Saturday, April 18

SPOTLIGHT: "Don’t you know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut, b*tch!"



Ahhhh.... Warmachine MK2. As well as consternation, doubt, grief and pure all-out anger (often spouted in Nerdragey-like threads on the official PP forums) there has been brief moments of pure ecstasy.

One of these is the new and improved Juggernaut. Normally, the plain old Juggernaut was incredibly vanilla. Suffering all the drawbacks of Warjacks, (low MAT, low DEF, low SPD) with only one decent special rule - Critical Freeze on the Axe - and at a (relatively) hefty 105 points cost. For the same price, you could get Drago, who could output a rather large amount of damage, and came with a boatload of special rules to further distance him from ol' Jugger.

Now, with MK2 changes coming about, the Juggernaut benefits from several of the overall warjack changes. +1 MAT brings him up to the average trooper level, at MAT 6 hes hitting DEF 13 on average, which is about the maximum DEF most Heavy Warjacks will get to. Also, practically every medium or heavy base trooper as well! He still has crit freeze, which, although easier to mitigate with the new shake effects still can force an opponent to spend a focus to get out of it. The new damage system basically gives him an extra 3-5 damage points AND he is (practically) fully functional during this time as well, as opposed to losing 11 damage and being completely useless without his Ice Axe.

The once weak open fist of the Juggernaut benefitted from a POW increase, up from 12 to 15. This is quite significant, basically the equivalent of Weapon Master on average.

Furthermore, the Juggernaut costs only 7 points. With pButcher, this means you can take one for free!! Most other Warcasters only pay 1 or 2 points for the Jugger if hes the first Jack you take. To see why this is so good, compare it to other Warjacks and units at the same or similar cost.

Basically, its only 1 point more than the Berzerker! In terms of Warjacks, the Juggernaut is definitely the best all-around choice for the 8 points and under category. (This is only because at 9 points, the Devastator and the Kodiak are brilliant!) (Disclaimer: biased opinion alert!)

Compared to units, hes a point cheaper than the full unit of our elite infantry, the Iron Fang Pikes, Assault Kommandos and Kayazy. Im pretty sure this puts him (comparitively) cheaper than he was before. Also, since Jacks got buffed and (some) units got nerfed, hes even better in a direct comparison!

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