Mercenaries

How to build a Merc list

Way back in Warmachine Prime MkI, Mercenaries were expansion options for existing armies rather than a full army. You could hire them to fill gaps in your army's tactics, thus ensuring that you were less likely to have two identical faction armies slugging it out. However, the Mercs proved so popular that people demanded that they be allowed to field nothing but Mercs. For the sake of preserving the fluff, Privateer Press made it so you couldn't just drop every mercenary model you owned on the table; instead, you had a choice between five Mercenary Contracts, each representing a different agenda, but with some models and units shared between Contracts. When the MkII edition of the rules came out, this order was slightly disturbed by the addition of tier lists to the game (the Magnus's Agenda contract got demoted into Magnus1 and Magnus2's tier lists), but the other four contracts remained the same.

This means that, when you build a Mercenary list, you have two options to work with;

• Tier lists. You'll find tier lists for every Mercenary warcaster in either Forces of Warmachine: Mercenaries or the expansion book where that warcaster was released; there are also special tier lists that have been released in No Quarter Magazine. Basically, you'll have a limited selection of models to work with, and if you meet the requirements for each tier, you get bonus special shiny rules for your stuff. Tier lists are usually a useful guide to what goes well with a warcaster, and sometimes the special rules are truly sweet, but most of the time it isn't worth bothering.
• Contracts. This is what you came here to see. Contracts are similar to tier lists but less restrictive; you are limited to certain classes of models, and in return you (usually) get the benefit of a single special rule.

If you're allowed to build multiple lists for a tournament, you can bring two different tier lists or contracts; you could, for example, field a Searforge Commission list and a Talion Charter list. This allows you to mess around with your lists way more than most other armies, and that's awesome.

The Mercenary Contracts

Four Star Syndicate

This represents the armed forces of the Iron Kingdoms Mafia, as well as the de facto military of the kingdom of Ord (as in, the Ordric army is so small that the king usually just throws money at these guys until invaders go away). Basically, it's full of mercs who will either work for literally anyone who can pay for it or who are too insane to work with any more organised army. A Four Star list can take any Mercenary models who will work for Cryx and/or Khador, which is a substantial majority of all Mercenary models, making this the most generic of the Mercenary lists. The trade-off, however, is that you don't get any extra army-wide special rules.

Highborn Covenant

The army of the Llaelese resistance, consisting of those few Llaelese who aren't complete cheese-eating surrender monkeys, as well as mercenaries who are willing to contribute cash to the resistance and a few Cygnaran warriors left over from when Cygnar actually had the resources to care about defending Llael. You can take any Mercenary model that will work for Cygnar, which means you have a slightly smaller range than Four Star, but you still get most of the Mercenary models in the game, and have a lot of crossover with the Four Star list. Every solo in a Highborn army gets Advanced Deployment, which is pretty damn cool. Highborn lists can also include one unit of either Long Gunners or Arcane Tempest Gun Mages and they'll count as a Mercenary unit, representing either Cygnaran forces staying behind in Llael or remnants of the Llaelese military. The main attraction of Highborn lists is that you can take the ATGM Officer and have him marshal a Mercenary warjack. Giving the Mule some Rune Shots is pretty devastating.

Searforge Commission

DWAAAAAAARVES.

That should be all you need to know, but if you're not convinced yet, the Searforge Commission is the company which arranges trade between the Dwarven kingdom of Rhul and the human kingdoms, and this army represents the Rhulic mercenaries that they occasionally hire to settle disputes. If you prefer, you can use it to represent the Rhulic military, although fluff-wise Rhul has never been invaded by another kingdom -- it's the Switzerland of the Iron Kingdoms. In a Searforge Commission List, you can only take Rhulic or Ogrun mercenaries, meaning that this list is much more limited than the Four Star or Highborn lists. As a rules benefit, the size of your deployment zone is increased by 4" (which is pretty awesome when most of the models in the list are SPD 4), and you get a +1 bonus to the FA of all non-character models and units (which compensates somewhat for the small selection available).

Tactically, Searforge is quite different to most other armies, being a turtle-tastic SPD 4 list in a game which is focused on speed and aggression. Dwarven warcasters are tough as nails, but they have terrible FOC scores and not a lot of magic to play with. The army has trouble dealing with some scenarios, as the enemy will almost certainly be able to take the objective before the Commission army can get there. On the other hand, assassination-based play simply doesn't work against Searforge, and most anti-infantry tech will be rendered useless, since even their small-based infantry is armoured like a light warjack.

Talion Charter

The Talion Charter is a piratically-minded association, led by Phinneas Shae, captain of the Talion. He gets to lead the Charter because he has the Commodore Cannon. Do you have the Commodore Cannon? No? Then you can't lead the Talion Charter.

In all seriousness, the Talion Charter allows you to field any Privateer mercenaries, leaving you with a list that's about as varied as Searforge (i.e. not much variation). Rules-wise, they get a +1 bonus to the roll-off to see who goes first, and the (awesome) ability to redeploy all solos in the army after Advanced Deployment is resolved. Talion lists are usually focused on infantry synergy; take a unit of Sea Dogs, buff it up to ridiculous levels, throw it at the enemy, and hope its support models don't die.

As we may have implied above, the main reason to run Talion is to field Phinneas Shae and the Commodore Cannon. Shae only works for the Charter (he won't work for any main faction or any other Merc contract), and the Cannon only works for Shae. Both Shae and the Cannon are truly awesome and well worth the restrictive list building.

Mercenary warjacks and list selection

Mercenary warjacks fall into three categories; Normal, Privateer, and Rhulic. Rhulic warjacks are locked to Rhulic warcasters and 'jack marshals, and vice versa. However, Privateer warjacks aren't locked to Privateer warcasters; it's a difference of design and fluff, not actual rules.

What all this means for our Tactics pages

There are three tactics pages for Mercenaries;

• Warmachine/Tactics/Mercenaries covers the tactics for both Four Star and Highborn lists (since there's so much overlap).
• Warmachine/Tactics/Searforge Commission covers the tactics for Searforge.
• Warmachine/Tactics/Talion Charter covers the tactics for Talion.

Glad we cleared that up.