Warmachine: Iron Mother Directrix
There’s been a big debate on the forums recently as to whether Iron Mother is one of the best warcasters in Convergence, or one of the worst. With her official release, you’ll be able to find out for yourself.
The first thing that stands out is that she’s actually a warcaster unit, accompanied by 2 exponent servitors. Each servitor has a gun that does no damage on hit, but instead adds +2 to any damage taken by that model/unit for the rest of the round. This is similar to having 2 Lady Aiyana models in your battlegroup, albeit with a lower chance of hitting.
There have been a lot of complaints about their accuracy, but honestly if they are able to aim, they are pretty much guaranteed to hit a heavy/ low def target with at least one of their shots, and about a 50/50 to hit an average warcaster def. On the plus side, as long as Mother is alive, she’ll have at least one exponent servitor with her, since she can put one into play if there are fewer than 2 on the table. That happens during control phase, so unfortunately no shenanigans with moving her up first to gain the aiming bonus on the spawned servitor.
The second thing that really stands out is her focus score of 8. Models with 8 focus are very rarely outright bad (even Mohsar is better than a lot of people give him credit for). With her field marshall turning everything in her battlegroup into an arc node, she’ll have no trouble getting spells where she needs them. The real question is how applicable her spells are to a given situation.
Fire Group: +2 range to everything in her battlegroup. This is actually an accuracy buff as well, since it increases the likelihood you’ll be able to aim. Her servitors can aim from 12″, Prime Axiom can aim drags from 13″, Monitors can aim from 15″. Mother herself has probably the most powerful gun of any warcaster, it’s basically the equivalent of Obliteration from 13″ away.
Shrapnel Swarm: A cost 3 offensive spell that, if it directly hits, does a 4″ AoE of automatic 1 point of damage to everything in it (including the original model if it’s still standing after taking a pow 13). Unfortunately, this requires a direct hit on an enemy, so you can’t place your own servitors or drift it onto spread-out infantry. Ironically, it’s probably most useful for infantry clearing against Convergence, because it ignores Iron Sentinel and clears B2B Optifex off of heavies. What it does provide is the personal threat of up to 2 shrapnel swarms and a gun shot. If you’re able to tag a caster with the exponent servitor first, that’s 2 pow 15s and a pow 17, two of which can be boosted, plus the 2 points worth of plink damage from the AoE.
Tactical Supremacy: This upkeep lets a model/unit move 3″ at the end of your turn. Situationally useful for getting Mother herself further out of harms way after shooting something with her gun, or for getting a model/unit onto a scenario point. If nothing else, it’s a good first turn buff for Reciprocators to get further up the field.
Backlash: This is an offensive upkeep that causes an enemy warcaster to take a point of damage any time the backlashed warjack takes damage. There’s been a lot of discussion about building Mother towards spamming Elimination servitors for 1 point puncture damage to abuse backlash. Her field marshall makes it at least theoretically possible to put this spell on a warjack in your opponent’s advanced deployment zone on turn 1 (Prime Axiom throws a Steady heavy vector downfield, it can still arc because it won’t be knocked down). How realistically useful this is remains to be seen, especially against the stronger warmachine factions (Menoth can choir, Cryx can kill the one jack they brought before you get to it, etc).
Domination: This is the most situational of her spells. Take control of a non-character, non-colossal, non-spell warded enemy warjack, make an advance and one attack with it. Basically, this spell reads as “Are you playing Khador, and did you bring a Devastator or Demolisher? Are you playing Axis, and did you leave Iron Aggression on an Inverter near him? Sucks to be you.” Otherwise, you may as well cross it off her list. By far the most disappointing spell on her card, if this were Telekinesis instead (or in addition), there’d be no debate on her overall power level.
Finally, her feat. It makes her and all her warjacks (not her servitors) MAT 8 RAT 8 for a turn. Pretty straightforward, and somewhat makes up for her otherwise bad MAT 5 and decent RAT 5.
So after getting her painted up and on the table, how does she actually play? It’s really easy to build a decent shooting battlegroup with her. Needing not-snakeyes to aim and hit prowled warpwolf stalkers from teleport + warpath range is alright. Problem is that triple ones still happen when you have a low volume of attacks, and you need everything to hit (and crit) in order to actually shoot down heavies with Monitors. She’s definitely not eLylyth. Furthermore, if you build in that direction, she doesn’t really have anything to help contest zones. Which pretty much leaves you with assassination as an endgame.
The corollary will definitely help her out (she has so many ways to spend her own focus), and the release of the Assimilator and Transfinite Emergence Projector likely will as well. For now my initial impression is that she’s fun to play, and quite possibly the best looking model in the faction, but probably not at the top of the competitive heap.
