Retribution Tactica 01

Got this very insightful email from a viewer:

Shawn,

I just watched your bout against Khador. First off, I want to suggest you put video links from youtube on the privateer press forums. They have a battle report section that gets a lot of traffic. You'll also get a lot of good critiques there.

As far as your list goes, you said you ordered some new stuff. That's good, because it seems like certain areas of your current list are falling flat. This is what I can say about this list. Rahn isn't a big time jack caster, so bringing 2 Phoenix (a huge amount of points) AND a Chimera might be overkill. Most of the more competitive Rahn lists have a single Phoenix and a Chimera and no other jacks. Rahn isn't about providing mismatches with your opponent, as far as hitting power is concerned. Rahn's game is to control the board and set up his own units/jacks to make meaningful charges/attacks with little or no retaliation. Bouncing telekinesis off of your two arc nodes could have prevented Beast-09 from charging and could have provided a turn to further pummel the infantry ranks with your Shyeel Mages. I can't stress how good 2 units of them are with Rahn. The trouble you're having with your dawnguard isn't necessarily your playstyle, it's the unit. That unit isn't meant to be a tarpit (what the WM/Hordes community calls a high defense/high ARM unit that just sticks to you...like tar). The Houseguard Halberdier's Shield Wall is perfect for that role, at ARM 18 in Shield Wall. A full unit of them plus their Unit Attachment is a perfect example of a tarpit unit. The dawnguard would likely follow up behind them while the battle mages flank either side. Also, Battle Mage Magisters are AWESOME. I mean completely and utterly auto-include with the Battle Mage units.

Just try to remember that Rahn has A LOT of board control elements. You want to use those elements to reposition your opponent's models. Retribution simply does not have the hitting power or hit boxes to go toe-to-toe with Khador; no army in the game does, really. That's Khador's trap, if they can lock you up in combat, they WILL wear you down eventually. That's why Rahn is such a great matchup against Khador. He can literally prevent them from getting locked in combat until they have hardly anything left.

If you have the models, and are going to play 50pts (like you said in the video), try something along these lines:

Rahn
Chimera
Phoenix

Dawnguard Sentinels (full unit)
---Sentinel Unit Attachment
---Soulless Escort (makes them a lot more survivable)
Houseguard Halberdiers (full unit)
---Halberdier Unit Attachment
---Soulless Escort
House Shyeel Battle Mages
House Shyeel Battle Mages

Arcanist (to manage your jacks and free up focus from Rahn)
House Shyeel Magister
House Shyeel Magister
Eiryss, Mage hunter of Ios

This list literally makes me cringe, thinking about playing against it. That is tons of magic attacks for Rahn's feat, tons of board control, lots of sticky, swampy models to wade through...

This list would be SO hard to beat.


The more years I play this game, the more I realize this game is really similar to old, Roman-style military tactics. You line up in formations and move in one, concerted movement.

You can use anything I say in this in your blog, by the way.

Ted