You must be avoiding the YJ forum. This thread is pretty tame! I'm not sure I entirely agree, but I will agree that familiarity does help. Only if the person using them doesn't know how!
Sufficed to say, upper three comments are very worth to read and strengthens my experiences. Good posts, @daboarder @Stiopa and @barakiel , as always you do.
I have been in YJ a fair bit, I've also read the Tohaa forums recently and some Pan O stuff. I think in general people in this forum need to take a breath and think about their own mental health. Theres alot of energy put into being upset at stuff that shouldn't be that big a deal.
I felt like I had to address this. A Strelok minelayer is 21 points and generates 3 camo tokens, for 7 pts and 1.66 swc. They're AVA 4 so 84 pts and 2 swc puts down almost as many camo markers as most 12-14 model lists bring total orders. I appreciate the contributions of both sides to this debate, but I'm heartened to see Nemo bringing up my own concerns about Ariadna. As a primarily Morat player, it's a disquieting feeling to see that some players utilising forces that I believe are much better suited to the task of handling Ariadna than Morats are still finding it an uphill battle. It can be done but there's no room for mistakes or bad luck. It's a skew.
You're right 100%. I said Camo Markers which made sense in my head but is wrong. I simply meant Camo troops. Which I admit is different. In my experience playing against them I find the triple camo Strelok a little underwhelming but then I also tend to run Sensor unit. Which makes clearing clumps of camo Markers easier. The units in TAK are good but the over all costing tends to leave them in that 14-15 order range. Which makes them a lot easier in my opinion to deal with. That is my main focus. I can afford to spend an extra order here and there to deal with expensive troops if I know my opponent isn't going to flood the board.
The answer is as always not easy. Who are you and your opponent? Friends playing a casual game? TAK seems much easier to perform well with at the lower end of the competetive scale. Camo Shell games, redundant capable gunners, Orders galore to top it off. With OSS it's rather easy to fall down a trap and end up with a 10 Order list that can't defend its Order Pool from an AD trooper with a Combi Rifle. To put that in relation to a different Faction that handles pretty great even with a casual "do whatever you want" attitude, TAK is pretty close to Tohaa, whatever you'll end up taking, it's hard to really screw yourself completely during listbuilding. OSS however have an easier time to end up with a list designed to lose even before deployment. As a result IMHO the casual aspect of the game has no place in a power ranking discussion, if you look at everything together the lines blur, people want to validate stuff with personal experience etc.... it's just a jolly good waste of time for everyone involved. Alright then, neither TAK nor OSS are bottom feeders, both for example easily surpass Tunguska for a variety of reasons (Order Economy, choices, general suitability for ITS missions, ... etc). Personally I'd put TAK ahead of OSS and there are a couple reasons. Ariadna's native trait of not having to give a damn about Hacking helps a lot and keeps the matchups in check here, don't take a Ratnik and you're good in TAK. After that there are still multiple ways to get your Orders, midfield presence, Specialists, gunners and so on. The Link is nice to have to force your opponent to deal with it or circumvent it as usual for defensive Links and can fluidly switch to attacking duty in Active Turn. Neat. OSS has a bunch of options that simply pale besides Posthumans and Dakini/CSU/Deva Core Links. After that is out of the way you'll need enough Orders, decide how much you want to spend on Hacking, figure out who will go kill stuff and the ever annoying Lt question. A pretty effing great Shukra CoC BSG and Lt L2 make the Asura a stand out candidate to check a bunch of boxes at once. After everything is said and done both Sectorials are rather straightforward - trade options for Links and AVA. Links are often a gamechanger but here I have to admit - both of our cases "only" unlock an excellent Linetrooper Link. That's rather disappointing to offset what respectively Vanilla Ariadna and Aleph bring on the table. Ariadna still has Spetznaz with AVA2 to meet all it's firepower needs, but losing the Chasseurs, Galwegians, 6 point Orders with no strings attached, Dogwarriors, Foxtrotts.... TAK is a solid B+, but Vanilla just takes the cake. OSS forfeits all that rather great and fancy CC, Frenzy and ODD stuff, on top of lacking Smoke and a Netrod less. Posthumans can't link anyway and Achilles is just that much more efficient than an Asura to murder his way across the table. To be blunt OSS looks and plays like a PanO Sectorial, a lot of the mind blowing versatility in Vanilla Aleph is replaced by an array of similar options for the same job and one thing usually has an obvious edge. The standout pieces are all solo troops available to Vanilla again. A Dakini Link, CSUs and the option to run a Deva with full core boni just don't quite make up for everything else. This is just a summary, so please don't try to argue every little point, you should know who you are, the Aleph/Ariadna forum section has the individual discussions on singular troop types, their issues and detailed breakdowns. For anyone who wants to disagree with the whole statement - TAK/OSS powerlevels are fine in comparison but fall a bit short next to their Vanilla Factions - I'm game for that.
Teslarod, agreed 100% on the general points especially regarding TAK...I have less experience with OSS. I played TAK exclusively since release, with the exception of my last two games. Tried a few different styles of play - limited insertion, high model count, mixed links, unmixed links, solo pieces, etc. Every game, they beat face in the active turn, then get punched like wet tissue paper in reactive. Won more than I lost, but generally felt that they were lacking. The last two games I played, I switched it up by playing Shock Army, then Vanilla Ariadna, and it was a complete bloodbath in my favor both games. Their issues boil down to this: Nearly every power piece is 30+ points and generally W1. Outside of Antipodes and bikes, they are actually pretty slow with most things either starting in your DZ, or lacking full Infiltration. Those extra 4" make a lot of difference in terms of deployment. They have a single AD trooper, and he's over 30 points as well and has to pick his entry point upon deployment. The lack of midfield hackers and flame throwers means that enemy power pieces can advance on you relatively uncontested, especially HI and TAGs packing visual mods. In short, they're playable, but compared to Vanilla Ariadna, they lack the aggressive midfield and AD posture of vanilla and have some serious capability gaps both within-faction and compared to other factions. Losing Uxia, Paracommandos, Foxtrots, Van Zant, and Chasseurs really hurts. Most of the AVA you gain is in units that you probably aren't taking more than Vanilla-level AVA anyway (for example, what TAK players are reliably running more than two Spetsnaz? Double antipode packs?). While I like links as much as the next guy, IMO Ariadna plays better as a distributed guerilla force than as a set-piece army unless your faction is particularly well-suited for that, like USARF.
I've played TAK a couple of times with TJC, and eh TJC has the same weakneses vs them they do vs anyone, and the same strengths. A Hollow Man core goes a long way to dealing with their shenanigans, tbh.
Camo is a psychological game. One tip is generally, Camo doesn't want to come out in aro. You can use this to really bully someone who has overinvested in Camo. Force them to Aro your secondary pieces where they gain little from the action, but you gain a lot if they choose not to. Or sensor.. Sensor ruins Camos day.
"here, use sensor to make their camo still give mimetism, which is pound-for-pound the best defensive/offensive buff one can get for the points! Also, you just spend 3-5 orders moving up the sensor platform, so thanks for that!" Yeah, I don't buy the whole "just sensor them lawl" solution, as this is a game about managing your resources.
Yeah mimitesm is awesome. It's also dirt cheap. Camo is expensive. A unit without Camo is going to be a superior gunfighter to a Camo troop of similar cost. Camos advantages lie in not being attacked, maneuvering and surprise attack. Revealing for ARO utilises none of though and mimetism doesn't make up for burst. Sensor is cheap. Most people use a sensor bot in a small order pool. 3 orders is enough to get a sniffer 30" up the table and discovering a 16" blob. Camo will need to spend similar resources undoing that even if you don't then clean up the resulting weaklings.
Camo is actually relatively cheap for all advantages it provides. For one thing, that's a minimum of 4 Orders to trigger Sensor, not 3. For another, if your camo-spam opponent deployed in a way you can do that so easily, then yes, you deserve to discover his camo.
Nemo basically made all the points that needed to be made. if you think camo is expensive, try playing a game against ariadna for once :P practically speaking, it'll be 4-6 orders to get your sensor up without a suicide rush. AKA: half a combat group of orders. Add in -2 orders if you started, and I think the point I made is clear. Ironically, TAK and vanilla ariadna are also the best anti camo armies because of antipode packs....
It's an eight point Remote, why would you not suicide-rush it if it's going to help clear the midfield? Which generally means: Move-Move Move-Sniffer Followed by a third Order with the Sensor trooper running Sensor.
