Warmachine: Khador’s Reckoning
The Khadoran war machine keeps on churning out more indomitable tools of war! Let’s dive into the new weapons available to the Motherland released in the Reckoning expansion!
What’s up guys!? It’s Trevy the Great from Way of the Swan here for another super cool Reckoning review. Earlier I touched quickly on the new releases for Cygnar in the new Warmachine expansion; this time around let’s dive into the new tools released for the limitless armies of the Empire! Once again; I’m just going to go over what I think of the new releases, not necessarily what they do on the table. The cards are all over the place, I’m sure you can find them.
In this book Khador became the first Faction to sport two Warcaster units with the release of Obavnik Kommander Zerkova. While filling largely the same role as other Khadoran ‘casters like Sorscha1, Zerkova2 (or Z2 as she’s being called by the kids these days) brings a lot more raw infantry clearing potential with less of a control-oriented game plan. With lots of Greylords or Valachev’d magic users, her list can throw so many magical attacks benefitting from Occult Whispers to make any Cryx player quake in their boots. Even fun tricks like double Zephyrs from Valachev two Kisses from Aiyana or multiple clouds from Ternion or Arcanist Corps gives her an interesting toolbox of abilities. Unfortunately, a relative lack of answers to high armor or anti-magic tech makes her a little one-dimensional when it comes to list pairings; Zerkova comes prepared with a pretty strong assassination option via Telgesh Mark and a couple Whispered spells to play out of those bad matchups.
Next up is Khador’s newest colossal; the Victor. This big guy is being touted on the interwebz as Khador’s savior; while I don’t think he’s quite that game-changing, he is pretty sweet. The most important benefit he brings to the table is an interesting and varied toolbox on his Siege Mortar. Despite its inaccuracy (making the Khador ‘jack RAT 0), even on a miss there’s a significant chance that the AoE won’t drift far enough to miss the target. With an AoE radius of 2.5”, it’ll hit anything smaller than a Huge based target on a 3 or less, giving it a 50/50 chance to tag the target with blast damage and a secondary effect. With ‘casters like Sorscha, who can make targets stationary or knock them down to mitigate the Victor’s negligible RAT, a POW 15 arcing fire shot that threats ~24” is a terrifying prospect, and even a deviating 5” fire bomb is enough to keep most light infantry honest, especially on a chassis that still boasts the grandiose hitting power of a Khadoran colossal.
A bit of a surprise on the releases in Reckoning for Khador were the Mad Dog and Rager. These two heavies are based off of the Berserker chassis with all of its benefits and detriments and will probably open the door for an awesome new modular plastic kit like the new Stormclad/Reliant that’s coming any day now.
Despite the hype that’s been growing about the Mad Dog since his High Command card was spoiled ages ago, the poor Berserker variant isn’t particularly exciting. Besides being the cheapest heavy ‘jack in the entire game (theme forces notwithstanding) and therefore spawning all sorts of weird Karchev lists, it fills a niche that wasn’t really lacking. It’s a dedicated trample-bot and doesn’t stand up in a real fight, but at SPD 4 the chances of it making it into a position to find a legal landing zone are slim… that is, unless it uses Jury Rigged and takes the chance to blow itself up. Still 5 points for 31 boxes and a way for a lot of ‘casters to spend their ‘jack points isn’t the worst thing ever.
In sharp contrast to his cousins the Rager on the other hand is an impressive piece of work; for one more point than the Mad Dog (the same cost as a standard Berserker), this guy brings a shield, a gun and Shield Guard to the table. While not particularly impressive in melee (unfortunately the drawback of the chassis as a whole), 6 points for an ARM 20, 31 box shield guard who can soak WJP for ‘casters that don’t want to spend them or take hits for more important pieces is impressive. Even sitting this guy in the back of a zone as a bargain-bin Devastator can be worth its weight in gold… and that gun has to hit something eventually, right? The argument has been made that a pair of Ogrun Bokors are better than this guy for the same points and a similar role; while that’s absolutely true for protecting your ‘caster or other important pieces from snipers or pesky solos like Eiryss, a Bokor can’t usually take more than one big hit from heavy artillery. The Rager on the other hand has armor and boxes to spare, so taking those heavier shots isn’t a problem for this guy. He’s basically ablative armor anyway. I don’t expect to see this guy in every list, but I certainly think he has his place as a defensive piece.
Overall, some strong new improvements from the Khadoran armory! Stay tuned for more Reckoning talk as I try to cover the new releases from every Warmachine Faction!
Do you agree with my impressions? Why or why not?
Remember to check out Way of the Swan for more neat Warmachine/Hordes content!
