Warmachine Tactics – Cryx: Mortenebra

Warcasters are the stars of Warmachine, and Cryx has no shortage of powerful and fun-to-play warcasters. Today, I’m taking a look at Master Necrotech Mortenebra.
IN SHORT: Mortenebra is the undisputed queen of Cryx warjacks. No one can make our warjacks perform like she can.
STRENGTHS: Mortenebra comes loaded with 6 ways to support our warjacks. Let’s step through them.
Spectral Steel gives one of her warjacks +2 ARM and Ghostly. The extra armor is great, but Ghostly is fantastic, allowing her chosen warjack to ignore terrain and run through buildings. Nice!
Jump Start is a super cheap spell at 1 Focus. With this, Mortenebra can clear stationary and knockdown effects from her entire battlegroup. At the same time, her battlegroup can face in any direction, which is situational, but still nice when you need it.
Overrun is a powerful spell that gives one of her warjacks a surprising burst of speed, once per turn only. Put Overrun on a warjack. Now have that warjack destroy an enemy model. Immediately after this happens, ANY model in Mortenebra’s battlegroup can make a full advance. This gives her battlegroup a terrifying threat range!
Her spell, Terminal Velocity, allows any of her warjacks to charge or execute power attacks for free. But that’s not all! They also gain boosted melee attack rolls against living models, AND they gain +2” movement when they charge or slam a living model. Ouch!
On top of all this, Mortenebra can repair warjacks (skill check 10) and has an interesting ability in Interface. If she is base-to-base with one of her warjacks, that jack can spend her Focus. ALL OF IT!
Her feat, Recalibration, is also extremely powerful. All Cryx models in her control area can reroll attack and damage rolls. Missed? Do over! Not happy with the damage? Do over! This is for her ENTIRE ARMY!
And, as an added bonus, she comes with her own Skarlock with a few minor upgrades.
WEAKNESSES: Except for her feat, Mortenebra has no support for anything but warjacks. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take infantry, only that they’ll be a little lackluster with Mortenebra compared to more conventional Cryx warcasters.
Mortenebra also has low personal attack power. Her melee attacks are okay, nothing too special. She comes with two attacks spells, but she’s going to be spending most of her Focus on supporting her warjacks, not slinging spells. Her army has to do the heavy lifting for her.
SYNERGIES: Warjacks. Lots of them. Big ones. Small ones. Whatever your heart desires. Mortenebra can support any of them. Or all of them at once.
That said, Mortenebra only has so much Focus. A Warwitch Siren or two are great additions to help power the warjacks. Cryx also has an excellent selection of Focus efficient warjacks to choose from. Taking one of these, like the Seether, can greatly aid Mortenebra’s resource management.
Mortenebra’s Theme Force, Infernal Machines, is one of the few themes I would actually recommend to new players. Who doesn’t like helljacks that each cost 1 point less? 5 Points for a Slayer? That’s just nuts!
JUST FOR FUN: Interface + Recalibration + Kraken. Just think about it for a moment. Let the ridiculousness sink in.
The Kraken can reroll any roll with 2 base melee attacks and up to 10 additional melee attacks (7 Focus on Mortenebra + up to 3 on the Kraken from corpse tokens). Not many models in the game can take a pounding like that!
SUMMARY: Cryx is a faction focused more on infantry that warjacks. Mortenebra lets us go crazy with our warjacks, and win with them.
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