List Building: Darius Tier 4

Lately my Circle have been getting lots of love from me.  I am "playing" them in the LGS Journeyman League which started two weeks ago, so they have been foremost in my mind.  I also plan on taking them to Templecon this year for the team tournament.  I'm still trying to convince my teammates to run all Tier lists so that we can name our team Trail of Tiers (too much?), but I digress.

Today I want to give some love to everyone's favorite protagonists, the boys in blue, the swans, Cygnar.  Specifically, I want to highlight one of the better tier lists in the Cygnar book, Captain E. Dominic Darius' Wrecking Crew.  This tier list is great for several reasons that become more apparent at the 50 point level.  I will start with a 35 point list, however, as it will probably be easier to achieve for some of you out there who want to think of ways of making this neat caster work for you.  Author's note: Darius is actually one of the rare casters who can achieve a Tier 4 list in 15 points!
I do want to admit that I got this idea from someone at our LGS, so I will not claim full credit for these lists, even though I've been touting the viability of Darius for over a year.

Let's look at Darius's tier list to see what we have to work with:

Warjacks: Non-character warjacks, Thunderhead
Units: Sword Knights, Field Mechanics
Solos: Arlan Strangeways, Squire, Journeyman Warcaster
Tier 1: Include only the models above
Benefit: Battlegroup gains pathfinder first turn
Tier 2: Two units of Sword Knights
Benefit: Free Sword Knight UA
Tier 3: No light warjacks in the army
Benefit: Cost of heavy warjacks reduced by 1
Tier 4: Includes Thunderhead
Benefit: Deployment zone is extended 2"


Why is this such a great tier list?  First of all, it's got all of the toys that you'd want to play with anyway!  Heavy warjacks?  A dude with a massive wrench that repairs warjacks?  More dudes who can repair warjacks?  Dudes who do more damage when they're near warjacks?  Cheaper heavy warjacks?  AND the Squire to give us more focus to warjacks!?  Pretty neat! 

Haters gonna hate

Now we can discuss the merits of the Thunderhead another time, as many think it is simply the worst character 'jack out there, but for the purpose of this article is to build a Tier 4 list and make it work.  Remember that I did preface by saying that this tier - although achievable at even 15 points - really only hits its stride at 50 points.  Let's start by looking at a 35 point list.  If you don't like taking Thunderhead, you can easily swap him out and play around with it.  This is what I came up with:

Darius (+5)
- Centurion (*8)
- Thunderhead (*11)
- Cyclone (*8)
- Squire (2)
Sword Knights (min, 4)
- UA (*Free!)
Sword Knights (min, 4)
Journeyman (3)

Dakka dakka!

So what do we notice first?  Well, discounting any discussion about the merits of taking Thunderhead at this points level, you might notice the Cyclone and think that it's a bit odd in a list like this with Darius.  Darius' spell list clearly seems to favor melee-centric warjacks with spells like Full Throttle and Jackhammer, right?  Well what we're interested in here is the Dual Covering Fire (*action) that the Cyclone has available.  It is able to place down 2 3" AOEs that cause a POW 12 damage roll on any model that enters or ends its activation inside the AOE.  What's neat is that we can place these AOEs anywhere within RNG of the Cyclone's guns.  So what?  Well if we have the Centurion and Thunderhead on the front lines, this means that we can place these AOEs on top of their base, meaning that any non-reach infantry that wishes to charge these warjacks will be killed before they even get a chance to swing!  (Note: If you need to make some 3" AOE templates, check my little tutorial here)

What this means is that the enemy has to rely on their heavies or lights to do any damage to our two heavy hitters, and it'll be difficult to do since they can have the benefit of Arcane Shield and Fortify from the Journeyman and Darius, respectively.  Even Molik Karn will have a hard time killing off a Centurion at ARM 23 or Thunderhead at ARM 22!  To be even more amusing, the Centurion can just use its polarity field to make sure even the big MK himself won't get the benefit of charging!  Yikes!

Don't let this happen to you!

Now this means that your opposing heavies can still do some serious damage, but Darius' feat lets him and his buddies move out and repair any warjacks completely!  So even if their heavy knocked out most of your systems, your heavies will be ready to go and bash some face!  The Sword Knights are just icing on the cake, and since that Centurion has reach, it means that they will be getting bonus on lots of targets and will be able to squeeze in more attacks.  Oh and their UA gives them penetrating strike so that they can choose the damage location on the enemy heavy!  Good-bye spirit or cortex!

Now that you have the general idea of the strategy we wish to employ, let's look at what we'll be up to at 50 points:

Stop.  Hammer time!

Darius (+5)
- Ironclad (*6)
- Ironclad (*6)
- Ironclad (*6)

- Thunderhead (*11)
- Cyclone (*8)
- Cyclone (*8)
- Squire (2)
Sword Knights (min, 4)
- UA (*Free!)
Sword Knights (min, 4)

What's different at 50 points is that we've essentially thrown out the idea of having beefy ARM stats on our warjacks and instead decided to spam heavies like a boss!  Sure, your opponent might be able to take out one of your Ironclads, but not 3, and we still have Thunderhead (mostly for our tier 4 benefit)!  Two Cyclones are now needed to throw out 4 of the 3" AOE covering fire templates - one for each heavy.  This allows us to cover more area on the board and more threat angles, while still providing our warjacks some great protection against infantry to make sure they hit the front lines at full steam (heh).  Between Darius and his scrapjacks, we still have enough models to repair each to full as needs require, and it will be very hard to remove 6 (!) heavy warjacks from the table.  While we don't have a 'jack with reach for those Sword Knights, we make up for it by having more jacks in general for them to flank with.  Oh and Full Throttle on Ironclads mean that they get a boosted roll for their Tremor on their hammers.

ZOMG