Convergence of Cyriss

Yesterday a new faction was introduced to the Warmachine and Hordes scene in the guise of the Convergence of Cyriss. From what the trailer has shown (link is at the bottom of the page if you want to check it out) is that firstly anyone who loves their really techno looking models will love these models. In my opinion they look like a crossover of Elven and Egyptian (mainly the Warcaster's face at least) asethetics with a dash of 40Ks favourite unfeeling robotic rave, the Necrons. It has also shown that like the Retributuion forces Jacks are not called Jacks, they are actually called Vectors, and given their technological feel I'm relatively certain there maybe some form of immunity to electricity or even a weakness to it give the mechanical nature of the army.



Whilst no immediate conclusions should be made from what we have seen I noted three very interesting points through the video. First, one of the light Vectors serves as a battlefield mechanic, to put this into perspective, to my knowledge only Khador and Cygnar can repair jacks and that requires a squishy unit that generally dies the minute the Jack they're repairing gets hit by an AoE, Cyriss have a light Jack which will be a) better armoured, b) better armed and c) easier to hide, (try hiding five small bases rather than 1 medium, you'll see what I mean). The second point of interest is how the army uses focus on it's Vectors, this may simply be a misunderstanding, but in the video a player is seen using focus on one Vector, then having used it passing it on to another vector. Essentially the focus you allocate to one Vector goes round every Vector in your army, add on top of this that the Caster that was shown has an incredibly high focus value and already I'm thinking casters such as pSeverious and other focus stealers are suddenly going to have a field day when facing these guys. It also screams to me that either these Vectors are going to be very focus hungry, beyond even Khadoran standards or the Casters are going to be very spell heavy.

This then nicely leads to the third point, the Casters themselves. Firstly Casters appear to each have a field marshal ability (although we have so far only seen two examples) which applies battlegroup wide and when you see some of the abilities, they are pretty sweet tricks. The other thing that caught my eye about these Casters is their Vectors. Whilst other Jacks have a set MAT and RAT the MAT and RAT of Vectors in a Cyriss army is reliant upon the Caster as the values become the same as the Caster's (Very hive minded possibly), bringing the old maxim of "you build your army round your Caster not the other way round" with quite a bit of force, although I'd like to see this on the tabletop before drawing conclusions, I feel this will heavily shape how army selection works in Cryiss forces.

One final side note and one I can't really go too far into is the apparently adaptable weaponry that the force carries as some of the art shown depicted an axe turning into a halberd and a flail into a mace. I can only assume this means that effectively the weapons will have * attacks meaning the player will have to choose what weapon they use for the attack, like the Demo Corps choosing which swing to use effectively, but as this wasn't explained much I can only make assumptions, but if I do ever get a second army dependent on what they bring I must say Cyriss is a very attractive option.

http://www.facebook.com/l/uAQHZAmpj/www.youtube.com/watch?v=na_ehW6hm5A