Cygnar

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Cygnar is one of the eponymous Iron Kingdoms and one of the five major factions of Warmachine. It is, generally speaking, the most advanced nation and the nicest to live in if its borders weren't constantly being raided.

History

Before the Iron Kingdoms the lands that would be Cygnar had a fairly long history. It was the birth lands of the twin deities Morrow and Thamar, who went to found what with be its Capital, Caspia. During the Orgoth invasion it was one of the few human cities to not be taken allowing it to be the resistances HQ. Thanks to this and the rich Midlunds Cygnar quickly became the most advanced human nation. Inventing the ancestor of the Warjack, the Colossal (not the GEN2 versions that came out later, but older versions) also helped.

Things for the past few years haven't been going so well. Their King, Vinter Raelthorne IV was not only an huge dick (like Hitler level dick) but also an utterly incompetent leader. Doing things like banning the use of magic (you know the thing that rather safe thing that is used in EVERYTHING) bring the Inquisition to Cygnar and taxing the crap out of people while driving the economy into the ground. So his brother Leto got tried of his brother's bullshit he rounded up some dudes to kick Vinter out in what's known as the Lion's Coup.

During Leto's rule everything turned around pretty quickly and was great until the start of the story were everyone attacked Cygnar at once. Khador invaded its chief ally Llael and Cygnar's northern region, the Protectorate stated to attack Caspia and Cryx stepped up its raids and Vinter's back with an army of wrist-slicing weeaboos known as the Skorne (who are pretty nasty guys).

Currently things have for the most part settled down. Khador and the Protectorate have a ceasefire and Vinter was beaten back out of their eastern borders with his Skorne, who have since abandoned him. Cryx is still a problem but Cygnar and Khador have joined forces to fight the Nightmare Empire. Aside from a chunk of their northern border (home of a lot of military industry at the time) they haven't lost too much ground with most of its army still able, ready and willing.

Crunch

Gameplay wise, Cygnar is very shooty with a lot of neat effects and tricks to represent their high-tech weaponry, but despite their dakka-worship they aren't slouches in close combat and are just fine at smashing things with hammers and swords (their thematic weapons, alongside with guns and lightning). They do sometimes have trouble with survivability without spell support, of which they have plenty - Arcane Shield and Blur both are able to buff their ARM or DEF (respectively) to rather ridiculous levels when called for it.

Cygnar's signature elemental attack is Lightning, and with it the Disruption status effect, which drops all a warjack's Focus and prevents it from being allocated Focus on the next turn; effectively frying the cortex for one round. However, despite being hilarious against warjacks (especially when you knock them down as well), Disruption does bugger-all to non-warjack models, and therefore is absolutely useless against Hordes armies.

Cygnaran warcasters usually focus on buffing the defence and ranged capacity of their models. They generally shy away from spells with negative trade-offs for their own models, and don't bring very many debuffs to the table, although most of them have at least one ranged offensive spell. Cygnar doesn't really have any pure combat monsters, but Caine and Haley work pretty well in a "super solo" style (Caine shoots everything, Haley delivers magical death).

A typical Cygnaran warjack has pretty average ARM, but makes up for it by being both (comparatively) fast and accurate at melee and range. They also have slightly higher DEF than your average warjack, but not high enough that anything's going to miss them.

Military

Unlike other forces Cygnar is all volunteer and allows non-humans. They are also the only faction to have non-character Journeymen, owing to a long-standing tradition of sending out trainee warcasters to serve under a veteran warcaster in a padawan-Jedi style arrangement. This lets Cygnar throw down up to three battlegroups once the next expansion comes out: the main warcaster, Jakes, Journeyman and Crosse for a total of 11 Focus plus whatever the Warcaster brings to the table plus at least one more thanks to Arlan's Power Booster.

• Arcane Tempest Gun Mages: Think Harry Potter but with guns for wands and some bitching outfits and nice hats.
  • Tempest Blazers: As above, but on horses.
• Long Gunners: The 'face' of the Cygnar soldier, Long Gunners are armed with revolver rifles that can rapidly put shots downrange.
• Stromnouns: Lighting units that are named storm-[noun].
  • Storm Knights: The heavy hitters of Cygnar's melee units.
    • Stormblades: Knights with lighting swords that can hose down a target with lightning.
      • Storm Gunner: Attached to Stormblades, Storm Gunners have a lightning gun to help direct the electrical wrath of their comrades.
    • Stormguard: Uses halberds that hit a secondary target with electro-leaping.
    • Storm Lances: Heavy cavalry with lightning-lances.
  • Stormsmiths: Wizards with Lighting Rods, can triangulate to hit targets beneath them.
  • Storm Tower: Artillery version of stormsmiths.
• Sword Knights: Vanilla 'dudes in armor with swords', they wouldn't look out of place in a more mundane setting (except they're trained to both fight with and take down 'jacks just as well as they can regular humanoids).
• Trenchers: Essentially WWI trench infantry, they're the toughest bastards around. Also come in Commando flavour, as well as a bevy of support units (chaingun and cannon, to be precise).

'Jacks? 'Jacks.

• Light 'Jacks.
  • Charger: Has a gun and a close combat weapon. Is fairly uncomplicated, but needs quite a lot of focus to work efficient.
  • Firefly: Light, electric, support and mainly ranged - just like the rest of Cygnar. Works great with the stormnouns.
  • Grenadier: The Threnchers' best friend. Throws grenades overhead and can give the enemy a mattock to the face if they get too close. Can also dig a grave for it self like the rest of the Trenchers.
  • Hunter: This nimble 'Jack is perfect for hiding in the woods, picking off high ARM enemies. If the noisy engine of the 'Jack didn't ruin that completely. Good at range and works well with Rangers.
  • Lancer: A little 'Jack with a spear that can distrupt other 'Jacks, as well as a shield to bash their Cortex out of order. Good as a mean to get the enemy 'Jacks to back to fuck up.
    • Thorn: Haley's personal 'Jack, this thing just wants to be with someone who can churn out a lot of magical dakka through its Arc Node. It is also pretty difficult to destroy for a Light 'Jack.
  • Minuteman: How do you make Warjacks even cooler? Give them a fuckin' jetpack! This is pretty much the fastest 'Jack in the Cygnar range, and will make fly-by shootings at hard-to-crack enemies with his Slug Guns.
  • Sentinel: If you want to keep the hordes at bay, pack yourself with a shield and a gatling gun. Works well as a protector of a Warcaster, but not much else.

• Heavy 'Jacks.
  • Avenger: Combined Arms in 'Jack form. It can knock enemies down with its Quake Cannon, and slash 'Jacks into submission.
  • Centurion: A moving wall of metal. Armed with a shield to protect itself with and a spear to poke the enemy from a good distance. Set this in the flank and dare the enemy to outflank.
  • Cyclone: Imagine the Orks magnitude of fire with the power of Taus firepower, and you get the Cyclone. This thing will make swiss cheese out of infantry and light 'Jacks alike.
  • Defender: The Hammerhead of Iron Kingdoms, toting around the heaviest and most powerful gun known to men. Put it in the back lines of you force and let it loose.
    • Triumph: Siege saw the Defender, saw it was good and let the forgeries build one for him. While having a better RAT than the vanilla Defender and s Shield for additional defence, Triumph doesn't work too different from its vanilla counterpart.
  • Hammersmith: What it says on the tin. Good for dealing massive damage to single enemies while pushing them back. Might be a Khador 'Jack painted blue.
  • Ironclad: The main battle Warjack of Cygnar, this behemoth will wreck infantry, light and heavy 'Jacks alike. It has a good speed for a heavy and its hammer does a good amount of damage, while having the ability to control masses through Earthquake.
    • Ol' Rowdy: The cranky 'Jack of Stryker, Rowdy will do what the Ironclad does and then some. It is better at hitting things like the beatstick it is, but has some tricks up its metallic sleeve that makes it even more effective at its job.
    • Gallant: Blaize' 'Jack of choice, this nice little bugger does what Blaize does (smite evil, collect souls of Morrowans, get laid), while looking awesome in the process. Let it defend along a line of Precursor Knights and Blaize herself and laugh as the enemy tries to kill your guys (Pro-tip: Let them do just that - Dead souls power up both Gallant and Blaize).
  • Stormclad: The best buddy of the Stormnouns, this counduit of lightning and awesome powers up as its friends fry enemies. Is mainly melee, but can attack over range if needed.
  • Thunderhead: The brainchild of Nemo, this is one of the best infantry-shredders in the game. It is both ranged and melee, but might be most useful at range. Also called DJ Thunder because of its pose.

Oh, and we have a Colossal.

• Stormwall: The Stormwall works just like Cygnar does: Very powerful at range, but no slouch in close combat (Colossals are good in close combat? WHO KNEW). It is essentially a bigger and badder heavy 'Jack with more health, more guns, but also a higher point-cost. It can also shoot out Lighting Pods who create electric zaps between it and the Lightning Pods. It also has a ridiculous small head like anything Colossal.

And then there is our Battle Engine.

• Storm Strider: The bowling ball on legs, this is the pinacle of zapping. Gets more powerful the more it is hit and can send enemies back where they came from if the get into melee - keep in mind, though, that the thing actually can't fight in melee for starters! The Strider is best at downright killing than anything else.

Characters

• Coleman Stryker: The posterboy of Cyngar, went to the darkside a little. Kind of a patriot. Pretty much Captain America if he was Cygnaran, given a lightning sword and a lightning pistol and got backed up 7 ton robots.
• Allister Caine: Drunk John Woo gunslinger wizard. Though it is well-known that he is killing himself with his dangerous lifestyle, that doesn't stop his superiors to throw him at the enemy. Grimdark. Is hinted to in fact be an assassin for the Cygnaran equivalent of MI6, who does this by sleeping with some dude's wife and then killing him in the resulting honor duel.
• Sebastian Nemo: The Not Einstein with a little Tesla in the mix. Creator of most of the Stromnouns. Has a fetish for lighting that is extreme even for Cygnar, and runs 'jacks like he's pimping. Which he is, in fact; Nemo3 goes to battle with a pimp cane and a ho to carry his second cane for him.
• Victoria Haley: The brain to Stryker's brawn, she has an amazing amount of focus at her disposal and can even control time itself. Haley2 (eHaley) is considered one of the most broken warcasters in the game (being able to take control over enemy warjacks temporarily), despite being less of a woman her original incarnation was (she's missing an arm).
• Kara Sloan: A marksman/artillery specialist who believe that sniping should be done by volley-fire, turning 'one shot one kill' into 'twenty shots twenty kills'.
• Markus 'Siege' Brisbane: Pities no fool as he controls the battlefield and smashes face with his favorite Lightning Hammer. Also the only warcaster able to defensively buff the magic-immune Precursor Knights.
• Jeremiah Kraye. Likes horses and warjacks so much that his warjacks become cavalry models.
• Constance Blaize: Full armoured saviour of the faithful of Morrow. Can save the souls of the dead and has bitchin' armour. Can also be taken as a Mercenary if it is the LLael Resistance she is fighting for.
• E. Dominic Darius: The man in the machine AKA Tony Stark + a moustache - the money, this guy can repair any 'Jack on the battlefield while staying inside his metal shell. Also, his Halfjacks helpers? They are also landmines. Yeah.