Now that Gen Con 2011 is finished, it’s time for me to decide what I’m going to play for the following Gen Con (I work on yearly cycles based on Gen Con). Having just finished my Master Track series for the Cygnar casters considered reject by the Cygar forums, (http://handcannononline.com/blog/cat…/master-track/)

I’m going to focus Master Track 2012 on winning with Mercs. That means I’m going to need to pick casters that I think I can win with, and just as importantly casters I want to play, since I tend to have the best success with casters I enjoy. I’m going to start with 6 casters and narrow it down to 4 over time, since my guess is Gen Con 2012 will again be 3 list, characters restricted and I want to focus an additional caster on Hardcore.

Given that I’m planning on a character restriction, I’m going to start out by calling this the worst case scenario — 6 lists with characters restricted. Since no event over the next year will likely have characters restricted across this many lists or more, if I start here, I should be able to find character leeway on events that only require 3 or 4 lists and it should help me build my final masters list when I start culling casters (and thus freeing up characters as well).

Without any significant number of games under my belt, my selections are:

Magnus, either version. I’m going to play both versions of Magnus for a bit and select one, likely running normal Magnus during the Journeyman grow league and later playing eMagnus bad seeds due to the large Cygnar model selection available in that theme list. I think I’m currently leaning toward eMagnus Bad Seeds with a heavy assassination focus, but I do vastly prefer the spell list on pMagnus. The idea behind the eMagnus list is Double Renegade, double Sword Knight Marshaled Mule, with Rangers for Spotting. If the enemy caster gets too close, I get 4 arcing fire shots on his head that are almost guaranteed to hit (if the caster can be knocked down, anyway)

The eMagnus list (pMagnus pending the Journeyman league):

eMagnus (Bad Seeds, Tier 4)
^Renegade
^Renegade
10x Sword Knights
^UA
^^Mule
^^Mule
6x Trencher Commandos
^3x Scatter Gunners
6x Rangers
Kell Bailoch
Saxon Orrik
Orin Midwinter
Trencher Master Gunner

Gorten. A likely candidate to be my Hardcore caster or an anchor in Masters. The final list will likely be based on attrition with a good helping of landslide to win if my opponent gets too close.

Gorten (Highborn)
^Driller
^Rockram
^Rackram
^Bokur
10x Nyss Hunters
10x Boomhowlers
6x Gun Mages
^ Gun Mage UA
^Madalyn Corbeau
Thor
Reinholt

This list should be able to take my opponent out at range, forcing my opponent into Boomhowlers and ideally into landslide range where I can end the game via assassination.

Damiano: Plenty of flexibility here with a very strong feat and deadeye to make sure ranged attacks are deadly. The initial draft is based on 20 Steelheads & 5 Steelhead Cav, and then expanded from there.

Damiano 4*
^Rociante
^Nomad
5x Steelhead Heavy Cav
10x Steelhead Halberdiers
10x Steelhead Halberdiers
10x Croes
Brocker
eEiryss
Wyshnalyrr

There is no fancy win condition here except to plow right through my opponent’s list and go for the assassination. I can see some potential for dead eyed Croes against a number of opponents, and the Cav should be a most excellent harassment unit early and a heavy hitter late, especially under the feat.

McBain!: I’ve spent a lot of time playing Darius, and I can see McBain playing in a similar fashion – take the first strike on the chin, buff damage, jack hammer and charge to eat enemy list. I also find the thought of stacking Failsafe and Spiny Growth on a jack like the Rover or Mangler to be very appealing.

McBain 4*
^Mule
^Mangler
Wrong Eye & Snapjaw
^Bull Snapper
6x Kayazy Assassins
^Underboss
10x Steelheads
10x Steelheads
Alexia
Ragman
Gorman

Win condition is probably attrition, but there is a nice assassination failsafe with Kayazy.

Constance: Potentially the weakest link, Constance is however one of the casters I really want to play. I’ve got three potential list solutions with Constance (Steelheads, Pirates, and Rhulic), and at the moment I’m most liking the Rulic solution.

Constance (Highborn)
^Gallant
^Talon
10x High Shield Gun Corps
10x High Shield Gun Corps
^UA
10x Precursors
^Ua
10x Forge Guard
Piper
Harlan Versch
DiBray

The list takes it slow and steady with the Gun Corps to add durability and a ranged threat (something I’ve had a problem with in Constance lists with character restrictions). Since this list tends to stick together, it keeps the infantry closer to Constance which helps the feat. The precursors and Forge Guard make for a pretty solid counter charge as well.

Finally I finish with a Shae list since it is very character friendly. The down side of the list is that I don’t have any Sea Dogs or Press Gangers, but I’m missing quite a few models from the other lists as well, so it’s not a terrible down side.

Shae (Pirates Life)
^Nomad
^Freebooter
^Mangler
10x Sea Dogs
^Mr. Walls
^3x Riflemen
6x Press Gangers
The Commodore Cannon
Aiyana and Holt
Grogspar
Doc Killingsworth
Lord Rockbottom
First Mate Hawk
Dirty Meg
^Buccaneer
^Buccaneer

The Marshaled Buccaneers knock down key models for me to trash with my heavies with all of the threat range granted from either a spell or a Shae’s feat.

So that makes 6 lists with characters restricted and as I cut out lists, I’ll free up additional characters to use if I so need. Over the course of the next year, I’ll be trying to attend the following tournaments that are either Masters events or have masters like qualifiers:

Feast of Blades
The Clash for Colorado
Adepticon
Templecon OR Lock and Load
Gen Con

Hopefully, I’ll do well at a few of those and maybe even qualify for Masters at Gen Con – that would be a first!

Tags: Convention, Lock and Load, Master Track, Masters, Mercenaries, Privateer Press, Strategy, Tournaments, Warcaster, Warmachine