Editing Warmachine/Tactics/Mercenaries (section)

==General Strategy==

Well... This is awkward. Unlike other factions, there is very little to say that is common to all 4* lists. 4* has the metagame advantage that you can tell your opponent you're running a 4* list and they still have no clue what you can do until they sit down and read through your list and check every model's rules. This is strong in tournaments but makes it hard to advise on general strategies to use. 

Fundamentally this is not shooting faction, or a pure melee faction, or one that runs lots of infantry, or even a "dirty dozen" handful of solos. This is any one of those at a time. Mercs trade off things like faction bonuses and friendly unit buffs for having access to every trick in the book. Because they are meant to be a way of acquiring said tricks for factions that lack them, mercs are overpriced compared to in-faction equivalents or not as powerful when looked at from the perspective of including them in a faction list. As a merc player building a merc list we have to look at things differently, we can do everything, but it will cost us and it won't be as good.

4* has the following things you can really count on: mediocre shooting, access to cheap spammable infantry units (anything Steelhead or Sea Dog), rugged warjacks, utility character solos and niche character units. Overall you're looking low def/high arm stats for pretty much everything but a handful of solos and stealth units. Mercs don't have good choice for generic units so expect character units. This lends a feeling of running overspecialized units and losing one removes a whole branch of functionality, but in practice its pretty normal to see people picking similar choices like Croe's Cutthroats with Kayazy Assassins, Gorman di Wulfe and Ragman for a bunch of stealthed infantry killers to wipe out that Winter Guard Deathstar.