The Street Sweepers, Part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

A reminder of my list,
from the previous post

While I've been as sick as a simile, I've finally gotten a chance to play my Street Sweepers list.

In this case, it was against another Cygnar army- an epic Stryker list with Precursors, warjacks and the black 13th for range, and Rowdy.

Probably the biggest success of the army was my ability to prevent damage: one flank had stealth Commandos with Blur and the grenadier hiding behind a wall, while the other had my Trenchers move in with smoke each turn.

Performance:

Most elements performed about as expected:

-the Hunters blasted at warjacks
-the Charger shot whatever was out of the damage range of my infantry
-the Commandos did a mix of every attack they had, got in the way as a threat to melee infantry, and lasted inappropriately long with Blur up
-the Sentinel did minor damage, but was mostly there to shield Caine and the Hunters. It wasn't very useful, but would have been good if A-my opponent had ways of negotiating around my clouds or B- I ran out of clouds

Things that performed outside of the norm:
-the Grenadier was a surprisingly good place to put extra focus, as you don't need to use it to buy extra attacks (but has better and more reliable attacks than the Sentinel). Standing still with artillerist makes it functionally RAT 10, or 13 with a boost to hit, making it pretty deadly and not always require a boost to hit.
-Caine himself, until retaliating against a failed assassination run, hardly ever attacked. Running 5 warjacks meant that there was almost always a time where it was less risky and about as effective to put focus on one of them and hide.
-The Trenchers did surprisingly well: 7 points bought me a couple kills and, more importantly, 2 turns of immunity to incoming fire.

Thoughts:

I was strapped for focus, so will be lessening that load (see below). 

I was, after a strong first and second turn, on the retreat most of the game because of the combined threat of the Precursors and Stryker.

Smoke worked surprisingly well, though that may have been against this list in particular.

I had trouble concentrating fire enough to take out infantry, with the combined problem of Shield Wall and Deceleration (bringing precursors to ARM 20).

The denial was enough that I had the upper hand, and eventually forced a difficult assassination attempt. However, this certainly wouldn't be a primary list: anything that can easily handle stealth and clouds will have a lot less trouble with this list, and I'm not sure how a straight melee army would do.

Conclusions:

The biggest problem with the list was, short of a wall and a free point from the theme, I could have played this with any number of casters to better effect, because the only spells or attacks I regularly took advantage of was the common Blur and, to a lesser extent, Caine's accuracy.

Because of this, I'm looking to protect Caine better and to lighten his focus load, to make him play more like Caine, and less like a focus battery with a pistol.

The theme list just isn't very good, but it handled okay, and taught me to use some elements I hadn't explored before, so I'm definitely in it for round 2.

Revisions:

eCaine
-1 hunter
-1 Grenadier
Trencher Infantry
-1 Grenade Porter
-Unit Attachment
--1 Hunter

--1 Sentinel

Trencher Commandos

-2 Scattergunners
Artillerist
(+ 1 wall, 1st turn pathfinder, AD on the Sentinel)

As much as I love the humble Charger, it's time I think outside the box: I dropped my favorite little warjack.

This freed up 4 points. The first three of these went in to the Trencher Unit Attachment. Hopefully, the Sniper shot and more accurate shot from the Officer will help compensate for the loss of the medium-weight attack from the Charger.

The other reason for taking the Officer is for his Jack Marshal ability: Hunters generally want exactly one boost a turn (for boosting damage) so I lose a minor amount of flexibility in order to give Caine one more a turn. This, combined with no Charger, will give Caine access to an additional 2 focus a turn, based on how I ran him. This will also make his Feat turn more effective, as diverting resources to him will not weaken the rest of my army as much.

I basically never consider it necessary for the Sentinel to have focus (especially when that could go towards more pistol shots), so I attached it to the officer because it could get Advance Deploy (from the theme list

I spent the remaining point on another Scattergunner: while I love the guys, without Rangers to help, a little redundancy can really add to them.

Losing the Charger and Marshaling the Sentinel has a secondary benefit, in that it means that the entire army, other than Caine, will Advance Deploy, making it much more able to react to my opponents' deployment.

This list looses a little durability, but I believe it's worth it, for the added firepower and flexibility.