Warmachine/Tactics/Mercenaries
Faction overview
Ok to start off with, this isn't a singular faction, it uses a system of Contracts to determine what units can be taken and to provide a more coherent theme. The two Contracts that actually have a theme will get their own pages because they are pretty much just regular factions that have bugger all choice.
Four Star Syndicate
The Four Syndicate (or 4*) is a large reaching criminal empire that is made up of lots of various bandit groups, smugglers, thieves guilds, mafia families, merchant leagues with shady backgrounds and many other morally questionable types working in a strange alliance under the guidance of the Syndicate leadership based in the port of Five Fingers, wherein they enjoy a "special" relationship with the Kingdom of Ord.
The concept of this contract is that these guys have the dole to pay for the services of Mercenaries, both commission and as straight forward employees, in other words its Western Immoren's first megacorp and first giant nefarious PMC with ties to corrupt government officials and meddling in international affairs. Pretty much the idea is that the 4* is so powerful it can protect its interests with military assets and often does so to further its goals of controlling the entirety of the Iron Kingdoms.
Why Play Four Star Syndicate?
Because you hate Cygnar, because you can't really decide what Mercs you want to play, because you want to Magnus without the restrictions of tier lists. 4* is very much the most generic mercenary contract and its restrictions are that it can only take merc/partisan units that fight for Khador (Technically its Cryx and Khador, but anything that can be hired for Cryx can be hired by pretty much everyone and the list itself doesn't allow the Cephalyx allies) with the exception of Rupert Carvolo and Sam MacHorne.
This gives it the most diversity of all 4 contracts at the tradeoff lacking a lot of theme and no extra bonuses like the other contracts get.
Its also the only place to field Magnus who is one of the nastiest badasses in the Iron Kingdoms lore that has a model.
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), 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.
Unit Analysis
Warcasters
- Asheth Magnus the Traitor: One of the main reasons people choose to play this faction is because they want to play Magnus with an actual choice of what their list includes. Magnus the Traitor, pMagnus or "T-Mags" is an interesting warcaster, he has synergy with jacks and units but doesn't like to run too much of either. His Resourceful rule and his sword make him pretty damn focus efficient as a warcaster and having Iron Aggression pushes him further to the supposed "jackcaster" that a lot of ignorant players label him as being. In practically terms Magnus can't run more than 2-3 warjacks before it becomes an issue, he has a strong battlegroup but he needs a decent sized army making him a combined-arms warcaster. He's no slouch in combat with the ability to knockdown on hit with his fist. Just reread that, he doesn't need to do anything but hit the target to drop them for subsequent auto-hitting. The sword is pretty damn good, very efficient with boosting, meaning that you should be boosting on the hit every time for the free damage boost. His gun has the same range as charging, he is a lot better in melee, the only reason this gets used is when you need to clear a path to the enemy caster by blowing some screening units away. His feat is pretty simple, free move after activation, bear in mind this requires you to activate pMagnus before the rest of his battlegroup, other than that you can use it to rush down the board by running on the feat turn or as a way to GTFO after the battlegroup hits something it and needs to bail.
- Asheth Magnus the Warlord: The first epic merc caster, eMagnus is very similar to his older self. While pMagnus is combined-arms with mostly jack support, eMagnus is the same but with absolutely no infantry support. His Mobility spell is pretty key to his playstyle as it keeps him and his jacks very mobile, when he's not spamming it he's a slow brick. Killbox is an odd feat, its amazing for fucking up your opponent's plans because he suddenly can't move in 2 directions. Picking your table edge and your opponent's table edge is pretty much locking them in place, they may try to move to the sides but they are pretty much unable to move out of threat range of eMagnus or his battlegroup without running. The backstab and warjack bond are ok, but outside of a well timed Killbox you will never get either of these off because no one is going to let you get a battlegroup that close to their backs. He's a pretty competent fighter, he won't beat either Butcher but he isn't going to be on the frontlines outside of setting up his feat. He's hard enough to be safe against most assassination plays but nasty ones like Garryth or either Caine can be a problematic if you can't pop killbox and block them.
- Drake MacBain: General consensus for quite a while was that this guy a)had the most manly name in existence and b) was meant to be printed with Steelhead in his type line. We now have Captain Damiano for that second part, but prior to his release, MacBain was the leading infantry caster and manly man in the Mercs faction. He favours running a single heavy warjack and several units of tough infantry, Boomhowler & Co. being mandatory, with a few combat solos rather than the usual merc tricksters. He has a focus dependant feat so expect to have Sylys Wyshnalyrr on hand to keep Failsafe up on his feat turn. Speaking of which, Failsafe is probably one of the best warjack buffs in the game, in larger games running MacBain with Failsafe on a Galleon is on par with murdering parents in front of their children in terms of cruelty, so long as it has a single box left on its massive damage grid, it is 100% functional.
- Captain Amador Damiano: While MacBain is the premier heavy infantry warcaster in Mercenaries, Damiano is the premier HordeCaster. Although this is about running Damiano in the Four Star Syndicate, its hard to resist the urge to run his tier list where wave upon wave of Steelhead infantry fight and die for gold while Steelhead Cavalry ride onward to GLORY!!!! He is a Steelhead, so until someone other than Stannis Brocker cares about the Steelheads this means little, except that you will usually run Stannis Broker with Damiano and you will run steelheads anyway. His Paymaster ability is another reason why steelheads are important, he makes them more mobile by granting them the ability to advance after activations and the ability to buff range attacks. His feat is another unit buff and is great for the turn when the Steelhead Cavalry manages to charge a unit that is engaged with Halberdiers as it makes it a guaranteed execution of whatever is between them. In 4* with few or no steelheads he struggles to justify himself as he has some neat buffs to all infantry but is pretty much pure support with little threat himself. Always run him with at least Rocinante, maybe another light like the Talon but fundamentally this guy runs on steelhead swarms. TL;DR: Build a Damiano list with Rocinante and steelhead units first, then add a few independant niche units or solos like Eiryss. Or just run his tier 4 theme list.
- Captain Bartolo "Broadsides Bart" Montador: The first ranged jackcaster in warmachine. Unlike the other 2 pirate warcasters he doesn't really need the super-synergy of Sea Dog infantry to be effective so in 4* he tends to run a more "normal" list, well as close as normal as 4* gets. Currently infamous for a dirty combo involving the Galleon, Wrongeye and Snapjaw, and a Bullsnapper. It results in a functionally immortal Galleon with an ARM that has Khador heavies looking squishy.