win the attrition war.
Overall:
Caine's kind of a dick. There's a couple irritating strategies that Caine has available to him that can seriously frustrate opponents. Using his high speed and teleport spell, Caine can "kite", moving forward to take a couple shots and then teleporting away. He's great at hit and run for this reason.
He can also support a ranged army quite well with spells. Any unit that has some kind of critical effect (roll two of the same number on an attack roll to crit) on their guns will love his Deadeye spell, and he can "hotswap" Snipe in addition. Hotswapping is when a 'caster puts an upkeep buff like Snipe on a unit on turn one during the advance. Then the next turn Caine pays to upkeep the spell on that unit during his maintenance phase.
During activation, the unit with Snipe takes their go early. They benefit from the enhanced range. Then Caine activates and puts snipe on another unit who could use some range. This removes Snipe from the first unit. However, through careful turn ordering two units can gain the benefits of a single upkeep spell.
I haven't had much success with Caine, but he's still lots of fun to play.
Melee Power: F, None to speak of. If Caine is stabbing something with his pathetic sword, something has gone terribly, horribly wrong, and you are losing.
Ranged Power: B+. I'm tempted to go higher here, since Caine can quite easily get 5 accurate power-12 shots per turn, and many more than that on his feat turn. However, there are a few Cygnar 'casters that simply have more stopping power than Caine. He's got a lot of shots, but against a warcaster camping several focus or a heavy they won't do much.
Magic Power: C. Caine has a tough go of his focus each turn. He's either shooting the crap out of enemy models himself and using focus to help, or he's supporting his army with Snipe and Deadeye all over the place, or he's casting one ThunderStrike. It costs 4 of his 6, and he nearly always wants to boost, so we're talking 5 focus minimum most of the time. That can be a tough choice. If Thunderstrike slams Caine's target to oblivion or knocks down the enemy 'caster for ranged assassination, then it's bananas. If something goes wrong, Caine is boned and his army isn't feeling the love either.
Melee Support: C-, Caine's Blur spell helps deliver a low-defense unit like Stormblades or Stormguard forward. With Snipe and Deadeye Stormblades can Assault across 14", which is butch. It's ranged support for a melee troop, however.
Ranged Support: A, Caine has Snipe _and_ Deadeye, which are two of the best ranged buffs in the game. Only 'casters with Guided Fire and eHaley do ranged support this well for Cygnar.
Magic Support: D, Caine's Blur can again be used defensively against magic-heavy opponents, but Caine doesn't support his own spellcasters well.
Tricksiness: B-. Caine has a few modes, and his startling speed and pile of magical gunshots give him a lot of threat vectors. Thunderstrike can keep his opponents away from screening warjacks, lest he slam one into the caster and fill them full of spellstorm shots. Even when he's cowering in the back, his buffs are likely making a huge difference on the battlefield.
Rating: 3.0
Lists with pCaine:
15 points:
pCaine Ol' Rowdy (9), Stormblades + UA (8), Black 13th(4)
Caine + Defender (9), Arcane Tempest Gun Mages + UA (8), Reinholdt (1), Gorman di Wulfe or Squire(2), Stormcaller (1)
25 points:
Caine + Rowdy (9), ATGM + UA (8) + Hunter or Arlan +Charger (6), Rangers (5), Reinholdt (1), Squire (2)
Caine + Hunter + Hunter (12), Stormblades +UA + WA (11), Archduke Runewood (3), Black 13th (4), Reinholdt (1)
35 points:
Caine + Rowdy (9), ATGM +UA + 2 Hunters (20), Archduke Runewood (3), Stormblades + UA + 1 WA (9)
Caine + Defender (9), Squire (2), Stormblades +UA+ 3 WA (11), Reinholdt (1), Stormclad (10), Arlan Strangewayes (2), Black 13th (4), Gorman di Wulfe (2)
50 points:
Tiered, Caine +Stormclad (10), ATGM+UA (7) w Hunter and Defender (15), ATGM +UA (5) w Hunter and Defender (15), Black 13th (4)
Caine + Rowdy (9), Squire(2), Reinholdt (1), Stormblades + UA + WA (11) + Stormclad (10), Arlan (2), Rangers (5), Black 13th (4), Journeyman (3), Runewood (3), Gorman (2), Harlan (2), GMCA (2)
-Merlin
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