[MILITARY ORDERS TACTICS] Quo Peregrinatur Grex Pastor Secum ["300pts Box" WiP 06/04/19]

Listen to @eciu and you'll surely go the wrong way. Because, the fact is, Hospitallers aren't anymore the core FT you should look at first glance. While they are individually rather cheap and good, they cost too much as a core FT to worth all the reactive power you sacrifice in exchange. My advice, and I think Daboarder will agree with me, is that you should look at the other core FTs MO have and make your lists more around it. You can still play Hospitallers but I would advice to stick to the Haris instead of the core. Teutons/Santiagos Core and OS Core are the best FT of the sectorial now. Teutons/Santiagos, while being medium range oriented in active, can make a good work in ARO even at long range with their Panzerfausts and those of the Magisters.
OS is more flexible in the options you can put in, bringing Drop Bears, KHD, MSV2, Albedo, Spitfire, ML, HRL and so one but is more fragile and more sensible to bad deployment (the OS HRL is, to me, a good example of a flexible trooper, good at long and short range firefights).
And then, once you have your core, you have to choose which Lt would fit the mission and your list feeling. Daboarder loves Joan, Santiagos and FK have my preference but there are still spots for Hospitaller and Teuton if your list request it.
Now, what you need is to select all your auxiliary troops. If you want a good solo HMG for active turn, our TAGs are great. The Hospitaller Haris is one good choice, mostly if you have already 2 Santiagos so you can have your core for active long range support before going back to a Haris and bring back your Santiagos in their original core. But not only: they make a good second point of pressure too.
TO OS are good for TO ARO traps, sneaky assassination and objective grabbing. Sierras are good as solo ARO units while still packing active turn potential, Pathfinder is a great cheap specialist and correct fighter (don't ask too much to it though), KotHS is excellent for alpha strike (but needs some protection) or second wave... You have a lot of tools to choose from.

But what is real is that, compared to the other PanO sectorials, your list won't play in part by itself just by putting here and there cheap ARO pieces. MO is really dependent on the skill of the player himself/herself. Deploy bad and the sectorial will give you nothing to mitigate this and your only chance is that the god of RNG loves you at this moment. But deploy smart and effective and it will be very difficult to put you in a bad situation. And this applies to every step of the game. The nice part of MO is that the sectorial has answers to a lot of problems and those solutions are rather cost and order efficient to compensate the lack of access to the order battery the other sectorials have. You have access to a crazy shit ton of toolbox troopers, able to fight and grab objectives and the FT compositions give you access to a great level of flexibility (not to the level of VIRD, but still).
As for CC... Even with Joan, it's a risky move against a Makaul. It's better to land a mine there and to prepare someone for ARO at the impetuous order of the Makaul than use orders to deal with something you can't. What Makaul doesn't have is your good BS, your saves stats and your 2W as they hate AP mines like hell and MO as a good access to them. But CC is valid against a lot of infiltrators and soft targets with huge vis MODs. And against Engage ARO! In PanO more than everywhere else, CC is a situational thing. You don't want to CC if you can prevent it. But sometimes, a Seraph CCing a Zensha FO is more interesting and efficient than just shooting at it with Nanopulsers or Spitfire at bad range.
That's one of the difficulty with the new MO: you have to find the good balance between sneaky moves, firepower demonstration and reckless charges because you can do all this but not everyone can and not against everybody.

So, in conclusion, you're going to have the feel of uphill battles until you get the complete understanding of the sectorial. It is not easy and it asks you to try everything to understand really what can do every trooper and you'll have to improve yourself too as this sectorial is not newbie friendly. The starting difficulty is higher than the other armies but the final level is on par with them.

 

Thanks @Ayadan, that was a concise summary of the current situation of MO. Like many players I also think that MO changed a lot since the upgrade, to the point that it seems to me a completely new army, with logic and tactics different from the previous one. I also regret the loss of an extremely efficient core such as hospitallers + magisters with no good reason... but this is the situation now, and the fun is to adapt and take advantage of it.

So I ask myself in what kind of scenarios MO is strong and in which weak. Today most players use lists of 10 orders, which limits the possibilities of movement and error, but at the same time, these 10 orders are very diverse, with many tools and a good number of specialists (having 5 specialists is normally easy). I'm thinking of going back to MO, that's why those who have been playing for longer, whose type of missions become more difficult and which are easier?

 

Hmm, difficult to answer as it also really depends on what army and what kind of list you are playing against. But I would say that Transmission Matrix may be the worst one for MO, regardless of what you're playing against. But even then, you could find a list able to handle this specific scenario and crush any list played against you. Since Daboarder proved that 2 groups is also an effective option for MO, you can go this way too.
But, yes, holding zones round after round are, in my opinion, the scenarios MO struggle with the most. But those heavily objective oriented like Highly classified, Comm Center or Tic Tac Toe are those where MO shine the most. Just because you have access to a lot of good specialists who are also good fighters, the same trooper can make the murder and the objective alone (stealing it to the ennemy if possible), letting the rest of your list staying in security or pinning your opponent. Those oriented on killing are OK but not much because all your specialists won't help you much there.

 

MO is also really great at Frostbyte. The last time I played, I didn't even leave my half of the table and won. All but two of my models were HI, so I didn't have to worry about the cold. Didn't turn on a single heating unit.

 

Yes, that's one of their prefered scenario too.

 

I'm more motivated after the slump.

So, I have a match today against the combined army, and I am planning to bring one of these two lists:

Combat group 1:

Jeanne d'arc lt. mobility armor spitfire and AP weapon. 51pts

Hospitalier with boarding shotgun. 31pts.

Hospitalier with HMG. 39pts.

Hospitalier doctor with combi rifle. 35pts

Hospitalier with multirifle. 35pts.

Warcor 'n' Techbees. 8pts for those two gofers.

2xFOOTO sarges with mines. 54pts

1x paramedic sarge. 15pts
2nd combat group.

2 order sarges with HRLs 30pts.

Most likely will swap a HRL for the paramedic.


And the second list in the link:

IwBgzAPmIhEEwFIDsBWR8BsJEEIlobZ4HpbB7rIAcGyyeAnItUvI2HrdRQCyrJOuZqwyMKuXigbxkSfCjI0puTskxENAATBSODMKmDMtWoA=

For 10 regular orders (11 as long as the NCO is alive), 2 impetuous and an irregular. Most likely will cut the tech bee.

Thoughts?

Actually may go for this 3rd list.
Military Orders
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

10 1
MAGISTER KNIGHT Panzerfaust, Light Shotgun / Pistol, AP CCW. (0 | 22)
KNIGHT OF SANTIAGO Lieutenant (Specialist Operative) Spitfire, Nanopulser, E/M Grenades, D-Charges / Pistol, DA CCW. (1 | 43)
KNIGHT HOSPITALLER HMG / Pistol, DA CCW. (2 | 39)
KNIGHT HOSPITALLER Doctor (Fireteam: Haris, MediKit) Combi Rifle / Pistol, DA CCW. (0.5 | 36)
ORDER SERGEANT Heavy Rocket Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 15)
ORDER SERGEANT Spitfire / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 19)
SPEC. SERGEANT (CH: TO Camouflage, Infiltration, Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27)
SPEC. SERGEANT (CH: TO Camouflage, Infiltration, Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27)
TEUTONIC KNIGHT Combi Rifle, Panzerfaust / Pistol, AP CCW. (0 | 34)
KNIGHT OF SANTIAGO Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, D-Charges + 1 TinBot A (Deflector L1) / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 38)

6 SWC | 300 Points

Open in Infinity Army

 

Doing a bit of report.

Ended up using the 3rd list.


Played the game against the combined army. Fought the avatar itself. I won.

The mission was highly classified and the objectives were: "an engineer heals a remote" (had no engineers), "a hacker scans a HVT", "mark an opponent with a FO" and kill 2 opponents in CQC. We had each a secret objective, mine related to my FOs.

He went first, and started positioning his hacker towards the HVT... which was next to one of my infiltrators. This tipped him off and forced a bit of his maneuvering. He made a move with a remote, tipping me to shoot him with the other infiltrator (basically, I had forgotten about the engineer objective, my bad). I hit, he's downed. He cures him and falls back. I hit him again and he resurrects him again. Long story short, my FOTOOs make him waste about half his orders. He positions the avatar, does an intuitive attack, fails. Long story short, he's wasted his first turn though he gets a paratrooper and the avatar into key positions, protecting the HVT.

I start my turn, attacking with a magister knight. 3 shotgun shots down the paratrooper. But the avatar is a thorn in my side... maybe I could panzerfaust the hell out of him?

Hint I couldn't. The teuton flubs his BS14 shots and I fail two exp saves. He unveils a TO infiltrator with a missile launcher... though he tanks the wounds better than the machine gun.

I momentarily panic. Keep my head cool and focus on scoring the FO objective and the secret one. By this point I am down to 3 orders. I move my haris... and the avatar can see them with its S7 (frak). He flubs the first shot and my sarge, as the hero he is, gets a wound in with the 5 spitfire shots. My knight tries the same. Gets another. I try to aim for a kill, get 4 hits, one a critical. He's decided against shooting, downing his chances from 18 or less to 15 or l-

He rolls a 15.


FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

He hides and spends the first half of his turn healing back the avatar. He uses his weird ability to kill a FOTOO sarge and achieves his secret objective with him.

I sweat nervously, trying to stave him off from orders by trying to kill most of his army. My FOTOO sarge partially succeeds in that regard, spencing 4 orders into killing 2 guys (not my brightest idea.)

I am on the minimum. I move and move my santiago hacker, getting into firing range of the avatar in the second to last order.

I have no choice but to try and get him inmobilized. He rolls an 11. I need a crit.

I roll a 4.

At this point I almost fall apart, then I remember I was going by using my Physical rather than my BS.

It is a crit.

The avatar himself is neutered. WIth my last order I secure the HVT and thus 2 out 4 of the objectives. He has no CQC specialists in the army and all his engineers are within firing range of my troopers.

Given that the closest models I had to him were sporting CC22 and MAs? He conceded at the end of the second turn. He was a good sport and a very engaging opponent and was a great afternoon.

 

Massed camo: depends of what you're thinking of. If it's the Ariadna/TAK one, your brain is the best tool. Dart, Santiagos, Peacemaker, Pathfinder and Seraph Spitfire are the best you can have access to as they can do the hunting alone in active. But you need to know how to deploy a low order count list, even if @daboarder showed that you can reach 14 orders without sacrificing much. And you need to know also that in active, the only camo tokens you need to reveal are those which hide a threat. No need to discover Strelock FO or Minelayer or Hardcase/Foxtrot. What you need to kill are smoke tossers and Chasseurs, TH/Vassily, Spetsnaz, McMannus and Scouts with E/Mauler. And since outside of Chasseurs and Galwegian/Irmandinhos, they are all costing 30+ points, they won't be in high number on the field. They aren't that difficult to notice and not that good in reactive.

Jammers (unlinked) and E/Mauler: Auxbots, Palbots, Stealth and KotHS (depending of which of the two you need to counter). The KotHS being the best one as your opponent is forced to choose between shooting to a decoy or wait until you can see him in the eyes. Dart is also good against Jammer wielder but not against E/Maulers.

Smoke: I think that between BF and Konstantinos in core FT, you are pretty comfortable against smoke at rifle range. It is more a problem in reactive at long range but you're still impervious to smoke+MSV2 trick since you're going to have SSN2 in ARO 80% of the time.

Strong TO units (so Cutter and not Avatar): Avoid long range avenues or cross them with cautious movement (or camo state if Dart/TOFOOS happens to be enough). One good thing is, if your core is locked down by this kind of unit, a TAG or a Haris elswhere as a second attack piece is the best thing to use. MO has a lot of good solo units, that's exactly at those moments where they shine the most.

Order spam: just learn how to leverage 10-14 orders lists against 18 ones. This isn't easy at first but once you know how to make your opponent spend orders for nothing, you're going to be good. Winning scenarios with a lot of areas to control at the end of each round is going to be where this will be difficult (so Transmission Matrix, Quadrant control...) but outside of that, you're going to loose 0-2 orders per turn while your opponent will loose likely 4-5 of them each round or those which matters and being teethless for the rest of the game. Body spam isn't that much a problem.

Dedicated Hacking: KoS KHD. This guy is the best KHD in this game and you still can help him with a supportware of your Mulebot EVO to be even better against Hackers. He has stealth. Pair him in a duo with a FK and add Fairy Dust on top of this and you're going to force Hacking AROs against a BTS 12 trooper at -6 WIP.

Less orders? Yes most of the time.

Less toolboxy? No. The number of troopers who can do a lot of things alone are in a greater number in MO than in VIRD. Outside of Patsy, ZC, EB, Montesa (but he is also in MO) and Kamau specialists, every unit in VIRD is really in one dimension. Add to that that there is only one MSV in the whole army and she costs 32 pts and 1.5 SWC, compared to BF, Konstantinos, Dart and even MSV2 OS, that's the biggest downside of VIRD. DTW are also very rare in VIRD and this is a tool MO doesn't lack that much. Any TO/ODD unit in SF at short range is a real problem to remove for VIRD without specific troopers while MO has a lot of solution against this. Both sectorials have access to excellent TAGs though but VIRD ones cost more for less weapon options than the MO ones.

Less punchy? Depends of your opponent. But MO is, however, punchy enough to don't have to feel it. What VIRD has access to is a bunch of glass cannons. MO prefers to be less overkill in order to get more resilience to bad luck and to free moves 1W units can't do without risking to be put down in ARO.

90% of the time, my opponents don't use their infiltrators in ARO duty, so reaching them in CC is rather easy. I don't know how you build your tables but if your opponent is able to stack threatning AROs to each exit of your DZ from his own DZ, question your table set up. During the Merovingian satellite, I reached CC in 3 games and had the opportunity to do so in one more. CC is easy to reach with an average table set up and 2+W troopers.

Didn't get this one. Makaul should never be fought in CC, like Valkyrie, Ajax or Chimera. That's pretty suicidal or at least, really dicey. Shoot them, like everyone would do.

See? And the TAG has pretty much the same odds to straight kill the Zensha in CC as to only wound him by shooting. That's part of why Seraph is a really good TAG and why CC20+ is enough against non CC-oriented troopers. All you need is a good PH (meaning that KotHS received a CC nerf during his update) and a multi damage CCW. This makes FK pretty good against the same kind of target. This is one of the rare case where assault is a useful skill too if you're shooting outside of 4".

It also depends deeply of how your TO thinks his table. If the terrain is dense only in the 24" in the middle and the DZ are nice plains with no cover, MO will have a real hard time. 10 orders lists are on par with any list if you can deny one flank during the deployment and if you can use the whole 12" deep of your DZ. Like said in the Patsy Datatracker topic, if your stuck with WH40k DZ style set up, your going to have a hard time to deploy effectively.
I won't lie, listbuilding and deployment phase are the hardest part of the game in MO. So, yes, you take a lot of time before your game and at the beginning to ensure that you're not going to get stomped. Then, you have to make the good decisions, which requires good calculation, to have an accurate eye and to know your troopers and those of your opponent. In short: experience and skill. Unlike VIRD, NCA and SAA which are "easy to get, hard to master", MO is more "hard to get, easy to master". Once you know everything you need to, MO isn't that hard to play and to bring to victory because of all the tools the sectorial can mix in the same FT or pack in the same trooper. You know how to leverage the strengths of all your troopers and it will be rare that you would feel that you paid too much for one trooper.
Because all of this, I understand why a lot of players say MO is for uphill battle lovers. I would rather say that they are more for players who have time to play weekly and dedication and curiosity to want to find out how the whole thing works. The old MO didn't match that much with my playstyle and it was a pain to play them, while it was OK to nice for a lot of players. Now, it seems that things reversed.

As for Lt problems, it hits less at 10 orders than it does at 18. And since a lot of MO troopers are pretty good on their own, you always can find something useful to do with them. Learning to win in LoL is a skill useful to get, even if it is hard to put MO in LoL, except if the MO player want his Lt dead.

And I'm sticking to it. The fact that MO reached top 10 of 2 satellites and was the top 1 PanO sectorial in those both events while still getting a lot of complaints conspire to what I say. Everyone want to jump in the Hospitaller pain train while the sectorial is a lot more around the rest of the sectorial. This is a big shift from the old MO and it seems that this and the MO box are doing a lot of bad to the new sectorial players.

More because you loose pretty much only the support troopers if you didn't connect the consoles while your opponent need to do so to ensure that his whole list won't die at the last turn. You could even go in a suicidal charge to destroy his heaters, you would only need one HI to survive to get the victory. And since even MO TAGs are equiped with antimaterial CCW, it is something doable.

 

I have a game of transmission matrix against invincible army in a couple of days, and I am dreading it. Suspect I will probably run a KOTHS with a grenade launcher to try and make the zones too dangerous to stay in, and then an order sergeant core, with stuff like dart, tofo etc, to avoid the hacking.

Absolutely dreading it!

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Transmission Matrix vs Invincible Army with MO?

Order Sergeant Core Fireteam with Father Knight Assault Hacker, in one of the antenna zones.

Watch and laugh as you Isolate all their HI with a Sixth Sense Assault Hacker.

 

Run an evo, fk AHD and a Santiago KHD. Since you can coordinate hack with the evo you can tank hack attacks with the FK and blow their skulls out with the KHD

 

Can you explain to me how the coordinated hack does help with that? Maybe it is too late over here but i can't think how that helps.

 

The coordinated order if they're both sitting in the transmission matrix means they can hack any hacker visible on the table. From the first short movement skill declared, the FK generates an ARO while the KHD does not due to stealth. The FK becomes the target of the attack which his BTS 9 can help tank while he opposes with his own roll and the Santiago is free to be unopposed.

 

That seems terrifying risky, and more likely to end up with a dead (and very expensive) father knight, surely?

I was going to avoid hackers as much as possible, or maybe run a single killer hacker just to make him think twice about movement. The idea was the lgl could keep his own transmission zones clear by making him worry about spec fire.

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At BTS 9 and 2 wounds, the Father Knight is highly likely to survive an attack. The key is using the trick above to kill enemy hackers with the Santiago KHD. Keep in mind that if you include the Santiago in the link, he brings his tinbot along. -3 to all hacking attacks coming in before modifiers.

 

Oh, yeah, I'm assuming as a base that you are taking a Santiago KHD as well.

But, sure, the KHD is for dealing with other Hackers while the Father Knight is there to fuck with all the poor Power Armoured dudes and dudettes.

 

I mean the -3 mod alone puts him on par with maestro and lightning with regular programs which is amazing

 

I will say that I'm still worried to face Maestro with the Santiago. Getting sent straight to unconscious would really hurt.

 

Hmm, can you give me an idea as to what sort of a list you would run with that? By the time I've crammed in the core, FK, KHD and the evo, it feels like I don't actually have any points left for troopers that can push forward. It just feels like a lot of moving parts, especially given they can run those awful tinbot B's as well.