Bear with me here... Brun & Lug in Cygnar : Part 1 the theory

I picked up Brun & Lug in a Mercenary army I bought and they screamed out to be painted so I figured I would give them a go in some Cygnar lists.

I am aware that they seem to be the least used of the four minion lessor warlocks but I think they have some promise.

So first I will go over what the pair do.

Brun has some decent survivability with his spell Stonehold reducing damage rolls he takes by one die and preventing knockdown.

Lug has the same stats as the Ironclad chassis except his strength which is one higher , though his melee weapons are pow 16 which is a little lower.

Where Lug shines is his control effects, he has both hyper-aggressive, Counter attack and Return.

Hyper-aggressive allows Lug to advance up to 5" directly toward a model that damaged him.

Counter attack allows him to charge a model that ends within 6" of him as long as he is not engaged.

Return lets Lug move up to 5" towards Brun after a charge attack ignoring free strikes (this does work with counter attack which is quite nice)

His animus is bear hands which allows him to either knock down or push 3" a model hit in melee. This works great to trigger another ability he has called "Chain attack: Grab and smash" which allows Lug to do a head-butt or throw if he hits with both his initial melee attacks.

In a good activation he can force for 1 to use his animus then boost to hit his first attack (which will knock down the target) then either use return to walk 5" away or auto hit with his second initial attack which will trigger the chain attack throw which will also auto hit.

So I decided to put Brun & Lug in a list in my pairing and have been using them for the last couple of months.

Haley2

Squire

Dynamo

Thorn

Ragman

Gunmage Captain Adept

Strangewayes

Journeyman Warcaster

Firefly

Lanyssa

Brun & Lug

Storm Lances 

(This list was before the errata so is now 1 point over...) 

Haley2 can protect the pair really well on her feat turn and can extend their threat range up to 4" using Telekinesis.

The plan will be for Lug to charge into a heavy (for free if possible using hunters mark from Lanyssa) use his animus to knock down his target.
Then buy all his attacks and after he is done Brun charges in with flank to get even more attacks on the target then uses bear hands on his last attack to push the heavy 3" away.
Haley then feats and the heavy is now knocked down and pushed out of melee with the pair so can't attack back.

If heavies are bunched up and you can get to attack more than one then all the better. They can also push surviving heavies away from the Storm Lances should they fail to kill their targets.

I think they are worth some effort trying out so for the next while I will be using them.
I don't plan on using them with every caster in Cygnar (that would be crazy) but there are a few that I think have potential such as Siege & Sturgis.

Hopefully I be able to get some batreps up on Youtube soon with Brun & Lug in action!

What do you think of the Bear?

Kraye & Gunmage batch Painted

This time I have Kraye and my remaining Gunmages done!

(Still waiting on my local store to get me another Gunmage rifleman)

Tempest blazers got put off for a long time, I disliked painting my two units of normal gunmages so the thought of painting them with horses added in was not something I looked forward to.

I got some advise about painting horses and after that they didn't take that long really.

Gunmage Rifleman was nice and easy to paint up, when I eventually get hold of a second one I'm sure it won't take me too long to get it painted.

Gunmage Captain adept was also fairly easy to paint up, just copying over the colour choices from the gunmage unit made it easy.

For my second Gunmage Captain Adept I decided to do a simple conversion.

Using an Iron kingdoms RPG model called Valeria Alvaro Ordic pistoleer I cut off second set of pistol holsters and added a sword in their place. This gives her two pistols and a sword the same as the Captain adept above.

That and keeping her the same colour scheme as the gunmages I feel happy with the conversion.

Since I was painting horses when doing the Blazers I figured I might as well work on Kraye at the same time. He was a little harder to paint than other casters I have worked on lately, mainly choosing what colours to paint the various parts of him...

I couldn't resist getting the resculpted Black 13th, even though their rules took a bit of a hit the models sure got better! I actually enjoyed painting these guys, which is huge for me as I really disliked painting the old unit.

What do you guys think of my Gunmages? I'm really glad to have painted them and happy that they weren't the grind that the two units of gunmages I painted a long time ago were.

Theory Thursday: Major Katherine Laddermore

As requested by the Cygnar facebook group!

Laddermore is a Dragoon cavalry solo. While mounted on her horse she has the exact same defensive stats as a Storm Lance. Her Mat and Rat are one higher than Storm Lances being 8 and 6 respectively.

Dragoon

When she is dismounted her armour drops by two and she loses the Electrocharger special rule which give Storm Lances +2 Rat and Pow on their ranged attacks while in her command area.

When she is dismounted you place her on foot model anywhere within the area her large base was.

You can try to deny further attacks on her by choosing where you place her well.

Weapons

Her weapons are similar to Lances too, though her ranged attack has 2 more pow. Also instead of the e-leap special rule that Storm Lances have on both their ranged and melee attacks she has the Lightning generator special rule instead.

Lightning generator her attacks make d3 leaps with the leaps jumping to the nearest model that hasn't already been effected within 4" of the last model. The big difference here is that its not optional.

E-leap states that you "can" have the leap happen, Lit. Gen. just states that it just happens.

So be careful with the placement of your low armour models that are not immune to electricity.   

With assault she can get two attacks per turn that each generate d3 leaps. Combined with her impact attacks she can mulch infantry. 

The limiting factor comes from the fact that if her assault shot hits its likely to kill then the leaps are likely to kill any potential target for her to swap her melee attack too now her charge target is dead.

(I know first world problems huh?)

An ideal target for her attacks is a model tough enough to take her assault shot and her melee attack to kill, allowing her to get use out of both of the d3 leaps.

You can also use her to free up your heavy warjacks or Storm knights by having her shoot the models engaging them. Always try to shoot the enemy models if you can get line of sight to them, even though their defence will be higher due to being engaged you might get lucky and hit. And if you miss you get to roll to hit on your own model anyway which will still generate the d3 leaps so you effectively get two chances to hit.

Use in battle

In early turns the best use for her is to advance up to 8" and shoot 8" then reposition 3" to a position to safety or to a place that gives her the range to buff your Storm Lances.

Its best to keep her back and alive until later in the game if at all possible.

To make positioning her and the Storm Lances she buffs you can have a Stormblade Captain nearby to allow them to see and move though each other. 

This lets you move Laddermore out in front to attack and get in position to buff the Lances, then they charge though her also blocking line of sight to her when they are done keeping her safe.

Its worth noting that she can be used to activate a Stormclads accumulator, giving it a point of focus.

Synergies 

Firefly for its +2 to electrical damage, works well with the Storm Lances too.

Silverline stormguard can buff the electrical damage by another +2

 Stormblade Captain for the above mentioned moving through other Storm knight tech.

Nemo3 makes her ranged attack and eleaps gain an additional die on his feat turn.

Stryker2 will make her generate another d3 leaps with her attack on his feat turn.

Stryker3 makes her hit like a truck on his feat turn. An additional die of damage on both her impact attacks and charge both of which with automatically hit.

Haley2 can cast temporal acceleration on her to allow her to shoot twice and move an extra 2". Useful if you need to clear out a unit of infantry.

As a solo she is not the best use for spells like arcane shield or blur as you will get more use out of them by putting them on the Storm Lances you will normally bring along with her. (You are bringing Storm Lances right??) Spells like bullet dodger though can be great with her, pushing her defence up to a level that makes her much more likely to survive an attack.

Here is my painted Laddermore. Overall its nice to be able to put her on the table now in mk3 without feeling like she doesn't pull her weight as she was not that great in mk2. I hope you get a lot of use out of yours, I have been loving using mine!

What are your thoughts on her? Was there anything you think I missed? Let me know in a comment below!