Lets not, and say we didnt.

    As much as I may have commented that keeping a blog is like artistically spraying jisim over the internet, I am in fact re-trying to keep a blog.

    Since I last tried to make a blog I completed my university education, developed a long term stable relationship, embarked on several challenging career ventures and some not so challenging. But most importantly I switched factions from Circle to Retribution.

    It was a slow transition, kind of. My Retribution army was built up over several months buying them off the local forces collectomaniac. My Circle forces are still sitting around collecting dust as I try to move them on, I have played maybe 3 games with Circle since moving to Retribution over a year ago and never once did I regret my decision to play an underpowered, under resourced, elven faction.

Mission statement: Death to humanity...
The tournament season kicks off pretty early around here and although I'm trying to play 5+ games per week I'm not keeping a written record of my games. As depressing, arrogant or generally uninformative as that might be. I deem it a social  obligation and personal experiment to record my games and tournament experiences in blog format.

What to expect:  "Just a wild stab in the dark which is incidentally what you'll be getting if you don't start being a bit more helpful."
My painting is abhorred which is much more than can be said for my motivation to paint. That being said the local tournament scene has decided to go all pencil case at the queen of England's fancy dress party and decided to give us things like fully painted, painted as part of scenario tie breaker and the good old "There are too many 50 point tournaments so I decided to make mine 42"
So I will be painting some things, and maybe posting them and then hiding. Also I will perhaps from time to time steal pictures other people have taken and use them to illustrate otherwise verbose and boring battle reports.


     To kick things off I have acquired a record of ratings written by a high profile warmachine celebrity using a analytical and informative rating system about the Forces of Retribution. He is the utmost authority on what is good in Warmachine and Hordes and his opinion is not to be taken lightly. He developed this rating system to help sort out the wheat from the chaff in the expansive Blindwater Congregation and was obliging enough to do the same for Retribution of Scyrah at my behest.

So at no further a due.

1 – Being an actual liability. Broken bad.  (Grade: F)

3 – Crap (Grade: D)

5 -  Mediocre. Does stuff, but not really exciting or strong. (Grade: C)

7 – Solid, has some bad matchups. Does cool things. (Grade: B)

10 – Cryx. Best at what it does, really potent. Should probably be nerfed to be a 9. (Grade: A)

 My idea is developers are aiming for everything to be around a 7-8 level, where it’s strong enough to be exciting and powerful, but not powerful enough to risk breaking the game.

• Garryth – 4/10 – Lacking. Would need another spell, probably a unit buff, to boost him up. Silence of Death or something.
• Kaelyssa – 7/10 – solid all round but seriously lacks hitting power. Feat is Rask-ish and therefore good.
• Rahn – 9/10 – awesome control, quite survivable. Polarity shield is awesome on a ranged faction.
• Ravyn – 7/10 – Slightly better than average, only because she brings a damage buff.
• Vyros 1 – 7/10 – Solid all-rounder.
• Ossyan – 6/10 – Buffs damage is his main thing. Anything that counters shooting hurts him badly.
• Vyros2 – 8/10 – Like Vyros 1, but better.

Jacks:

• Chimera – 4/10 – lame jack but has an arc node and can teleport out of melee.
• Gorgon – 5/10 – mediocre but can douche someone hard. Should be 4 pts.
• Griffon – 7/10 – 4pts, fast, decent POW, has a shield. Pretty good little workhorse
• Aspis – 7/10 – 4pts with beatback. Not bad.
• Hydra – 5/10 – 9pts for POW 14 fists? Even stashing focus and the gun doesn’t make up for that.
• Manticore – 6/10 – Can hit pretty hard, and has the option of covering fire. Neat.
• Phoenix – 7/10 – Costly, but can actually do stuff. Magical everything is good. An arc node.
• Banshee – 7/10 – Hits hard, good gun, wailing helps it live and mess with people.
• Daemon – 5/10 – The gun is quite good but the rest of it is very blah.
• Sphinx – 5/10 – token workhorse heavy. Ok I guess.
• Discordia – 8/10 – SP 10 POW 14 magic spray, decent in melee, solid imprint. Little squishy though.
• Hypnos – 6/10 (8/10 with Ossyan) – ok jack I guess. Sacred Ward is always nice. About as good as a Daemon.

Units:

• Invictors – 6/10 (7/10 with UA). Solid all-around unit but expensive.
• Sentinels – 6/10 (8/10 with UA). Pretty much have to take the UA otherwise they will just get sniped out like nothing.  Need a way to protect them still.
• Destors – 6/10. Probably the best heavy cav unit in the game outside Tuffalos, but still heavy cav that cost a lot. Hit and run with guns is good at SPD 8. Needs an upkeep buff.
• Mittens – 7/10 – Good unit that forms the backbone of Ret’s strengths (magic attacks / threat range)
• Halberdiers – 8/10 (9/10 with UA) – Cheap and effective workhorses. UA allows them to hit pretty hard when they need to (POW 14 reach charges is pretty damn nice).
• Riflemen – 5/10 – Long Gunners that can’t shoot twice. Mediocre.
• MHSF – 4/10, (7/10 with UA) – kind of a meta bender unit. Really good when they’re good, and extremely average when they are not. Matchup dependant.
• Stormfall – 7/10 – solid workhorse, only issue is RAT 5. At RAT 6 they would be amazing I think.
• Soulless – 5/10 – sometimes good, sometimes not.
• Heavy Rifle team – 2/10. Light artillery, like a hunter that can’t boost.

Solos:

• Arcanist – 7/10. If only you had better jacks. Would be 9/10 if he had boxes.
• Destor Thane – 8/10. This guy is pretty awesome. Mostly because of his gun. If you can Polarity Shield him, he can douche a unit over 2 turns very easily.
• Scyir – 4/10 – Jack marshalls aren’t great.
• Magister – 7/10. This guy is pretty solid all around.
• MHA – 8/10. The potential to completely destroy something with lucky dice is kind of stupid. Almost as good as a Warwitch Siren. Only an 8 because it is MAT 7 with one attack, and craps out above ARM 18.
• Ghost Sniper – 5/10. Probably not as good as a Widowmaker Marksman.
• Eyriss – 7/10 or 10/10 vs Warmachine
• eEyriss – 9/10.
• Skeryth – 7/10 – It’s Mk1 Vilmon on a horse. Unfortunately he’s not invincible like Vilmon was.
• Nayl – 6/10. Very tricky to use.
• Narn – 7/10 – Would be amazing for 2pts, but he’s just quite good at 3pts.
• Artificier – 7/10 – Pretty good for 3pts. Does cool stuff.
• Space Tick – Never seen it. Seems ok, like 6/10.

 

Mercs/Minions  - I don’t really know what to think of these.

• Nyss Hunters – 7/10. They don’t seem as good in Ret as with other factions, since they do more or less the same thing without benefitting from faction buffs. Still a good unit though.
• Ayanna + Holt – 8/10. Ret doesn’t benefit as much from magic weapons, but Harm is serious business.
• Dahlia + Skarath – 6/10. Seems ok but the snake dies a bit too easily. Then she doesn’t do anything. Wrong Eye at least can still do pretty cool stuff after Snapjaw dies, and Snapjaw is harder to kill than Skarath.
• Lanyssa – 6/10. Seems cool. More threat range.... Two really strong crit effects which you can’t rely on. Anti-Legion tech is mediocre.
• Madelyn Corbeau -  6/10. Good but would probably rather have a Magister since it can move jacks as well. Depends wildly on the list and caster in question.  

    Now if anyone is actually reading this you are probably aware of my sincere sarcasm. however if by some unfortunate selection of links you end up wading through this it may be important to note that I don’t quite agree with all of the above and hold my frequent swamp swilling, autodysomophobiac elf mulching croc opponent in as much a churlish as hypocritically envious way. After all, neither of us play real factions.

Over time lets test out this rating system, while adding to it and updating it as necessary. I hereby declare this the Imbeau scale and will be rating models from time to time using the I.I.C (Imbeau index classification.) not to be cconfused with the I.I.R.C which is the Index of Imbreau Classifications, named after some guy who won Guardcon 2012.