They're... okay... At 43 points each I found them to be a tiny bit difficult to build lists around, and it's still a bit of an underdog when they have to ARO against KHDs (particularly through hostile Repeaters), but not a massive victim like basically every other AHD/HD is. You're basically having to rely on the 13pts Panggos in order to get Hacking Area coverage, and preferably an EVO Panggo in order to get Kaleidoscope up (at what point Ninja/... Skullbusting becomes 30% risk vs 25% chance of Isolating the Ninja/...) You're just not going to get them to both dominate Hacking and leave enough room to attempt to dominate the shooting game which Haqq, Aleph and Nomads can do.
Yeah, and YJ repeaters are often very vulnerable from blackout bum rush. I'm aware of it sure. Still he's the one tough boy.. Maybe he'll find a job on Tinbot hugging links.
It's been said plenty already, but I just don't see as many hackers and repeaters in play as I do with Nomad lists. You can tailor a list to have great hacking capability in CA or ALEPH, but I don't see those lists on the table very often. I'd say CA is usually the faction I run into trouble with in terms of hacking, because you pretty reliably see Kernau and Bit+Kiss on the table, plus repeater bots. Nomads can bring a strong hacking game for a song. It's almost an afterthought to your list building. I'm taking a Bandit or a Zero anyway, why not make them hackers? I want a Moran FO for the koalas and an infiltrating specialist with Mimetism, oh, it also has a Repeater. I don't have a lot of room for hackers, I'll just take Mary Problems... who also has a Pitcher. I really like this attack bot for its offensive capability, and guess what? It has a Repeater! Oh, and a Pitcher, too. OOOoooo... the new securitate link is cool. I'll take the cheapest dude to fill it out. Guess who has a Repeater! For me, this is what makes Nomads top of the pile in terms of hacking. You're always running into Nomad hackers and repeaters in actual, real, gameplay. Forget theory. When it comes down to the lists that people play, there's hackers and repeaters in Nomad lists far more often than other factions. They're everywhere, even in lists that aren't designed to be hacking forward. There's always at least a cammo KHD in the mix. Combined Army comes in a close second, but with Combined you instantly know exactly what you are getting. Kernau in a link? Bit+Kiss? Okay. With Nomads you might be staring down the barrel of a Kriza and a Jaguar+Intruder and you've got to assume that one of those markers is a Bandit or a Zero and keep your eyes peeled for all of the units you forgot had repeaters.
Most transmissions matrix missions I either build or see from nomads tend to have enough KHD's (a significant amount of which have a marker state) that the nomad player is probably going suicide them into key enemy hackers and not really care and take down the main target they're after. That being said I've only played one game of that mission where hacking actually meant something as most of the time people run lists that just completely opt out of the hacking game and just play a conventional game, especially against the nomad players.
1. Nomads. 2. Nomads. 3. I wanted to say some form of a unit from Nomads, but then I remembered the Daoying Hacker Lt exists... what with it being Lt2 Camo regular HD in a faction where 25 of the 61 ( Give or take ) units in the entire faction, naturally available mercenaries included, are Hackable. A free and relatively safe supportware program in a faction like this...? I'm honestly going to say it's the Daoying: not because of it itself being a great hacker ( That being said, a BTS3 Bioimmunity Camo WIP14 hacker is something. ), but because it's a safely protectable Lieutenant Lv2 Hacker in a faction which'll either: A) Have a buncha other Hackable units in a list that will wholeheartedly appreciate the Fairy Dust. B) Free Assisted Fire for yer Lu Duan/Rui Shi/Husong. C) Is a Sectorial that has Deflector Lv2 TinBots in links that can Wildcard or naturally take Hackers to boot. So... because it's in a faction that innately amplifies this hackers good traits. Otherwise... I still feel Nomads are the top of the deck when it comes to hacking, simply because it just comes so naturally to them: Usually you have to remember to equip for some infowar or actively go out of your way to dabble in it... in Nomads it's an afterthought, since odds are, you probably already got a decent spread of Infowar stuff before you even remember to check if you got it. 10 of their units have access to naturally in-built Repeaters, 7 have access to Deployable Repeaters, 8 Pitchers across 5 Units, 11 AHDs across 11 units, 7 HDs across 7 units, 6 HD+ in Interventors and 4 HD+ in Custodiers and to top it all off, 6 KHDs across 6 units, one being a TAGs Pilot no less ( I still find it funny how the Pilot can simply jump out and kill an enemy Hacker and then pop back inside his TAG. Nothing like taking matters into your own hands, eh? ). That's a lot of different pieces of Infowar equipment, you sort of end up passively grabbing some without even noticing... So... that's my take at that: most factions can hack nicely enough, but it comes completely naturally to the Nomads. Still feel like mentioning Yu Jing as a good anti-Infowar faction... Daoying aside, both sectorials get to mix Fairy Dust + Deflector Lv2 fireteams + Hackers in said fireteams with relative ease. We have 4 KHDs, 3 of which have marker states, one of which has 2 Wounds, and the non-marker KHD can link with a TinBot in a sectorial and still has NWI + Shock Immunity. Kinda sucks half of these have 3 BTS, but still... oh, and we have an innate Sixth Sense Lv2 HD, juuuuust in case. Beyond that, a polite mention to Ikari and Druze for having linked Pitchers.
This makes me wonder: how would one build hacking heavy list to play transmission matrix anyways? Unless I am overlooking something if both players bring „enough“ hackers, especially KHDs, it will be impossible to activate any hacker until someone shoots enough hackers. So either you go in so strong that your hacking AROs can kill pretty much anything (how much is that? Like 3-4 hackers?) or you opt out bc. your 1-2 Hackers will just get instantly killed.
option 3 activate less important or more resilient hackers that can still to draw out hidden AROs and then take those now revealed units out with whatever tool works best.
If you take Mary Problems and a Moran and a Heckler Jammer then congratulations you're now better at hacking and hacking force projection than 95% of non-Nomad lists.
Pretty much this. usually something disposable like a zero or a bandit that can also leverage surprise attack to ensure that they win the f2f. Though i have seen a game played of Transmission matrix where both players had most of their armies dead on turn one without a shot fired.
Depends a lot on how people interpret the "multiple models activating at the same time, some with stealth" interaction. It would definitely involve the ability to spotlight => guided missile people. I do it with Onyx, the E-Drone is pretty terrifying in that mission.
I just realized that I have no clue on how to play OSS in Transmission Matrix, so I made a threat to discuss that in the appropriate forum rather than here: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/oss-and-transmission-matrix.27627/ But unless something cool comes up there, I‘d be inclined to say that Aleph pays a very high opportunity cost to be able to challenge any nomad list in hacking
That's what I thought too, then my opponent popped out a ninja KHD and split Redrum burst against my EVO and my Rodock KHD, knocking them both out cold. Granted, I was playing vanilla, and the odds of him being able to do that were ~3.5%... it was a dumb tactical move on his part, but sometimes the dice just hate you. (Kaleidoscope was up, but I did forget to use Maestro instead of Redrum with my Rodock... not that it would have mattered, as he rolled something like a 1 and a 3 and I rolled a 19 and 20 or somewhere along those lines).
It's Nomads. Not because of the top end (where ALEPH put up stiff competition and even Combined Army are strong) but the bottom end. It's the humble Alguacile and Moderator who make the Nomads the kings of hacking.