ARO duty in Limited Insertion

If your meta allows either "play by intent" and "slicing the pie" you would have a very steep slog on your turn if you leave everything out for ARO duty. A medium endowed opponent will single out every single ARO piece and eventually make shreds of them all.

You should assume that your opponent have a some salt if he goes for 1st round when almost every ITS scenarios reward going second. Even if you deploy second, if he is not LI too (bar salty Yu Jing who got a trove of orders in IA), he would have all orders he needs to redeploy hard hitting pieces to maximize the alpha strike.

So as your chaps are frigging expensive and few you should try to overcome 1st turn onslaught drive with your head deeply tucked under cover and away from edge to edge LOF corridors. Keep your chaps on ARO duty only if you need to dust off pesky warbands like mutts and only when range and engagement conditions favours you.

 

That first, Fugazi and Warcor aren't good for LI. Warcor is ok with Joan butnot much.

Then I hope you didn't setup ARO that are out of good range in the first place. In LI you want your opponent to spend the most part of his order pool to just move to gain LoF. The more he moves the less he shoots and the closer he is from you when it's your turn. And loosing 3 orders in the first reactive turn isn't crippling. LI games are all about nerves and attrition. I had games where I lost 4 troopers in the first turn but managed to win because I kept my head cool and focused on priorities.

 

Yes you should take costier but more order intensive ARO pieces to passively cripple the order pool of your opponent.

 

You're not tied to HI links. As I said in the MO topic, I'm experiencing with OS link and it is pretty effective. The FK ML is nice at long range, BF albedo great at short and against FTs.

But if you want your Magisters, they are here for ARO duty first. Anyone don't mind to see them going unconscious but don't set up AROs at 32" where life support is near in case you succeed your Pzfaust ARO. Set it up at 24" where your shotgun can work too and where a doctor or an engineer is rare. Each time you receive a hit, guess what really want your opponent. If he just want to kill you orders, retreat. If he want to reach an objective, stay as long as you can without loosing your buddy if possible. And you should train to use solo rambo pieces like Santiagos, BF or Konstantinos. LI rewards the player that makes the highest damage with the less commitment.

 

This is why I have a lot of difficulty playing limited insertion. Having a second order pool to support my main order pool, to sacrifice pieces from, and to replenish my main order pool is necessary.

Just turtling and hiding everything is not a viable option in my experience. You’ll either let your opponent own the middle of the table and accomplish the mission or you’ll leave yourself open to a powerful alpha strike.

Careful use of magisters is a fantastic way to slow your opponent down. Panzerfausts and missiles are incredibly dangerous. Magisters are also two wounds and can dodge on 17s, so they always have a good option for ARO and it is rare that they will be taken off of the table from an attack.

I think the important question you didn’t ask is, “how many orders did my three lost ARO pieces cost my opponent?”

 

You dont ARO in MO anymore.

Not in traditional sense.

Depending on opponent leaving Magister (or two) might be an option (unless enemy has something like fully linked Vet Kazak AP HMG, Swiss/HacTao, Cutter, Avatar).

Otherwise you have to make "soft ARO" try to enforce your opponent to spend orders into actually digging out your guys. Leaving your TO MSR on overwatch position over your link team (so that once enemy engages link team he starts receving shots in the back from TO MSR) is now your best bet on "effective ARO".


Really forget about leaving people in open, with new MO you have to hide everyone and hope your link (and possible support pieces around it) just survives 1st turn.

 

Linked H

So youve said that you misdeployed your units. thats where the key mistake is, not the choice to be on ARO at all.

If you cede the table to the opponent you have to expect that you are going to get pants as the opponent gains free reign of the table to push buttons, move-move towards your lines every order and to set up their own defense across a larger part of the table.

What you want to be doing with most of your AROs is applying them at the last possible order at which they will be effective, allowing the opponent to sped orders on positioning to take down your ARO as opposed to moving where they want too or achieving the objectives. if you then manage to win that ARO they then have to spend those resources all over again or accept that dealing with your ARO is not something they are going to be doing this turn.

There are however a few pieces which can play the "we will dominate teh table game" These top Tier ARO units include troops such as linked HI MLs with High BS, High ARM, B2, and the requirement to lose 3 wounds before they are eliminated as a threat.
Tr Hmgs that put out Massive ARO burst and dual role as active turn gunfighters for a relatively cheap SWC investment are another as are B2 mimetic flashpulses in the right range bands (nothing in the game can shrug a stun and still be combat effective that turn). These two units also require significant investment in causing wounds to eliminate them from the game entirely due to their 2 unconscious states. though their inability to go prone behind cover means that they are easier to kill outright.

Finally MO has access to TO MSR BS12 units, which allow you to cover large segments of the board while remaining totally invulnerable to the enemy until the point at which you choose to act, usually the point which is most disadvantageous for the opponent.

These are the ARO units that MO has access too which can and will achieve cominance of the board if used correctly, but there are other types of ARO as well, "soft AROs" that cover short ranges or are only usefull iin a limited capacity.
Linked HI Panzerfaust and HI Multi Rifles, Supression Fire HI and Mines/drop bears. Even linked Order Sergeatn HRLs are options here or Auxbots for their HFTs.
The goal of these units is to force the opponent to fight on your terms every order after he has closed to a point where your units will be effective and to force them to bleed if they wish to try and remove your own orders from the pool.

So yes I think MO can and does play a very good reactive game, particularly if you are leveraging the HI which you should be in a LI list in order to conserve your orders over the course of the game.

 

In an LI situation (ie, both players are playing LI), you need to consider that each piece of yours is worth three orders. If your ARO makes the opponent waste three orders directly (by winning f2f rolls, unlikely), indirectly (by forcing them to reposition/move around a fire lane) or by some combination of the two, it has paid for itself. If it does not do this, it has failed.

In LI, you should be more aware when going second of what the limits of your opponent's list is -- they will want to be playing as efficiently as possible as well, which means in general, hiding more of your list and forcing the opponent to come to you if they want to shoot you is pretty reasonable (of course, there are a number of factions that you probably won't want to allow to take up the midfield). As MO, you probably won't struggle to shoot your way out of your DZ anyway -- there aren't many problems linked BS14 HMGs/Spitfires don't solve very well.