Retribution Mage hunter strike force... are they really that dirty??

Well... the painting has taken a bit of a back burner to say the least!

On a positive note I've managed to get a unit of mage hunter strike force finished

The big question is are they really as good as people make them out to be??

So far I've played 2 games with the retribution and when the guys I normally play against find out that I'm trying out the new project its meet with moans and groans of the usual cheese which makes me smile ;)

The first game against Spencer I'll be honest I had no idea how to use them and it was tight to say the least, I sent the mage hunter group after Spencer's warcaster and only just failed to take him out.

Now the second game was against Stef's troll's, with the new Trollblood army book out I wasn't looking forward to this game as it was going to be a tough one! Stef didn't disappoint me and promptly stomped all over me! (I did make a schoolboy error at one point but the less said about that the better!!) however I sent the mage hunters after his warlock and once more they failed to do the job that was expected of them.



Breaking down the unit into the basic areas...

Movement:

So they have stealth, pathfinder and advanced deployment with the upgrade which makes them nice and fast and the threat range is very impressive.

Shooting:

fairly good range, if you use a certain caster and get snipe on them then they border on the insane! Arcane assassin is nice and with that skill it appears that they are warcaster/warlock killers but then they also have jack hunter giving you 3D6 against warjacks, include the unit upgrade and you ignore LOS, so far all very impressive, but then you look at the actual power of the ranged weapon and its only 10... now against anything above armour 18ish then your going to need some above average rolls to score more than 3 to 4 damage points sometimes easier said than done!

Melee:

For what ever reason the unit comes with combined melee attack? again the arcane assassin & jack hunter skills can be used in combat but with a power + strength of 9 I don't quite "get it" either stand 12 inches away and shoot like a nutter or run up and get a +7 to hit and damage with one attack (minimum size unit and commander) assuming you can get all 7 into melee range of the target.  

so final thoughts??

Against warmachine armies they do have there uses, aka jack hunter however as I found out to my cost against hordes they are "ok" maybe I expect too much of the unit? and should use them more as a "sausage" unit? I've had the usual suspects trying to tell me what to use but I like to find my own way as we all have a differant playing style.

now the question is turned over to you.... would you agree with what I said or am I missing something?

Any how I'm working on one of the retribution light jacks to see if the technique that I tried on my caster works on the bigger models, so far its looking quite good but I'll try and get this finished sooner rather than later, and once its done I'll break down the model from a gaming point of view as I enjoyed disecting the mage hunters gave me some food for thought!