First Impressions: Convergence of Cyriss
So a while ago, I had a short stint with Warmachine. It was a fun game, but I just didn't get sucked into it. I liked Skorne and Khador enough to get me interested, but their models didn't keep me sucked into the game as long as I thought they would have. Also, since I often keep tournaments in mind, the Steamroller format didn't really appeal to me with either of these factions, since it would necessitate a larger investment, and usually a lot of miniatures that I didn't care for to be competitive. Well, now the Convergence of Cyriss is out, and that's pretty much all changed. I'm a huge fan of the 1920-1930's Sci-fi aesthetic, reminiscent of movies like Metropolis, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and The Rocketeer, as well as Dr. Who's Cybermen. I can totally imagine an army of polished steel, aluminum and brass marching across the battle field, crackling with electricity. Of the miniatures that have been seen, none of them are really offensive to me, and the ones I like the least (the Obstructors), I think may still be tolerable.
Alright, enough nerding out over the miniatures, how about the mechanics? Well last night, my friend, Wongchen, aka Mr Mayhem, was kind enough to come over, re-teach me the rules of the game, and then play a quick 10 point game with what comes in the Convergence of Cyriss Battlegroup.
The first thing I noticed was that while I expected that the Focus Induction rule would some how be mitigated by my casters having a low focus or something, that wasn't the case at all! Forge Master Syntherion has a respectable 6 Focus (as well as being a downright pain to kill with Arm 18 and 20 Damage), and when combined with Resourceful, it really means you have a lot of focus to spend every turn. I learned quickly that there was little use in ever giving any of my vectors 3 Focus, most often they'd get 1 or 2 and I'd let Focus Induction take care of the rest, which left me with plenty of focus every turn for either armor, or for casting one of Syntherions many useful spells. After the game, I read over the other Warcasters, and honestly, all of them seem like 10's. Each one has a decent MAT/RAT (which is very important as the MAT/RAT is passed to your vectors), a fair amount of focus, and are generally hard to kill across the board.
The starter set comes with 3 Vectors: a Galvanizer (funny looking tripod with a saw), a Mitigator (another tripod, but with a hugely annoying gun), and a larger Cipher (with yet another annoying gun, as well as 2 nasty Piston Spikes). I probably didn't use the Galvanizer to the best of it's ability, but it did get to get punched around a bit and surprised me how resilient it was (also thanks to Syntherion's auto repair). The Mitigator had a ton of fun, firing off it's blast that was knocking down my opponent's jacks left and right. Since it has 360° vision, and a fairly decent range, it had no problem finding a good spot to sit still and fling it's razor bolo... I can definitely see having multiples in my list. Lastly, the Cipher was slow, resilient and packed a mean punch, basically everything I expected from it, while it's Servipod Mortar was flinging out 4" AOE Craters and Flares, which, when combined with the Mitigator knocking everything down, meant my opponent wasn't going very far.
In general, the faction seems very fun, the Focus Induction is an interesting mechanic, and after playing a game, and re-reading all the Vectors in the book, it definitely seems like a very dynamic force with lots of options. I look forward to getting a ton of these chrome warriors ready for a Steamroller sized force!