How do you solve a problem like Edward?

I got into Warmachine for one reason, and one reason alone: Giant Robots. I love steampunk, and I love the idea of fighting robots, so Warmachine just seemed like a perfect fit for me. Of course, when I started playing, I discovered that it wasn’t quite that simple. While warjacks were the thematic focus of the game, in gameplay terms infantry tended to be a much better bargain. They operate more independantly, they’re often harder to wipe out in one swoop, and they do some tricky things with probability through the sheer quantity of dice they roll.

Now, as it happens, the game had one warcaster who could handle multiple warjacks… and by a fluke, he was the same faction as the battlebox I’d bought purely for looks. Edward Dominic Darius is, in Mk.I at least, the premier warjack caster. Other warcasters make their jacks move, but Darius makes his dance. Others make their jacks strong, but Darius makes his into gods.

He was hard to learn, but once I figured him out, that was when I truly started to enjoy the game. I spent nearly a month, and nearly $50 in parts, converting his model into something worthy of his rules. Darius truly defined for me the way this game should be played: load up on walking steel and slam it into your opponent’s face.

Fast forward to the afternoon of April 6th. The Mk.II rules have come out, and Darius is… gone. He is completely and utterly gone. Every one of his tricks– not just “most”, but all– has been deleted. Put simply, the new version is only a Jack caster by exclusion– he has no infantry buffs or self-buffs, so by process of elimination he’s a jack caster. But that’s about as far as it goes.

I’ve been ranting about the changes to my favourite model for three days now, and I’m… done. Ranting isn’t going to accomplish anything; the only way I can hope to see him restored is if I can convince Privateer that there are legitimate problems with the changes they’ve made. To that end, I’m going to undertake an exhaustive breakdown– not just of Darius, but of the very concept of Jack casting itself. I’ll dig into what Darius used to do, where I think his excessive power came from, and how that excess can be curbed without destroying the essence of the model. I’ll also compare Darius to other jack casters to give us a frame of reference for evaluating his true performance.

It may seem like I’m explaining really obvious things at various points, and it’s probably true; but I don’t want to make any unexplained assumptions, so I’m explaining my reasoning at every step of this process. If someone disagrees with any of my conclusions, this will make it easier for them to figure out where they think my arguments fall apart.

Alrighty, let’s get started.

Jack Casting 101

Warjacks in Warmachine depend on focus to perform. On their own, they lack the accuracy to hit high-defense models; they lack the damage to put an appreciable dent in a hard target; and they lack the sheer weight of attacks necessary to even the odds against superior numbers. A naked, focusless warjack really isn’t much use to anyone.

Focus evens up all of these deficits. A warjack with a pile of focus can boost its accuracy and damage output, and can swing repeatedly in melee to accomplish with four hits what it could never hope to in one. Focus is an incredibly powerful equalizer in this game. But for precisely that reason, it’s also a restricted commodity. Warcasters only have so much focus each turn, and can only hand so much of it to their jacks– both legally, with the three-focus allocation cap, and practically, with all the other things a warcaster might want to do with his focus.

This is why, traditionally, most warcasters are not warjack casters– most casters can very adequately support one heavy warjack at a time, but start to gasp for air a bit as more are added. Once you add a second warjack to your caster, you start having to make hard choices– what will help my cause most this turn? Should I cast a spell to hold off the enemy, or hand all my focus to my jacks and hope they cause enough havoc to keep the threat at bay? Most casters have strong spells, and end up choosing the former of those options.

This is where a jack caster steps in. If you ask most players what makes a jack caster, they may tell you that it’s a warcaster with spells that deal with your warjacks. And while this is a symptom of being a jack caster, it’s not what does it for you; Irusk has some powerful Jack boosts, but he’s first and foremost an infantry caster. What really sets a model up as a dedicated jack caster is the ability to adequately support multiple jacks through a little thing called a force multiplier.

Put simply, a force multiplier is something whose cost is fixed (ie, “pay 2 focus”, or “pop your feat”), but whose benefit scales depending on the number of eligible recipients. A simple example: the High Reclaimer’s Sacrificial Lamb spell costs him one focus and one warrior model, but puts one focus on every warjack in his battlegroup. In a large enough game, there’s no limit to how high this could scale– he could generate two focus, or five, or ten, or fifty-seven, all depending on how many warjacks he has. The cost is fixed, but the benefit is shared across every warjack he’s willing to lug into battle.

Not all multipliers work with a distributed buff; just as useful in this regard are the game’s many concentrated debuffs. Another Menite warcaster, High Executioner Reznik, has a force multiplier that works in the other direction. He can cast Brand of Heresy on an enemy model, and every model in his battlegroup receives boosted attack and damage rolls against that model. This kind of multiplier is more restrictive, but still extremely potent; it only applies to models attacking a single target (leaving any jacks who wanted to hit someone else high and dry), but it still produces a scaling benefit, giving its bonus to any warjack that is willing to poke the target. Any debuff you put on a model that makes it easier for “anybody” to walk up and hurt that model counts as a force multiplier– whether a DEF debuff or knockdown effect that makes it easier to hit, or Gorman’s Rust Bomb that lets any interested parties ignore a good part of the victim’s armor.

Whatever their form, force multipliers are the reason certain warcasters can support a large number of warjacks. Since it wouldn’t be balanced to simply give jack casters a massive pool of focus to hand out every turn, they all generally spend a fixed amount of their focus on a scaling benefit. They can’t afford to actually give 2-3 focus to five jacks, but they can hand out the equivalent benefit by buffing their battlegroup or debuffing their intended victims.

The Talented Mr. Darius

So, there were many jack casters before, but Darius was generally acknowledged to be head and shoulders above the others. I won’t argue the point– Darius had some problems. There isn’t a single model in Mk.I that a Centurion with 3 focus, Jackhammer, and Full Throttle can’t kill in a single turn of attacks. Most heavies even leave the Cent with one or two focus left over! The sheer amount of pain Darius’ boys can deliver is staggering, and his feat can be quite demoralizing for our opponents, undoing in an instant what took them several full rounds of combat to accomplish.

So what exactly did Darius do that was so good? Let’s look at each item on his résumé:

1. Full Throttle: With few exceptions, the first thing you do every turn when running Darius is activate him and fire Full Throttle. For an investment of three focus (half his natural pool), he can grant an additional attack die to every melee attack made by his battlegroup. If any two of our melee Heavies attack with both of their weapons, you’ve instantly made up your cost, and even profited by one! With every further warjack added, and every extra focus spent, the benefit gets even better– two more attacks from a third Heavy, and then spending Darius’ remaining three focus, puts you at a total of nine boosted rolls. Without doing anything more than firing one spell and hitting things with your jacks, you’ve doubled Darius’ focus pool (3 for attacks + 9 for boosts). This is Darius’ main force multiplier, ensuring that your relatively limited pool of attacks will at least all hit their targets. In addition, Full Throttle takes Cygnar’s slowish heavies and sends them catapulting across the board. Your whole battlegroup can run and charge for free, and the +2″ of movement gives them an appreciably larger threat range than your opponents– I can park my Centurion 11″ away from your Menoth or Khador heavy, knowing that I’ll be able to charge you next turn, and you won’t be able to charge (or even run into!) me.
2. Jackhammer: Casting Full Throttle and upkeeping Jackhammer leaves Darius with two focus, or three if he takes one off the squire (which he usually does once combat’s begun). The investment here is four focus, and it buys you eight attacks– two free ones Jackhammered from your initials, three bought legitimately, and then three more Jackhammers. As before, this doubles the investment, letting Darius make very efficient use of his limited focus pool.
3. Pit Stop: Darius’ feat was just an absolutely crushing moral blow to the opponent. He spends several turns putting all he has into wrecking my army, and then I erase all his work in an instant. Smart opponents would simply choose to completely ignore the Jacks and work on getting direct access to Darius, but even this was often quite hard– they couldn’t approach directly, and ranged or spell attacks on Big D had a lot of problems penetrating ARM21. So even the smart folks usually knuckled under and went after the Jacks.
4. Crane: An ability I scoffed at in my first couple games, this has ultimately become one of the deadliest tools in Darius’ arsenal. If you pick up a large-based model at the full 2″ from Darius, and drop it off on the other side at the full extension, you’re moving it 7.5″– almost a run for a Centurion. Combined with the Cent’s 11″ charge range, this often allowed me to take a Jack the opponent thought he’d boxed in and isolated, and send it streaking across the board over a foot and a half. This power turned Darius into a staggeringly effective assassination caster at lower point levels– the opponent exposes a flank because you have no models over there, and you take advantage of it by craning a Centurion onto that side and charging him up the empty space for a sudden and unexpected caster kill. Crane also has a lot of other uses besides adding movement distance– it can be used to pull a model out of combat, letting it charge a new target, or even re-charge back into the combat it just left (essentially getting a free damage boost). It could be used to jump models out of rough terrain, or pick up a blocker from behind Darius to protect him in front. Crane has a million uses, many of them game-deciding.
5. Jack Selection: A big part of the “problem” with Darius wasn’t so much his own abilities, as how those abilities interacted with the Jacks he had access to. For example, the Centurion and Ironclad both have abilities on their weapons that more or less guarantee that if they crit, they no longer need to roll to hit (Cent has Crit Sustained Attack, and the Ironclad has Crit Knockdown). These abilities are fairly marginal on their own– the odds of critting on two dice are only about 16%– but combined with Full Throttle, they become much, much better. The additional die added by the spell ups their crit chance to 44%– and they can still boost, which brings the Jack to a total of four dice, which give a 72% chance of critting. This is why these two Jacks made such powerful assassins– all you have to do is use one of your three focus to force a crit, and then you’re just “removing focus until you fall down”. Beyond the massive critical threat, Centurions are also simply the best Jack in all of Mk.I, with the best defenses in the game, period, and at least in the top 5 offensively. Setting up an unchargeable wall of two Cents and hiding Darius behind it really takes away most of your opponent’s best options, letting the Darius player take the initiative and decide where and when the combat happens.
6. Statline: Another very important thing about Darius, that Darius players themselves often forget, even when their opponents are acutely aware of it: Darius is naturally ARM18, and has easy access to a +3ARM upkeep through the Journeyman. 21 armor is very difficult for traditional assassin casters to crack (most caster spells are POW12s– dice minus 3 on an average caster, but dice minus nine on an armored Darius). He’s able to keep very close to the front lines with much less backup than most casters– which means he can start lending his own personal strength to fights in the mid-game, when there are still juicy targets around, instead of waiting until most of the big threats are gone in the late game like most other casters have to. With FT running, Darius is throwing out a MAT6+boost POW15 with critical knockdown, and a POW11 with dismantle. He won’t kill an enemy Heavy all on his own, but if you need one finished off after your Cents start the job, Darius can capably do the work without really risking reprisals.
7. POW13/14 to Everything in AOE4: Between the Pressure Cooker and the Halfjack mines, Darius can set up a really nasty battlefield that is incredibly hard for opponents to advance into. His big AOEs are hard to make work offensively (they’re both delayed a turn, making it difficult to drop it on an enemy and still have them around by the time it blows), but they’re a very effective deterrent for your defensive line. Drop a line of mines in front of your Jack wall, and an infantry-heavy opponent has a really unpleasant choice– don’t advance into the Jacks and let them run rampant, or advance in, do some damage that will just be healed back, and lose 90% of my squad when the mines go off. Darius has trouble aggressively pursuing large swarms of enemies, but he can keep them out of the fight through intimidation, so they “might as well” be dead. Even if the mines never go off because the opponent held back, that’s still a victory because it means the opponent conceded the initiative to you.

So in the end, what is the problem with Mk.I Darius? I’ve had people say it’s Full Throttle, or Jackhammer, or the Centurion… Cryx players whine about the armor. In the end, it’s not any one of those things– it’s all of them. Darius’ individual strenghts, already mighty on their own, overlap to become much more than the sum of their parts. Crane’s extra movement isn’t a huge deal without a strong threat when you get there; the ability to roll 4 dice and sustain your attacks with the Heavies don’t matter if you can’t get where it’ll hurt most. But combine both of those things, and you have a heat-seeking caster-killing missile.

Personally, if I had to name the one main thing that makes Darius the best Jack caster in the game (and in fairness, the thing that meant he really did need to be ratcheted down a few notches in the new rules), I would without any hesitation name his force multipliers. It’s not that Full Throttle and Jackhammer are obscenely high-yield for their cost– each one more or less doubles your focus investment, which is pretty standard for Jack caster force multipliers. The thing that creates problems is that unlike every other jack caster, Darius has two multipliers. This is the real problem– instead of simply multiplying the investment, it’s doing compound multiplication. The focus investment is doubled (or more), and then doubled (or more) again. That is why his math works out so splendidly.  Jackhammer on its own, or Full Throttle on its own, would constitute enough force multiplication to make Darius playable. But Darius takes that “acceptable level” of multiplication, and multiplies it a second time. It’s just far too much return for his 7 focus invested.

I’ll illustrate what I mean: here are some quick comparative scenarios, showing how five sample Jack casters– Darius, Reznik, Amon, Mortenebra, and Kharchev– multiply their focus. You can see that Darius gets by far the best deal of any of them.

Focus Multiplication in Action

Here’s the basic scenario I’m going to use across all five examples: Steve controls the jack caster, and three heavy melee Jacks. Bob controls two “threats”– one that needs to be killed right now, and one that only needs to be dinged up. Steve is going to send two heavies into the larger threat, and one into the smaller threat.

For the purposes of these examples, I don’t really care about damage inflicted or how much better one faction’s jacks are over another’s– all I’m looking at here is the size of a caster’s investment, and the size of the return. For the purposes of these demonstrations, I’m going to give each caster one extremely common “crutch” piece– things that you will reasonably expect to see accompanying these casters. Specifically, I’m going to give Cynar a squire, Menoth a Vassal, and Mortenebra her Skarlock, Derelyss. I couldn’t really think of any standard crutches for Khador without really twisting the example beyond reason (ie, “Greylords immobilize the main target”), so Kharchev is on his own. It’s not really fair, but it is reflective of how a real game with each of these casters would run. It’s simply how Privateer set the factions up!

Also of note here: if any of the multipliers are upkeeps, I’m assuming the caster is upkeeping it, and not casting it fresh– as that is generally how these things work.

The metric I’ll be using to analyze efficiency is to look at how much focus went in, and then how many focus worth of benefit was reaped. Anything that would normally cost focus– an extra attack, a boost, a power attack, or a charge– will be considered one focus worth of benefit. For any casters who are giving their jacks a bonus to attack or damage, I’ll add up the total bonuses accrued over the series of attacks, and divide the whole thing by 3.5 (the average result of a rolled D6).

Standard Scenario:

The jack caster controls three warjacks in his battlegroup: A, B, and C. He is facing down two threats– a large threat, X, and a small threat, Y. The threats are close enough to walk into, but far enough to get a charging bonus. The jack caster is going to send A and B into the large threat, and C into the smaller one. I’ll enumerate the best series of attacks (efficiency-wise), and count the focus or pseudo-focus being spent, as well as the focus benefit being reaped, at each step.

First up:

Mk.II Mortenebra

UPDATE: As has been pointed out in the comments here and on the PPS forums, I made a mistake in Mortenebra’s math. I thought she boosted attack and damage, but she only boosts attack. I’ve updated the math here and in the section conclusions, but if you see any other stray references to her having 300% efficiency somewhere else in the article, it’s because I missed a reference when I was editing.

For Morty’s example, we’re assuming that Bob’s two “threats” are living warbeasts, as that’s what her multiplier triggers off– her spell Terminal Velocity gives her Jacks boosts to attack anytime they’re hitting a living model.

• A charges X. TV boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• A makes second attack. TV boosts attack. Onefocus benefit.
• A pays Morty’s three spare focus for additional attacks. TV boosts attack on each. Six focus benefit.
• B charges X. TV boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• B makes second attack. TV boosts attack. One focus benefit.
• C charges Y. TV boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• C makes second attack. TV boosts attack. One focus benefit.

All together, Morty spent seven focus (four for TV, three allocated), and got 15 focus worth of benefit, a little over double her investment. Note that Derelyss didn’t do anything in the example– none of the spells he can cast from her would have any effect on the overall efficiency of the Jack chain, as he can’t cause extra attacks, and TV is her only multiplier.

Mk.II Karchev

Karchev allocates three focus to A. During his activation, he takes one focus from the Arcantrik Turbine and uses it to cast Unearthly Rage, then pops his feat.

• A charges X. UR boosts attack– damage was already boosted from the charge. Two focus benefit.
• A makes second attack. UR boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.
• A spends Karchev’s three spare focus for additional attacks. UR boosts both sides of each. Nine focus benefit.
• B charges X. UR boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• B makes second attack. UR boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.
• C charges Y. UR boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• C makes second attack. UR boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.

Karchev spent six focus (three for UR, three allocated), and got 21 focus worth of benefit. He got about three and a half times the benefit for his investment.

Karchev’s math works exactly like Morty’s– he had one less to hand out, but his multiplier costs one less to cast, so it’s a wash.

Mk.I Darius

Darius takes a focus off the squire, upkeeps Jackhammer on A, and gives three focus to A. Darius casts Full Throttle during his activation.

• A charges X. FT boosts attack– damage was already boosted from the charge. Two focus benefit.
• Jackhammer triggers. A makes an attack with the first weapon, boosted to hit. Two focus benefit.
• A makes second attack. FT boosts attack. One focus benefit.
• Jackhammer triggers. A makes an attack with the second weapon, boosted to hit. Two focus benefit.
• A pays Darius’ three spare focus for additional attacks. For each focus spent:
  • Attack is made, boosted to hit. Two focus benefit.
  • Jackhammer triggers. Attack is made, boosted to hit. Two focus benefit.
• B charges X. FT boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• B makes second attack. FT boosts attack. One focus benefit.
• C charges Y. FT boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• C makes second attack. FT boosts attack. One focus benefit.

All together, Darius spent seven focus (FT, upkeep Jackhammer, allocate three), and got 25 focus worth of benefit. That’s a little over three and a half times the benefit.

Mk.I Amon Ad Raza

Amon doesn’t allocate any focus. During his activation, he enters Meditative Stance and gives the two focus to A. He pops his feat, and casts some random spells to blow his 5 focus, including Synergy (casting it fresh lets him allocate one more focus than he could if he upkept). He gives one focus to A, three to B, and one to C.

Amon’s totalling is going to be a bit of a headache to track… I’ll be totalling F (focus) and B (buff) after every line.

• C walks into Y and makes its attacks. The one focus can be spent on anything (C cannot get a Synergy bonus since it is first in the chain). 1F.
• B walks into X and attacks. Attack and damage are at +1. 2B.
• B makes second attack. Attack and damage are at +1. 2B.
• B pays its three focus for three attacks. Attack and damage are at +1 for each attack. 3F, 6B.
• A walks into X and attacks. Attack and damage are at +2. 4B.
• A makes second attack. Attack and damage are at +2. 4B.
• A pays its three focus for three attacks. Attack and damage are at +2 for each attack. 3F, 12B.
• Vassal has A make another attack. Attack and damage are at +2 for each attack. 1F, 4B.

Amon spent eight focus (Seven on spellcasting (which became allocation), one pseudo-focus from the Vassal). He got eight actual focus back, as Synergy doesn’t directly multiply any focus. The combined total of all the buffs was 34; divided by 3.5, that’s just short of 10 focus worth of benefit. So for Amon’s eight focus investment, he got 18 focus worth of benefit– a little more than double.

Mk. II Amon is almost the same math, though he gets one less real focus to give to C, so his investment and return both drop by 1, which actually makes the return about 2.5 times the investment. Also note that Menoth has a ton of extra ways to increase their efficiency– in this example I could’ve added three focus from a Reclaimer and one from a wrack. I’m also not including the Choir, which is another powerful Menite multiplier.

Mk.II Reznik

I’m using the F and B tracking system from Amon here again.

Reznik upkeeps Brand of Heresy on X, and Iron Aggression on A. He allocates 3 focus to A, and one to B.

• A walks into X and attacks. BoH boosts attack and damage, IA gives +2 to damage. 2F, 2B.
• A makes second attack. BoH boosts attack and damage, IA gives +2 to damage. 2F, 2B.
• A spends three focus to make extra attacks. On each one, BoH boosts attack and damage, and IA gives +2 to damage. 9F, 6B.
• Vassal has A make another attack. BoH boosts attack and damage, IA gives +2 to damage. 3F, 2B.
• B walks into X and attacks. BoH boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.
• B makes second attack. BoH boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.
• B spends one focus for an additional attack. BoH boosts attack and damage. Three focus benefit.
• C walks into Y and makes its attacks. C receives no multiplication bonuses.

Reznik spent seven focus (two for upkeeps, four allocated, one pseudo-focus from the Vassal), and got 23 back. He also got 12B worth of buffs, or about 3.5F. Spending the focus on an attack with B instead of upkeeping IA would’ve given him 3F worth of benefit, so overall it’s a wash. Actually, without the Vassal it’s slightly less than 3F returned.

Also note that this depends on upkeeping Brand instead of recasting it. If you cast it fresh, you get 3 less returned. If you need to boost to hit to apply it (ie, applying it to a target you’re already engaging from last turn), that’s another 3 less. So Reznik definitely gets his best efficiency on the second turn of combat, while other jack casters (Darius, Karchev, and Morty) generally get their best return on their charging turn.

So, to recap:

Mortenebra: 214% return (7 in, 15 out)

Karchev: 350% (6 in, 21 out)

Darius: 357% (7 in, 25 out)

Amon: 225% (8 in, 18 out)

Reznik: 328% (7 in, 23 out)

What conclusions can we draw here? Well, Darius comes out on top, but only by a hair– Karchev is more or less tied for the 3.5x efficiency mark, though his total output is less. Reznik is hot on both their heels. Amon seems to be way behind the pack, but as discussed, he really reaches his peak with lots of lights, and the “three heavies” case I used for all of them puts him at a disservice. Mortenebra brings up the rear in pure efficiency.

So, if most of them are around the same efficiency, why is Darius so lauded and the rest of them relatively marginal? Well, it’s a few things. First of all, Darius’ overall package just brings more to the table– every spell and ability on Mk.I Darius revolves around jacks; so he’s giving you huge return on your focus, and providing a ton of other benefits as well.

More specifically, his feat does some odd things that the math doesn’t really show– most of these casters get one turn of huge power, but then their efficiency drops as they start losing Jacks. So they get one explosive turn, but the return swings are likely to cripple them, and then they have trouble recovering. This hits various casters more than others– as I mentioned above, Reznik gets his explosive turn on the second turn of combat rather than the first, and it’s quite likely that by that point, he’ll have lost a piece critical to his efficiency chain, and his actual return will be a fair bit less than the ideal situation I outlined.

Darius gets his one turn of explosive power, just like the others– but when the retaliation kills his posse, he can just bring them right back and get a second explosive turn. These are the real equalizers– Darius’ explosive power isn’t limited to one turn of the game, and he gets two full turns of output to take down the threatening pieces on the other side of the board, where other casters would only get the one unfettered chance. It’s very hard to completely neuter your opponent with three Jacks in one turn– but in two turns, it’s quite feasible. So Darius’ ability to sustain his threat level longer than the others is really what puts him a head above.

There are a few other advantages in Darius’ favor that don’t show up in the math– the two jacks Darius is likely to use in his example are the Cent and Ironclad, who both effectively have Critical Sustained Attack; after the first two attacks, every attack Jack A makes is probably going to auto-hit. Whereas with everybody else’s jacks, they’ll still be missing here and there even with a buff/three attack dice, so they’ll then miss out on the associated extra damage die, lowering their efficiency.

Meet the New Boss

So, with all of that groundwork laid down, let’s get to the matter at hand: Darius’ treatment in Mk.II. Here’s the full list of changes:

Gains

• Manual Control’s cost reduced to 1
• No more Pressure Cooker (if you hated this effect, which some people did)
• Gained Jump Start (an awesome spell, credit where credit’s due)

Losses that hurt

• Full Throttle no longer gives an attack die
• Jackhammer is gone
• Pit Stop no longer repairs wrecks
• Halfjacks no longer start with three in play– it takes three turns to get the full complement onto the board.
• Crane is an action instead of automatically happening, and only moves a model 1″ from its own reference point, instead of 2″ from Darius’ reference point.
• No more Pressure Cooker (I loved this, I always looked for ways to auto-miss by firing too far or shooting people with cover)
• Fortify no longer stops out-of-turn movement (I never used this, but apparently most Darius players are mourning the ability to form a wall of Centurions)

Losses that don’t matter

• Lost Dead Lift (meh, I’ve never used it)
• Stun Bolt (spell I never used) changed to Arcantrik Bolt (spell I’ll never use)

Let’s not mince words here– Darius needed to be nerfed. He was far too powerful; the combination of high efficiency and the ability to resurrect the dead made him staggeringly effective, especially compared to other Jack casters whose forces were very fragile and whose entire gameplans could be derailed with surgically-applied disruption.

• Crane needed a nerf, as Darius is supposed to be about a unified wall of force; I don’t think the developers ever intended him to be sending heat-seeking missile streaking across the board.
• Jackhammer was, admittedly, over the top. It wasn’t just that it let you make lots of attacks– it was that it let you make lots of attacks with the same guy. It’s often impossible to get two big beaters into contact with the same big threat, and under ordinary circumstances, you often just can’t muster enough weight of attacks to completely annihilate a tough Jack (Cents, the Avatar, etc) in a single round, meaning you’re taking heavy retaliation the turn after. By being able to cluster all of his attacks onto a single body, Darius ensured that he could surgically remove big threats with a near-guarantee of success.
• Full Throttle’s ability to trigger easy criticals was, in my estimation, not an intended benefit of the spell. The die was there to help accuracy, but in reality it was interacting too strongly with Cygnar’s stable of melee jacks, who almost seem to have melee criticals as a faction theme.
• I really do stand by the adjective I used to describe Darius’ feat above– demoralizing. I often point out to people that there are things in the game– Temporal Barrier, or Legion’s “flying circus” army builds– that, while not necessarily hard to beat, are simply not fun for anyone involved. They confer an annoyingly one-sided advantage, and force an opponent to play his army in a way it was never intended to work, robbing that player of the ability to enjoy his army in the way he’d hoped for. Darius’ feat was one of these “just not fun” effects– outside of blocking Halfjack access, there’s really nothing an opponent can do to stop you from erasing all of their hard work. It’s just not any fun for the opponent to have to plan around resurrected wreck markers, and while I’ll mourn the loss, it’s not something I can really be mad about. I play this game to have fun, and I like my opponent to be having just as much fun as I am.

Darius needed a nerf, and a lot of the things that were removed from him really did need to go. Jackhammer offered too much attack density, Full Throttle was stupidly good with Cents and Ironclads’ auto-hit crits, Crane was doing things it was never intended for, and the feat just wasn’t fun. They all needed to be removed or changed, and I’m not really arguing with any of the individual changes. It sucks to be losing all my toys, but I can understand that it’s for the best.

So, why the hell am I writing this gargantuan article if I agree with the changes? Well, like I said just now– I agree with the individual changes. On their own, each of the changes I mentioned would be acceptable and would go a long way toward bringing Darius in line with other jack casters’ abilities. The problem is, Privateer didn’t just pick from the list– they picked the entire list. Presented with multiple choice, they answered “all of the above”. And that leaves Darius with, not just less than before… but nothing. Nothing at all.

I’m really not exaggerating here– Darius has no tricks left. He has a pool of six focus to hand out, and that’s all. Jack casters live and die on multipliers, and Darius’ multiplier has gone from 3.5, to 1. He puts 6 focus in, and gets 6 focus out. That is the worst possible return, short of “no return” by firing Jump Start six times in a row for giggles.

This change really baffles me. Darius’ problem was that he had two multipliers, and they compounded on each other for too high a return; but rather than only stopping the compounding by removing one of the multipliers, they removed both of them to stop him from multiplying at all. I really have to ask… why? Privateer clearly doesn’t have a problem with multipliers in general, because the other four jack casters I analyzed above kept their multipliers, entirely unchanged from before. And this was the right thing to do– Privateer’s goal in Mk.II was to re-emphasize jacks, and the only way to really encourage a player to take multiple jacks in this game is to tell him he’ll get good efficiency out of his focus by doing so. Otherwise, it’s simply a better choice to load up on Stormblades and Longgunners and not bother with Jacks at all. Jacks really do need focus to earn their points back, while most squads exist in fairly self-suffient packages, not needing any extra support to pull their weight. Every focus given to a Jack is one the caster can’t use for himself to cast spells and make attacks, so getting good return on the investment really is critical.

I’ll even go ahead and debunk the counter-arguments that have been presented to me to justify Darius’ current state:

“Sorry, man. You can’t argue that a model needs a buff because it’s worse than in Mk.I. Things in Mk.II need to stand on their own.”

Yep, that’s completely right. One of the things I’ve tried to do with this article is really emphasize that I’m not arguing that he needs a buff to return him to his old power level. I don’t want him nerfed, “so he’ll be the same as before”. I’m analyzing Mk.I and Mk.II versions of Darius as separate entities– looking at Mk.I Darius to see why he was problematic in that game version, and looking at Mk.II Darius to see why he doesn’t compete in this one. Nowhere in this article have I, nor will I, argued that the reason to improve Mk.II Darius is because he “had it before, and needs it now”. That’s not a reason, and I actually fully agree that the people who are making that argument (and yes, there are a ton of them), are wrong. They’re asking for the right thing, but for all the wrong reasons, so in the end they’re wrong.

I just can’t emphasize this one enough– Mk.II Darius is awful on his own merits. He doesn’t need to be compared to his old version to look bad; the new Darius compares unfavourably to every caster in both Warmachine and Hordes, and in both Marks of the game. Compare him to Mk.I Amon, or pKaya, or pDoomshaper, or any other “I have better choices so I just won’t bother” caster, and he’ll come out the loser. Mk.II Darius is simply the worst army leader in the game, full stop.

“Darius was broken! He needed the nerf.”

Yep, I fully agree with you. The problem is that the nerf went way too far. Pretend that there’s a scale for measuring caster effectiveness, where “10″ is perfectly balanced. Instead of dialling Darius down from 15 to 10, which was what was needed, he was dialled down from 15 to 2. It’s not that he does literally nothing now (ie, he can still hand out focus, and attack with a big hammer, so he’s more effective offensively than, say, a swamp gobber), it’s that he does far, FAR less than all of our other warcasters. There is simply no reason to take him– all of our other warcasters can pull the same trick he can– handing out focus– but they also do other things. They have more spells to support their Jacks, or their troops, or their spellbook directly hurts the enemy. They hand out focus, and they have other effects on the game. Darius only hands out focus. That is the problem. He needed to have some toys taken away, but taking all of them away is just creating an entirely new problem.

“Warjacks got better, so the jack casters needed their power dialled down to compensate.”

There’s some merit to this argument, but it’s more or less entirely deflated by pointing out that none of the other jack casters had their multipliers nerfed. Mortenebra, Reznik, and Karchev’s efficiency are exactly the same as they used to be, and Amon’s is slightly better. Everybody’s Jacks got better, not just Cygnar’s– so why were we the only ones to lose our premier melee Jack caster?

“Darius isn’t as bad as he looks. Manual Control (the spell now called Jackhammer) is his thing now, and it’s great!”

It really hurts me to see this being brought up, because I almost don’t even know where to begin explaining the problem to the people who say this. This is generally brought up by people who don’t understand how focus accounting works, and aren’t (consciously, at least) aware of why multipliers exist and are necessary. Being a jack caster doesn’t just mean your spells target jacks. Being a jack caster is essentially making the following statement: “I, the jack caster, am as effective, or more effective, in my overall performance by using a primarily warjack-constructed force, as another non-jack caster is in using their own ideal force.” It’s essentially saying: yes, there’s a reason to take me instead of the ten other warcasters available to the army, and if chosen, there’s a reason to fill my army with jacks, within reason (I’m not saying they need to take exclusively jacks– but at least a plurality of a the force should be jacks, and support for them, to qualify for this). The new Darius simply can’t make this claim– every other caster we have can hand out focus just as well as he can, but they do other things, too.

Certain people have been really hammering the point that the new Jackhammer is full of possibilities, and presents enough tactical options and abilities to make Darius viable. I will grant that the new Jackhammer (I just can’t bring myself to call it Jackhammer… how about I call it Manual Control, because that’s all it is) presents two tactical options that standard casters can’t replicate by simply handing out focus, but ultimately neither is really very impressive:

1. Run a jack into melee, and then fire attacks with Manual Control. Essentially, it lets a jack fight after running, letting him engage in fights that were outside charge range, or couldn’t be charged to in a straight line. This “advantage” is, in my estimation… kind of “meh”. I don’t really find myself needing to charge around corners very often (like, ever), and Cents’ “can’t charge me” shields ensure that if I’m short on charge range, I can just walk forward and wait a turn– the enemy Jacks aren’t going to get charges on me (and may not be able to engage at all), and then next turn I just charge the rest of the way.
2. Make nine attacks in one turn with a single warjack (main attack, Strangewayes’ focus buys a second, Darius’ six+squire makes seven more). As mentioned above, this was always one of Darius real strengths, so you’d think I’d be all over this advantage. But really, it’s not the same thing. Eight attacks from a Darius jack in Mk.I weren’t just “eight attacks”– they were eight guaranteed POW18 damage rolls. They were eight damage rolls after making the Jack immune to free strikes and Craning it across the board like a cruise missile– totally stranding it away from support, where there’s no possibility of it being backed up by the rest of your army. Those eight attacks had to do the job, because there was no way in hell you were getting a second jack up there to finish the job if the first one failed. Fast forward to Mk.II… your army is going to be much more huddled together now. Crane can’t send missiles flying around. Manual Control only has a 6″ range, so if you DO manage to fling a Cent across the board, it isn’t making more than its base attacks. Manual Control only works AT ALL if Darius or his arc node is practically in the fight– and if they’re that close, you can just get a second jack to walk up and help. Why do I need to make eight attacks with one jack, when I can just make 4 with one, and 4 with another? Why is the first really preferable over the second? Darius doesn’t offer any buffs to single jacks, so the second jack’s attacks are just as good as the first one’s  (unlike the Nemos and eStryker, for example– they DO have one jack that is better than the others thanks to STR buffs, so making lots of attacks with that one is an advantage).

Manual Control doesn’t offer any efficiency, and doesn’t offer any tactical advantages that really amount to anything. It’s not that it’s a bad spell, per se– there are reasons to use it. It’s just that it’s not anywhere near enough for this to be Darius’ only trick. Give Darius this spell so that he can decide to use it, in addition to whatever his main plan is, when the tactical need arises; but don’t try to tell me that this one spell is enough to consistently make Darius an equal choice to our other options. Because, you’re just wrong. Do the math, and really think about it– this just isn’t much of a spell.

“He does have a multiplier– Full Throttle lets all his Jacks run and charge for free!”

Darius’ Full Throttle does retain the ability to multiply your investment, as long as Darius is running four or more jacks. It still costs 3 focus to fire, so in order to get any advantage out of using it, he needs to get one more free charge/run than he’s paying for. This means running four jacks, but since the new Darius gives no real incentive to do this, it’s a serious waste of points.

Multiplying your resources is only ever valuable when demand for them exceeds the supply. The new Full Throttle only gives you advantage in the stage of the game when you’re travelling to the battle; once the fight is engaged, it no longer confers any benefit. And unfortunately, during the travelling segment, I actually already have plenty of focus to go around. Darius only has one upkeep spell at this point, and it costs two to cast; if Darius had lost Full Throttle entirely, he could still cast Fortify on the travelling turn, while having enough left over to let four jacks run “the old fashioned way”, by spending allocated focus. Focus just isn’t in very high demand during the period when both players are maneuvering. The point where players start to need every focus or pseudo-focus they can get their hands on is once they’re in a fight– this is where all other jack casters’ multipliers start doing their work, but this is where Darius’ stops being helpful. So, he’s completely backwards here. He helps when you don’t need it, and offers no assistance once you’re actually in need.

“Dude, I’ve totally been winning with him. He’s awesome.”

First of all: anecdotal evidence is meaningless. You could be far better than your opponents, or you could be slanting your reporting because you always hated the old Darius, or you could be outright lying to win an argument on the internet.

Second of all: Jacks got better. Jacks are now very good, compared to how they used to work. I, myself, won a game with Mk.II Darius the other day, purely on the strength of Cygnar’s jacks– I cast no spells, popped no feat, made only three repairs all game (all bodges with the Halfjacks, something any Gobber Bodger could do). I won despite Darius doing absolutely nothing but be a focus bank, because 1) Jacks are really good now, and I’m very good at knowing where to place them for maximum effect; and 2) because my opponent made mistakes. I won because of every factor except Darius– and my victory would simply have been even more crushing if I’d gone with someone else.

This… complicates things.

So, here we are. Mk.II Darius is a worthless warcaster. The problems aren’t hard to see, but the solutions are tricky. There are some major roadblocks to fixing him; I’ll enumerate some of them here.

• All warcasters have the same point cost now. Jack point bonus aside, all warcasters in Mk.II were standardized– essentially, they were all made to be worth roughly 70pts under the old costing system. Casters in the 60s got slight buffs; ones in the 70s and 80s got slight nerfs, but were left essentially intact. The problem was the casters in the 90+ bracket. These ones were all staggeringly powerful, precisely because they were so expensive; the player is willing to pay a premium for his army commander, and in exchange, he gets a holy terror on the field. Terminus, Darius, eThaggy, the Harbinger– these casters are far and away stronger than their contemporaries, and that fact was acceptable, because they cost a lot more to field. With all casters being standardized at 70pts, they had to lose abilities… and lots of them. They couldn’t just lose one ability or two, they all essentially needed to be stripped down to one gimmick– Harbinger kept Martyrdom, but lost most of the rest. eThaggy will likely keep his statline and Glory of Everblight, but I doubt that feat will survive the transition. Darius needed to be brought down to his core gimmick, and unfortunately, Privateer decided that the reason people played Darius was for his repair feat. The feat was awesome, to be sure… but you played Darius because he made his jacks sing. Focus efficiency was the reason he worked, not his feat. They distilled him down to the wrong thing. But even if they’d picked the right aspect of him to keep– he was losing the rest. There’s no way in hell a 93pt caster was going to go down to 70pts without some serious collateral damage.
• He still has that repair feat, so he’s always going to get one more turn of smashing than other Jack casters. I went through the overlap between the focus efficiency and Darius’ feat above, and it’s a really important roadblock toward balancing him… as long as he retains a way to resurrect all or part of his army, his multiplier has to be less than other casters’. It’s just not fair in a face-to-face fight otherwise.
• The model still exists. This one’s a little odd, but think about the burden it adds. The Crane ability was open to a lot of abuse, and the new Jump Start spell does a lot of what Crane used to. I’m sure Privateer would love to drop the Crane rule altogether… but unfortunately, the model still has a gigantic crane on the back. They can’t just wish this one away, the crane does still need to be there somehow. Similarly, the statline– part of the reason for Mk.I Darius’ high cost is his huge personal stats– his ARM and STR are huge for a caster, and he has a massive hammer with an awesome crit effect. They couldn’t very well reduce him to “standard” caster stats, since he’s quite obviously stronger and tougher, dressed as he is in a light warjack. They can’t tone down his weapon and say it’s not a Quake Hammer, because it very clearly is the exactly same weapon the Ironclad is holding. They can’t say Darius doesn’t come with Halfjacks anymore to tone down his feat, because they’re in the box. The fact that so many of Darius’ special abilities are carved directly into the model is a huge lingering burden for the designers– they have to address these doo-dads with some rules, otherwise the model just doesn’t make any sense. Which means, he has to keep most of his old statline, which is probably why his spells were nerfed so badly in the first place– they couldn’t edit out the things that were inherent to the model they’re selling, so they edited out the pieces that weren’t. Unfortunately, the rules that need to be there because of the model are some of the least important ones, so we end up with a model that’s been stripped of everything that really mattered, and left with everything that never did, because they had to stay true to the sculpt.
• Epic Nemo’s feat could potentially cause some problems. The feat, which used to give three focus to every jack in his battlegroup in his control area, has now been expanded out of his battlegroup; if Darius is given a high-yield focus return, letting Nemo pump all of his jacks up with three focus, even for one turn, could be just a massive, massive beating. That said, this doesn’t mean he can’t add any multipliers– the army already has an effective +2 to hit from pHaley, so as long as Darius doesn’t get too far beyond her buff, there shouldn’t be a huge problem.

These problems don’t have easy answers, but they can’t be ignored when trying to turn Mk.I Darius into Mk.II Darius. Which finally brings me to:

You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?”

Rather than assume I have the one and only solution to “the Darius Problem”, I’m going to suggest a large number of things– different possibilities for making him more worth taking. The “correct” solution may be one of these suggestions, or several of them… or something else altogether. I’m just going to throw out a few different possibilities to create some discussion and open up consideration.

Restoring Efficiency

The #1 priority for me is to restore some of Darius’ focus efficiency. There are a couple ways to do it:

• Have Full Throttle boost melee attack rolls. Not an additional die, as I wouldn’t want to get back into the “four dice to hit = auto crit” shenanigans from Mk.I. I don’t think this solution is ultimately a very good idea– with the overall +1MAT/RAT bonus to our jacks, this would put Darius’ jacks PAST their old accuracy, which was already incredibly high for a warjack. Also, even as a boost and not an additional, this springs the crit threat from 16% to 44%, which is a massive jump. Cygnar’s melee crit effects are just too good, and additional attack dice really do need to be at a premium. So, I personally wouldn’t suggest this solution, for balance’s sake.
• Have Full Throttle grant +2 to melee attack rolls. This seems to be a fairly popular suggestion on the Cygnar forums, and it’s the measure I most strongly support. Several of the game’s “additional die” effects got this same treatment in Mk.II– Aiyanna’s “Harm”, the Bokur’s client bonus, etc. This change would essentially bring Darius’ jacks to the accuracy they enjoyed before, but without inviting the problems you get when you add extra attack dice and raise the critical threat.
• Bring back the old Jackhammer, but restrict it to triggering off initial attacks. This one is inspired by the new Hammersmith, whose Beat Back only triggers from initial attacks, stopping him from careening 17″ across the board in a single turn. Similarly, if we restricted Jackhammer to triggering only off of initial attacks instead of all attacks that jack makes, it’s essentially paying one focus for two attacks– and quite often, the second attack is with a much less desireable weapon, like a shield or open fist. I’m not sure whether or not this change would invite problems, but it doesn’t seem too bad at first glance. Of course, if Darius gets a large multiplier elsewhere (ie, more than a full focus on each attack), then this is right out.
• Let him borrow someone else’s multiplier. Darius with Unearthly Rage or Terminal Velocity is probably asking too much… but what about Synergy? I think that’d be a great spell for us– it’s been demonstrated that it’s very difficult to break (as evidenced by Amon’s near-pariah status among Menite players), but still gives enough of a bonus to make players think there’s something to be found therein. Really, that’s all I’m asking– give him something that at least makes him seem like he has potential. I’m not asking that his power level go through the roof again– just give me something to latch onto and hope for.

Ancillary Abilities

If it’s decided that Darius just can’t have focus efficiency like other jack casters, there are still some other tweaks he could get to make him desireable.

• Restore the old feat. This is asking a lot, and I don’t think it’s likely, or even an especially good idea. But, it would definitely give us a reason to take him.
• Give him a defensive focus. If it’s too dangerous to give him offensive power, how about refocusing him on defense? It would certainly fit the fluff– refocus his feat and spells specifically to make his jacks very tough to kill, to let him engage in a war of attrition with enemy forces. I’m not sure exactly what changes would help here… maybe let Fortify transfer its ARM buff to others? Maybe give a spell that denies extra and boosted damage dice when dealing with his Jacks? I dunno. There are lots of directions this could go, but it would certainly give him his own niche apart from our other jack casters.

Paying For It

Of course, if Darius is going to receive any buffs, he needs to pay for them somehow. I have two main suggestions here:

• Put Manual Control back at 2 focus. It’s clear that the developers intended for Manual Control’s reduced cost to “make up for” the loss of every other ability Darius had, so obviously they think this is a very high-value spell. It really isn’t, so I won’t shed any tears if it’s recosted or lost entirely to make room for something I’d actually use.
• Remove most of his jack points. The point of giving out free jack points is to give players an incentive to take them– but Darius doesn’t need any incentive. Or at least, he shouldn’t, if he’s built right. He should simply be giving such a compelling buff to his jacks that no bribe is required to get him to run 2, 3, even 4 jacks at full cost. By bringing him down to 4, 3, or even 2 jack points, the developers could justify giving him much more efficiency than he currently has, at the expense of having to buy all of his jacks at nearly full price. Personally, that’s a sacrifice I’d be more than willing to make.

Aaaaaaand I’m spent.

So, yes. Privateer said that if they’re going to listen to any feedback, it helps for it to be reasoned and even-tempered. The preceding 10,000 words were my best shot– I simply don’t know any better way to explain the problem and need for a solution than what I’ve just written.

I’m going to submit the link to this blog post as field test feedback, and hope that a sympathetic ear at Privateer reads it and understands just how much Cygnar players care about this issue. I really want to stress this: we’re not mad that Darius lost his power level. At least, we shouldn’t be– he was clearly overpowered, and any objective evalutator had to conclude that he needed to be ratcheted down. What I want to make clear is that this is an argument about fun, about fluff representation, about the fundamental essence of a model. Darius wasn’t just nerfed, he was entirely gutted. The current Mk.II Darius isn’t fun, and doesn’t really give players a reason to choose him over our other casters. I want so much to continue loving this model, but as he stands, I just can’t.

Privateer, please don’t make me fall out of man-love with Eddie Darius. For myself and many others, he’s the essence of this game– a caster who reminds people that this isn’t a game of wars between men, but rather of clashes between iron titans, where men merely spectate. Please, I beg of you: don’t take Eddie away from us.

Thank you for reading, and for your patience. Please leave your feedback below, and especially send your feedback along to Privateer through the field test feedback form. If you don’t tell them what you’re thinking, they won’t know how deeply we care about this.

-David Tierney

Burlington, Ontario, Canada

captainspud@gmail.com