Mercenary Warcasters

Graham is going to be playing the Mercs next week if he's still alive (I do hope nothing has happened now I've made that joke) so I thought I'd give a crap on about the Merc casters I like.

Ashlynn D'Elyse
My favourite merc caster. Feat is devastating (for one round everyone rolls two extra dice and you choose which two are discarded). Means you will hit more of your opponent and your opponent will not hit much of you. To take advantage you want high def troops. She is great in melee, has high def, tricks to fight back if attacked or shot at and some great movement tricks. She wants to play much closer to your opponent than most other warcasters.

As her feat doesn't do anything to protect jacks (though it's great at helping them kill stuff) and she wants her focis to cast spells/kill things she can't give a lot away to jacks. Ideally she wants one jack: Rocinate (which I don't have). Other than that the Nyss are a great choice, gun mages, Aiyanna and Holt (really help this army which struggle against heavy jacks/beasts), Rhupert Carvolo (gives something +1 DEF), either Eiryss.

Magnus the Traitor
Magnus1, feat makes him very fast has some great jack spells and doesn't pay upkeep for spells on jacks which allows him to free up some focus. Since all of his good spells are upkeep all of that focus should be going to his jacks.

Take some renegades with him. Only he can take them and double renegades at 35 points is brutal. Add in a Mule if you want to make this an assassination list. Also the Mangler loves him, one of his jack spells gives a free boosts for all melee attacks and the Mangler has reach and thresher. As for troops you need something that doesn't need any help (or that wants snipe/blur in which case take wyshnalyrr). I like to continue the theme and go for jack marshalling a heavy. In this case Captain Sam and a freebooter. Captain Sam can give the freebooter a free move with her drive and her unit can cause knockdowns which gives the freeboter another damage dice and automatic hits before it's free power attack. Means your opponent has to deal with 3 heaves and 2 lights. A lot of lists will struggle with this. His theme force is quite good but I don't have the steelheads to run it.

Magnus the Warlord
Only with his theme force. Bad seeds is excellent as a warcaster though he's nothing spectacular.

Fiona the Black
Great warcaster when playing against lots of infantry. She wants a Mariner (I like the range on it with nonokrion brand, lets you shoot through screening models), and some pirates but needs something that can fight heavy beasts and that means taking her as fourstar or highborn. Other than that she's pretty flexible. She doesn't want a lot of jacks so she can arc affliction (when damage roll doesn't exceed ARM you do one point of damage, upkeep on a unit - she has another spell to make an arc node) but she can take two or three without a great deal of difficulty. Her feat is a good defensive feat for high arm and high def models.

Phineas Shae
My second favourite warcaster after Ashlynn. Theme force is the best in the game. Take every solo he is allowed and lots of pirate units. He doesn't do anything for jacks and like Ashlynn he likes to play forward and cast spells. His army is very weak against jacks but ludicrously fast. The pirate units are looking at around 14.5" threat range on feat turn just make sure that you have the solos positioned correctly so you can activate in the correct order. Storm rager is best cast on Shae himself, though you can cast it on first mate hawk until you are ready to throw Shae in. I like him as a second tournament army if your other army is good against jacks/beasts but by himself he can struggle a bit. You'll need Aiyanna and Holt for the damage boost against heavies and don't forget gang works on pirate pistols as well as they have point blank not gunfighter so they are making melee attacks with their pistols. If you are facing a few jacks/beasts though you'll need to just gum them up with press gangers and rely on their 4+ tough rolls to stop the jacks from really doing anything.

Gorten Grundback
My third favourite Merc warcaster. Let's start with the obvious, he only has 5 focus. He needs Wyshnalyr (one free upkeep). He wants one heavy (A driller usually) to cast strength of granite on. He can also take Grundback blasters which are spectacular. One focus and you boost all to hit and all damage rolls on its 8" spray. You can't really justify taking more than two but they will absolutely shred infantry. He also allows you to put down a wall a fantastic defensive spell which will keep your driller alive until it's ready to kill something. You can upkeep solid ground which means no knock downs and no blast damage. He's just so tight on focus that you need to be very careful what you choose to do and not to do. His feat is brilliant, slide everything up to 8" (you pick the distance) and drop its defence, RAT and speed. He just needs a well balanced mix in his army so you can use his feat how it best suits you. You might want to slide stuff out of the way and charge everything behind it, slide everything back and then shoot at it or most importantly slide everything away from an objective and make it too slow to get back. The speed debuff applies to running and stops you from charging.