Talion Charter: The start of my voyage

Upon my return to Warmachine, I jumped into a new MK4 (4th edition) army. However, very quickly I had the desire to find and play armies I never had a chance back when I first played Warmachine over 12 years ago (guh, I am getting old). The one that I went out of my way to find and purchase the out-of-print models was the OG Pirates, the Talion Charter Mercenary Faction.

These are going to be both a hobby project and a fun way to jump into the game with! With this, I decided let's start a series of tacticas and strategy articles from the perspective of someone who is both relearning the game and learning the army! Just be aware I have done a LOT of talking with current Talion Charter players and have poured over everything. At this point, I am just lacking excessive experience but will be updating things as I play and learn! These will still be my own opinion and/or perspective!

A Swabbie's First Look

So, first thing to do is look at the army's overall status and characteristics.

Talion Charter (TC) is an "Army of Legend," meaning its models are out of print and the faction only gets rules updates once a year during the January update. The good news is there is a "Prime" list for the army, so it is still currently legal! I was fortunate enough to acquire all the models, so I get to play with them all!

TC overall is characterized by a few downsides, namely being low quality infantry with poor stats access to the mercenary warjacks who are also understated. This is balanced out by the faction having very cheap infantry and the jacks being cheaper and efficient for their cost. They utilize these core features by having multiple stacking infantry buffs and focusing heavily on outscoring through objective play, leveraging their numbers and many different slam or other control effects. 

The main struggles the army has is vs spammed high armor, anti-tough abilities, and multiple area of effect attacks. The infantry having lower POW means that the debuffs need to focus on the few most problematic enemy models/units. This means any army such as Winter Corps that can spam high armor multi-wound models will present challenges.  Our infantry also relies heavily on their 'super tough' status so anything that just ignores or prevents tough (grievous wounds or remove from play effects) completely negate the main way our army prevents enemy scoring. Lastly, with our heavy reliance on mass infantry, armies able to apply a lot of area of effect attacks can do a lot more damage if the right support isn't brought. 

The main strengths are that we have a LOT of cheap infantry than can cover not only objectives to score, but cheap ambushers who can run lots of interference and prevent enemy scoring. I addition, our ranged options have a plethora of blast damage and spray attacks making dealing with infantry rather easy. We also have a lot of knockdown and slam synergy that helps push enemies off of objectives. Add in that all of infantry has tough and we can indeed be hard to move off of the objectives.

Initial Leader Breakdown

I will go over each list option as I build and share them, but we will start with a general overview of the leaders. For leaders we have four options, each with their own spin on things.

• Captain Bartolo Montador: Broadside Bart is the leader who loves his warjacks. His spells list supports his cohort and brings some control options. He either wants to focus on being a melee cohort or a ranged cohort. his feat powerful but defensive in nature so planning battlefield engagements with him is important! This is one of my starting two leaders I have picked for my competitive lists so I will be going over him and my choices soon!
• Captain Phinneus Shae: The first of the leaders and the captain who started the Talion Charter, Shae focuses on mobility and controlling the objectives with mass infantry. He has incredibly high def to protect himself and brings a lot of support to get his crew where he wants them from a speed buff spell to his feat. Currently he is held as the best competitive option due to his focus on what makes the faction unique, spammed pirates!
• Fiona the Black: Our first really spell heavy warcaster, Fiona uses her infantry as arc nodes using Dark Rituals to cast her spells while staying safe. She also wants to focus on infantry but brings a few good control spells and the critical Curse of Shadows to help chew through high armor. She might be one of the best options to flex into assassination because of her spell list and her magical blessed weapon with grievous wounds. He feat is an incredibly powerful defensive debuff that can carry her games.
• Captain Rahera, Terror of the Wailing Sea: Rahera is a caster who also can lead Cryx armies and brings a bit of their style with her. She is highly mobile and when looking at her card she does a lot. She likes to make her jacks better at fighting with your infantry and improves your MAT and has an armor debuff and... she does a lot.. the challenge is she cannot do it effectively without killing enemies to trigger free spells. She has a great defensive spell in Rough Seas, so she wants to get into melee quickly. She also has the least number of games as she is a hard to find model so fewer people know what to do with her. She is my second list choice, and I look forward to figuring out her different tricks!

Time to Set Sail!

I will be sharing my lists over the next couple articles and breaking down each model choice within. I will also do an additional article looking at all non-choices separately in detail. I will bring battle reports and updates on how the army develops both on the paint table and on the war table! It's the pirate's life for me!