Post by osiris on Jan 9, 2020 18:13:17 GMT -5
Updated for 1.091
Starting with Willa Shaw - Burning the Breeze Theme posse:
Willa can be selected as on foot or mounted for a few points more. With the style of her list, I would highly suggest taking the mounted version, as you get three more quick, an extra grit, rapid, and a set of liberty gatling guns in exchange for swapping out target priority (a nearly useless ability anyway) with moving target (great!), and gaining bulky. Also, of importance she also gains the machine trait when mounted, which can add to synergies in her list (see below).
Ok, so for her posse, you essentially get 4 slots where you can pick from union mounted faces or Iron horse cavalry. Since there are only three Union mounted faces total to choose from, you will be taking some cavalry (which is ok, because they are pretty fantastic anyway) The other two slots have the additional option of taking a unit of Iron Eagles (which is where your firepower will come from). You do not need to fill the posse slots to get her faction bonus, but to be honest, I haven't seen normal reserves be all that useful in games anyway. The strength of this posse comes from its heavy shooting firepower, and synergies from the included faces and boss, not the posse bonus.
First lets look at the three Faces available to ride with Willa:
Mounted Captain Johnathan Sheridan (If you dont name his cavalry something with "white star" in the name, you're missing the point...)
Anyway, he has a pistol and a rifle that he'll essentially never use, run of the mill stats, a decent melee weapon, the gatlings for his snowmobile, er 'iron horse'. and is otherwise just a basic run of the mill face. His advantages are his Tactical Brilliance and Counter Intelligence, as well as Trailfinder. The other advantage is he is cheap coming in at only 100 points. worth it.
Mounted Kay Free
She's vital to making this posse work. She has plenty of special rules that will make her very helpful. Rejuvenate is fantastic for filling up the boss' chips between activations, override automata is generally too short ranged to be amazing, but compelling attack dogs to run away from your shooters can be a game changer, and of course, she has sic'em, allowing you to bring some K9 automata of your own if you so desire. She has a very good melee weapon and her bike comes with the electrocarbines, but her fight and aim are a tad on the low side. The reason she is vital however, is her repair ability. "But wait" I hear you say, "Iron eagles are the only vehicle in this list, and they can already reroll their grit saves" yes, this is true, however, all of your mounted faces and your cavalry have the machine trait..... so she basically becomes the "sawbones" for this posse.
Mounted Sierra Icarus
This is the one union mounted face that you can probably do without in this posse, although she isn't bad, for her cost she just doesn't bring much that other units can't do. She also has rejuvenate, AND invigorate, and she's elite, and she does come with some decent melee and shooting weapons, so like I said, not bad. But, she lacks any fortune of her own and for 135 points, she begins to become questionable. Now, because she has Rapport, she lets you bring civilians, but nobody else in your posse can benefit from them but her, so that's a trick you could bring to guarantee some decapitates and blasts on her own weapons, but the civilians aren't as maneuverable as her, and again, for the points, you have better tricks up your sleeve, only bring her in higher point lists when you have points to spare.
Union Iron Horse Cavalry
These are the workhorses (pun intended) of this posse and while a little on the pricy side, punch well above their weight. remember they're moving targets, so they're usually a bit harder to hit, and near Willa Shaw, they're Grit 6, and near Kay Free they reroll that. it's expensive, but for 350 points, you get a unit of 4, two of which have flamethrowers (with torrent engulf) and two with gatlings. combined with their speed and face support, these can be deadly (remember you can't quick and the dead torrent weapons, engulf ignores cover and cooks all people hiding in buildings) expensive but worth it, you can also trim the unit down to run them in two teams of two (for the same total cost) which give you more tactical flexibility, but can also make them a bit more vulnerable to yeller checks (although they do come with disciplined to help mitigate that)
Iron Eagles
Heavy shooting fire support. They're tesla masterwork, durable grit 6, they shouldn't blow up too easily, but lacking tough or mettle really hurts. Also, as ancillary with mind 4, these things can be really fragile to special attacks. They may be immune to stun (actually your whole posse is), but hazardous weapons can wipe these out quickly as can disorder (oddly these are vulnerable to smoke grenades because of this as well). These are the glass cannons of your army. You can partially mitigate the yeller weakness by putting them into groups of 2 or 3, but that gets expensive pretty quickly. thankfully, these have pretty long range weapons, and your opponent should be worrying about the cavalry charging down their throat as well, so they can still bring some long range pain.
To play this posse, You'll need to spend at least 400 points on Willa, Kay, and Johnathan, 350 or so on cavalry, and a couple hundred on iron eagles (This puts you at 950 in a 1000 point game, and you can take a gun dog to fill in the missing points, or an attack dog and a booby trap). you can trim down to just the two cavalry with flamethrowers, and a single iron eagle and bring the list in at 680 points, but that would be difficult to play, below that amount would be nearly impossible (although for a 600 point game you COULD skip Captain Sheridan to get in at 580) But this posse really shines at high points limits, where you can bring even more cavalry and Sierra if you wish.
One vital piece of information. Find any of your opponents that have weapons with the Disrupt quality and eliminate them as quickly as possible, or they will tear your units to pieces.
This posse is fast and maneuverable, hard to kill due to combinations of rerolling hits against them, as well as rerolling grit. and brings incredible ranged firepower. They have weapons to negate Quick and the Dead, can bring blasts to fight the Order, and can bring alot of stun to deal with tough-heavy opponents. learning to properly keep their bonuses in play and striking at the correct enemy at the correct time will lead to alot of victories with this posse.
Starting with Willa Shaw - Burning the Breeze Theme posse:
Willa can be selected as on foot or mounted for a few points more. With the style of her list, I would highly suggest taking the mounted version, as you get three more quick, an extra grit, rapid, and a set of liberty gatling guns in exchange for swapping out target priority (a nearly useless ability anyway) with moving target (great!), and gaining bulky. Also, of importance she also gains the machine trait when mounted, which can add to synergies in her list (see below).
Ok, so for her posse, you essentially get 4 slots where you can pick from union mounted faces or Iron horse cavalry. Since there are only three Union mounted faces total to choose from, you will be taking some cavalry (which is ok, because they are pretty fantastic anyway) The other two slots have the additional option of taking a unit of Iron Eagles (which is where your firepower will come from). You do not need to fill the posse slots to get her faction bonus, but to be honest, I haven't seen normal reserves be all that useful in games anyway. The strength of this posse comes from its heavy shooting firepower, and synergies from the included faces and boss, not the posse bonus.
First lets look at the three Faces available to ride with Willa:
Mounted Captain Johnathan Sheridan (If you dont name his cavalry something with "white star" in the name, you're missing the point...)
Anyway, he has a pistol and a rifle that he'll essentially never use, run of the mill stats, a decent melee weapon, the gatlings for his snowmobile, er 'iron horse'. and is otherwise just a basic run of the mill face. His advantages are his Tactical Brilliance and Counter Intelligence, as well as Trailfinder. The other advantage is he is cheap coming in at only 100 points. worth it.
Mounted Kay Free
She's vital to making this posse work. She has plenty of special rules that will make her very helpful. Rejuvenate is fantastic for filling up the boss' chips between activations, override automata is generally too short ranged to be amazing, but compelling attack dogs to run away from your shooters can be a game changer, and of course, she has sic'em, allowing you to bring some K9 automata of your own if you so desire. She has a very good melee weapon and her bike comes with the electrocarbines, but her fight and aim are a tad on the low side. The reason she is vital however, is her repair ability. "But wait" I hear you say, "Iron eagles are the only vehicle in this list, and they can already reroll their grit saves" yes, this is true, however, all of your mounted faces and your cavalry have the machine trait..... so she basically becomes the "sawbones" for this posse.
Mounted Sierra Icarus
This is the one union mounted face that you can probably do without in this posse, although she isn't bad, for her cost she just doesn't bring much that other units can't do. She also has rejuvenate, AND invigorate, and she's elite, and she does come with some decent melee and shooting weapons, so like I said, not bad. But, she lacks any fortune of her own and for 135 points, she begins to become questionable. Now, because she has Rapport, she lets you bring civilians, but nobody else in your posse can benefit from them but her, so that's a trick you could bring to guarantee some decapitates and blasts on her own weapons, but the civilians aren't as maneuverable as her, and again, for the points, you have better tricks up your sleeve, only bring her in higher point lists when you have points to spare.
Union Iron Horse Cavalry
These are the workhorses (pun intended) of this posse and while a little on the pricy side, punch well above their weight. remember they're moving targets, so they're usually a bit harder to hit, and near Willa Shaw, they're Grit 6, and near Kay Free they reroll that. it's expensive, but for 350 points, you get a unit of 4, two of which have flamethrowers (with torrent engulf) and two with gatlings. combined with their speed and face support, these can be deadly (remember you can't quick and the dead torrent weapons, engulf ignores cover and cooks all people hiding in buildings) expensive but worth it, you can also trim the unit down to run them in two teams of two (for the same total cost) which give you more tactical flexibility, but can also make them a bit more vulnerable to yeller checks (although they do come with disciplined to help mitigate that)
Iron Eagles
Heavy shooting fire support. They're tesla masterwork, durable grit 6, they shouldn't blow up too easily, but lacking tough or mettle really hurts. Also, as ancillary with mind 4, these things can be really fragile to special attacks. They may be immune to stun (actually your whole posse is), but hazardous weapons can wipe these out quickly as can disorder (oddly these are vulnerable to smoke grenades because of this as well). These are the glass cannons of your army. You can partially mitigate the yeller weakness by putting them into groups of 2 or 3, but that gets expensive pretty quickly. thankfully, these have pretty long range weapons, and your opponent should be worrying about the cavalry charging down their throat as well, so they can still bring some long range pain.
To play this posse, You'll need to spend at least 400 points on Willa, Kay, and Johnathan, 350 or so on cavalry, and a couple hundred on iron eagles (This puts you at 950 in a 1000 point game, and you can take a gun dog to fill in the missing points, or an attack dog and a booby trap). you can trim down to just the two cavalry with flamethrowers, and a single iron eagle and bring the list in at 680 points, but that would be difficult to play, below that amount would be nearly impossible (although for a 600 point game you COULD skip Captain Sheridan to get in at 580) But this posse really shines at high points limits, where you can bring even more cavalry and Sierra if you wish.
One vital piece of information. Find any of your opponents that have weapons with the Disrupt quality and eliminate them as quickly as possible, or they will tear your units to pieces.
This posse is fast and maneuverable, hard to kill due to combinations of rerolling hits against them, as well as rerolling grit. and brings incredible ranged firepower. They have weapons to negate Quick and the Dead, can bring blasts to fight the Order, and can bring alot of stun to deal with tough-heavy opponents. learning to properly keep their bonuses in play and striking at the correct enemy at the correct time will lead to alot of victories with this posse.