Editing Warmachine/Tactics/Mercenaries (section)

===Warcasters===
'''* Asheth Magnus the Traitor:''' One of the main reasons people choose to play this faction is because they want to play Magnus with an actual choice of what their list includes. Magnus the Traitor, pMagnus or "T-Mags" is an interesting warcaster, he has synergy with jacks and units but doesn't like to run too much of either. His Resourceful rule and his sword make him pretty damn focus efficient as a warcaster and having Iron Aggression pushes him further to the supposed "jackcaster" that a lot of ignorant players label him as being. In practically terms Magnus can't run more than 2-3 warjacks before it becomes an issue, he has a strong battlegroup but he needs a decent sized army making him a combined-arms warcaster. He's no slouch in combat with the ability to knockdown on hit with his fist. Just reread that, he doesn't need to do anything but hit the target to drop them for subsequent auto-hitting. The sword is pretty damn good, very efficient with boosting, meaning that you should be boosting on the hit every time for the free damage boost. His gun has the same range as charging, he is a lot better in melee, the only reason this gets used is when you need to clear a path to the enemy caster by blowing some screening units away. His feat is pretty simple, free move after activation, bear in mind this requires you to activate pMagnus before the rest of his battlegroup, other than that you can use it to rush down the board by running on the feat turn or as a way to GTFO after the battlegroup hits something it and needs to bail.

'''* Asheth Magnus the Warlord:''' The first epic merc caster, eMagnus is very similar to his older self. While pMagnus is combined-arms with mostly jack support, eMagnus is the same but with absolutely no infantry support. His Mobility spell is pretty key to his playstyle as it keeps him and his jacks very mobile, when he's not spamming it he's a slow brick. Killbox is an odd feat, its amazing for fucking up your opponent's plans because he suddenly can't move in 2 directions. Picking your table edge and your opponent's table edge is pretty much locking them in place, they may try to move to the sides but they are pretty much unable to move out of threat range of eMagnus or his battlegroup without running. The backstab and warjack bond are ok, but outside of a well timed Killbox you will never get either of these off because no one is going to let you get a battlegroup that close to their backs. He's a pretty competent fighter, he won't beat either Butcher but he isn't going to be on the frontlines outside of setting up his feat. He's hard enough to be safe against most assassination plays but nasty ones like Garryth or either Caine can be a problematic if you can't pop killbox and block them.

'''* Drake MacBain:''' General consensus for quite a while was that this guy a)had the most manly name in existence and b) was meant to be printed with Steelhead in his type line. We now have Captain Damiano for that second part, but prior to his release, MacBain was the leading infantry caster and manly man in the Mercs faction. He favours running a single heavy warjack and several units of tough infantry, Boomhowler & Co. being mandatory, with a few combat solos rather than the usual merc tricksters. He has a focus dependant feat so expect to have Sylys Wyshnalyrr on hand to keep Failsafe up on his feat turn. Speaking of which, Failsafe is probably one of the best warjack buffs in the game, in larger games running MacBain with Failsafe on a Galleon is on par with murdering parents in front of their children in terms of cruelty, so long as it has a single box left on its massive damage grid, it is 100% functional.

'''* Captain Amador Damiano:''' While MacBain is the premier heavy infantry warcaster in Mercenaries, Damiano is the premier HordeCaster. Although this is about running Damiano in the Four Star Syndicate, its hard to resist the urge to run his tier list where wave upon wave of Steelhead infantry fight and die for gold while Steelhead Cavalry ride onward to GLORY!!!! He is a Steelhead, so until someone other than Stannis Brocker cares about the Steelheads this means little, except that you will usually run Stannis Broker with Damiano and you will run steelheads anyway. His Paymaster ability is another reason why steelheads are important, he makes them more mobile by granting them the ability to advance after activations and the ability to buff range attacks. His feat is another unit buff and is great for the turn when the Steelhead Cavalry manages to charge a unit that is engaged with Halberdiers as it makes it a guaranteed execution of whatever is between them. In 4* with few or no steelheads he struggles to justify himself as he has some neat buffs to all infantry but is pretty much pure support with little threat himself. Always run him with at least Rocinante, maybe another light like the Talon but fundamentally this guy runs on steelhead swarms. '''TL;DR: Build a Damiano list with Rocinante and steelhead units first, then add a few independant niche units or solos like Eiryss. Or just run his tier 4 theme list.'''

'''* Captain Bartolo "Broadsides Bart" Montador:''' The first ranged jackcaster in warmachine. Unlike the other 2 pirate warcasters he doesn't really need the super-synergy of Sea Dog infantry to be effective so in 4* he tends to run a more "normal" list, well as close as normal as 4* gets. Currently infamous for a dirty combo involving the Galleon, Wrongeye and Snapjaw, and a Bullsnapper. It results in a functionally immortal Galleon with an ARM that has Khador heavies looking squishy.

'''* Fiona the Black:''' Our only mage warcaster. Fiona is pretty much about debuffing/buffing units rather than spamming damage spells. She can run without a jack, though in truth she wants a Vanguard and/or Rocinante. A mule or mariner works ok provided its just there to be another artillery piece. She loves having a unit of sea dogs for the cultists bonus and Sylys Wyshnalyrr is a major boost considering the number of upkeeps, especially Telgesh Mark/Nonkrion Brand, which she wants online at any one time. Her feat is a nice little fuck you as it removes 1 die from attack and damage rolls, if they have a MAT/RAT below 7 they cannot hit anything with DEF 13 or higher, ditto for P+S versus ARM. This can be fucking brutal against armies that don't have easy access to boosting rolls and can blunt the damage from weapon masters etc. Works ok with Damiano in a Two Caster list because he likes infantry and cares for them and she likes infantry and can't give a shit about them. Her Cultist rule applies to Sea Dog type units, which includes the Deck Gun Crews and Press Gangs. The first probably the best choice as Press Gangs need a Sea Dog unit to add models to and the regular Sea Dogs need a boatload of solos to be worth taking over Steelhead Halberdiers and would rather be forward in combat, while the Deck Gun is likely to want to sit back next her and blast at things she has debuffed. Fiona is also a Thamarite with Animosity to Morrowan, this means nothing to us because everyone who is a Morrowan is a Cygnar puppet.

'''* Gorten Grundback:''' One of hardest nuts to crack. Considering how he plays in Searforge is different from 4*, I'm going to talk about him without reference to Rhulic units excluding their warjacks. Gorten is tough; only Gorten and the mean machine that is Karchev the Terrible are able to shut down any assassination list. Gorten can get retardedly high STR and ARM. He is also infamous for his synergy with the Ghordson Driller, the only Rhulic Jack to have an open fist. Gorten can make that one warjack strong enough to one-hand throw pretty much any other heavy warjack. Or if you want to have fun, use it to destroy Khador heavy jacks with a P+S attack thats higher than their ARM, better yet use the drill on the warcaster and laugh as you have them held in an inescapable grip (the driller's open fist with Strength of Granite is pretty much unbreakable unless you are Gorten against Gorten) and drilling them into a fine vapour with a 3D6+21 damage roll. Gorten is also slow as fuck, so don't expect him to be able to fight on his own terms unless your opponent tried to assassinate him and now has his eCaine sitting in drill destroyer range. His feat is another reason why killing him is hard, because he can make you fuck the fuck off or come the fuck in to be drill destroyed.

'''* Durgen Madhammer:''' Rhulic  caster Searforge Yadda yadda yadda. AOE god. Loves AOE, very powerful against hordes. Quite possibly the best warcaster to wipe out Winter Guard deathstars or Steelhead Hordes. In 4* we can field him with Dougal MacNaille and 3 Sea Dog Deck Gun crews. On his feat turn that hits fucking hard. On his feat turn that is a crap load of accurate AOE shots that have boosted damage. Not on his feat turn that is still some pretty good pie plate spam, as long as you aren't against a list running only a few heavy infantry like stormblades or Man'O'Wars (pfffa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Like someone would ever touch those things) it may be more of grind, a grind with pies but still a grind. Actually a Searforge list would be troublesome as Rhulic infantry aren't pushovers, which is exactly what you would expect of dorfs really; not sucking.

'''* General Ossrum:''' The third Rhulic manly man. Although not personally familiar with him, I can see that he's easily a more infantry focused caster than the other two. His feat and only special rule pretty much scream "I LIKE MEN!" and they're nice, because they give you the ability to make your whole list, not Friendly Faction models (the three words that piss off every mercenaries player) draw LoS and move through allies, until this guy you only got this on Steelheads with Stannis motherfucking Brocker on the field and that basically mandated you were up to your eyeballs in Steelheads. Arguably this guy is the dwarf version of Axe Cop, because if you let him, he will chop your head off. His axe is nice, not something to wipe out hordes, but something that is likely to kill shit when the dice goddesses smiles upon thee. Unlike the other two who are somewhat defensive in playstyle, Ossrum can be pretty mobile with a few tricks, or rather if you actually are the type to think about what you're doing he is a very mobile brick otherwise he is just a brick. His feat doesn't give him the SPD bonus, but it does give the rest apparently, the issue is whether to use it for offence to move forward and hit them in one foul swoop or defence to get the ARM buff for that painful turn when they hit your lines/counterattack. Again this is mostly conjecture based on his stat profile and battlecollege entry but even with just those its clear this guy is probably the better of the 3 dwarves for overall play compared to shooting spam in Durgen and the grindfest of Gorten. In 4* we can use him to help run Alexia Ciannor's screen for Steelhead Riflemen (actually not that good, Steelhead Riflemen aren't really a static gun line unit and Steelhead Halberdiers are better because they're cheap as fuck and then you can take Stannis motherfucking Brocker, or you can have Alexia raise them to keep her numbers up and screen another unit) or say Sea Dog Deck Gun crews (ok maybe another meh example as most people only take them in Talion Charter or Durgen lists, but you get the point, Ossrum is great for the fact that we can use other units instead of Steelheads for these shenanigans).