Hunter or Charger?

It's a question I've seen discussed many times. While people are normally trying to analyze ranged damage, there's a lot more to be looked at here. Let's take a quick look at the pros and cons, and compare Cygnar's two favorite ranged light warjacks.

The Hunter has a number of pros

• It has extended control range
• It gets two inches more range than the charger
• It has pathfinder
• It requires only power-up focus, assuming you're looking to only boost damage. This makes it  great on focus-starved casters.
• Its defense is one higher than the charger
• All things being equal, its RAT is one higher

But the charger also has a number of benefits over the hunter

• It's one point cheaper
• It gets two shots, which means it's able to potentially take out more targets
• It's slightly sturdier than the hunter, with one extra ARM and two extra boxes
• The extra incentive to boost with powerful shot means that it's going to be more accurate in many cases, although it's eating more focus
• It's got one higher POW on the melee weapon

The extended control range and pathfinder more than anything are likely why the hunter costs more than the charger.

But all that said, let's take a quick peek at the comparative ranged damage output. For this chart, we're assuming that all shots hit, and that all shots have boosted damage.

As you can see, the charger is clearly better on low armor targets, and the hunter becomes a better choice only when the target is ARM 20. Armor buffs skew the math, since base armor is halved and then the ARM buff is re-added after the fact, so higher armors aren't included in this analysis.