Starting to thing (or rethink) the whole idea of Cygnar's ranged superiority. The more I did and think through things, they have a lot of ranged assets, but lack the terror inducing superiority that a Lylyth2 list brings to the table, or Bart + Galleon, or some of the other "Meta-Benders" that exist out there. Cygnar is probably second to none for effects that allow them to shoot accurately and ignore targeting, but rarely do we have the ability to hit with a POW greater than 10 (prior to CRA's).
This leads to an interesting dilemma, we don't have the out right destructive power at range to crush an enemy army without fear of retribution, but the heavy emphasis on ranged seems to scream that we need to soften up targets to reduce the impending onslaught. We have a lot of tricks to get around things (anti stealth in particular) but nothing that ignores pretty much everything. For example some of the other meta-benders in the ranged game:
- Lylyth2's ranged game ignores: forests, concealment, clouds and stealth (eyeless sight)
- Ravyn's Snipe feet go ignores: LOS in general, magic buffs, animi, cover, concealment...
We also lack the staying power of something like:
- Bart + Galleon: 4 focus a turn for armor 22, fully boosted ranged damage (with between 3 and 7 attacks a turn).
As Cygnar it often feels like we show up to the battle field and face teleporting assholes who ignore all the rules we have to follow. We don't have a heavy stealth caster, we lack the ability to counter a lot of upkeeps and the like within faction (and even outside of faction we have Eiryss for upkeep removal).
This is not a Cygnar mweh article however, it is simply looking at what our enemies have (stealth, cheaty rules, and oddly more armor buffs etc). With all our ranged superiority how do we start to look at taking advantage of it.
First of one of the other things Cygnar does well (in my opinion) is board control. We can dictate where large portions of or enemies cannot go, or force them to play our game. We can spam reasonably high powered templates that stay in play and do damage, not only that we get to place them in larger numbers than most people get (off the top of my head placeable POW 10 from Trencher Chain Guns and Longgunners, Placeable POW 12's from the Cyclone and Stormwall).
We also have access to probably the second best defensive buffs in the game (blur and arcane shield are good, defenders ward is ridiculously awesome...), but having it on a 3 point solo is pretty bad assed as far as keeping our stuff up and going. We also have Stryker1 who gives your entire army +5 ARM for a turn. All and all we can put up some decent meat shields.
Add a dash of either Haley ruining peoples days with Temporal Barrier or Haley2's feat and time bomb, you can stretch out the pain for as long as possible.
At the end of the day (as it is getting late and I am totally rambling), I think we as Cygnar have a strength in ranged attacks, but I think that we lack some of the tricks that allow other faction to seemingly dominate at ranged. I am pretty sure I am stuck in a bit of Cygnar, I am doing it wrong...
I think we may need to look into combined arms over straight up pew-pew and accept that skew lists will be hard for us to pull off... With work killing me and twins on the way, Dojoing will abound for a while, but I am pretty sure the Swan I have loved since MK I is more of a Phoenix, but only time will tell (or Flanzer playing Cyngar ).
