Hey guys, BigVik here with my next installment in my ongoing series of Warmachine Faction Overviews. This week we discuss the hardy red comrades from the North, Khador! ‘FOR THE MOTHERLAND!” Check the Tactics Corner for more great articles!
The lore for Khador goes all the way back to the beginning of the Iron Kingdoms. After the Orgoth were driven out of Immoren (think blood magic driven Chaos Warriors from Warhammer), the nations which helped fight them off convened to split up the land as warranted. At the time Khador felt it had been swindled as Cygnar had given itself all of the most resource rich, and fertile lands. While Khador was left with the frozen tundra to the north with much of their ancestrally controlled lands handed to Ord, Lael, and other smaller countries.
Fast Forward a couple hundred years, and Khador occupies a large part of Lael as it continues the grinding war to take back what is rightly hers!
Khador has a very interesting niche in the meta-game of WarmaHordes. The Warjacks are big, slow, and hit hard, the infantry are highly specialized, and the Warcasters are so varied they can do almost anything. The themes of the faction as a whole are generally representative of the cold, harsh, and desperate environment these hard bitten soldiers come from.
The Warcasters in Khador are generally more hardy, and forward playing than contemporaries of other factions. Some are ‘Super-solos’, meaning the caster himself kills everything he gets his hands on, and your army is really there as delivery mechanism for him. Other casters primarily increase threat ranges in their army, or increase their killing power, and others will make them more survivable. Let’s look at some iconic Warcasters who really epitomize the themes of this very deep faction.
The first Warcaster we’ll take a closer look at is Orsus Zoktavir, The Butcher of Khardov, just rolls off the tong. Not only is he a great jack support caster, with his spell, full throttle, which makes his ‘Jacks both focus efficient and extremely accurate in melee, but he is the original ‘Super-solo.’ He comes in with the highest melee attack skill in the game. His massive two handed ax is iconic to the game, named after his long lost love, Lola. And I gotta say “Lola is thirsty”
Though later iterations of this caster become increasingly psychopathic mass murderers on the battlefield, Butcher 1, as he’s called in Warmachine vernacular, is definitely an iconic beat stick in the game, and is a great example of such for this faction.
Next up is Kommander Sorscha Kratikoff, she is the personification of the Frigid North. She is as cold and stoic as she is majestic and beautiful. On the battlefield she commands the powers of Winter itself to summon thick fog, freeze her opponents in place, or even to rush forward with the ferocious winds to unexpectedly assassinate her unsuspecting prey. Sorscha loves to support her forces by giving them concealment on the approach, freezing an opposing unit in place, often the linchpin of your opponent’s army if possible, then wind rushing forward and killing your opponent’s caster for the win.
Khador Jacks are big, slow, and hit hard. They have some of the best melee attack skills, relative to other ‘Jacks, in the game. They have the highest base armor, and some of the highest base damage potential for their melee. The downside to them is their lack of speed, and lack of accuracy with their ranged fire. To offset their lack of ranged accuracy, it is not uncommon for their ranged attacks to be AOE’s such as bombards and mortars, making them very good at countering large numbers of weak warrior models.
I would be remiss to not follow up by talking about the most iconic Khador ‘Jack, BEHEMOTH. This guy is one of the most expensive ‘Jacks or ‘Beasts in the game, has 2 powerful bombard cannons, and 2 piston powered fists that put Big O to shame! Each bombard has a rule called powerful shot, meaning every to hit and damage roll from the shot it throws gets an extra die for 1 focus total, making it quite accurate, very deadly against infantry, and extremely focus efficient for casters who have too many things they want to do with their focus. Not to mention those armor piercing fists, which only count your opponent’s armor at half. Behemoth is the epitome of up-armored, over armed glory that is Khador!
Khador’s infantry is an interesting dichotomy, either extremely elite, or completely expendable. These range wildly, including street criminal Kayazy Assassins, the battle wizards of the Greylords, to the strangle gas shooting Assault Kommandos!
Even after mentioning all of these previous units, none sum up Khador’s infantry like the Man-o-War Shock Troopers! Highly elite soldiers mounted in power armor, equipped with a lumbering shield cannon and halberd. Closer to light Warjacks than they are to regular infantry, no wonder these are some of the most sturdy infantry in all of WarmaHordes!
Ah the expendable guys, tied for the cheapest infantry in the game as of writing this article, the Winter Guard Infantry! Armed with an ax and a hand cannon, these guys are underappreciated in my opinion. They are summed up well with “Quantity is a quality all its own” as said by Josef Stalin, it is completely doable to have 60 of these guys on the field, in a game where a ‘swarm’ army is likely to be in the 40 to 50 range, and with proper support those lowly hand cannons can be used to clear dudes out nice and quick. If all else fails, Drown your enemies in the bodies of your fallen!
Khador is in a really strong place right now, even if their strongest tournament list did just get nerfed recently (RIP Mad Dog Spam). The ‘Casters are very resilient, and highly efficient at what they do, their ‘Jacks are the biggest and the baddest, and their infantry are varied enough that if you need a job done, there’s a unit that can do it!
That’s it for my overview of Khador, tune in next week for my look at the lords of death itself, Cryx!
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