Planing my angry elves shopping cart.

[ocelot2]

Hello,

I'm planning on starting retribution this summer. I'm still very new to Warmachine and I want this army to be my main army, mostly because I love the models. I've done some lurking in the forums and I found this list.

Vyros
Pheonix
full Sentinels
plus UA
Stormfall archers
20pts

and then battle mages to reach 25 points, but what about 35 points? And what makes this list a good beginners list? Are there any downsides to this list?

[Halycon]

Welcome and good choice of faction, we're a smaller facton currently but we've got a lot of great units and the community is good too!

The list is a good start, but I'll come to that in a minute (I apologise I waffle )

Vyros was my first caster for Ret and WM in general, I struggled with him because whilst his armour keeps him going longer, his spells are quite good, the feat he has is very situational, if your opponent has few infantry then it will be difficult to get anything out of the feat, which means that you're denying yourself an extra ability which your opponent will have.

It depends on your playstyle, I'm more of a shooty to start and then follow up into Melee as necessary, so I've found Ossyan to suit me very well (I'll be trying Kaelyssa shortly)

I actually did start getting alot out of running 2 manticores with Vyros, the covering fire does make some opponents hesitate charging your front line, as a 7" Line o' Doom (on POW 12's its still painful for most infantry) and then give you 6 shots if you're willing all of which ignore LOS so they can shoot anywhere - this is a big thing.

Your SFA will be awesome, they are such a good unit I'm actually going to be picking up a second unit

I'd recommend when you expand into 35pts by adding a second heavy to your list, as you're not really utilising his birds eye nor mobility spell, that heavy I'd recommend either a manticore or a hydra or Sphinx. The sphinx is a cheap reach jack, manticore gives some decent melee and 3 shots but the hydra gives you the option to load up on turn one and then just start plinking POW 15's on either solo's or jacks (I got pNemo down to 1 health with a single shot which really scared my opponent )

I'd also get a couple of solo's, Arcanists are always the first solo to buy, then I'd suggest a couple of MHA's, they're 2 pts each, unfortunately can miss, but when they hit usually the damage done makes people cry.

On the whole get some stuff, play with it, decide what suits your play style and then expand after reading some of the model writeups that are available here and you'll hopefully get some advice from here

[ocelot2]

Thanks for the great reply.

I'm not really sure what my play style is because I've only played a few tabletop wargames in general. I liked this list because I think that all, if not, most models in this army will get a lot of use because they are so good. I've read that this list is simple and a "smash face" kind of list that beginners will pick up pretty quickly, which is fine by me.

I also want to buy models rather than spending on books. I know the book isn't too much money but I think each dollar I spend on books, is once less I spent on models. This makes it tricky to expand to 35pts but I think that I would maybe have picked up the army book by then.

I like the second heavy idea, especially the Sphinx. Would adding some Shyeel solos work? I tried reading them up in BattleCollege but I still don't quite get them.

[Halycon]

You're welcome, my only disclaimer is that I'm a relative newbie as well I've only been playing WM 6 months and 4 months Ret

If you get a vyre and a shyeel heavy, you can magnetise them both so that you can have any combination you want, I've done that and it does give you lots of options to play with regularly till you can get a handle on your list.

That list is a fairly straight forward one, and one that will give you some flexability as it combines some shooting, some melee and a jack that can do both, the phoenix is a very versitile jack.

The Magister solos are brilliant, I only bought 1 to give it a try and until recently (because I'm trying a few other things) it was a regular in my list, its an odd solo, gives you some ranged magic attacks which allow for some extra movement, but I also love the combosmite, being able to slam something to the ground upto and including a jack gives me a warm feeling inside
I've not actually used the Artificier yet (still building up my model list!) but I read that its useful in certain lists and also strikes me as quite powerful but I can't give you any more info on it I'm afraid