In my playing group the meta game is moving toward tons of cheap expendable AD jumpers. Many cheap units, who come down, kill somebody, usually taking out my order pool and die at the very same time. Being irregular, their death doesn`t bring any problem to my adversary, but they are really annoying. No problem to eliminate them, but they bring some of my troops with them to hell every time. How to deal with such units ? How and what to deploy, in order to avoid loosing one regular order for each enemy AD diving from the sky ?
Kuang Shi where always good to secure my DZ, followed by Shaolin and overlapping firelanes within, preferable Lu Duan with Holoecho. Hackers for Hack Transport, Mines + Mad Traps+ Baggage Bot. Every AD trooper which comes down need at least another regular order to do something and is vulnerable in the order he comes down.
I prefer bringing at least 1 normal HD when facing Yuan Yuans. They're becoming absurdly versatile terror units due to Season 10. HD+ Shaolins are good to go, Kuang Shis are considerable, but their regular order is what Yuans Yuans aim for. Well placed TR bots tend to pick out dispersed Yuans, too.
Having chain rifles of you own watching those board edges and potential drop zones helps. Don't forget your flashpulse troops can also stop their shenanigans.
Use your own expendable troops to prevent landing inside your lines, monks/kuang shi armed with chain riflles are pretty good at this. Cheap flash pulses placed defensively towards the rear of your table edge such as the Chaiyi and Warcor are also quite good at preventing these models from being effective as if you flash pulse them they can't attack you, they will also prevent them from landing safely. I regularly put the Chaiyi on Van Zant duty. Placed touching your table edge facing forwards it is impossible for Van Zant to enter without taking a Flash Pulse on a normal roll on your rear table edge. Normally stick it behind a building doing that.
Make sure you get at least one combirifle or chainrifle shot against every possible drop location. Camo markers are great for that, because of 360° LoF. Mad Traps are also nice, but it is sometimes favorable to trade a YuanYuan against both MadTraps.
I've had good luck denying landings with the help of MadTraps actually. Goes in from the side? A single MadTrap can cover a great chunk of a board edge without even needing to get right up on it. And if anything lands via AD3+ within their ZoC... also works. But simply making sure there's at least a single bullet looking over the table edges closer to you tends to assist in making sure they're at least semi-protected. Otherwise, for midfield drops... all I can advise is just make sure there are as few comfortable drop locations on your half of the table as possible.
To put a bullet or a template on every landing ground does not bring too much: the yuan-yuan, for instance, are totally expendable. They come down, shot their chain rifle and die with their own irregular order. Very often I miss the save rolls with armour 0-1 (Kuang Shi, REM, Zhanshi, Celestial Guards...)... I killed an irregular order (designed to die) and loose one regular order at the same time. Spending less than 25 points, the enemy can wipe out three of my regular orders in one turn, and then start to advance with his regular troops. Also the Kuang Shi showed not too strong: people say they are cheap and dogged regular orders... thats true. On the other hand they are very fragile: they move toward the enemy without having any partial cover, and the adversary troops in overwatch can kill them easily (they do not have smoke during their impetuous phase. And when they die, I loose a regular order. It is not a great deal, by my point of view. The only way is to consider them not as part of your order pool, but only expendable troops, My problem is that these cheap AD jumpers don`t give a damn about my ARO, they only need to open fire on their target and die.
I'm not sure if I quite understand what you're typing here, but AD troops cannot attack in the order they land. It sounds like they are shooting the chainrifles as they land, they can't do that. They must use an entire order to land (or come on from the table edge), that's an entire order, no shooting no dodging. You can shoot them as they land for free with normal rolls. They can only attack you if they survive your shots and spend a second order.
Yeah, save me from a few Airborne Rangers and Para Commandos rather often, really. Extra amusing when the AD troop is a Parachustist, so they have no option but to enter on the edge that has a tiny little cat-cow-mouse-looking-robot-thing looking at it. And they come as cheap as taking Xi.
I don't like Xi for Vanilla. Doesn't bring enough to the table for his cost and winds up just being an expensive cheerleader. Normally bring them on a Kanren which has better deployment for them, can deploy them then go gunfight with surprise shot and BS12, clear mines and stuff with Holoechoes.
That also works, but I do tend to use Xi a lot simply cause for 20 points you get 2 MadTraps, a DTW, a WIP14 Flash Pulse and a specialist all in one package, which seems fair.
Thing about Yuans is that they are free. Dropping one to remove 2 koalas/traps/mine/whatever is profit.
I mean, still, that is 25% of Yuan Yuans that are no longer a problem. So... still a benefit in my book.
Spending 32 points on that trick is no longer exactly "free" and with a hit chance for those Yuan Yuan of less than 50% ('cause you did bring a hacker or two of your own, right?) you're still looking at very few to none of them surviving to do damage if you spread your Perimeter weapons out a bit. It's still a gamble for the Ikari player.
he said they shot with their irregular. Sounds OK with me. They land with Impetuous Order (and always out of sight, at least in my meta. YMMV maybe in your meta they often land where they can be shot for free), and then they move+chain rifle+die on their irregular order (after the player's impetuous landing phase is over with).
