Hi fine forum dwellers, I'm playing Capture & Protect with IA against OSS as part of our local league. What do you think of the match up? Any insight would be much appreciated since I haven't faced this Aleph sectorial before.
You have to prepare against some serious hacking. Tinbots and haidao khd are the way to go. Pack any visor you can because their basic link has mimetism. Maybe not every visor but rui shi or lu duan would be nice. The worst part will be 2 very good troops with e/m granades so watch out for them. OSS has rather obvious lieutenant (easy to liu xing into oblivion) but also very viable chain of command. They are not perfect enemy against IA though.
From a small subset of games against OSS, I'd say that Haidao MSR is probably going to be very important. Them Dakini snipers/HMG don't sit down when unconscious, and you will want to finish them off, which can potentially be hard when moving forward and relying only on HMG to bring range.
And it is unlikely that the OSS player will be able to ARO with white noise - the hacker would need to be in sight or the shooter in the hacking area. And even then that would only be beneficial for the second attack (since white noise is not a dodge ARO), if you don't deal with the hacker first. So, definitely hide your MSV during the OSS player's turn, and use them during your turn. As said before, don't forget the dakinis can't go prone even when unconcious. Bonus point if you use any form of template on the fireteam by targeting the unconscius one :)
I ran into OSS 2 Times on 2 different Tournaments! It was always an uphill battle with those hackers and repeaters! MSV and Mines are really useful! Zencha, Haidao MSV2 and KHD , Lu Dan are really useful! Consider an Lu Xing with Spitfire! Moving in from the side and kill as much as possible!
More the point of if you take the advice of "take any visor you can" and start doing stuff like taking a Hsien, Haidao, Rui Shi, and 2 Guilangs you're gonna get a rude surprise when the Aleph player can screw with all of them.
OP is asking for IA advice so it's going to be a Haidao and Rui Shi at most with plenty of other tough heavy weapons to fend off things attacking through white noise
This is the maximum amount of MSV you can take in IA (it's either 3 Haidao or 2 Rui Shi): 6 HǍIDÀO (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 37) HǍIDÀO (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 37) RUI SHI Spitfire / Electric Pulse. (1 | 20) RUI SHI Spitfire / Electric Pulse. (1 | 20) LÙ DUĀN Mk12, Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (0 | 21) LÙ DUĀN Mk12, Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (0 | 21) 5 SWC | 156 Points Whatever the remaining 5+ models and 144 points are going to be, they'll be able to ARO just fine. Not that any of the models above are going to make good ARO models. Oh, and the Haidao in a Fireteam of 4+ can still stick out their nose and rely on Sixth Sense if you really, really, want to have long range ARO presence that's easy to screw with using White Noise, because the Haidao will then only be screwed with as long as you don't shoot at it. In either case, what's suggested is something more along the lines of this to form the counter-DakiniArjunaProxyDasyuDart core: 3 HǍIDÀO (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 37) RUI SHI Spitfire / Electric Pulse. (1 | 20) LÙ DUĀN Mk12, Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (0 | 21) 2.5 SWC | 78 Points Which leaves room for one or two TacAware HMGs, a Zhencha, a Louie, or something else that's decent at shooting without Visors
Thanks everybody for your responses! From your advice I gather that having MSVs is a must and also it's a good match to bring templates. I've been in love with the Haidao MSR since the profile came out, so It's gonna be there, probably a Louie and both Yaoxie REMs as well. Only question now is what do I link the Haidao with? I'm gonna need a tough DataTracker (I was thinking about the Mowang) so maybe a defensive Zhanshi link to free up points?
MSR Haidao in pompoms link is pretty efficient, indeed. If you feel like it, adding in there a missile bot makes your opponent split his burst between both threat too (in addition to provide impact template and hard target removal of course). I have tested with success this defensive link: Invincible Army ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11) HǍIDÀO (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 37) SON-BAE Yaókòng Missile Launcher / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 17) 3 SWC | 87 Points Open in Infinity Army It works fine (and one of the Zahnshi can be a hacker to put some supportware on the bot, but you probably already have an HD device on if you're planning to use the Liu Xing). It eats 3 SWC though, so it limits the number of TacAware HMG you're bringing on the table.
Hi guys! Just letting you know that I went with your advice and took the game 9-0. List ended up being a Zhanshi Core with both a Haidao MSV2 and a Son-Bae SML, a Hac Tao HMG, Mowang DataTracker, Liu Xing BSG with Daoying HD Lt. L2. I ended up loosing the Lt. roll and had to take second turn. Luckily, the defensive link pinned down the Dakini link due to a really crappy DZ on the other side of the table and my opponent decided to spend the forst turn moving a Naga and Dart up the table, loosing both. Then I pretty much suicided the Hac Tao for nothing but managed to hold my ground against an Asura HD+ that moved up the table and attempted an assassination againt my Lt. but ended up blind thanks to a couple of Zhanshi FOs. My last turn had the Mowang pretty much spending all orders getting the beacon and bringing it back. Thanks for the tips!