Don't die on me Constance!!!!

[Calibre]

Okay so I started out Constance a while ago and naturally at 35pts kitted her army out with the basics, Precursors, Swordknights, Gallant... the works (no tier) and off I went too go kick some Merc off Morrowan territory. The first battle battle I fought with her I played a little reserved keeping her well back. It was a long an grueling battle against Damiano, I got my 7 focus on my feat turn but got surrounded by halbediers and some boomies which I cleared up easily with flashing blades. It eventually came down to damn Rocinante putting a cannonball through Constance after Gallant suffered a similar fate.

Speaking with my friend we both came to some conclusions that I needed to play Constance a bit more aggressively opt in for more infantry less support solos, so I altered my list and off we went for round 2 this time it was against jack heavy Magnus. Again I felt the game a bit too attritiony for my taste and on a turn I swamped Magnus and Rocinante with infantry and Constance right up there in the mix camping and popping feat. This time it payed off although Constance was left alive (battered and bleeding) with one PK officer by her side but managed without much effort to kill Magnus.

So once again we analyzed the game a bit, and came to the conclusion that Constance plays better aggressively than some of the other casters like Nemo, and Haley, so my friend dared me to face my worst nightmare....eStryker. So I accepted and off we went, I quickly gained ground and wanted to test out Constance ability for survival, so hiding behind tough PKs wall 2" thick I argued that eStryker could potentially do a run at me but it would be very risky and what do you know my friend picked it up. So feat up, Constance camping focus and Arcane Shield she was on ARM 25. He kills the two PK's in-front of Constance and guns it 3 Focus left on eStryker and power boosted for 10 he was sitting on POW 25 but took 9 points of damage. I know Constance has a spear so I'm hoping for Set Defense.....but nothing, so its 8's for eStryker who hits home on the charge for 8 points of damage. Next attack misses... but the last two connects each rolling an average 5 damage..and that's game.

My conclusion of Constance is that I'm really missing the Set Defense on her spear, It would have made a world of difference and I don't think it would have tipped Constance into the OP criteria. Her shield is dead weight the fact that she cant use it to attack and its armor bonus is already counted into her armor bonus just bothers me eStryker has a gun and armor 16. Insparation [Morrawan] is also in my opinion dead weight, failing a cmd check on 10, 11 or 12 is definitely well deserved unless other Morrowan units are going to be introduced later with very low cmd.

So I started this thread because I would like to find out from all the other players out there what tactics I could have used to give Constance a better survival rate. Cygnar's got all these cool abilities like heals from PK officer, move from Madam Corbeau but all of it requires you to survive till the next round, and I think I've shown that Constance can be pretty hardy, if she had 1 more armor or three more hp she would have put eStryker on his @ss.

[MagnustheJust]

I just read over her listing in Wrath - I saw no set defense...

Also, Harlan Versh is a huge boon to Blaze. If you do not have him, I HIGHLY recommend him!!


I do not play her personally, as I am a Mercenary player who does not play Highborne Covenant - just Four-Star Syndicate and Searforge.

But I have read all the Merc threads on her, and it seems to me that it just takes a few games to get her rhythm down, to find the balance between defensive and aggressive. I'd say give it at least another ten games before you start going crazy with list changes...

[WindlordRyu]

If you want to make her more survivable you probably have to shove so much infantry down your opponents throat he has no choice other than kill it before going after Constance, and then camp the focus you gain next turn. 15/25 is already close to Terminus-like levels of survivability, except that you use your infantry to screen you instead of Sac. Pawning to it.

Or stay outside the threat range of models with extremely high damage output, even if they don't kill you on average rolls. It looks Stryker got some good rolls when trying to kill her (three out of four attacks when hitting on 8's). You only needed one more Armor, if you had taken a Focus from Squire and camped it you would've lived. I'm aware that you couldn't have known that during the game but you were trying to take a charge from eStryker. Just drop all upkeeps and focus everything on defense.

[sleet01]

Edit: NM, got turned around between the Merc And Cygnar threads that popped up simultaneously.

I like AS on Constance, a lot. If you really need to camp armor it's invaluable, as it lets Blaize sit at 21+ while still using some of her own focus (or 26 with full focus and a squire).

[NecroMerlinoid]

Campstance loves the killbox artifice against a lot of opponents.

[Stephan Garmark]

Campstance loves the killbox artifice against a lot of opponents.

Does this mean that eStrykers new nickname is "Camper"?

[slinkdawg]

If you run her in cygnar, I like running a centurion with her to deny people the charge on Constance. Arcane shield on her is huge too.

Try some different options out with her. And camp focus as others have said.

[John of Arc]

Does this mean that eStrykers new nickname is "Camper"?

His nickname is Grizzly Bear because he ruins camps all day.

[Ishmale]

I'm not sold on Gallant I have I like him but the extra point on a Stormclad has paid off better for me and Calvary with her can be good if you have transference up.

[FearLord]

Best way I've found of keeping her alive is playing 50pts... At 35, I'm not confident that I have enough stuff to keep her going...

If you don't like playing attrition style lists, she really isn't for you - all my games with Constance have been long slogs where I've just had to overwhelm and swamp my opponent, and this just hasn't been possible at 35pts...

At 50pts I tend to run just Gallant and the rest as Infantry and support solos...

[DontStop]

What FearLord said, 50 pts with Connie ftw. I could never go back to 35 with her.

I agree basically word for word with what he says and I play a similar list. Eventually my Stormblades get in the game and by then they normally just rip the enemy army apart and I find my spot to win. That can be by a Gallant charge to the face or my opponent saying enough is enough.

Thanks,

DS

[John of Arc]

Some feats, like eVlad and eSkarre don't scale up well. Connie's feat scales HARD up to 50- having another 10 bodies on the table is a pretty big deal.

[Calibre]

Does this mean that eStrykers new nickname is "Camper"?

Okay I agree with what everyone is saying, but really she's only on what ARM 25 because my opponent let me have it, retribution will ignore all those buffs not to mention LOS when trying to kill her,... as for other armies I rarely don't see the elvish wh@re Eiryss not featuring, and the 50pts margin only guarantees that she will be in one of the lists, not that I'm afraid of her I run both Bokur and Gallant but just the same.

I like running Constance up front, I see her as a more durable/tank like version of eStryker, but I really don't like that they neglected to give her "Set Defense" yea it will over-stat her weapon being magical, blessed, reach and then also having "Set Defense" but she needs it against the likes of Terminus, Butcher and eStryker. Its not going to save her, lucky rolls will still kill her but, that's how I see her playing: you set your opponent up to fail the assassination with Constance's durability and then she just goes to town on them next turn.

I now realized that if I had included the squire: +1 squire, +6 Constance, +3 Arcane Shield, +2 Feat, I could have been camping on 28ARM which would have left her on 1 hp left not much....but surely enough to win the game, is there any other buffs unit/solo wise I'm missing?

I get that she's an infantry caster but if we boil it down to the basics we are only playing mass infantry to boost her feat and to make sure we will be able to contest control zone's and you can play her that way say 4" deep in her army with no possible trample/placement vector on her but boy'oh'boy that makes for one boring game, shoving 50 plus models around...doing attack and damage rolls enough so that you can attrition your opponents army but not too much as it will eat your time on the clock. Personally I don't like that play style very much.

[Alzer]

I think the problem you're running into is you're trying to plan around surviving a charge from Butcher, Terminus and eStryker. I can't think of many warjacks that can do that, let alone casters. If you leave them hanging out to get attacked by something like that they're going to end up dead. Offense trumps defense in warmahordes, just how the game is built.

"Only ARM 25" is unreachable by many factions. Just throwing that out there.

Also well...dice will jump out and bite you right when you think you're safe. ARM 25 only protects you so much when Butcher rolls 6s and 5s on his charge dice.

[FearLord]

I get that she's an infantry caster but if we boil it down to the basics we are only playing mass infantry to boost her feat and to make sure we will be able to contest control zone's and you can play her that way say 4" deep in her army with no possible trample/placement vector on her but boy'oh'boy that makes for one boring game, shoving 50 plus models around...doing attack and damage rolls enough so that you can attrition your opponents army but not too much as it will eat your time on the clock. Personally I don't like that play style very much.

It isn't just for her feat - after the first few games against her, I find people just stop attacking me on feat turn - I think the most anyone actually managed was 6 kills anyway before my infantry ARM started to get a bit silly... I don't take many jacks because they basically undermine this - if I have a good mix of troops and jacks they kill the jacks and leave the troops alone.

I use 2 waves of Infantry - Sword Knights and Storm Guard up front and Storm Blades and Precursors behind. Wins usually come from Assassination - either from Infantry with Transference or Constance herself coming in to finish off with flank. She's just too exposed to play upfront all game. Flashing blade is nice against people who try and tie her up since she can do it before moving, but in general I'm generally upkeeping transference and camping focus for most of the game - I use transference boosts sparingly when required and keep the rest to keep her safe.

I do find her pretty boring, but the more I play her, the more convinced I am that she can be quite powerful... My main problems with her have been time related (although this could be mitigated by the fact that jamming with the infantry is more important than actually attacking with everything)...

[DontStop]

Obviously, you wouldn't take Connie vs. Ret in most cases. We have much better options.

The OP doesn't like to roll a bunch of attack and damage rolls with tons of infantry. Best advice, move on to the next caster. She obviously isn't your play-style.

/thread