Cygnar's storm knight infantry tends to be very complex and have wonky rules. There's a lot to keep track of in terms of making sure this model is within 5" of that model, making sure that model is inside this other model's command range, and lots of additional overlapping synergies. Memorizing a model's stats are one thing, but when there are so many modifiers, and a single stormblade unit might have three different POWs on their shots because some are inside ionization and others are out of range of the storm rod, it can get sticky.
Stormblade Infantry
The closest thing Cygnar has to weaponmaster infantry. When you first look at them, their POW13 swords don't look like much. But they're capable of POW15 charge attacks with an assault shot that starts at POW12 and can go up to POW16 with the storm rod and firefly. Against an ARM18 target, each can do an average of 12 damage this way. And if backed up by ragman, positive charge, or Aiyanna and Holt, it can go even higher.
The basic 10-point stormblade infantry unit comes with a leader carrying a storm rod, and five grunts. They have POW13 swords, and POW12 shots with range 4. Yes, you heard me right: range four. When any of them are within 5" of the leader's storm rod, they get +2 POW and +2 range on their shots. This brings the shots up to range 6 POW14, and brings the melee attacks up to POW15. Also, stormblades have combined melee attack, something I've always forgotten and have never once used.The storm rod is an odd and quirky thing. It always gets its own bonuses. Also, the storm rod is the only range 2 melee attack in the whole unit. Also, while any model in the unit can be field promoted and pick up the storm rod, if it ever does get removed from play, the +2 bonuses are lost permanently.
The stormblade command attachment is a 5-point officer and standard, the key being that this standard actually has a weapon. The officer has five boxes and an extra point of MAT and RAT. But the real reason to take the officer and standard lies in their other abilities. Firstly, they grant a mini-feat: iron zeal. This gives the entire unit +3 ARM, and immunity to stationary and knockdown for a round. With arcane shield, the unit can be ARM21. With deceleration, they can be ARM23 vs shooting. Not bad.
While Iron Zeal helps deliver the stormblades, they still have the problem of a very poor threat range. A 9" charge isn't likely to catch much unless you're coming in as a second line unit. The command attachment also grants assault, which allows the stormblades to threaten up to 14" with assault shots. The shots aren't terribly accurate at RAT6, but laddermore and a storm strider can possibly bring this up to RAT8 if positioning works out perfectly. In the end, if making assault shots, the stormblades are probably looking to shoot at warjacks, warbeasts, or heavy infantry with a defense of 12 or lower.
This can potentially change if you've brought at least one storm gunner. Each stormblade unit can bring up to three of its weapon attachments, which are identical to a normal stormblade except for the range 10 storm gun, which goes up to range 12 when within 5" of the storm rod. If a storm gun hits a target, any other stormblade shots from that same unit which fire in the same activation will auto-hit that target, so long as the target is in range. So an ideal scenario would be an enemy warpwolf positioned at 13" away on a hill, well outside of a stormblade charge, but well within range of its shots. Those shots normally would require tens to hit, so perhaps the wolf feels safe. Lets say you've brought Caine0, and you can put fire for effect on the storm gunner. The unit assaults, the stormgunner needs a 10 on three dice, which is quite feasable. If it hits, you've now got a bunch of POW14 shots going into that ARM16 warpwolf. Each shot will do an average of 5 damage, so you really only need six. Granted, that's an ideal sceario, but that's what theorymachine is all about - ideal scenarios.The stormgunners, at two points for a single model, are a bit overpriced for what they do, but they're nice against high defense warbeasts like those in Legion or Circle, or against light warjacks. They also work well when you've built a list and have two points leftover - there are no two-point options in Heavy Metal.
Personally, I'd love an upcoming storm division CID to give us Pangborn, a character stormgunner with five boxes, jack marshall, and some kind of decent Drive ability.The stormblades love buffs. Defensive buffs like arcane shield can stack with their Iron Zeal, and Blur can stack with Rhupert's Veil of Mists to make them DEF 17, or 19 on a hill. And I've already mentioned offensive buffs like Positive Charge, Ragman's Death Field, and Aiyanna's Kiss of Lyss.
Positioning is important with any infantry, but there are a lot of very specific things you need to keep in mind with Stormblades. If they have no armor buff, it's very important to space them out to deal with whatever size AoE attacks you expect to come in. If your stormblades are only ARM15, and your opponent has a couple artillery pieces with 4" AoEs, you need to space your models so that any single AoE can only get one of them.
Something equally important, but easier to overlook, is positioning for Take Up. You do want to position your grunts such that they can take up your standard or your storm guns, but be careful about losing too many grunts, since a standard or a gunner cannot field promote to unit leader. If you're left with a storm rod, officer, standard, and three storm gunners, and your storm rod dies, you've lost it permanently.
Stormblades can be a great unit, but sometimes I like to play non-storm division lists just to take a break from the complexity.
Stormguard Infantry
An infantry-shredding unit that never sees the table. Battleboxes included them for quite a long time, but they just never see the table in Mk3. Their base stats are the same as stormblade infantry, but they lack Iron Zeal and assault. Instead they have electroleap and practiced maneuvers. They can still use arcane shield to get up to ARM18, and deceleration to get up to ARM20 vs shooting, but what they really need is something like Force Barrier.
If the stormguard infantry make it into a mass of enemy infantry, their halberds can wreak havoc - a unit of 10 should be able to take out twice their number in low-armor enemy models thanks to electroleaps. And if they're going up against enemy infantry, even weaponmaster infantry, they're DEF14 when being charged thanks to Set Defense. The problem is that low-armor infantry of MAT6 or less really isn't a thing in today's meta.The stormguard leader has a weird weapon that works in a manner every bit as wonky as the stormblade leader. Rather than buffing the members of the unit, the stormguard leader's weapon has a shot which builds up power as members of his unit hit. So if you have a full unit of ten, and they're all still somehow alive, and they all even more miraculously hit targets, his Quick Work shot can be an amazing POW16 AoE4, with POW8 blast damage. Yeah, that's actually not really so amazing for something that is extremely unlikely to ever happen.
Silver Line Stormguard
The elite version of the Stormguard Infantry. What do they have that the regular stormguard don't? Well, they can't be charged, which is actually a really neat ability. But they also lost electroleaps, and they cost more. And the weird AoE gun that the stormguard have is replaced by a gun that does no damage but instead causes a target hit to take +2 electrical damage for a round.It's possibly useful? But wait... it's not wonky enough. Storm knight units are supposed to have wonky rules. Okay, so that weird +2 electrical damage gun is range 6. But it gets +1 range for each model in the unit that hit this round. Okay, now it's sufficiently weird.
So that's the three primary infantry units in Storm Division. One that's seldom taken, and two that are never taken. Next time, we'll look at Storm Towers, which are technically a unit, and Stormsmiths, which technically aren't.
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