You have an Achilles, and a Patroclus. You can duo them, you want to hide the identity of both. But as far as I know, you can't really do that. At least not with using 3 holoechoes and also deploying Patroclus as Achilles. You put them in a duo, but you have to put a link leader token next to the leader, so either you put it on Achilles, or the three instances of Achilles, which are your Patroclus. Then it's obvious which one is which. On your active turn, you have to put the Holoecho marker on one of the Patrocluses, unless you deploy only a single one of them. So you can only hide the identity of either, if you deploy 2 Achilles, then what's the point in deploying 4?
If going second, try deploying Pat as 3 chain rifle thorakites, put a Dasyu and a chain rifle ekdromoi in the same combat group... Then watch your opponent sending his piece to catch your cheerleaders, but finding smoke instead... and a 21CC EXP weapon. Expensive and not optimized for tournament play, but very, very fun. Also take note that Pat kills RT in cover very easily (be careful if marksmanship 2 is active) Enviado desde mi SM-J330FN mediante Tapatalk
During the deployment phase you place four Achilles on the table and your opponent will not know (until the start of your turn) which one is Achilles, which one is the real Patroclus and which two are fakes. Consequently he will not know how to deploy to best counter your troopers. You can for example deploy the real Achilleus on the left side of the table, then a holoecho 8' to the right, a secound holoecho to an additional 8' to the right and a real Patroclus an additional 8' to the rigth. That means Achilleus is a whopping 24' away from the real Patroclus. But your opponent will only know one of them is Achilleus and the other is Patroclus. So where will he place his hacker (pretty ace against Achilleus but completly useless against Patroclus)? To the left hand side of the table or the right hand side of the table? There is a 50% chance he will make a significant mistake during deployment. Now during your turn you place the holoecho markers and activate the fireteam Achilleus being the leader. OK your opponent will now know which one is Achilleus, but will not know which one is the real Patroclus. Shooting at Achilleus is suboptimal in most cases but your opponent might find it reasonable to shoot at Patroclus. Now there is a 66% chance he will shoot the holoecho instead of the real Patroclus. (FYI the best thing in this duo is your ability to drag both Big A and Patty in one single order towards the DZ of your opponent, becuase there is no link team bonus in this case at all. Consequently you do not mind breaking coherency at the end of the order too much.) Your opponent only has bad choices and worse choices... I second the suggestion of pedrogzc. Assuming you play vanilla Aleph I suggest fielding Patty as three Dakini Paramedics. If you can trick your opponent into believing they are real (fairly mobile specialists that can heal your troopers farily reliably - it is not hard to believe you take three of them!) he will field hackers and lightweight firefighters to finish them off. By the time your opponent realize they are Patroclus, misdeployment has already been made. It's garbage time for Patty!
All good points above, and great uses for Patroclus. To respond to the op, the fluff offers some insight. Patroclus has holo lv3 to distract the enemy. With more than one Achilles appearing on the field, enemy deployment can be confused and some attention will be directed away from Achilles himself. Aleph felt that this was important because Achilles was a little too eager to get into the fight. Instead of fighting until the mission was accomplished, Achilles kept killing until he got deep into enemy lines and eventually was overwhelmed and killed. Resurrecting him is expensive, so Aleph wanted to find a way to help him survive. Patroclus is also the close friend of Achilles and helps hold his fury in check (in a duo, Achilles does not become impetuous) so that the blonde titan stays under control. As far as the rules, here are some other things to keep in mind. Holo lv1&2 have the negative feedback trait, which ODD and camo:mimetism also have. This means, as soon as you use holo lv1 or 2, the bs bonus of mimetism or ODD no longer apply. Holo lv3 allows Patroclus to keep his negative modifiers even when His echoes are on the table. Some other uses for his holoprojector include: Clearing out mines and perimeter weapons without risking his 1 wound against shock. Moving with one of the echoes provoking an ARO, and then running Patroclus across a gap. Almost like a short skill cautious move. Stacking surprise shot with ODD. If you can catch something without a range bonus, that’s negative 12 to hit.
Thanks for the answers! What I also don't get, how can you put them together in a link. Achilles V1 has Fireteam: Duo, it doesn't say anything about Patroclus, and he's (surprise!) AVA1, so seems like a bug. Achilles V2 has Duo with Patroclus, so he can team up with any of Patroclus' loadout. Patroclus has Fireteam Duoa (also seems like a bug, same as with Achilles V1), but there's a general, all loadout fireteam duo with Achilles V2 on the bottom. Also Patroclus with Mimetism has Duo with Achilles V2, which seems redundant with the bottom note. I suppose the idea was that you can Duo ODD Achilles with ODD Patroclus, and Mimetism Achilles with Mimetism Patroclus. It just doesn't written like that on army.
There are a couple of different things going on. The main difference between Holo2 and Holo3 is that Holo3 doesn't have NFB. That means that Patroclus can benefit from Holo2 and ODD/Mimetism at the same time. As for using Holo1 + Holo2 to pretend you have 4 Achilles models on the table, you've pretty much got it. The examples in the book make it very clear how you have to place the fireteam duo marker, and it does end up revealing most of your surprise. I personally think Holo1+2 is unnecessary rules bloat, for all the reasons you outlined.
Patroclus is best without Achilles IMO, like, you just run him solo as a BS 13 Spitfire with ODD and Surprise Shot who can pretend to be something else, has MOV 6-4 and NWI and also is a monster in CC and also has smoke grenades. Deploy 4 Agema Marksman MSRs. Yes, obviously three of them are Patroclus. But which three? If any of them are Patroclus, you want troopers up to ARO him so he can't just run up the board at lightning speed unopposed and kill your shit. But any of them are Agema, you are also fucked, you can't leave stuff staring up the board to get MSV2 Sniped from behind a smoke cloud which can be dropped by a wide variety of troops in ALEPH and SP in particular. Ahhh! What to do? There is no good answer. If you opponent does leave stuff out, aforementioned snipage, if they don't, Patroclus bombs up the board and tears them to bits in CQB where he absolutely excels. He's not even frenzied so you can run him solo reliably. Achilles is really good but what he wants is an entire order group and to be shoved down the neck of the enemy army. Patroclus doesn't do much he can't already do, except for the cunning tricks, which are kind of detracting from Achilles' role as army-killer. So I wouldn't necessarily say that the default is a duo, I think the default is for them to not even be in the same list, and if they are; hey, you get duo too!
I love running Achilles and Patroclus side by side. I’ve never run them as a DUO though, doing so seems like a waste. Achilles running down one flank hits hard enough, and Patroclus can hit the other flank just as hard - or pave the way for Achilles through a repeater network. And giving up Pats ODD for DUO seems a steep price to pay.
Too many points. Just enjoy the extra order - if you’re running both Achilles and Patroclus, you’re gonna need it ;)
It also means Achilles can take advantage of partial cover (while linked) because without that link, when he's impetuous, he's getting total cover or nothing.
Again, BS15 and ODD is all Achilles will ever need to win a FtF. Another thing about Achilles is, that he is usually expendable. The important part is, that you make his opponent pay the bigger price.
Running Big A and Patty in duo is an order-efficient way to move-move both your heavy-weight hitter upfields. You can field them in the middle of the field, rush towards the enemy DZ and unleash them both; one to the left and one to the right. (Preferably Patroclus in the direction of enemy hackers, repeaters and Achilleus in the other direction.) Also as the old adage goes: S*** happens. If the fairest of all heroes goes down Patroclus can still save the day. Admittedly easier said than done but Patty has a much better chance finishing the rampage started by his BFF (and derailed by a pesky little TO camo hacker isolating poor old Achilleus) than the ragtag supporting cast normally fielded in vanilla Alehp to pave the way for Big A.
The official ruling, as annoying as it is, is that Achilles v2 and Patroclus with mimetism is the only duo that either model can be a part of. I’m not sure why Achilles v1 and the overall profile for Patroclus still sport the duo rule. This page has all of the legal fireteams and is well kept up to date.
There really is no feeling like it, when a first turn chausseur gives Achilles a warm welcome, he fails his dodge and the following four armor saves..
