As, I'm new to NCA. I was wondering, what is the best way to deal with Hassassin and Fiday's? what units should I have in my list?
Black Friar is the obvious choice - because of his visors. Although, he is a rather easy target for the Friday to clean up first. I would honestly recommend 2 or 3 Auxilias to cover the back field.
The most important thing while dealing with Fidays is having a correct deployment so they cannot deploy behind your lines to go on a liutenant hunting rampage. Auxilias (mostley for their bots really) are good units at protecting flanks, and a pair of CSU with the right metachemistry roll can also guard your deployment zone easily. Other than that, we don't have any other biometric visor than the black friar, and that one has a hard time being fielded on NCA because of being a MI (and the issues related to that) and its point cost and weapon selection.
Give him more than 1 LT target (hello Deva) and guard Fusilier link with HFT (auxilia). And use TO/Bulleteer to clean whatever else he bringa. Haqq really hate TO/ODD and Shock ammo.
Bonus pointa as your Fugazi network is a good way to prevent him for easy smoke coverage and/or endander his rather fragile CAMO with sniffer net
A couple of things on Impersonators: Don't line up your troops. Sounds silly, but you really don't want to provide that easy shotgun blast that takes out your entire Fusilier link team. Stagger your troops across multiple levels if possible, while allowing them to get supporting Line of Fire to one another. A Fiday that has to lay smoke and CC models individually is spending 3 or 4 times more Orders per kill compared to nuking multiple valuable cheap NCA troops with a light shotgun. 5-man links are very good vs impersonators. A linked Fusilier Combi hits a Fiday in cover on 15s... That's almost a match for the Fiday's best-case scenario shotgun blast on 17s. The Fiday could very easily lose this F2F roll. Use your Fusiliers as a deterrent. Hidden Deployment. Keep your Hexa or Swiss keeping an eye on your DZ. You may get a chance to reveal for a critical shot, either when the Fiday throws smoke, or (best case scenario) wihen the Fiday stops to reimpersonate, believing itself to be safe. Use these troops to babysit your DZ (but make sure you don't reveal that Swiss just for it to get beaten down in CC...) Corporate Security Units: This name isn't just for show... This unit is very good at securing your DZ. Use that Sixth Sense Level 1 to make the Fiday work to get past it. Trade Nanopulser hits if necessary. Watch out for rooftops or lanes that extend outside your DZ. Deploying your best troops prone on a roof, only to find a Fiday deploying risk-free on the same rooftop, is very scary. Be conscious of terrain areas inside and outside your DZ that Impersonators are likely to stage from. Everything that applies above also applies to Inferior Infiltrating Daylami, except Daylami have no smoke or CC abilities to speak of. Watch out for a heavy saturation of Daylami, because a shotgun in your DZ on Turn 1 is no joke. A couple of things for HB in general: Use Stealth/Marker states to get past Jammers. Yes, Jammers are brutal. Don't play into their game, and use TO troops, a Garuda walking on, etc. to outflank and kill Mutts. The Swiss MULTI is very good at this, able to sneak around easily and use Shock to drop Mutts easily. Remember that Jammers can Intuitive Attack against TO tokens. Don't leave your TO troops hanging out in the midfield... Plan to make the most of your Hidden Deployment units once you reveal them, because they become vulnerable Jammer targets once they're in play. Don't let Holoprojector L2 mess with you too much. If you see three identical models with overlapping zones of control, weigh the possibility of them being a Holo Ayyar. If possible, get familiar with the point and SWC costs of HB units... This may help you pinpoint real units versus fake units. Plan on mastering the firelanes. HB has some respectable shooting troops, but most of their damage is done with asymmetrical trades, usually at short range. Maintain mastery of the long lanes to make it harder for HB troops to maneuver, and focus on dominating them in long-range combat when you can. The more open the table, the more HB will have to work, so favor table sides or approaches that give you this advantage. Edit: One last thing. This is a really good matchup for maximizing our tech: HB has a lot of Dogged 1-Wound troops, as well as good Doctors to pick them up, so hard-hitting options like Shock, DA, Fire, etc. are all very helpful. Put targets down hard enough that they stay down. HB has good smoke tools and likes to rely on smoke to maneuver into short range, so Visors aren't bad here. No MSV2 and only an AVA1 Sensorbot makes TO very helpful. For Discovering, you still have to contend with good Haqq willpower, plus secondary methods for Discovery like Intuitive Attack Jammers or direct templates, but TO/ODD units are difficult for Haqq to outshoot directly. Stripping units like Mutts early in the game can make it very difficult for HB to stand toe-to-toe with -6 units. HB can have a good infowar game, with Leila's KHD being a common sight, plus good Pitcher coverage readily available. Look for good KHD opportunities (you may even be able to kill an LT in the process) and be careful with your own Hackers.
I used them last night, for only the 3rd or 4th time ever. I'm not particularly good with them, but I've fought them enough to know what to look out for. They're a lot of fun to use.
The other things Hassassins are bringing is Ghazi spam. To answer that you want to bring Bolts. No, seriously! Bolts make players who lean heavily on Ghazi cry.
The one thing Bolts are good at is not getting jammed through a wall. At the same time they're extremely vulnerable against Chainrifles, don't have anything to deal with Camo and dogged, are vulnerable to Haqq's "LSGs everywhere!" trait and Drop Bears don't strike me as extra useful vs cheap Haqq troops. Not sure if that is enough to bring them over anything else. Mind elaborating your train of thought @AdmiralJCJF ? Some small observations against Hassassins: - They're gonna try to kill your LT. Forfeiting the Fusilier Core to spread your possible Lt candidates or even shelling out for a Black Friar might be ways to deal with that. - There are a lot of Multiwound/Dogged models in HB, NCA is good at causing overkill to offset that.
Bolts have high BS and Shotguns of their own, so a Shotgun in close isn't scary. And their high BTS and BioImmunity are also very likely to see play against HB thanks to Viral. It does depend on the mission, but I've had better success with the kind of stripped-down Bolt Fireteam that's been discussed elsewhere (basically, ditching everything with a Combi/Shotgun) and using them as an aggressive combat team. And, to be fair, it's not like NCA are exactly flush for great answers to Chain Rifles other than our HI or TAGs... and those just suffer from the Jammer!
My approach has always been to try to get as much of my backfield covered as possible. I often choose to deploy second with NCA to begin with since we have strong ARO options [I take a pair of peacemakers and a missile link], but between the order monkey fusiliers, and your pick of CSU/Auxilia, they have to be really committed to getting to you. Especially as even combi rifles are brutal on B2 BS15 SSL2. I usually find myself making a choice between a boarding shotgun locust and a MSV/BMV Black Friar, and have decided I like the additional pressure of having stuff in the upfield. It's worth remembering if you take an 'all comers' list [which I believe in, tailoring to your opponent is kind of ridiculous in an army as specced out as PanO], you can use stuff differently. Like for me, putting a locust or Peacemaker in the backfield to force terrible ARO decisions, and consider where your TO units are going to let you stack AROs.