The Five 50 mms of Doom
Asssuming Make them Suffer is not in the scheme pool, here's what I usually like to take with McCabe:
Lucas McCabe - 6 cache
-Glowing Sabre (2)
-Elixer of Life (2)
-Strangemetal Shirt (1)
Pale Rider (12)
Peacekeeper (11)
Ama No Zako (10)
The Lone Marshall (8)
Total: 46ss, 6 cache
The thing I like about this crew is that it has a very low model count, which means that most of the time your opponent won't be able to score any points from the strategy off of you. All of these models can be very difficult to kill and are quite killy themselves, which when coupled with McCabe's Upgrades and his ability to toss them around makes them even stronger.
The first real strength of this crew is McCabe's ability to heal damage through the Elixer of Life. If one of your big hitters like the Peacekeeper gets brought down to a low number of wounds you can use the (1) action Elixer of Living a Few Seconds Longer to help bring him back up. Granted it does have a very short range (6 inches), but in this crew McCabe should be pretty close to your other models anyways. After you use the Elixer to help heal up a model you can also use Take This! as a (0) action to give the model Regeneration +2, so they can heal up even more as soon as they activate. Being able to heal one of the 8+ wound models in this crew back up to full wounds in Reckoning is absolutely HUGE and should not be overlooked.
The second strength of the crew is how killy it is. The Peacekeeper is an absolute champ at killing things, and if you give the Pale Rider the Glowing Sabre there isn't much he can't go through. The Glowing Sabre ignores Armour, Hard to Wound, Incorporeal, and Hard to Kill. Short of Damage Prevention through Soulstones there's no defence it can't get through, and the Pale Rider's ability to add a number of Rams equal to the Turn Number - 1 makes for one holy hell of a Critical Strike trigger (that being said, avoid models like the Freikorps Librarian or Somer Teeth Jones that either make you ignore suits or unable to declare triggers). Ama No Zako works quite well with McCabe's ability to Paralyze models (by using the Crow trigger on his netgun when targeting a model that is already slow), and can use the Peacekeeper to help her Paralyze living models through the combo of her Promising Whisper and the Peacekeeper's Terrifying Living (12). Once a model is Paralyzed (or Ht1, which makes her extra awesome against Gremlins) she can use her Swallow You Whole to Sacrifice the target unless it discards two cards or two soulstones (this can also grant her a healing flip, which is always useful in Reckoning). She's also a Henchman, which is quite nice. The Lone Marshall acts as a heavy scheme runner/clean up hitter for the crew. He can throw down some very mobile ranged damage with his (2) action Trick Shooting, and since you don't want him too close to enemy models he works quite well as a scheme runner. With his Bullet Proof +2 and Hard To Wound +1 it won't be easy to kill him at range, especially if you stick to cover.
McCabe should be running fairly close to the pack of the Peacekeeper, Pale Rider, and Ama No Zako. Use his (0) action Take This! to get models into position or out of unfavourable combats. I suggest tossing around the Elixer of Life when using Take This! because it gives the model it's attatched to Regeneration +2, and that heal can be game changing in Reckoning. Also be sure to make use of his heal off of the Elixer of Life to keep your crew topped up on wounds. You can use his netgun to pass out Slow to enemy models, and if you target a model with Slow make sure to hit the Crow trigger to Paralyze them so Ama No Zako can come up and Swallow them Whole. Two shots on the same target (one to slow them, and one follow up for the Crow trigger) should be able to Paralyze most models. McCabe has a low number of wounds, so be careful not to get him too close to the enemy. Once he's Dismounted he loses a lot of mobility, which can be key in accomplishing your Schemes.
Some of the schemes you'll want to take with this crew are Schemes like Breakthrough/Protect Territory (both of which can be accomplished by the Lone Marshall if you're clever), Assassinate, Make Them Suffer, Murder Protege, Pant Evidence (which can also be done by the Lone Marshall), Vendetta, Entourage (due to McCabe's extreme mobility), Outflank (the Lone Marshall/Pale Rider/McCabe are all extremely quick, so you should be able to pull this off quite easily in the later game turns), and Bodyguard (if you're not playing in a timed tournament game).
If you do come across a Reckoning game and want to use this crew but Make Them Suffer is in the scheme pool simply swap Ama No Zako for either 2 Austringers (dropping you to a 4 cache), or an Austringer and a Watcher (which keeps you at a 6 cache). If you do bring an Austringer make sure place it behind a piece of terrain that hides it from enemy models so they can't target it (Austringers don't care about Line of Sight when they shoot with their Raptors anyways, so hiding them behind buildings or rocky outcrops won't bother them in the least).
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this write up, let me know what you think about this crew and the ideas I've presented here by leaving a comment! Thanks for reading, may all your flips be positive and your Jokers only Red!
