Kommander Sorscha: Army Building pt.1

Sorscha can make it easier to hit a model/unit through a few different way.  A few of them are focus intensive.  The odds of my opponent letting me focus my entire army on one unit is slim, so I'm going to need an army that is self sufficient.  My goal should be to wipe out a model/unit the round I make them stationary.  If they lose a round of activating, that should be a bonus.  The best way to do this is to start with a high MAT/RAT.  First I'll be looking at warjacks, units and solos that have a MAT or RAT at 7+.  Then I'll be looking at models that can increase their ability to hit from inside the unit or from another source.

Melee Models
Warjacks

• Beast-09
• Drago
• Torch

Units

• Doomreavers
• Kayazy Assassins
• Man-O-War Bombardiers
• Man-O-War Demolition Corps
• Man-O-War Shocktroopers
• Great Bears Of Gallowswood
• Kayazy Eliminators

Solos

• Manhunter
• Man-O-War Drakhun
• Man-O-War Kovnik
• Fenris
• Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich
• Uhlan Kovnik Markov
• Yuri the Axe
• Stannis Brocker
• Rutger Shaw
• Harlan Versh
• Bloody Bradigan
• First Mate Hawk

 Ranged Models
Units

•  Widowmakers
• Lady Aiyana & Master Holt

Solos

• Widowmaker Marksman
• Kell Bailoch
• Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios
• Eiryss, Angel of Retribution
• Dougal Macnaile

Lots of solos and not a lot of Warjacks.   It looks like I'm going to be running a very melee heavy army unless there are a good number of units that can buff their shooting.

Kommander Sorscha: What to Do?

When looking at a Warcaster, there's a few things I'm looking for.  Accuracy buff, damage buff, speed buff, defense buff, damage output and debuffs.  These can come from spells, feats or ability's.  Debuffs are generally anything that has a negative effect on the enemy.  I would include a knockdown effect like Earthquake and Inhospitable Ground as debuffs.  The more of these categories that a caster covers, the better.  The broader the effect is, the better it is. 

So what can Sorscha do for her army?
She has three ways to indirectly increase the accuracy of her army, through her feat, two spells and the crit on Frostfang.  She can cast Boundless Charge on three models in a round, at the cost of not doing much else.  She can grant concealment to everyone within 12".  She has a Handcannon and a reach melee weapon at reasonable power.  Getting frozen will make models lose there next activation, if used correctly.  Sorscha covers a lot of the criteria that I'm looking for, some of it better than others.  What she is lacking is any kind of damage buffs, so I'm going to need to find models that already have high damage output or can increase their own damage.  On the plus side, nothing on her card calls for friendly faction models, so I can use any and all mercenary's that will work for Khador.

The hard part is what will Sorscha be doing during the game?  I see three roles that she can take.

1. Focus battery.  Just handing out focus to jacks and letting them do the heavy lifting.  Because she only has 6 focus and no battlegroup spells or abilities, I don't want to spam jacks.  I can take more if they need less focus because they do something for free or will be making limited attacks.
2. Super Solo.  In this role, Sorscha is running around killing things.  Charge, kill a few models and Wind Rush away lets me inflict damage and stay somewhat safe.  This can be a very risky way to run, because if something goes wrong, then it's game over.
3. Spell Slinger.  Casting spells like Freezing Grip and Tempest to lock down units or set them up for the army to kill.  Gives a bit more freedom and range, but is more focus intensive.  

In reality she will be doing a mix of each of these during the game.  It's best to keep them all in mind and use what will workout that turn.

The Paradox Plunge 2013: Kommander Sorscha

The concept for the Paradox Plunge is to take a under loved or less played warcaster and champion them in competitive play for 2013.  For this year I'm going to champion Kommander Sorscha Kratikoff, who in the days of Mark 1, was a terror.  This is no longer the case in Mark 2.  Kommander Sorscha is familiar to anyone that has played a battle box game with Khador.  This would make her the most common warcaster among Khador players in terms of ownership.  

The way I'm going to approach making Sorscha into a tournament threat is roughly following the Power Progression articles in No Quarter magazine.  This means starting with the battle box and then working my way up to 50 point lists.  Part of why I'm writing this is to help me in my thought process and to explain my thinking for army choices.  Note:  any time I talk about average rolls I'm using 2D6=7 and 3D6=10.

Because I'm starting at the beginning, I'm going to review Sorscha's stats, feat and spells.
Stats

• SPD 6  Standard speed for Khador troops.  If you want faster, you need four legs.  The only things slower in faction are Man-O-Wars, Mechaniks and weapon crews.  This gives Sorscha a 11 inch threat on charges (SPD6+3 charging+2 Reach).
• STR 6  Pretty much average for Khador.
• MAT 6  Seems to be the breaking point for the more elite troops and melee focused models.  This will mean that Sorscha will hit DEF 13 on average.
• RAT 5  This is regular Winerguard RAT.  Sorscha will hit DEF 12 on average, so she will be less inclined to be shooting things than attacking in melee.  Sometimes the only option is shooting.  If it is really important, then Sorscha should be boosting her shots.
• DEF 16  This is the highest defense stat in faction, without the help of spells or effects.  The only other model in Khador that has a DEF of 16 is Sorscha's epic version.  To be hit on average rolls will need MAT 9 or MAT 6 with boosts.
• ARM 14  Tied for lowest warcaster armor with tho Old Witch.  Sorscha relies on he DEF, not her armor.
• CMD 9  Only slightly better than some of the troops that she will be leading.  In many cases, it's the same.
• 17 Health  Sorscha can take a hit, but not much more than that.
• +5 Warjack Points  Nothing for free.
• Focus 6  What I would call the Khador average.  There's a few casters at 7, one at 5 and one at D6+1.  Gives Sorscha a 12" Control Area.  I'll talk more about this with the spells.
• Immunity: Cold  This is not going to relevant in most games.  Cold effects are limited to a couple of models in Khador, Trolls, Circle and Legion.  It's useful to look at your opponents cards if they are playing one of thoes factions to see if this Immunity will come up.

Weapons

• Hand Cannon  RNG 12, ROF 1, POW 12.  Just a standard Iron Kingdoms hand cannon.  Better than a Blunderbuss in range.  The good thing is that it's the same range as her Control Area so that she can always check to see if something is in range
• Frostfang P+S of 13 magic weapon with reach and Critical Freeze.  This will make the model hit Stationary for one round unless it has Immunity Cold.  Combined with Sorscha's MAT of 6, she is going to want to boost most attacks with this weapon.

Feat

• Icy Gaze  Enemy models currently in Sorscha's Control Area and LOS become Stationary for one round unless they have Immunity: Cold.  What does this mean?  Stationary Models is covered on pg. 64 of the Warmachine rule book.  Enemies need to be within 12' of Sorscha and she needs to be able to draw LOS to them.  So clouds, forests, other models and effects that reduce how effective this feat will be.  Timing and placement is important for using this feat.  There's a few ways to use Icy Gaze.  The first is disruption.  Because models that are stationary can't do anything, hitting the enemy army can keep things out of control zones in scenario play. Or it can give you an extra round to set up your army for a better turn.  The second way is to use Icy Gaze as an attrition tool.  Because stationary are DEF 5 against shooting and automatically hit in melee, this can be a great tool to take out opposing high defense models or large parts of the army.

Spells

• Boundless Charge: Cost 2 RNG 6.  During its activation, target friendly model can charge without spending focus or being forced and gains +2" movement and Pathfinder when it charges.  Boundless Charge lasts for one turn.  This is a spell that helps get a model into combat.  Because it only affects one model, it's not that useful to a unit.  It is however a great spell to cast on a Focus loaded jack to have it wreck things.
• Fog of War: Cost 3 RNG Self AOE Control Upkeepable.  Models gain concealment while in this model's control area.   Helps out against shooting, but it can also help your enemies because every model gains the bonus.  It's good for protecting things on the first few rounds of the game, but once things are in melee, it's not needed.  The only exception would be if there are a lot of Gunfighters in the opposing army.
• Freezing Grip: Cost 4 RNG 8 Offensive.  Target model/unit without Immunity: Cold becomes stationary for one round.  This is a great spell to shut down a model/unit for a round.  Has the same uses as Icy Gaze, but at a shorter range and needs an attack roll to work.
• Razor Wind: Cost 2 RNG 10 POW 12 Offensive.  Standard Khador attack spell.
• Tempest: Cost 4 RNG 8 AOE 4 POW 12 Offensive.  Models hit by Tempest are knocked down and suffer a POW 12.  This is different from a normal AOE spell in that everything under the AOE takes a full POW 12 and not a blast damage roll.  The big part of this is also the knockdown.  If Sorscha is 4" away from a small based model, the AOE will not deviate enough to miss and will not come back enough to hit Sorscha.  This can be useful against high defense casters.
• Wind Rush: Cost 2 RNG Self.  Sorscha can immediately make a full advance and gains +2 DEF for one round.  Wind Rush can only be cast once per turn.  This spell increases Sorscha's threat range by another 6".  I find that this will be cast just about every turn for the DEF bonus alone.  It also is useful for getting into better positions as it can be cast before taking her normal movement.  Sorscha can Wind Rush, then declare a charge.

The hardest part of playing Sorscha is going to be figuring out what to do with her focus each turn.  Two of her powerful spells cost 4 and most likely will require another focus to boost to hit.  This will not leave enough to Wind Rush in a turn that you cast Freezing Grip or Tempest.  Sorscha also can't feed a jack focus and cast her big spells.  Most common will be giving out 3 focus to a jack and then casting Boundless Charge on it.  If I'm planing on casting Wind Rush in a turn, this also reduces that else I can do with focus.  This also means that her battlegroup is going to be small.  Perhaps only one jack or jacks that are focus efficient.