Warmachine/Tactics/Searforge Commission

Why play the Searforge Commission?

Because you fall into at least one of the following categories:

• You like dwarves. I mean, you really like dwarves. Like, you will kinfe-fight a dude in a bar over dwarves. Like, you have a tattoo of a dwarf or something dwarf-related on your body. Like, you've played Dwarf Fortress longer than some people have played their World of Warcraft characters. Basically you really like the alcoholic midgets is what I'm getting at here.

• You have a fondness for/masochistic tendencies towards hard luck armies (Sisters of Battle, Blood Bowl stunty teams, Dan Hibiki, and so on). The idea of playing a faction whose best matchup is better than a 4:6 is violently offensive to you.

• You are the best player in your meta to such a degree that you need to find ever more inventive ways to handicap yourself to keep things interesting.

So anyway, if the above didn't tip you off Searforge is a hard mercenary contract to play. While you get some pretty strong benefits for taking this contract, you're giving up access to some of the best pieces in Mercenaries in order to do so and what you're left with doesn't necessarily have particularly strong internal synergy with itself. Dwarf infantry also tends towards being very slow (SPD 4 is your baseline, with SPD 5 being above average and SPD 6 being "holy shit slow down" fast) and low DEF with high ARM, attributes that aren't particularly ideal for single-wound infantry units. Recent releases have gone some ways towards rectifying this, but accept that some matchups (read: pDeneghra) will be nearly auto-losses unless your opponent is a complete spud or you are willing to branch out into the more general merc contracts. Still, if any of the above points apply you probably find this appealing: if that is the case, gird your balls of steel and read on.

The Basics

• A Searforge army can contain only mercenary Rhulic and/or Ogrun models and units. The FA of all non-character models and units in the army is increased by 1 (so FA 1 becomes FA 2, FA 2 becomes FA 3, and so on).
• Your deployment zone is extended 4" forward.

The big bonus here is the extended deployment: given how slow your army is, getting what is essentially a free advance before the game starts is a pretty big deal. The FA bonus is largely situational, since there aren't going to be a lot of things in Searforge you would want to max out at their default FAs, much less their FA+1. This does, however, allow you to take 3 Earthbreakers with Gorten at 50 points (who has just enough warjack points to do so): should you be able to borrow your friend's Earthbreakers (or have that much money to piss away) it's worth playing this list at least once for the lulz.

Strategy Overview

Mercenary Meta advantage: In Two List format events only take 1 Searforged Comission list. Mercs can field such a diverse set of models that being able to present two completely separate lists royally pisses off those guys who want to run the same list twice.

First and formost related to the Contract itself, Searforged do not get Assassination Runs. You have nothing conducive to it, you cannot make it happen. On the flipside only Garryth has an even remotely possible chance of assassinating you, and you're going to make him sweat an ocean to pull it off. General Ossrum and Durgen Madhammer are unreasonably tough, whereas Gorten Grundback is tied with Karchev the Terrible for hardest motherfucker in the Iron Kingdoms. The other cool part about this is that assassin lists are a wet dream come true, who the fuck is dumb enough to just hand your their models for you to butcher, seriously if they go for the kill and then get pissy when you dust their prized killer stop the game and ask them why the fuck they are surprised, are they fucking retarded or intentionally throwing the game? As a merc player Searforged make a great 2nd List in events because it lets you say no to all those players that want to have Caine personally kill your warcaster, and by no I really mean "DIE LIKE THE BITCH YOU ARE!".

Second is the cause of the first; mobility. You have none. You don't even get boosts like the Russians do. Skorne and Trollbloods are almost faster than you by dint of them having cavalry. This means some objective missions are a massive pain the butt and Circle are fucking infuriating as they will ideally be putting as much terrai in your way as possible.

Third point is being an army of pure rock hard nuts. Dwarves do not give kills easily, almost all dwarf units have decent to great armour stats meaning that combats will turn into tarpits for non-weapon master units. Note that this applies to dwarves not Ogruns, who are mostly subpar for cost with some exceptions. This has negative effects, like your Highshield Gun Corps gets charged by something, the highshields won't kill anything, but neither will they be killed which means if you want some other unit to engage it you will still have Highshields in the way.

Unit Overview

Warcasters

- Gorten Grundback: The hardest caster to kill in the game, bar Karchev the Terrible. Gorten is something of an all-rounder, with a bit for everyone, his most infamous trick is to use his Strength of Granite spell on a Ghordson Driller for P+S 21 drill attack, or in other words raw dice for damage against most Khadoran heavies, although it is generally preferred to go for the boost and apply 21+3D6 to the squishy warcaster's cranium. Also this Gorten's main way for dealing with himself or Karchev.

Gorten's other strengths are are his Solid Ground spell which is honestly way better in non-Searforge mercenary armies (not that it is bad in pure Searforge), and his OMGWTFBBQ feat. For most people, the feat is why you are playing Gorten; If he was focus 6 and speed 5 instead of focus 5 speed 4, he would be the best caster in the game just on the strength of his feat. As it stands his feat is still great, it pushes all of your opponents stuff up to 8 inches directly towards a table edge of your choice, and then debuffs their DEF, SPD, and RAT, and if that doesn't sound powerful to you then you've never played a game of Warmachine. The other great thing is that Gorten isn't immensely popular, which will lead to you laughing maniacally when your opponent utters their last words of the game: "What does Gorten's feat do?"

- Durgen Madhammer: BOOM BITCHES!!! Madhammer is sometimes played in Highborn because his feat works well with Sea Dog Deck Gun Crews, that said you can use Ogrun Assault Corps as stand-ins in a Searforge list.

- General Ossrum: Interesting, he's infantry focused in a faction where infantry aren't hugely competitive. General Awesome is a dorf who likes to plan out movement and very accurate strikes, which is kinda weird since he is a dorf warcaster and therefor slow - his Feat is even called "Perfect Plan"! That said, if you like going "just as planned", but want to use dwarves instead of the demons of Tzeentch, this is your guy.

Light Warjacks, aka the gun-bunnies

Come in two varieties, the blaster and the gunner, which can be talked about together as they're basically two sides of the same coin. First the qualities they share: they are 3 points for the defensive stats of a Cygnar heavy, which makes them stupid durable for the cost. Their bread-and-butter lies in their special ability Powerful Attack, which lets you boost all the attack and damage rolls of an attack by spending a single focus. The choice you're making between these models is what gun you want slapped on top; The gunner comes with a range 12 POW 12 cannon, while the blaster has a 8 inch POW 10 spray. What the gunners bring to the table for the dwarf 'casters is something they really need: focus efficiency. Take the blaster if you want to make any single-wound infantry that get touched by your all-boosted spray die horribly, or take the gunner when you want to snipe out harder to kill models from long range and threaten assassinations.

Units

Ogrun Assasult Corps: The little Ogruns that could...almost, but ultimately fell short. These guys are either a shooting unit that fights better up close than other shooting units, or an assault unit that outguns other close combat units. In short, they're too average at both roles to justify their cost, they aren't bad so much as being purely meh outside of screening something else and being a bit more mobile than dorfs. If you need shooting, get Highshields, for choppiness, get Forgeguard. In larger games where you have both they can fill the gap and they are capable of making a dent in armour with CMA/CRA.

Hammerfall Highshield Gun Corps: Cost efficient medium range infantry. Assaulting with these guys is bad, but charging at the unit is a wasted endevour for your opponent as they are bloody hard to kill up close. Take 1-2 units to form a gunline and screen your mortars and any future artillery PP gives the dorfs.

Hammerfall Highshield Gun Corps Officer and Standard Bearer: Because you were never really worried about their ability to hold under pressure Privateer Press decided to make an attachment to further push them towards being unbreakable without slapping fearless on them. Is this worth taking on unit that just does more of the same? Yes. Most opponents know that they won't be breaking this unit any time soon and you've now got an anchoring point that they will steer clear of until they've butchered every singlemother model. Two full blocks of Highshields with O&SBs are enough to force assassin lists to concede because getting to your warcaster is going to demand a lot of resources and then they need to actualy kill the 'caster.

Horgenhold Forge Guard: In many ways, the Forge Guard are the epitome of dwarves in Warmachine. They are incredibly slow (mitigated some by the reach special rule) and have the defense score of a sack of potatoes, but have naturally high armor that gets even better when they are in base-to-base, and when these guys do finally get into melee, their piston hammers are going to fuck shit up. They struggle against super high armor models but they can knock even against the toughest 'jack or 'beast right on its ass with the critical:smite.

Horgenhold Forgeguard Mortar Artillery Crew its a mortar, bomb goes up and explosion comes down. Not a great unit, but a good one, easy to protect with Highshields too. Durgen's feat makes maxing FA on this mandatory.

Herne & Johnne Not a bad pair, you will pretty much use them to pound on light infantry. Damn near close to at auto-include with Ossrum, since his spell Fire-for-effect synergizes great with all of their AoEs.