Arcantrik Force Generator in Card Database

I am really loving the changes to the DoI theme. I've gushed about it a bunch on the podcast and I'm really glad the changes from CID stuck.

This is the Thyron list I want to try out next.

Thyron
*FKG
*Banshee
*Griffon
Arcanist x 2
Pain Knight
HG Thane x 2
Lys Healer
Max HG Halbs + CA
Max HES + CA
HRT x 2
SFA x 2

Don't forget that Mage sight is battlegroup only.  

It's closest competition is a marshaled hydra in my opinion, and comparitively, it has way better ranged output. And more survivablity at ranged as well. It's a lot poorer off when the lines close however. I feel it really depends on the list which you would want to bring

Speaking of Defenders of Ios, has anyone tried using the AFG to get things knocked down so Stormfalls can pepper them with shots and actually hit? Mitigating RAT 5 that way seems tempting.

I played the AFG yesterday and was very pleased with what it did.
1) Damage: Our most damaging 'jack guns have POW 14 (or 15 for a fully loaded Manticore) and for a comparable number of points the AFG gets you two shots (also with boosted damage) at a comparable POW (14-16). As a bonus, it does not cost you any focus.
2) Anti-infantry: The AoE 4 can provide board control but even against Pathfinder infantry, the blast damage kills them. Getting engaged in melee is a problem since you really want to aim for the +2 on every blast damage roll.
3) Survivability: Due to Polarity Field and Carapace, the AFG as considered a sufficiently hard target to get largely ignored. When it did take some damage, I had an Arcanist follow it around and got it repaired back up to full health.

The only problem I see is SPD 4. I will have to get better at figuring out when to keep moving in order to make the AFG scenario relevant. I believe 'casters who can help it move (like Ossyan, Kaelyssa, and Rahn) offer it a lot.

Honestly, I think that play with it is going to spike for a bit because its a new shiny, but then its going to go back down to what it was before, which is a play status reflective of the fact that a good number of people in my meta genuinely forgot it was a model Ret could take. I don't think its good enough to ever warrant taking two of them, and even taking one right now feels very debatable. So I wouldn't worry about it too much macdaddy?

To reply to the earlier poster, I think the AFG is the best version of what it's going to be, with the scope of the changes they were willing to consider. I can respect that was their intent, but I disagree with it, as that approach makes sense if you have a solid foundation but just need some frame work. I think the AFG has fundamental problems that you can't easily fix with number tweaks, which is most of what they did. Its kit just feels like a grab bag of stuff put together, as opposed to a tight design focused on doing one thing, and doing it well. To complement its grab bag, it has a number of downsides (no melee weapon, limited number of attacks, still doesn't really want to move, and has trouble contributing to scenario play) with no real upside in my experience.

I did a lot of CiD testing with it, and there was more than one game in which the Ret army just died around it, with it being untouched because it was never threatening enough to at least draw attention off of the other stuff. It is now punished less for scenario play because it no longer loses 1 of its 2 attacks if it moves at all, but with all of the LoS blocking terrain that is now a feature of warmachine, it only having a gun is a problem. The fact that it isn't a battlegroup model (and thus can't benefit from the things Ret casters to have to make LoS blocking less of a problem) hurts it. It is still fairly vulnerable to jamming, and has problems clearly itself, as I don't think you can aim in melee with it. In more than one testing Kaelyssa game, it's biggest contribution with as optimal of conditions I could want was an mobile LoS blocking piece that has all of the huge-base benefits.

In short, I just don't think there's a compelling use case for it. The casters who seem to like it best are anyone with an out-of-activation move, and even then, I think they would want something they could take in their battle group and give more buffs to.