Magnus 2 irregulars

Oooo very relevant to my life. My wife plays Ret and I haven't had the heart to get into an attrition style game against her. Interested to see if Imperatus still eats Nomads like it's his job in this list.

Even though ret can clear the disruption, Impy does not want to spend all game eating Eyriss' disruptor bolts. Orin's chain lightning should make the arcanists think twice about approaching Impy to load him up. Feat locks him down for a turn and makes it highly likely to eat the alpha. Assuming Impy can move, still has systems functioning, and enough arcanists to fully load him up post-disruption... then there's Unyielding.

Buyorboost numbers of Imperatus (fully loaded with arcanist strength buff) vs a full hp Nomad that doesn't lose its shield for simplicity's sake:

• Regular Nomads: Imperatus has a 78% chance to kill in one round
• Unyielding Nomads: Imperatus has a 18.1% chance to kill in one round

Fascinating! My experience has been that 100% of my nomads die and sometimes the thing standing next to the nomad, but seeing the math laid out, it looks like I'm just unlucky.

I find the list has a few ways to play and that I only need 4 advance moves. The mariner sticks with Magnus to give him the armor buff from escort( b2b if knockdown is a threat) and to give it loader while the 4 nomads go screaming up the table. If you go first and run all the nomads and the idrians up the board yuo've got a lot of threat being projected from the middle of the board. The Nomads at 24" threatening 12" means that your opponent has 2" out of deployment to move before they are in threat. Depending on how they react to this you have several options. I've had games where they try to stay out of my threat but not out of run to engage range ( 14") and I have just ran all 4 nomads and the entire unit of idrians to jam them completely out of scenario on the top of 2 and positioning my caster, units and solos to score at the end of their next turn. Sure, they'll kill some of the nomads and some of the idrians but they will get little to no models into the zones to contest. You should have enough firepower to take down what does manage to get in. In some scenarios you just win at this point because you scored 1-2 points on bottom of 2 at the end of their turn, you score 2-4 points the top of 3 when you clear out zones and destroy objectives then you move magnus up and feat and on the bottom of 3 they physically cant get into the zones and you win.

Another way that this strategy can win ( ive made some slight tweaks to the list and taken tinker and eliminators our and replaced with 2 artillery) is assassination. When you run the 4 nomads and the idrians to jam your opponent out of scenario they put so much effort into just not losing on scenario that they expose their caster to your gunline. Calamity, renegade knockdown, Eiryss strips focus/fury, Harm, mariner shot, 2 artillery shots and a CRA from whatever idrians that aren't engaged kills casters.

The list also has enough meat and firepower to play for attrition. If you go second and the Jam option is taken off the table you can still play a very strong game with the combination of high armor, 12" threat heavies and heavy gunfire. You have the volume of attacks to clear out a decent amount of troops combined with the tools to crack heavy armor. I feel comfortable dropping this list into 90% of my matchups and currently have a few things in consideration to pair with it.

When either using the idrians as just a fast, pathfinder unit to help the Nomads jam or to stay back and contribute as part of my gunline behind the Nomad meatshield they contribute enough to keep in the list. If you're doing the 5 nomad variation it's probably not worth it because you want all 5 nomads to get up the board and need cheap units to fit 5 units. Since I want to keep the Mariner near Magnus it's not as much of an issue for me. With Prey, Harm and Calamity I have killed heavies charging in 4-5 idrians no problem and really like having a full size unit with such versatility in the list.

I had been testing it out with proxies but recently picked up 2 more Nomads and the Artillery to make it happen for tournaments.