Houseguard Riflemen

Template:Retbox2 This model is playable only in an Unlimited format.

Companies of riflemen have joined the Retribution in number and serve as the long-reaching line for the army abroad. They wield heavy rifles capable of delivering punishing firepower against the human armies that so greatly outnumber them. Every rifleman is trained to take careful aim and regard each trigger pull as a prospective kill.

Basic Info

Abilities

• Entire unit
  • Template:Combined Ranged Attack
  • Template:Practiced Maneuvers

• Officer only
  • The officer has +1 MAT & RAT and 5 hitpoints.
  • Template:Officer
  • Template:Granted (Template:War-Tempered-alt)
  • Template:Whites of Their Eyes

• Standard only
  • Template:Standard Bearer
  • Template:Take Up

Weapons

• Leader, Grunts, & Officer
  • Long Rifle - 14" range, POW 10 ranged attack.
  • Sword - 0.5" reach, P+S 7 melee attack

• Standard Bearer
  • Template:Unarmed

Weapon Attachment

• You may add up to 3 Soulless Escorts to this unit. Their info has been omitted for brevity.

Theme Forces

• Template:Defenders of Ios

Thought on Houseguard Riflemen

File:HouseguardRiflemenUA.png

Command Attachment

Houseguard Riflemen in a nutshell

Houseguard Riflemen, along with the Winter Guard Rifle Corps and the Long Gunners have the longest range in the game among the ranged infantry units. Beside having access to Practiced Manoeuvrers, Khador has weapon attachments to boost the damage output, Cygnar's soldiers sport Dual Fire and some extra mobility with Flawless Manoeuvrers, and Retribution has ways to engage targets in melee. They have superior stats to their competitors, but average troops still don't sweat much about hitting and killing them.

Thoughts on adding the CA and/or WA

What's not to like about CRA-ing into melee? And to help out, when the lines close, souped up accuracy can be leveraged for a round of shooting.

Combos & Synergies

• Lord Arcanist Ossyan fixes virtually everything that's an issue for the Houseguard Riflemen:
  • Damage output - feat
  • Low RAT despite CRA - Fortune (everyone loves a re-roll)
  • Mass dude removal - Shatterstorm (pretty sweet splash damage)
• Issyria, Sibyl of Dawn does similarly, except no Shatterstorm. But she can alleviate the Thane's burdens, providing True Sight for a key turn.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• Given their abilities and options next to their equivalents in other factions, Houseguard Riflemen are quite expensive and offer little by way of anything either new or particularly flexible.
• They're a low impact unit who need more help than one is usually comfortable with providing (5 POW 12 is not very inspiring, even from RNG 14).
• Shooting into melee to unjam something is often a waste. Because of the penalty and potential for redirecting into the back of your own model, that shot needs to be landed without fail... so a 5-man CRA is usually a minimum so as not to fluff it (against warnouns, never mind warriors)... but this is often either not enough to clear the jam (the POW of the shot is useless against the boxes), or complete overkill (high DEF and low boxes which would usually never withstand a 2-man CRA, never mind a larger one).

Tricks & Tips

• Per model, they cost just as much for a min unit as a max unit, so it is a reasonable option to take a min unit accompanied by a Thane for long range solo hunting.

Other

Trivia

Released in Forces of Warmachine: Retribution of Scyrah (Novermber 2009)