ok so, i think it's about time we all had a discussion about nullifiers, and how great they are. NULLIFIER SHORT SKILL / ARO Comms Attack, Comms Equipment, Deployable, Disposable (3), Indiscriminate, Optional, Zone of Control REQUIREMENTS In the Reactive Turn, LoF to the Active trooper is required. EFFECTS By spending a Short Skill or ARO, the user places a Nullifier Marker on the game table to represent this piece of Equipment. This action is an Attack. In the Active Turn, the trooper can deploy the Nullifier Marker in base contact or, if he moved, in base contact with any part of his route. In the Reactive Turn, the trooper must deploy the Nullifier Marker in base contact. Nullifier Markers are not considered deployed until the Conclusion of the Order. Once the Marker is placed on the game table, the Nullifier will be considered activated, and can be used in the following Orders/AROs. The Area of Effect of a Nullifier is its Zone of Control (8 inch radius). Inside the Area of Effect of a Nullifier troopers cannot declare the use of Hacking Programs, Technical Weapons, Comms Attacks, or Sepsitor, applying the effect of an Idle in such situation. Moreover, troopers, weapons, or pieces of Equipment inside of the Area of Effect of a Nullifier, cannot be targeted by any Hacking Program, Technical Weapons, Comms Attacks or Sepsitor. A deployed Nullifier remains on the table until the end of the game or until it is destroyed. So the only armies that can get nullifiers are tohaa and combine; whereas combine can only bring nullifiers on nexus hackers, tohaa has 5 different troops that can bring nullifiers, with most of those being viable enough to see common play. With tohaa being a weird faction to begin with, it would follow that one of the weird options we have doesn't even see play that much. Personally, i use nullifiers about one in every three or four games, and i think it might be possible they could even be used more frequently. Let's talk about what they shut off, and how that could be helpful to your gameplay: Hacking - while tohaa does not have a lot of units that see play that are hackable, the gorgos really likes having a nullifier near them. Forward Observer - nullifiers make a great defense against missile spam. while not a terribly common strategy, a decent nullifier net dropped with a coordinated order can protect your entire DZ Flash Pulse - as a technical weapon, flash pulses don't work against troops inside the zone of a nullifier. people were complaining that the change to symbiomates gave some troops temporary immunity to flash pulse, but most tohaa lists could already be immune to flash pulse if they wanted to be Jammer - i've been seeing more lists with jammers and jammer variants lately, but a well placed nullifer can make any fireteam immune to the effect Sepsitor - i don't think sepsitor users are running rampant anywhere, but its worth remembering you can protect yourself with nullifiers Pheroware Tactics - in case you are up against tohaa or spiral, prolly not worth trying to protect yourself most of the time, better to just kill the tactics user Phero-Booster - a real corner case. you can't shoot a fart gun out from a nullified zone, but you also can't shoot a fart gun into a nullified zone some weirdness about nullifiers: you negate things going into or out of the zone, but not through. what i mean is if there's an opponent FO one one side of a nullifier zone, and you have a troop on the other side, your troop can still be observed. anyways, i hope this was helpful, i'm pretty sure there are a number of players who don't know how this equipment works. if there are more things they protect against, lemme know, ill add em to the list!
Yeah nullifier look like fun but honestly I never gpt to use them my enemies dont use hacking or the other stuff all that much
It's situationally relevant at other times too. I played a couple of games against an Onyx player last weekend where he bracketed an armoury with repeaters for his E-Drone and my little Kaauri with nullifiers saved the day. Very, very useful to have.
A niche interaction to get the most out of your nullifier areas came up in said games: if you're moving around on the periphery of your nullifier and in particular if some linked members and outside the zone, and you're using one of Tohaa's stealth-heavy lists, it's a good idea to voluntarily not use stealth on one of your models in the nullifier zones. This can prompt out AROs to let your more distant stealth models move safely through jammer areas etc and still make attacks during the order.
I love the nullifier Sukuel, particularly for Rescue and similar "go to the guarded location" missions. These missions often see jammers, particularly of the "forward deploy into an unassailable tower" variety, and the Sukuel is immune to their shenanigans while using a nullifier to protect any allied troop from them as well. Needless to say this is also a premium answer to Ghazi Muttawiah for a similar reason - good shooter to kill them, 2W to not auto-die to the chain rifle, immune to jammers and able to nullifier up their attack path to prevent them wrecking your better units. Pity we need to take such measures against a 5pt guy, but at least the option is there. Also good for Transmission Matrix. While we only lose Neema, Gorgos, and Ectros on that mission, if you are wanting to run them the nullifier can be a useful tool. Edit: Lol @ being immune to flash pulse while in a nullfier zone. This could be clutch when your opponent is running lots of 8pt bots, especially with an EVO.
While you're not wrong, it's worth noting that literally any model with a symbiomate is immune to flash pulses, so anyone leaving flashy bois out on ARO against Tohaa has already made a huge mistake.
So question does a nullifier stop the hacking of an objective? Like antennas etc if it has them in its range? That could help to make the enemy unable to complete objectives
Thanks for clearing that up and looking at: Inside the Area of Effect of a Nullifier troopers cannot declare the use of Hacking Programs, Technical Weapons, Comms Attacks, or Sepsitor, applying the effect of an Idle in such situation. it makes sense hacking objectives is not a hacking programm nor a technical weapon nor a comms attack or a sepsitor but why doesn't it stop the forward oberserve?
To be technical, it would stop Forward Observer in the grid if the FO troop was trying to declare the skill from inside the nullifier zone. However, more typically they'd be trying to use the FO skill from a distance to mark targets, and a nullifier's zone only protects troopers, weapons and pieces of equipment - not scenery/objectives.
Nullifiers have saved my Ectros many times; any time I bring one to a game without a nullifier, my usual opponents punish me for it. But when I do bring one, they waste orders on the nullifier!