War Machine and Hordes

[Valynth]

I'm pretty sure this is the best area to put this, though it's not one of them thar fancified vidja games.

Anyway, I recently just got into the card/miniatures game called "War Machines."  To best summarize, it's a bit pretty much a steam-punk Warhammer with defined damage boxes.

Anyway, they recently got a new army which I purchased called "Convergence of Cyrsis" and after two games here are my thoughts:

The warcaster in the box set is the aptly named "Forge Father Syntherion," a human who almost totally replaced his flesh with highly advanced magical cogs, his appearance is best described as "A floating post with Swiss army knives attached," but most players simply call him a Swiss army knife.  With 18 armor, it rapidly becomes apparent that his fighting style is "endurance."  To further drive this point home, he passive ability is "Field Marshal: Auto Repair," which causes every construct (including Syntherion himself) to regain 1d3 boxes per activation (The period I move/attack with the mini).  He also has the trait "resourceful" which allows him to pay the upkeep for spells for free.

Syntherion's spells themselves reflect his VERY durable message:

Reconstruct, when cast on a vector, allows that vector, when normally destroyed, to slide 3" and regain one damage box for every system (4 boxes total) and expend the reconstruct upkeep.  This allows a normally dead vector keep on chugging when most mechs would crumple.  Couple with his auto-repair on his turn plus a recasting of reconstruct and he rapidly becomes a bane to those without a counter to upkeep spells.

Hot shot boosts all ranged damage rolls for a mech (add 1 dice in damage) kinda useless to the vectors in the battle group as the cipher benefits more from reconstruct trusting its heavy armor to see another turn, and thus another repair, than is does from its already weak (pow 6) ranged attack.  The other range unit has no damage roll at all and thus does not benefit.

Synergy really boosts melee capacity, with each model that hits in 12" of Syntherion getting +1 to hit and damage for each other allied model that hit this turn makes large conflicts with Syntherion nasty.

Magnetic Hold at range 8" turns Syntherion from "mildly annoying" to full blown "troll."  Once he hits a unit with this spell it suffers -2 speed and defence (any penalty to speed means you can't charge/run) and he can upkeep the effect indefinitely.  The fact that friendly constructs (pretty much EVERY Convergence model is one) also get +2 to speed when charging the affected unit is just cheese on top.

Convection is really the only non-upkeep spell in the list and is simply a ranged attack that if it some how kills a mech give a free focus to a friendly vector. I hardly ever use it as there tends to be a better use for 2 focus (like assigning it to the vectors for more attacks)

And now it's time for the vectors (Convergence mecha):

Over all, the inverter node allows for a truly efficient use of focus allowing and entire army to get the effect of 1 focus each while only spending one focus total.  The only downside is that is effect can only be used within 6" of each mech using the focus meaning convergence like to be clustered, though I would argue that the auto-repair for each unit nicely balances out the threat of aoe attacks.

The Mitigator seems to be made to frustrate enemies (lending more to my judgement of this being a trololololololl army) its only notable stats are that its defence of 12 means it might actually get missed by attacks, it has some of the best light mecha armor at 16, and its razor bola ranged ability that rolls no damage.  The razor bola has a short range at 7", but its 3" aoe means that it gets several units at once.  The main benefit of this is that if you directly hit the target you aimed for, all units in the AOE fall prone.  It also has the puncture ability that does 1 damage to everything in the aoe regardless of initial hit (though scatters on miss).  Its also has a bash with power and strength 7 which will most likely do nothing to anything even with a maxed roll.

The Galvanizer as the same DEF and armor as the mitigator, but is solely melee with its buzz saw.  At power and strength 12 the melee attack leaves a bit to be desired, though on a crit it negates healing/damage spreading.  Its true strength is that it has the repair special ability that allows him to repair 1d6 damage to one construct that he is base to base with.

The Cipher is the true backbone and damage dealer of the box set, with a respectable 19 armor even its side of barn 10 defence matters little.  it has two limbs with pistons each of which  attack with an armor breaking P+S 18.  To be frank if you lose the Cipher, you are most likely going to lose since the mitigator and galvanizer are almost wholly support mechs.  It does have a ranged ability I mentioned earlier, but it rarely comes into play as, once again, he's the main melee threat.

My tactics thus far have been use the inverter ability to advance for cheap, keeping the Galvanizer behind the Cipher for repairs while the Mitigator moves around to the side to knock things down for easy pickings with Syntherion being slighty behind the galvanizer casting reconstruct on the Cipher.  In my experience of two games I can safely say that the way to devastate my box set is to hammer either Syntherion or the Cipher and when I say hammer I mean LAUNCH EVERYTHING.  If you don't completely destroy them in a single turn the auto repair coupled with the galvinizer repairs and reconstruct means they will remain a threat for a significant portion of time longer than most.  In the first conflict, my mitigator had taken easily enough damage to wreck it twice over, but that damned auto repair kept it standing and firing.  The Cipher too was almost to the point of using reconstruct with 1 box left, but my turn saw two points bringing back the arms and swinging for full to hit/damage wrecking the enemy heavy that had smacked it so hard.  The second had my mitigator getting mitigated by the enemy warcaster negating falling prone and splash damage.  I still won mostly due to the freaking auto repair and shear bloody luck.

As for the future I can definitively say that my convergence army will ONLY see action in 1v1 matches as its incredible repair ability means that in everyone vs. everyone matches either all the others group against me, or I win via attrition.