Let’s start this story with an anecdote. When I first began to play WarMachine, I didn’t own many models. I knew that I wanted to own more, so that I could play bigger games with my pals. I owned just the
battlebox and a unit of Stormblades, and knew that I wanted some ranged support and other warjacks.
One day I went to the store to play some pick up games on WarMachine night, and there was a bunch of my faction’s models available for sale used. My FLGS is good about selling those used models at half-price (generally regardless of paintedness or quality of paintjob). So I saw a full unit of Cygnar Long Gunners, a separate packet of the unit officer and standard attachment, and some other stuff for sale. I picked it all up. It was only like $30 for $60-odd worth of models. I thought that as a new player this was a hot deal.
Thing is, Long Gunners aren’t so awesome, as far as troops go. They’re not terrible, but they’re certainly outshone by the awesome Arcane Tempest Gun Mages for similar army point costs at a number of points. I’ll write a full article on Long Gunners at a later date, after I play them some more, which brings me to the next part of my story.
My good pal Ray paints models like a boss. He had a fully painted unit of his own Long Gunners that he didn’t need anymore last summer, months after my Long Gunner purchase. He sold it to the store. I bought it. He said, “crap, I would’ve sold them to you if I thought you’d wanted them.” But my reply was, “I want a full unit awesomely painted, for cheap. I can sell my unpainted ones back. . .”
Or not. See, there are several Tier or Theme lists in Cygnar which require two units of Long Gunners. So I actually decided to paint up my own second unit (and paint the officer and standard in Ray’s colors) to run those tier lists. Tier lists are lists which restrict model choices but offer interesting advantages and often allow a player to break the rules in some way. Since there are three Long Gunner Tiers, I’ve decided to play each one a bit and see how they shake out. It doesn’t look promising.
The first experiment is
Commander Douchebag McWeen, who as a caster is really growing on me. I think he’s got some serious game, but he’s a support ‘caster through and through. His highest tiers require two units of Long Gunners, but gives a Unit Attachment for free (so cheap, which is good). He also is forced to take his awesome character ‘jack Ol’ Rowdy, which isn’t so bad and gives a +1 to the starting die roll. At his biggest tier level, he must also take two Lancer arc node ‘jacks, which is. . .meh. The benefit is that he gets his three sweet buff spells into play for free at the beginning of the game, giving him full focus to run those ‘jacks up the table. Which is nice.
I went to Chicago and contacted a local who I’ve played before, Tmage. T said that he could meet me for some games, though he seemed more interested in competitive play, and I told him that unfortunately I was planning on playing some janky nonsense. He graciously offered to play some fun lists himself so as to make a good game of it.
We met and set up a scenario called Outflank, Outfight, Outlast, which features two giant control zones which can be scored upon on either side of the center of the table. Controlling either one (no enemy models and certain of yours in the zone) nets a point, first to three wins. Or assassinate the enemy ‘caster. Whichever.
T decided to play Morvhana the Autumnblade, a Circle warlock who, like the Long Gunners, doesn’t see much play and is overshadowed by other choices. We thought it would be an okay matchup. It turned out to be good. . .in a terribad way.
T’s list was
Morvhana
Megalith
Warpwolf Stalker
Gorax
Swamp Gobbers
Shifting Stones
Witch Doctor
Full tharn Bloodtrackers with Nuala the Huntress Character Unit Attachment
His reinforcements were a unit of Shifting Stones with UA and the Lord of the Feast.
Mine was in tier:
Stryker
Ol’ Rowdy
Two Lancers
Long Gunners min with UA
Long Gunners min
Stormblades
Journeyman Warcaster
I had to scramble to find reinforcements in tier. It was either an Ironclad that Stryker would have trouble running, some ranged ‘jacks that probably wouldn’t do much good, or an extra unit of Stormblades. I opted for the last, was forced to proxy as I don’t own two units of them, and filled them out with two Storm Gunner weapon attachments.
Stryker’s tier has some weird synergies going on, and it’s lacking a lot of synergies available to him while he’s not in tier. For instance, he has trouble casting his awesome signature Earthquake spell while upkeeping a couple of his sweet buffs AND running any amount of warjacks. He needs a ‘caster attachment and Arlan Strangeways pretty badly to manage his focus-intensive playstyle. Losing those makes every turn a turn of difficult tactical choices.
I lost the die roll to go first. T decided to go first, and deployed his stuff that wasn’t advanced deploy pretty centrally. I set up Stryker and Rowdy in the center of my deployment, with the Lancers on the flanks, my larger unit of Long Gunners on the right and the smaller on my left, Stormblades behind them. The journeyman hung way back.
T’s AD blood trackers and shifting stones set up all over the center of his AD zone. He declared the smaller unit of Long Gunners as their first prey target. I had put Blur on them with my tier bonus, with Arcane Shield on the Stormblades and Snipe on the larger unit of Long Gunners.
T moved all of his stuff up, taking a big chunk out of the center of the board with his bloodtrackers. Morvhana put Regrowth on them, which is an upkeep that states she can spend fury to revive grunts to the unit during her Control phase, which is ballin’ in an attrition festival. The Witch Doctor put Undead and Tough on them, and pretty much everything else advanced or teleported forward (shifting stones. . .).
I had to advance more cautiously. I realized at this point that everything within range of my long gunners had stealth, so ranged attacks from further than 5” away automatically miss. That’s a serious problem for the Long Gunners, whose whole thing is long-ranged combined ranged attacks. So. . .I was behind the eight ball from the start. I allocated focus to the jacks. I advanced the big unit of Long Gunners and put down the covering fire template (which is about the only thing the unit attachment gives them. . .) to block some bloodtracker movement. The Lancers ran up to strategic positions. I moved up the other LGs and SBs in a mix, but not too far. Jr put his Arc Shield on Rowdy (which is substantial; 23 ARM is a LOT of armor) and stayed far far away. Stryker moved up and tossed an Earthquake with his remaining focus at a bloodtracker. It auto-missed because of stealth, but the template is enormous, and it deviated onto the front rank, knocking two down anyway. Rowdy ran up a bit.
I had contemplated popping the feat at this point, but it would have been largely wasted as T could probably back up and ignore most of my stuff. However, if I’d run more stuff and tried to jam up the ranks with my mostly-useless Long Gunners maybe I could have popped the feat to more effect, at least for board position purposes. They aren’t supertough under the feat, but ARM 17 is alright, and one of them was also defense 16 because of blur. I don’t know. . .still shaky.
T set up his reinforcements, and my ignorance of the threat range on the Lord of the Feast cost me a bit. I didn’t realize his Raven attack was a 10” shot. With the shifting stones teleporting him closer to my infantry and the Raven attack allowing him a teleport, he was a half inch close enough to hit the front stormblade. The raven attack allows him to teleport (again) into my ranks and thresher with a reach attack. He killed 5 guys, three of them my hard-hitting stormblades. They failed their massive casualties check and flipped out. That was bad.
The bloodtrackers acted in their hit and run role and killed two more of the smaller LG unit, but they made their casualties check. Then they reformed back. During their activation I counter-charged two of them with Rowdy to take away their ranged attacks. T moved the rest of his stuff up more cautiously, keeping Megalith a good distance from Rowdy and popping his animus to make rough terrain. The warpwolf moved into a forest and gained stealth from prowl (more stealth! Awesome), but was within striking distance of most of my force.
It became clear to me that I needed to just commit some stuff and hope my feat could save it from the inevitable alpha strike, either from bloodtrackers or the warpwolf berserking through a unit. I deployed my reinforcement stormblades near the edge of the table as far up as I could and ran them into the control zone near the wolf in the woods.
I needed to kill the Lord of the Feast. Jr managed to hit him with a hand cannon shot and blow him away, which was good. The long gunner prey hid out in the back. The fleeing stormblades rallied. The lancers moved up to contest both zones and give Stryker juicier earthquake targets later on. I moved the arcane shield from the fleeing stormblades to stryker and had stryker failcharge way up toward the stalker in the woods, popping the feat and daring my opponent to try and assassinate him at 26 armor. Rowdy failed to kill the two blood trackers he was engaging.
My opponent largely ignored my high-armor stuff during feat. He instead killed 5 of my new reinforcement stormblades with his berserking stalker (which I figured would happen) and sprinted back. He did not end in the woods, however.
Morvhana herself didn’t do much other than revive her bloodtrackers or cast animi on her beasts most of the game, hiding way back in a swamp gobber smoke cloud. I couldn’t get to her with my Long Gunners for a doubletap, and she had plenty of fury to spare anyway. I contemplated upkeeping Snipe on the bigger unit of LGs, moving them forward and trying for two or three man CRAs on her, since most of her screen was stealth and therefore did not block LOS. I could have gotten an earthquake autodeviation on her, and then while she was knocked down the LGs could have hit her with 3 pow 12s? or maybe 7 pow 10s? It was sketchy, and she still might have been out of their threat range.
Instead I decided to do as much damage to the warpwolf as I could. It was a long shot because it has a bunch of hit points, but I was trying to take it out of the game for at least a turn. I moved the Lancer up to get an autodeviation onto the wolf, had stryker quake it, and then the stormblades left and large unit of Long Gunners managed to hit it for a bunch of damage. If I’d upkept Snipe on the Long Gunners I might have done even more, but alas. . .
The rest of my stuff was ineffective. I realized at this point that killing blood trackers was just allowing my opponent to revive them and place them nicely to attack my squishy stuff, and resolved to not kill them anymore.
T used his blood trackers to kill another LG of the prey group, and one even managed to kill the journeyman (needing an 8 to hit and 12 to kill . . .) which was a big blow to my survivability. I realized at this point that I should have had Rowdy trample through the blood trackers and try to kill the Gorax or Warpwolf, but hindsight and all that. . .
T had some issues this turn because I’d knocked down the warpwolf and managed to get its spirit out, so it couldn’t shake the knockdown. He wound up moving it back. The flank forces tied up my Lancer. The Gorax nearly wrecked the one on the forest/wolf/stormblade flank.
I was losing the attrition war pretty badly at this point. I managed to kill the Gorax with lucky Long Gunner CRAs after it wrecked my Lancer with a free strike, but the stormblades couldn’t reach the blood trackers contesting the right zone to charge, and missed with their ranged attacks. I put Stryker behind Rowdy and waited for the hammer to fall.
Megalith went to throw Rowdy for the assassination, but Rowdy proved too strong against the odds. At this point the game was getting pretty silly. T killed some more stuff and passed the turn. I tried to kill Megalith with Rowdy (odds weren’t good, and then the dice just said no) and conceded the game.
There were a lot of interesting tactical choices we made, and I’m still kicking myself for forgetting about Rowdy trampling through a bunch of blood trackers. That might have gotten me control of a zone during the final turns, and then maybe we could have had a fight on our hands.
For a slap fight it was a good game.
We played a speed game afterwards, since my opponent and I tend to overthink our turns (which generally lead to good play, in our defense, but our single game had taken well over two hours). So we played “timed” turns, and made our armies a bit more effective. T played
Baldur1
Megalith
Warpwolf Stalker
Gorax
Double shifting stones
Full blood trackers and UA
Blackclad warfarer
I played
Stryker1
Rowdy
Squire
Strangeways
Full Long Gunners
Stormblades + UA + Storm Gunner
Black 13th strike force
Gorman di Wulfe
This scenario was close quarters, a pretty basic one where the goal is to score on the circle just on the opponent’s half of the board and keep him from scoring on yours.
T won the roll again. He deployed pretty centrally again. I did the same, though my Long Gunners were on the left flank and Black 13th with Gorman on my right for ranged support.
T ran up the blood trackers to jam up the middle again. Everything else advanced. I had Stryker buff the LGs with Blur, and the Stormblades with Arcane Shield. He advanced. Jr cast his Arcane Shield on Rowdy again and hid in a forest. The LGs ran mostly through the forest. The Stormblades advanced. Rowdy ran. Arlan powerboosted Rowdy (for grudge) and stayed pretty far back. Squire kept up with Stryker. The Black 13th went for lucky deviations but didn’t get any. Gorman gave them stealth with a smoke cloud.
T had his trackers move up to toss spears, and I had Rowdy countercharge one of them. That tangled two of them up. They mostly missed or failed to wound their targets (might have killed a Stormblade?). T then powered up his Stalker and teleported it in to scrap Rowdy, which it managed easily (I forgot about the Stone Strength buff on Baldur. . .). Megalith stayed further back. Everything else advanced cautiously.
I had Stryker Earthquake the stalker to knock it down and pop his feat. Jr put a new Arc Shield on Stryker. With the Stalker down I had the Stormblades assault it and they killed it easily. The LGs moved up cautiously but failed to kill any blood trackers. The Black 13th managed to kill the Blackclad wayfarer and tried to damage a stone to no avail. Gorman popped more smoke.
T backed up a bit, since he wasn’t going to be able to kill many Stormblades at ARM 23, and sending in Megalith to do it would have probably cost him a Megalith in the long run.
I had the LGs move up, fail to kill any bloodtrackers because of Stealth and general accuracy issues. Then Stryker moved up and Earthquaked them, missing because of stealth, but again the deviating GIANT template still caught four in the blast, knocking them down. Then I had the Stormblades assault to get within 5” to negate stealth, and since they pretty much autohit that was 4 dead blood trackers. Nice. Gorman advanced and put black oil onto Megalith (which was awesome), and the Black 13th again failed to kill the stones.
For those keeping score, that’s a warpwolf Stalker and half a unit of blood trackers for the stormblades, and NOTHING for the long gunners. Dammit.
My opponent went for an assassination, as he could buff baldur up with Megalith’s geomancy and then teleport to within range of Stryker with the stones at full fury. He would have won the game, but did not boost his first attack and missed Stryker’s impressive defenses. The next attack hit, and then weight of stone (Baldur’s sword has a sweet debuff attached to it) kicked in, making it so Baldur hit on 6s. He hit with 3 of his remaining 4 attacks, but left Stryker on 2 wounds. That one boost at the front would have sealed the deal.
T told me via email later that he also could have popped Megalith’s animus (he was pretty close to Stryker at the time) to get a debuff in before which would have done it as well.
But we were playing pretty fast, and I’ll take wins where I can get them. T’s a better player than I am, so any victory I can catch is worth it (in spirit he really won). Baldur was clubbed by Stormblades.
Clearly we should play more timed games so that we make better choices under duress (I shouldn’t have pushed Stryker as far up as I did, really).
Long Gunners aren’t looking so good at the moment. I’m not giving up on them yet, but I’ll probably stop playing them against T so that I can give him better games while I’m out of town
-Merlin out
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