Theory Thursday: Cygnar Avenger Warjack

{This article is based on mk2 rules}

A new type of post I figured I would try out.

I will start my first Theory Thursday with one of my favourite heavy warjacks, the Avenger.

The best thing about it in my mind is the Seismic Cannon, which on a direct hit on an enemy model knocks down everything in the 4" AOE.

The problem lies with its RAT of 4... but there are ways around this, I typically marshal the Avenger to Gun mages to get use out of their great Rune shots. 

I'll breifly cover those shot types and how I think they are with the avenger

• Critical Brutal is not great on a AOE attack as it only effect models directly hit, so has no effect on the blast damage and as a crit effect its unlikely anyway.
• Thunderbolt is only worth doing if you are shooting at shield wall troops (push them out of formation then roll the damage to get around that armour bonus) or you are trying to get models out of a zone.
• Snipe is the best for this Warjack, gets the range up to a more respectable 14" (which often means you can aim to mitigate the poor RAT)

I tend to use the Avenger to deny ground to my opponent rather than get kills. At POW 14 its ok but I mainly end up using the Jack marshal bonus to boost to hit. If it kills something that's great, but I would always rather hit and knock things down than miss because I wanted to boost damage. 

I was idly reading the its card the other day and something twigged for me. The knock down only triggers on a direct hit on a enemy model, and playing steamroller scenarios as most players do I remembered that the objectives you often get are classed as enemy models.

Also I have found that a lot of player will use these objectives to hide their Warcaster. So it can be a nice way to knock down their caster and you only have to roll a 3 to hit an objective! 

The Avenger also has great synergy with the Trencher Master Gunner, who can give it Artillerist to give it +2 to ranged attack rolls and a reroll on distance and or deviation.

Or he can give it Close Fire to allow it to fire into troops that have run to engage your Gun Mages. Using Thunderbolt in this situation helps as it can push them clear out of combat even if they survive the shot itself.

A great Jack for clearing line of sight for either Caines, Siege or Sloan to assassinate.

An odd trick you can do with it when its in Sloans battlegroup is to run with the Avenger in its activation, and then when Sloan activates have her Feat and shoot to trigger a feat shot for the Avenger who is now further up the field and perhaps has now got a better line of sight. 

It can also be very mean to run it on Gun Mages with eHaley as your Warcaster, cast Temporal Acceleration on it to knock down even more of their army!

Appologies if this is all super obvious or you all already knew this, I just want to try something new and get some of my ideas out there. 

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments and let me know if you want more of these or not!