Menoth

Going to put down my thoughts on Menoth while they are buzzing around up here as well.

EDIT: http://museonminis.com/which-bloody-unit-the-menoth-tarpits/ Chunky (Australian player, came down for the super series I played against him though he brought Skorne not Menoth) has written an article on the main Menoth units. It's worth a read, it hits all the important points.

Menoth - the basics

A lot of the abilities of jacks and casters that really make this faction are defensive in nature. Menoth is easily the most defensive faction in the game but not in a purely ARM or DEF buffing way, rather in a way that allows you to dictate to your opponent. It also has some of the best shooting in the game and is able to shoot without sacrificing the ability to fight in melee which is a dangerous combination. It has far and away the best jack support in the game making it one of the few warmachine factions that generally looks to base its lists around warjacks.

Things that make Menoth as a faction

Choir - Battle allows you to give all your jacks +2 to hit and +2 damage, in general Menoth jacks are not worse or at least not significantly worse than the jacks of other factions so this makes them spectacular. They can also prevent your opponent from targeting your jacks with spells or non-magical shooting.

Vassal of Menoth - Enliven and Ancilliary attack. You can have a jack walk away if it gets damaged or make an extra melee or ranged attack. The can also use arcane bolt but unless all your jacks are dead this should never even be a consideration.

Purification - Purification may not be the best spell in the game but it's certainly the one that breaks the game the most. Three factions have purification but Menoth has it in two of it's better casters and a third has purification light as a feat.

Eye of Menoth - pSeverius' spell. +1 to hit and +1 damage to all attacks from your army. Even blast damage. It's an upkeep too.

Exemplar Errants - POW 9 weapon masters who shoot really well and have blessed on their shots, and have self sacrifice so you can break up attacks and deny abilities that require destroying a model and pathfinder and quick work and advance deployment and can't be targeted by enemy spells and only costs 10 points. 

Martyrdom - The harbinger should probably get her own entry here but I'll focus on one of her more pain in the arse abilities. She is able to prevent you from killing key models, she brings them back to life for d3 damage and is able to heal that damage pretty easily as she has 10 focus.

The jacks - Reckoners can shoot and fight better than most specialist melee or ranged jacks. Redeemers can put out a ridiculous number of AOEs which hit at a pretty high POW (POW 9 with pSev is pretty silly). The other jacks are good too but these two are the best, most undercosted (feeling a bit weird calling a 6 point light undercosted but it is). 

Daughters - Menoths version of Kayazy, and the faction is full of defensive buffs. 

Zealots - A unit with battle from the choir built in. Hooray. Also can become invincible for a turn and have grenades. 

The book - Covenent of Menoth. It's such a pain to kill and can cause so many problems. 

Vessel of Judgement - Menoths battle engine. Has a great ranged attack, always has access to boosts, and has three great miracles it can do including one on your opponents turn.

Defenders Ward - Menoth's signiture spell (like arcane shield with cygnar or iron flesh with Khador). Half the menoth casters have it and it's a really good defensive buff. 

Menoth is better at higher points. Something not talked about very often is the way points values affect the strength of factions. Mercs for example are 35 point specialists or at least they were before Galleon. 35 points is enough for Mercs to get in all their powerful solos but not so high that large chunks of the army need to go without their abilities. Menoth and Circle and to a lesser extent Trolls (and Skorne?) rely on support staff, with Menoth in particular you start off with the choir and two vassals. You probably are also looking at the book, reclaimers,  Heirophant, wracks, Rhoven, a second choir... It's not unusual for a Menoth army to contain 10 points or more of support staff. At lower points you just can't fit in all the support you want and an army for them to support. 

Playing Against Menoth

First and foremost avoid a caster that is reliant on defensive upkeeps. Iron flesh is a great spell but it's just going to be purified off you. Shooting is a great counter to Menoth but only if it is magical shooting, otherwise you'll end up with the choir singing no non-magical ranged attacks and be stuffed. You need to be ready for enliven, that means you need open fists (to weapon-lock, being mindful of the reduction in threat range as you cannot charge and weapon lock), quick cheap troops to surround a jack or knockdown/stationary effects or force lock to hold them in place. 

You are going to have to be ready to both be shot at and face high MAT high P+S melee attacks. Unless you are immune to blast damage you can expect to be hit with high POW blasts as well high enough that even high ARM infantry are not immune. You need to be able to take down multiple heavies. Menoth can easily run quite a few heavies if they want, the Avatar in particular uses no focus from your caster

What about the off casters? I didn't really talk about the Khador casters without iron flesh but I will spend a bit of time talking about Menoths infantry casters. I'll start by saying that Harbinger is not one of them. Though she clearly is an infantry caster she also has 10 focus and all her spells also work on jacks. You still expect to see 3 or 4 jacks with her. Kreoss2 has a really good tier list which has a crapload of infantry in it. His spells and feat are better for infantry. Expect to have a whole bunch of exemplars up in your face very quickly. Vindictus is quite tanky and can sit inside a unit of zealots with defenders ward and be near invincible. He also makes infantry faster but not jacks.