As you all know, Morats are probably the best faction in Combine Army. They have access to some of the best link teams in the game, which are obviously the main reasons to play sectorials, thus making them very desirable as an infinity faction. Lets start with the links, the main reason to play Morats. This vanguard core link is spectacular! It only has 2 vanguard infantry in it, which contributes greatly to its utility and success. With E/M Grenades, Smoke Grenades, Vulcan Shotgun, K1 Rifle, and a 2 wound HMG this team excels at all range bands. It comes in with a bonus two orders! Giving you the premier feel of playing with a very order efficient army. Time to see something really special! The Oznot Hunting Party! This nets you 5 regular orders for 36 pts, averaging 7.2 pts an order! One of the cheapest fireteams in the game! Which is fantastic for a premium army like Morats! It certainly has the rest of Combine jealous as they're stuck paying nearly twice as much for their first 5 line troopers. To top it off these little guys are fast and great at making late game plays. Gaki and Pretas are also wonderful for taking solo and leaving them to do their thing whether that's discovering camo or running into enemies in suppressive fire! It's so great that they're inexpensive, it means that we can use them to fuel our premium TAG, the Raicho, on the cheap! Or you can also run a Haris of Rodoks, premium Morat MI, for maximum order efficiency! The Rodok Fireteam Core isn't to shabby on it's own. It has FD:1 in ITS season ten, mimetism, and super jump. Allowing it to work all sorts of weird angles. It is also surprisingly tough and exploits both of those benefits with fantastic weapons featuring good impact templates! The missile launcher and double light shotgun are really useful! They have a mix of a bunch of weird skills that other sectorials would be jealous to have. The Gaki link doesn't just fuel Raicho or Rodok Harisi!~ It also supports this nifty link: A three order Sogarat duo that should just about win any face to face roll in the active turn and use those orders efficiently dragging along his NCO specialist buddy! The NCO specialist really makes this Sogarat viable, and not many armies can take a duo that increases their useable orders by one too! If running Gakis or the buffed Vanguard link isn't your thing, perhaps this is more to your liking? A fireteam core of Daturazi offer a low costing fireteam capable of doing anything, without sacrificing a b5 active turn weapon! Some benefits they have are that smoke grenades let them get anywhere they need to be and NCO provides an extra order. All while grenades and MA:4 mean that once you lose your active turn killer you are still depositing some very high quality warbands somewhere near your enemy's back line! It's a knockout!!! Legend has it there's an ancient technique, from before the days of fireteams, that Morats have access to... Fireteam smoke?!? I find that the Yaogat is almost a must take because Daturazi make it into nearly every list I write. It really is the closest thing Morats will ever have to ODD or TO, but the technique is elevated by the fact that Daturazi are so useful and tough. And finally, there's this Fireteam I've neglected to mention until now: (if I were to take one it would probably look like that) Humble Honourary Mentions: The Humble Zerat with Evolved Intelligence Killer Hacking Device You can enter marker state. Also in addition to that Maestro straight up makes you a better hacker than most factions. The Humble Raktorak (NCO) Honestly this wildcard trooper does a lot to make the faction super duper good. Having an extra order on all the fireteams to reposition really does improve the experience of playing a sectorial. The Humble Rasyat The Rasyat straight up wins you Frostbyte so it's good. The Humble Preta You should probably take one if you're taking the Gaki's, dogged chain rifles that move 6/6 are good. The Humble Q-Drone It is the Q-Drone you know? The Humble Ikadron It is the Ikadron you know? The Humble Obsidian Medtech It is the Dr. Worm you know? Final Thoughts: Morats have access to way more viable fireteams than other sectorials, and that really sets them above and beyond other armies. They have a good supporting cast that enable their fireteams or individual models to perform well. Morats' fireteams will end up being the ones to do objectives rather than infiltrators but that really isn't the worst thing. It's tough to hit 15 orders, but if you do your army should be incredibly order efficient considering you'll be spending them on these teams. In my opinion Kornak is a trap. Taking a Vanguard LT and a Raktorak NCO saves you points and nets you the extra orders. The 1 SWC tax on taking a Vanguard LT is like 3 Gakis, which is half of your Gaki link, so they're points well saved. Kurgats are a trap. The Sogarat Haris is a trap.
Kornak look cool too. And makes it so you have other options for the Lieutenant order beyond the NCO or the Lieutenant himself. That said, I think Morats have a nice Lieutenant in the Sogarat HMG as well. P.S.: Morats are very cool. They're even as cool as the Brutes from Halo forsomeoddundisclosedreasoning.
The Raktorok NCO costs 26 pts. As long as you would normally spend 1 order on him moving around your link team or shooting someone with a shotgun, you still count as reaping the same benefit as with Strategos lv1 but at a 15 pt discount. You still have 1 extra order to work with at the expense of LT order, so it's almost the same skill except you have to make sure it goes into Raktorok and the link team. But spending an order there still frees up a regular order that can be used elsewhere that you would have normally spent on your link team anyways, thus having the same effect as Stategos. So you don't need Kornak to get use out of your LT order, then that begs the question; 'Why are you using him then'? Kornak is 40 pts for a 1.5 wound guy with MK 12 and BS 14; That is a steep cost. He is a prime assassination target and not very resilient for 40 pts. Him dying puts you in LoL. Which is easy to try and ignore, but while it's nice that your Morats are veteran you should also be running a lot of order bots who suddenly become a lot less helpful in that situation. A Suryat with heavy rocket launcher or a HMG is probably points better spent on someone who should be doing some active turn killing, and much less risky for your army composition. In a Kornak list, unless you're playing ten orders, he's likely to be the most or the second most expensive model. Every order you spend killing something in Infinity with a model that isn't paying for an special weapon like a spitfire or HMG is you getting less utility out of your SWC. In the case with Kornak you're paying more for a model with less burst than decent killers, and thus paying more to do less and roll less dice. Killing also puts him at risk, which seems at odds in most situations with his utility as a LT. The fact that his BS 14 doesn't translate into being an actual good attack piece, coupled with the fact that he's fairly vulnerable, and that his ability is made mostly redundant with the wildcard NCO, is the reason why he's a trap for new players. The NCO is better at enabling link teams and doing ITS objectives at a reduced cost.
Now, it's either I'm an idiot who has no idea how to play this game, just a play style difference OR my local meta is some high end type of weird ( We all know it's the first option, though. ), but... Call me crazy, but I generally prefer to run single combat group lists. And not run lots of order bots. Never do I even consider going over 15 orders honestly, because once I get there, I really start to feel like there's a lack of... beef in a list, you know? ( Or it might just be my very unreasonable love for Heavy Infantry. That's probably the case. ) So Kornak or the Sogarat HMG LT seem very appealing to me, since they both neatly fit into a single combat group AND they provide an effective additional order. And the extra SWC cost of the Morat Vanguard LT really goddamn hurts TBH, so I generally try to avoid honestly all LT profiles that cost extra, if I can avoid it. T: Beyond that, I'll have to disagree with you about not using your SWC weapons to be a waste. There are multiple weapons in this game that seem to be really useful despite not costing any SWC. The topic of SMGs has been beaten to death almost as badly as CC costs, so I won't mention them, but stuff like Shotguns firing at point blank range can be and often are devastating when in such a range, despite being only Burst 2 in most cases. Again though, might just be different preferences in the end.
¿Where are the old school Suryats core with Kornak and that Raktorak? ... hmm, don't forget this new additions. Morat Aggression Force ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 10 1 KORNAK Lieutenant Mk12, Light Flamethrower / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 41) SURYAT (Tactical Awareness) HMG + TinBot A (Deflector L1) / Pistol, CCW. (2 | 48) SURYAT (Tactical Awareness) HMG + TinBot A (Deflector L1) / Pistol, CCW. (2 | 48) SURYAT (Tactical Awareness) HMG + TinBot A (Deflector L1) / Pistol, CCW. (2 | 48) RAKTORAK (NCO) Vulkan Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 24) MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23) ZERAT Hacker (EI Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 22) ZERAT Hacker (EI Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 22) IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) 2 Light Flamethrowers, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 9) KRAKOT RENEGADE Submachine Gun, Chest Mine / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 15) 6 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army But too late for me to play again with MAF... Onyx, CA vanilla and new Shassvasti are more strong in this new season in terms on general missions, combined with mission objectives and focused fire power, more solid than MAF can offer. But yeah, MAF can work nice a couple times.
MAF don't do subtle. And that is why I like the MAF. Because I'm too not-smart for subtle. This is ultimately MAFs downfall since for some odd reason all the good players have a tendency to gravitate towards factions with tricks and subtlety over the way of the caveman: caveman see problem, caveman smash problem.
Ehm... Only the Hungries and the REMs suffer LoL in this army... It is not that downside... About Gazarot, he is not that bad as you think... With BS14 + MK12 + Light Flametrower he can engage all the distances With CC22 + Berserker + DA CCW + Kinematika 1 che has good chances to break necks, active or reactive turn He is a MI so doesn't suffer hacking or E/M The only downside is ARM3 (making him vulnerable to Shock ammo), but with all that you can throw to your enemy, focusing on Gazarot is a waste of orders.
I kinda get the feeling this was going to be a troll post considering your tone, but most of what's been said here was already said on the Morat Tactics thread too. I am confused. Dissing Kornak is really pointless. His biggest disadvantage, which is being an obvious lieutenant, is not a big problem for an army where most of the models are not affected by loss of lieutenant anyways. And the Zerat red fury is a big boon (seriously, I cannot sing her praises enough). Anyways, Nice post. I'm glad people are being positive about this army now. As for @Maksimas talking about single groups or multi-group: One of the reasons I like MAF is we can do both and we do them well. So I generally look at the mission first when I'm deciding whether to go for a large model count or not. I played a game of Tic Tac Toe recently where I went 10-1 vs Hassassin because I just had so many orders spread amongst so many models that he couldn't apply pressure to any single specific point to break my list, which led to my opponent not being able to capitalize on his alpha striking ability. The game was a slow grind, but the fact I had 15 orders at first (he had 19!) meant even though he killed 2-3 models per turn I still had enough to go around and cap objectives, while he was too busy trying to kill my stuff that de didn't realize he only had 5 regular orders by the end of the game. So don't pigeonhole yourself in a single playstyle. You can adapt, and Morat is a surprisingly adaptable army.
This wasn't touched on but I think the Yaogats are another Morat Fireteam that got greatly enhanced by the season 10 changes. Before in order to run a Yaogat fireteam you had to burn a lot of extra points on redundant MSV2 troopers in order to get a full Core or even Haris. But now their ranks can be filled in with the cheaper Raktoraks which provide a heavily discounted, fast specialist. Previously the only specialist available was the Yaogat hacker priced at a hefty 36 points, so by using the Raktorak you can shave a full 14 points. But its not only the Morat Changes that make the Yaogats more appealing. Season 10's "Bravery" means that all your Yaogats (and Raktoraks) all have forward deployment. Giving them increased flexibility and mitigating their slower movement. I've been using the following Haris to some success: The team has a specialist to take objectives, and a variety of weapons to stay lethal at any range-band. Especially when using their MSV2 to shoot through smoke, which lets you pick off units one at a time at -6 mods. Luckily Morats have no shortage of good units to provide that smoke for them (Anyat, Daturazi, and the new Oznat hunting party) Another great thing about the Wild Card ability is it lets you build a ton of flexibility into your lists. While the specific weapon load-outs can be tweaked, Consider something like this: Here you have the option of deploying a 5 man "Yaogat" Core as a defensive team where you can leave a Daturazi next to your ARO pieces, so your opponent will likely only have 1 shot at even fighting your team before smoke goes up to cover them, while they can still watch fire-lines. Or alternatively, if you are going first or there isn't a great place to deploy a 5 man defensive link. Then you can place your Yaogats as a 3 man link while you deploy the Raktoraks as a core with your Daturazi. That way you can run your Core up the board with 2 specialist, a B5 weapon, deadly close combat, and throwing smoke with 2 dice on 20's.
