Karchev

Khador
Standard Army
PCs: 35
20 models

[00] Karchev the Terrible (0 / 5 WJ remaining)
[01]  >> War Dog
[11]  >> Beast-09
[08]  >> Drago
[02] Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich
[05] Great Bears of Gallowswood
[04] Winter Guard Infantry (5 grunts)
[02]  >> Winter Guard Infantry Officer & Standard
[02]  >> Winter Guard Infantry Rocketeer (2 Rocketeers)
[03] Eiryss, Angel of Retribution
[02] Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor

This was Flanzer's masters winning (2010) Karchev list. Here is a more recent Flanzer Karchev list:

Karchev the Terrible (*5pts)
* Devastator (9pts)
* Juggernaut (7pts)
* Juggernaut (7pts)
* Kodiak (8pts)
* Kodiak (8pts)
Gun Carriage (9pts)
Battle Mechaniks (Leader and 5 Grunts) (3pts)
Gorman di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist (2pts)
Koldun Lord (2pts)

Second one is 50 points.

Both lists contain a decent ranged threat. The gun carriage or the winterguard. The second list comes after the introduction of character restrictions so that may have a big bearing on it. The gun carriage is there to clear infantry, you have the koldun lord to give a free focus to something the kodiaks run without focus and the mechanics are there to repair your jacks.

I think the way to go with Karchev is to take a bunch of jacks and then take some ranged stuff that can deal with infantry. Give yourself some threat range, the jacks can kill jacks/beasts pretty easily but can get bogged down wading through a unit of infantry.

In our game even though I had a lot of stealth the winterguard sprays ignore stealth and Kovnic Joe can give them additional dice to hit or tough and AOE's don't ignore stealth but would still have killed the striders and my important support pieces with blast damage from the scatters. Plus the gun carriage is a cavalry model so it can do ride by attacks (this is move forward 4" shoot and then move back 3").

I think it might have been worth casting tow first turn to move up the warjacks, charging with Karchev and then running them both in front of Karchev. It would still have kept the caster safe and  had your warjacks up the table. 10" deploy Karchev moves 7 with charge jacks have to be in his back arc so lose about 1.5" so 10" + 5.5" + 8" run would have put your jacks 23.5" up the table turn 1 or pretty much on the half way line. I would have been in big trouble then. You could have run your Iron Fang Pikemen and spread out to avoid the AOEs and run the man o war to put them up near Karchev.