List of Loathing: Herne & Jonne

I don't understand why I'm not seeing Herne & Jonne more often. They will work for Cygnar, Khador, and Protectorate, and I think it might be because in-faction options are perceived as better. Be that as it may, I pee my pants whenever I see this team take the field, and here's why.

These guys are three points, and with the addition of Dougal MacNaile they get to put some serious artillery in the air. Jonne can use his Scattershot while under the effect of Double Powder Rations and Artillerist, to inflict some incredible punishment on infantry hordes.

Those Re-rolls from Artillerist work for the secondary blasts as well, which means that with aiming bonus Jonne can put a RAT 10 small blast on something within 14", and then manipulate the dice into placing two more small blasts where they can really hurt.

The first time I met these guys I lost an entire unit of Mechanithralls to one round of shooting from H&J. They just sort of vanished, and H&J remained outside my threat range and got another round of fire in before I could get to them. The second time I met them I used two Pistol Wraiths to take them down, and I was quite pleased with myself until I realized I'd just lost six points and a serious threat, to take down three points that had already inflicted serious damage to my list, and it was back to the drawing board.

Solution

When Herne goes down Jonne becomes irrelevant, and Herne is only defense twelve, armor thirteen, and has five boxes. He will usually be standing behind Jonne, but a medium base doesn't cover a small base very well, and you can often draw a bead on him (massive casualties will also force Jonne to check when Herne dies).

Incidentally Herne has to be in B2B with Jonne if the team is to use the Scattershot option, and Herne is squishy enough that blast damage and sprays are a serious threat to him. The team has a fearsome damage output against infantry lists, but is incredibly fragile in return, so if you can manage to take down Herne before they fire of the big guns, you've effectively neutered Jonne as well.

/Lamoron

List of Loathing: Archive

Another little project I've been considering is the List of Loathing. This is supposed to slowly grow into an archive of the models/units I consider extremely problematic as Cryx, and possible counters to them if I have any that actually work.

Cryx

Cygnar

• Stormsmith Storm Caller

Khador

Protectorate of Menoth

Retribution of Scyrah

Mercenaries

• Herne & Jonne

Circle Orboros

Legion of Everblight

Skorne

Trollbloods

Minions

List of Loathing: Stormsmith Storm Caller

Another little project I've been considering is the List of Loathing. This is supposed to slowly grow into an archive of the models/units I consider extremely problematic as Cryx, and possible counters to them if I have any that actually work. For the first installment I'll present the models I hate more than anything else in the game.

Stormsmith Storm Caller

I hate these guys so much, and with a single skill check they can render an Arc Node useless for a round, take out most unit leaders, or take down a squishy solo like Gorman or Madelyn. They ignore stealth, and they care nothing about defense, cover, or concealment either.

If you're not running Arc Nodes, they can stay back until the lines clash, and completely wipe a wave of infantry in a single round. If your opponent has included a Firefly, it can run up and act as surge/triangulation point, allowing all three Storm Callers to pop Triangulation, and if they all succeed you've got 9 auto-hits on your hands that causes disruption if used against jacks and will nuke most of your solo characters.

Solutions

Without the Firefly they're a lot less scary, as he will have to figure out a way to get a single wound infantry model through your lines, and probably miss out on 1/3 of their attacks. When two of them are dead, the remaining SSC is reduced to disrupting warjacks and killing solo characters, and while that's annoying it's not as scary as having an entire wave of infantry go *poof*.

The Stormsmith Storm Callers need to remain "intact" (I tend to see them as a unit even though they aren't) to really blow up the world, so you need to diminish that potential quickly. It's easy enough to do, since they're easy to kill, but the problem is that we have poor long range fire power, so we will have to use whatever we have to kill three 1 point models that are spread out over his entire line.

/Lamoron