Deja Vu…

I’ve been told it was one of the biggest MK4 events (in the UK certainly) so I guess it does count as a lot. A few years at its height the Welsh managed to attract 180 people I think. Regardless it’s not the size of the event that matters but how much fun it is and the Welsh was always a good event.

Since it seemed that my choice to use legacy Cygnar was somewhat of a minority (despite this my one game into Cygnar was against another legacy list) it was nice to find Kraye was so much fun to use and felt so competent into nearly every matchup. Repo 5” is I think too much as the impact of seeing jacks come into range to shoot only to retreat back out of threat can be very demoralising to opponents. The cyclone is now genuinely awesome. The command cards impressed me a lot, they proved extremely influential in all games and give most forces some clutch tools to help mitigate bad matchups or just provide that one tool to let you do something cool that would otherwise be impossible. 

Every jack getting dual attack is a huge deal and the change to let you shoot whilst engaged (even if only at the model you’re engaged with) is so much of a game changer. Cyclones have become properly versatile jacks and on Kraye are an absolute terror into certain matchups.

To be very brief my games were as follows:

Round 1: Grymkin Old witch. A familiar opponent even if we hadn’t played in more than a year. Win on scenario as I managed to attrition his forces down control the scenario. Scenario was king of the hill. 

Round 2: Infernals Zaataroth. My first ever game against infernals and they still seem rather cheesy. Lost on scenario but definitely not an un-winnable matchup and it was fun to see the cyclone present a genuinely good counter to zaataroth’s feat. 

Round 3: Grymkin Old witch. A new opponent with a very different list and I made a terrible error in both underestimating how bonkers units are under boundless charge and desperate pace and just failing to notice the horsey man units. Despite that the game was decided by me clocking out. Scenario was Spread the Net.

Round 4: Cygnar Seige 2. A tricky game where I again made an early unforced error but attrition and scenario were actually finishing somewhat in my favour towards the end but another game where I death-clocked myself. Scenario was Invasion.

Round 5: Skorne Makeda 2. Going second is still a big disadvantage when facing gunlines I think. I got early board presence and scenario pressure to gain the advantage and my opponent’s dice completely abandoned him trying to clear out a ranger contesting his zone. Scenario was bunkers.

Round 6: Crucible guard Baldwin. On paper my opponent had both a lot of good ranged tech and a lot of decent anti-ranged tech so I wasn’t confident but first turn proved an advantage and I was also fortunate that the scenario rewarded my jack heavy list. My opponent wasn’t prepared for what Kraye’s feat could do and the mobility iron horse gives his battlegroup. I started to win heavily on attrition and in turn ultimately got to win on scenario. Scenario was Recon II. 

Kraye’s feat and iron horse ability are really something when you pull it off right. Cyclones getting to charge in, kill a couple of infantry and then go guns blazing and still with full focus is quite awe inspiring. I also really like and enjoy the changes to power attacks. It makes like jacks in particular much more versatile alongside gaining dual attack. Power attacks on lights is now a genuine option and really quite tempting for otherwise meek little things like the sentinel. (A sentinel slamming a small based model is no different from a heavy doing so and means a quite impressive bump up in power for it too.

There is a lot for me to mull on in the aftermath but I am glad to find the game is still fun, better balanced than before and the people who play it are still great too. 

More take-aways:

Jacks are much better now, all of them having dual attack and melee engagement not preventing the use of ranged weapons is a huge deal and whilst shooting in combat may be unreliable (stuff gets the +4 DEF for being engaged whether with you or any other model) it still beats not having the option and if you manage to punch what’s engaging you then being free to shoot afterwards makes mixed arms jacks feel awesome. No facing also helps here too. I like the changes to power attacks too, the flat damage values based on the difference between base sizes really steam-lines things and gives a significant boost to smaller weedier jacks that otherwise have very limited damage output. Even the lowly sentinel can decide to slam a small based foe to inflict a POW 14 hit on them with 3-4 dice damage if they can slam into another model. Smaller unit sizes also make jacks slightly less vulnerable to simply getting deleted. Make no mistake unit damage output can still totally one-round a jack but it’s harder without the right tech to deliver them and easier to mitigate by killing a few members of a unit off. Special mention goes to my long time favourite jack the Cyclone, for years an expensive, pillow-fisted model that looked cool but could never deliver on the table. Well in Mk4 the thing can be a damned terror and that’s in spite of not hitting any harder! Volume fire being added to the metal storm guns makes it just so brutal at range into large bases that it overshadows the defender by quite a margin in terms of damage output and I love them on Kraye.

Units feel very different now, much more tactical and you can make extremely potent use of the terrain to shield the bulk of your unit from enemy fire. If one model has line of sight and range to make a charge, everyone gets to charge in. That can be very brutal and there are still a bunch of ways to stack a couple of buffs onto a unit so that even a trencher hits like a truck. The lower model count still feels a bit odd on paper but it really helps clean up the table in practice. Units having to bunch up more also helps too as it’s now far harder to completely physically block somebody out of zones or pressure quite such large areas of the table. It’s also raised the value of smaller niche units for me. Weapon crews in particular seem much more viable, I took a pair of trencher chainguns, one opponent fielded the trencher cannon and express team, crucible guard fielded the rocket team and skorne a pair of venator flayer crews. The new movement rules really help make up for that abysmal movement stat and their often unique special rules offer some nice little benefits. I was really impressed with my little chainguns who racked up a fair kill count over the course of the weekend.

My one criticism of units or rather cautionary observation is that reposition can be nuts! Rangers are only a 3 man unit now and the new rules for running units actually makes them feel quite slow compared to previous editions but repo 3 gets them into all kinds of awkward little places for the opponent and they can spread out a lot more than you might think to occupy more board space or provide mark target. They proved extremely useful and tricksy over the weekend and no free strikes means that getting engaged in melee is not longer the end for them.

Actually, special mention to that change to the rules. No free strikes but forfeit your combat action that turn if you leave melee range is such an impactful change and it makes any model with a melee range an obstacle that must be removed it it’s engaging you models who want to charge past (no matter how weedy that pokey stick it) unless they are fortunate enough to have the unstoppable rule (which currently is quite rare) and that makes Kraye an insanely happy warcaster. Sending jacks into melee who then retreat out of the way to let the next one charge in or follow up to engage free foes that they can’t charge is so powerful and completely changes the dynamic for the game.

Which rule changes are you unsure about? I also felt the same way, particularly regarding units and run movement/charges but with a few games under my belt (still haven’t played much, it’s been one test game nearly a year ago and the 6 games as at the Welsh) it’s been enough to get a feel for things much more than just reading them and trying to imagine how it works. 

The most recent Wednesday update added a lot more options for me to field Cygnar, which makes me quite happy and enthused to experiment a bit more with lists now that I can field more than one caster. Quite amazed what they did to Stryker 3 and frankly amazed at how auto-include Rowdy is with him. Rowdy is in fact probably an auto-include with any of the casters. Somewhat expectant that SPD 6 is a mistake on him though.