Spells and Abilities
Caine has some excellent army support spells in his bag in Blur and Heightened Reflexes but by far the best thing he does to support his army is shoot a unit dead every turn. His feat is a useful assassination threat but it should never be the be all and end all of his game. It is more useful as a threat than as a mainstay of your game plan. Focus on killing troops and projecting threat, if your opponent leaves him self open for the feat by all means take it but it is generally more useful in forcing your opponent to camp focus, find cover or other defensive bonuses or just stay further back where his ability to influence the game is lessened.
Army Composition
Squire, Reinholdt and Rangers. These are auto includes in any Caine build. Rangers are just awesome all round but the extra +2 on Caine's feat turn will often buy you 2 more shots (when he's taking 10), since the POW goes up with every hit these will be the high POW shots, the POW 20+s. Reinholdt is the best one point imaginable for Caine and the Squire is how you get up to 10 shots on feat turn.
Since Caine is going to be shooting all the infantry dead you don't need any infantry clearing in his army, what you need is a jack that uses an absolute minimum of focus (0 preferably) and pieces that can crack ARM without warcaster support. Highly recommended are Forge Guard and the 4 arm fixers Cygnar has access to (Aiyana and Holt, Ragman, Eiryss to shoot off upkeeps like arcane shield and defenders ward and Gorman for Rust). Alexia and the Risen are also a great asset for him. Alexia with 20 risen will kill most heavies dead. You charge then buy 10 boosted attacks.
Other than that if you are looking for synergy Boomholwers are dumb with heightened reflexes. 4+ tough and they are not knocked down makes the unit a massive pain to chew through. Don't take them if you feel you are compromising your ability to crack ARM. Ol'Rowdy is a particularly good choice for a jack, he has high power attacks, runs for free and charges for free. Counter charge is a particularly good ability.
The other thing you can do when you have a troop swarm like Caine favours is to go though tough and recursion route. When you have a lot of tough models you can force your opponent to spend a lot of resources killing them, particularly when units like Boomhowlers are 4+ tough. If you combine this with Alexia you also get the dead models coming back as risen. The combination of the two makes it even harder than normal to fight through a troop swarm. One of the ways to get tough is through the piper (Rhupert Carvolo) and he also grants fearless which I would say is essential for a troop swarm. We have all been in games where a failed command check takes important models out of the game, particularly if they are the only models contesting the scenario.
Things to Avoid
I'm going to talk about the things I occassionally see with Caine that I don't think suit his play style. I'm going to skip over things you never see that are also bad choices like trenchers or Hammerfall High Shields.
Gun Mages. Gun mages are very good at shooting infantry models, particularly incorporeal and stealth models. Caine shoots exactly the same targets but better. When you add in the shots from the rangers you have plenty of infantry clearing at range. Save the gun mages for a deadeye caster and take some ARM cracking instead. Boomholwers and Forge guard and Alexia also have no problem killing infantry models either if you need it. EDIT: I should add that I don't mind gun mages if you are going double hunter. The gun mages are awesome jack marshals for the hunters and the hunters give you some long range punching power against high ARM.
Storm nouns. Caine is the best grind caster in the game because no matter how much damage your opponent does to your army Caine will still be there shooting the crap out of stuff. He can feat to remove a heavy and even without the feat will still kill most casters. 5 Boosted POW 12 shots are a problem for most casters, especially when they are coming in at RAT 11. Storm nouns die too easy, yes you can put arcane shield on them but you can also arcane shield forge guard. Go for the more survivable models to give Caine the time he needs to grind out your opponent.
Stormwall. That thing is a focus hog and Caine wants that focus. He does nothing to support it so you need to bring that in and he doesn't give the forwards momentum that Caine wants. Caine wants he army to press into his opponent so he can sit just behind it murdering infantry and forcing the opposing caster to worry about the feat assassination. Stormwall wants to sit back and shoot and force models to come to him. He's not a match for Caine2 put him in your other list.
Tips for Playing Him
Go first if you can. Get into the scenario zones as deep as you can and keep pressing forwards. AVOID LOW PERCENTAGE ASSASSINATIONS! That has to be the biggest mistake I see with Caine, players get fixated on getting the feat off and often use it when the enemy caster is in cover or camping a lot or both. Work out the maths in your head. If you need 5s to hit you are going to miss two shots, if you need 6s to hit you are going to miss 3 shots. If the POW of your final shot is two below the ARM of the opposing caster then you aren't going to make it. If you need to boost to hit remember that you only get 5 shots, if you need to boost both only 3 shots. As soon as the assassination looks unlikely pull out. If your assassination is close to the border line and you miss the first shot pull out immediately, figure out where the feat shots will do the most damage, shoot there and save 3 to gatecrasher to safety.
Other Playstyles
I know some people are talking about Tempest Blazers with him and I don't dislike it. Put blur on the unit, send it out on a flank and get behind your opponents models. Having Caine in front of your army and tempest blazers behind is a nightmare. They don't fit into the list I have built for him but if anyone ever runs a tournament with reinforcements then they are straight in the list.
I'll mention here also although I dislike the list, the avenger assassination tactic. If you take an Avenger and marshal to gun mages and take a Trencher Master Gunner you can push models around with the gun mages to get the opposing warcaster in AOE range of the Avenger and if there is nothing in between you can snipe the Avenger and just shoot straight at the caster. You can also use the avenger to just shoot screening models to ensure Caine has LOS to the caster. Caine's feat works a lot better against a knocked down caster. I don't like the tactic because it places too much focus on assassination and you are picking options that make your list worse at attrition to make it better at assassination. Caine doesn't need to be any better at assassination but he does need to have a good attrition game in order to ensure that assassination is on the table.
My List
Cygnar
Standard Army
PCs: 50 / 50
47 models
[00] Captain Allister Caine (0 / 5 WJ remaining)
[02] >> Squire
[09] >> Ol' Rowdy
[03] Journeyman Warcaster
[05] Rangers
[02] Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord
[02] Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist
[03] Eiryss, Angel of Retribution
[02] Ragman
[01] Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator
[09] Greygore Boomhowler & Co. (9 grunts)
[05] Alexia Ciannor & the Risen (9)
[08] Horgenhold Forge Guard (9 grunts)
[04] Lady Aiyana & Master Holt
This list is shamelessly stolen from Keith Christiansen who is my Mercs/Cygnar guru. I used to have a thing against playing lists other people had come up with but I've changed my opinion. I want to play fun lists and I want to talk about my lists with other players. I'm not going to avoid playing a fun list just because someone else has come up with it and boy is this list fun. Having your warcaster just obliterate stuff is just amazing. I had a game against Cryx where Caine killed two pistol wriaths, the entire withershadow combine, more than half a unit of mechanithrals, a Krakken and Asphyxious3. That was my first game with this list. My other games have had similar results. I will warn you though that around turn 3-4 of Caine just destroying everything it starts becoming impossible to hold in the pew pew noises.
In this list the Boomholwers are 4+ tough no knock down, the forge guard are ARM 21 and tough, anything that dies comes back as a zombie and you have all 4 ARM debuffs. Apply all of them to a colossal (say a Krakken) and Caine will kill it without feating. Boomholwers with shoot a colossal to death. Even just one or two and the Forge Guard and charging Boomhowlers will get the job done. That redundancy is what makes the list so good at cracking ARM, you can probably kill one or two ARM fixers but you aren't going to kill all 4, not until they've done what they are in the list to do.
Match ups and Pairings
The list has very few bad match ups. It really wants to avoid anything that can remove tough and RFP and casters Caine can't assassinate (there are a few). The only character that really bugs me when it comes to pairing is Reinholdt. Too many casters want that guy, all the rest of the characters here I can live without in any other list. If you are willing to run Caine against Ravyn and other assassiny (definitely a word) casters and just keep him in his deployment zone until the assassination is gone then you can go with Haley2 or Nemo1 or Nemo2. They all run jack heavy very well. Kraye too can run double Stormwall quite well.
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