I´m thinking it gets a Bomb and starts in the DZ behind cover and chucks Panzerfausts in ARO. In the active turn it replenishes them from a neighbourly Chaksa and advances up midfield. There it entrenches in SF acting as a forward emplacement. Bomb acts as insurance vs anyone sneaking up or as ablative wound with Revitalis. The point is it´s going to dominate a fair piece of the battlefield and take effort to get rid of. Differing from brittle one-shot tools like the various meleers or 'range-challenged' tools like Rasails it doesn´t need to do much more once there. Maycast described this using Achilles recently. It´s not about the do as much as making the enemy do not.
It's not really a unit for me, but I've heard a few people talk enthusiastically about it and I'm excited to hear how it performs for them. Also what the most egregious metachemistry result they regularly get is.
Finally got to play him and he is fun. If I need an HI for a mission, frostbyte, I would take him over gorgos or ectros. Still prefer neema His good points are: 1. Every result on his meta roll is useful 2. Decent in all ranges panzerfaust, mk or red fury, heavy pistol, melee. So pretty great soloist 3. He is really fun to play But yeah he is to expensive for standard lists still will take him from time to time in a soloist focused list
Because I was curious I tried a comparision between Kiel and some triads that are similiar at their combat effectiveness: Tohaa ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 2 KIEL-SAAN Red Fury, Panzerfaust / Heavy Pistol, DA CC Weapon, Shock CC Weapon. (1 | 53) KIEL-SAAN Mk12, Panzerfaust / Heavy Pistol, DA CC Weapon, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 53) GROUP 2 3 1 KOSUIL Engineer Boarding Shotgun, D-Charges, Panzerfaust / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24) MAKAUL Heavy Flamethrower, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, Viral CCW. (0 | 13) SAKIEL Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 23) GROUP 3 3 1 KAMAEL Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 18) KOSUIL Engineer Boarding Shotgun, D-Charges, Panzerfaust / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 24) MAKAUL Heavy Flamethrower, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, Viral CCW. (0 | 13) GROUP 4 3 1 SUKEUL HMG, D-Charges / Pistol, Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 35) SUKEUL Missile Launcher, Light Shotgun / Pistol, Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 36) MAKAUL Heavy Flamethrower, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, Viral CCW. (0 | 13) 7.5 SWC | 305 Points Open in Infinity Army The Kiel has a Panzerfaust for "Long" Range, MK12 or Red Fury for Medium Range, Heavy Pistol for short range and good cc for cc With the makaul in a triad all of these triads are better in cc because of ganging up. With the Kosuil in most of these triads they got a Panzerfaust and a specialist. With the spitfire they got a good medium range weapon. But the first triad that really could do Kiel job costs 60 points and 2 SWC. Thats more than the Kiel but they got a specialist. So if you need some all range weapon platform he is a decent possibilty, I probably would prefer taking him over the Gorgos simply because he is more intresting and can do coordinated orders
They also carry eclipse grenades, a large template weapon, 2 more wounds, and 2 more orders. That's absolutely worth the bump up in cost. The Kiel-Saan, to me, is Neema without any of her Lt skills, and without the ability to triad. It's a non-choice. It's not significantly faster, it's not significantly more durable, and it's not better at shooting. She's also wildly more resilient to hacking due to the WIP15 BTS9 combo.
I think for missions like Frostbyte he can be intresting or if you want a solo piece to hold back and deploy last that can still rambo decently through a weakly protected lane. I prefer him over the ectros in terms of HIs but yeah neema is better.
I recognize that this guy's points are better spent on a triad of cheap units, but I really want to use him anyway because the model is awesome and he's such a CC monster. Dragging along two Kaauri in spiral corps with him would make more sense, but I think he is viable in Tohaa.
I don´t fully agree with the above assessments. On the topic of Triads it doesn´t consider the degrading of effectivness due to losses. Simply, when the first member of a Triad goes down you lose alot of efficiency, whereas Kiel is unchanged. Further Kiel can use both Symbios to mitigate hits. Finally there´s the problem of footprint where Fire Teams are always more of a gamble on the advance. As for Neema she is has less ARM, is slower on the advance (4 vs 6 is worse order efficiency), but most importantly does not cover the rangebands up to 32 nearly as well. Having either B1 on 16+ or no answer on 24+ means she´s a problematic ARO piece compared to Kiel and struggles more on the setup. Kiel is about as versatile tool you can get and that is worth quite alot imo.
When you lose a member of the Triad, you only become as efficient as the Kiel-San is to begin with. 4-4 vs 6-2 is a really small change -- the only time it makes a difference is when you aren't MOV-MOVing, and even then it doesn't have a huge application in combined short skills except when there's a 2 inch gap. I'm not saying it's not helpful, but it's not a huge difference -- maybe an extra 6 inches over 10 orders. The Kiel-San is a B1 BS13 Panzerfaust with no visual mods -- that's not much better than Neema tbh (though she does pack B2, which makes her significantly better at winning the f2f within 24 inches and makes her perform more consistently beyond it). Neither of these units is going to ARO if they can help it, and Neema brings the tools in a triad to defend herself while she hides from more difficult long range engagements.
In my meta I find this a huge advantage, as the players I play against on the boards we play on you are rarely getting a mov-mov in. Personally I think they are a great unit to bring with Neema, as we often lack good uses for a coordinated order.
I actually really like this unit for limited insertion lists. I wonder if limited insertion was the intended use.
I like the model, but... For me if not part of triad link, than no part of Tohaa. Yes we can try to justify his existence, but. Tohaa is strong in 3 not 1 and his link is to expensive for what he does. Shame as great model but sadly no.
Works alone for me in Spiral Corps, but not in Tohaa, ONLY BECAUSE MY IN GAME PLAYSTYLE, i keep wanting triad mobility and clipsos/impersonators over Big Dude
I've recently started playing with Spiral (after mostly doing Ramah ) and I freaking love the Kiel-Saan! I've found him to be a great flanker... He can usually threaten panzaerfaust AROs and force opponents to spend orders on driving him into total cover, with a symbiomate that's usually quite costly to them! And in the instanses where the panzerfaust has landed... It's game over for the attacking model! If he's left alone by the opponent he can roll a flank quite easy: moving 6'' to next cover and firing a B4 BS13 Red Fury usually does the trick... Or facing hard opposition 6'' cautious move is so much easier to execute than a 4'' one. Coming from Ramah he's everything Al Fasid want's to be: tough, quick, good at all ranges and - in the end - disposable. At 53 points (exactly the same as Al Fasid HMG) he can usually either drain enough orders as a ARO presence (especially in a saturation zone) or kill enough stuff to be way worth every point... And if he dies a horrible death without having achieved much, well that's Infinity for you! I feel that he also makes a decent datatracker in most missions being a tough, quick, killy model, who can accomplish several classifieds and provide a valuable "free" activation in missions that give the data tracker a free order. My favourite moments with him have seen the Kiel-Saan put an Onyx force to a retreat almost single handedly in two player turns by killing 200+ points (and thus losing me the game! xD) and assaulting an Al Fasid holding the middle objective in Acquistion to get it down to one wound while being blown apart by the all the AROs... The love letter ends here! But I personally would't but him in a triad of any kind - investing that many points on a single "element" takes away too many points from the rest of the army and sets the Kiel-Saan triad to fail by forcing them to take on the world alone. But that's just me!
I agree what you guys said, he fits in Spiral for me more than Vanilla simply as there are better specialist "single" units which are cheaper and in event of death will not cost us that much.