Mercenaries for Guild?

[DrDuckman]

Which mercenaries do you guys emply for Guild? It seems to be the faction that benefits less from most of them.

Desperate Mercs are obviously very useful, and Johan and Taylor are also nice for their magical hammers. Student of Conflict is also obviously a must buy. Him and Nino make an amazing fire team.

I personally also find Von Shill himself great for Guild, when not using lucius. We kinda seem to lack really tough nimble killy models, and the morale aura he gives is gold. Not found much use for the rest of the Friekorps tho, except possibly the specialist, when you cant have enough blasts(plus he's the only armor piercing we got).

How about Killjoy? Extremely expesive, but given we lack a model like Bettie Noir, he seems to give us some new options. With a horde of Death Marshals we can propably get him to where he needs to be(slow to die means you are guaranteed to be able to summon him before dieing). Opinions?

Any other merc I should look at? Bishop? Perhaps Misaki is worth it against Kurai and co? I also hear good things about the Convict Gunslinger, though I think he kinda clashes too much with nino. Besides, if you are gonna get a second sniper, a trapper gives you more tactical options. I am gonna go ahead and guess that Ronin are no good for us either.

[GAH]

Bishop is too expensive to even hire with the Victorias. I would consider just about anyone else before hiring him out of faction.

[ucfan34]

Been reading up on Misaki a bit, but most of the threads I've found with notable discussion are quite old. Anyone have any more recent thoughts, opinions, or strategies including her a Guild force?

And to piggyback off of the above a bit. What about the Ten Thunder Brothers?

To get started with the game I've been running...

Lady J.

Judge

Death Marshall x3

Executioner

Abuela Ortega

Scales of Justice

Using companion with Abuela and the Executioner has been an interesting intro into that ability. Got to thinking about it and was thinking in an Ortega you could

1.) Add Abuela & Shotgun Wedding a TTB

2.) Activate Abueal / TTB and use companion

3.) Use companion on the Shotgun'd TTB to activate the 2nd TTB

At work at the moment so can double check to see if this would work or not, but if so that seems like it'd be fun to try. Seems like there may be a good bit of synergy between the TTBs and Ortegas / at least gets a bit more melee into an Ortega list.

Thoughts on any of the nonsense above?

[Carse]

Killjoy doesn't work well with Death Marshalls because they can't be sacrificed so they can't summon him.

[DrDuckman]

Gah! Forgot about Intractable. Oh well, that puts killjoy right out, he only seems useful with slow to die models, as otherwise the opponent gets a turn to shoot him. I guess a Desperate Merc is an option, but now things are getting to expensive and inefficient.

I think Misaki/Ten Thunders is probably the most useful of the mercs, even in a non Family list adding a companionable melee force can sometimes be huge.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

If you want a slow to die model to delivery killjoy you can utilize the watcher.

[Stonedog-7]

OK, not really a guild player so take it with a hefty pinch of salt, but i'm not sure that guild really need mercenaries

Taelor/Johan/Misaki - great for magic weapons, but Witchlings are 4pts and have them

Convict - solid shooting platform... Austringers, Nino, Santiago, even Death Marshalls... all varying in cost and style but similar

Killjoy - nasty jack in the box, sure guild don't have that, as most factions don't... but executioner if you can get him there will be tougher to remove

Hans - Nino, Austringers, 'nuff said

The only exceptions i'd personally consider short of just liking the models/theme are (not having book 3 so won't comment on TTB) -

Ronin - highly mobile anti-armour

Student of Conflict - handing out fast is handy if you're not bringing any of the other totems

Specialist - ok, he'll cost you your special forces choice but resilient and if you're not playing Sonia/Papa Loco is a great source of blasts

Desperate Merc - only because at 2ss they're dirt cheap for what they do

Guild seem to have just about every option covered in faction for a decent cost and some very nice specialised pieces too

[Akujie]

SoC is great only because most of our models are so independent and can all benefit greatly from fast (especially masters like Sonnia/LJ). The SOC/Luc + X strat is nice. Also the list I throw Misaki in (though Im not as sold on her as i used to be). Throw her up front with lucious round one and with her Wind spell + fast from SOC you can usually go to town turn one on something big. She is dead turn two though then LJ is there to take her place (and you saved LJ from having to endure the initial wave of foe.) but that said, Judge or Executioner work just as well if not better and cost less, heck even Frans works well with this, and he is significantly cheaper.

Convict Gunnslinger is fun and even in a Perdita family list. I like having "gunslinger" trait on all most my whole line up. Perdita, Abduela, Convict, and Fransico (not a gunslinger but still fits the bill) as the core, and then fill in with what you need gives you a great gun line that is not shut down by the fast moving melee that can lock you up. Slinger is married into the family which justifies the 6 point cost imho. They can provide a great intercept wall to keep your nino/santiago safe. Are there better guild shooters? Yeah, but its a very enjoyable theme.

Have to agree with previous poster that generally its hard to justify paying the extra point for mercs. Why pay 6 points for a Ronin, when my Stalker is almost as good (and two points cheaper).

Hamlin (minion) is fun with Sonnia for the utility and with his hiring an extra ht1 model ability can give some great degree of hiring options to guild. Only tried him once though so really haven't seen if he is "worth" it or not.