In Every List: The Journeyman Warcaster

There aren't many models that you can legitimately claim are must-haves in every list you build. But if there is a single one in Cygnar, it's the journeyman warcaster. That model is indeed literally in every single list I use. Let's take a look at why, at which warjack options are best, and whether it's viable to ever build a list without a junior.




The humble journeyman warcaster. At left here you can see my own as I was painting. I prefer the female variant because I'm a snowflake.

So why is this model so important? One reason: arcane shield. Cygnar is largely balanced around the fact that any model can potentially get arcane shield, so it feels like a mistake not to take advantage and drop four points on a model that can grant the arcane shield and also has a boostable hand cannon. Being able to camp up to two focus while maintaining the arcane shield also makes the journeyman pretty survivable.

One of the first questions that should come up here during listbuilding is which warjack to put on your journeyman warcaster. As a general rule, if you're taking a heavy, you'll want the ability at some point to be able to fully load that heavy with focus and send it in to do some work in melee. Given that your journeyman can't do that while maintaining arcane shield, putting a heavy on junior doesn't seem like a good idea.

The light warjacks in cygnar are as follows: firefly, sentinel, charger, minuteman, grenadier, hunter, lancer, and Ace. Right off the bat, let's strip out three as good options. Ace is only worth his points with Caine. A large part of the lancer's value comes from his arc node, and the journeyman doesn't have much worth channeling. And the minuteman is more focus-hungry than some heavies - not a good choice for your journeyman.

I'll tell you right off the bat that I don't own and have never played a grenadier, largely because I don't own a single trencher model. So I'm not that great a judge on this front. I'll be leaving the grenadier out of my discussion.

The firefly is the model I put on my junior most often. It's the least expensive Cygnar warjack, it's fantastic at dealing with light infantry at range, and it helps anything with lightning (storm lances, Dynamo, stormblades, itself) hit harder. If nothing else, you can run it up twelve inches and shoot it with storm lances to e-leap into a stealth model with POW12 leaps. It's hard to go wrong with a firefly.

When I feel that I'm in a list where my caster needs extra protection (ahem, Nemo) I'll always want a sentinel as a shield guard. The sentinel is also great at protecting your more valuable heavies from being disrupted by Eiryss shots. If I feel like I might be facing Eiryss1, I'll always take a sentinel.

The charger is a warjack that could easily be considered the best light in Cygnar. For just one focus beyond power up, it gets two boosted POW12s at range 12. Put it on junior, and your warcaster doesn't need to worry about allocating to it, and your journeyman still gets to camp one after maintaining arcane shield. Definitely a solid choice. It costs a point more than the firefly and sentinel, so I take it slightly less often, but it's certainly worth its points.

Lastly, the hunter. The hunter is great against armor bricks, but costs a good bit more than the charger and is far squishier. You've got to keep your hunter far out of harm's way or it will be crippled with a single hit. The upside is that the hunter is generally happy with just its power up focus to boost damage. This is why I rarely will put a hunter on the journeyman. All things being equal, it's just all-out-better on my primary caster since I won't need to allocate to it anyway and the caster's control range will always be superior.

That's my personal assessment of which warjacks work on the Cygnar journeyman: firefly, sentinel, charger, or maybe sometimes a hunter. In that order.

Last item: is it ever feasible to build a list with no journeyman warcaster at all?

It's hard for me to think of a situation where I wouldn't bring a journeyman warcaster. It's just the way I build lists. Perhaps a Caine1 unit-based gunline list in the Sons of the Tempest theme. That list would care more about defense than armor, and three extra points of armor wouldn't be of much use on the gun mages, black 13th, and light jacks that I'd put into that list.

It's probably because we're in such an armor-heavy meta at the moment - my own minimeta especially so - but it's easy for me to see why the journeyman warcaster really needs to be in every list.