A Dakini in Vanilla is little help only against a Kamau sniper in FT thanks to SSL2. Yes, you'll block LoF but all the point of the discussion for the last replies was to be able to move without using White noise. 4 shots on 11 against 2 on 16 is ok when you have ARM, BTS and W to tank the DA/stun rounds coming at you. If you fail your first FtF with your Dakini, the remote will be down 80% of the time, needing some repair before trying again. Achilles has 3W and ARM4/BTS6 to tank and try again in addition to BS15 (so hitting on 12). The best way to deal with Varuna in Aleph Vanilla is still Drakios but I don't remind him being a very popular choice. Scylla can try something too but she is harder to manoeuver.
SSL2 has nothing to do here. The point is not to shoot at him through white noise, but to use white noise to move and shoot something else. Like another member from the kamau fireteam. There are tools to deal with MSV or linked troops, i don't see the point in not using them, especially when it's something as common as HD+ in Aleph. Note that nimbus would be a better choice here, but i didnt mentionned it even if vanilla Aleph and SP can field it, since it's far less common than a danava in vanilla. . BUT contrary to many troops, the remote has little chance of being killed, thanks to being a remote. But you have to do with what you have, even if it's not ideal. And by the way, trying to outshoot the kamau is probably not the best way to begin with, it's better to try and weaken the link first. AD, infiltrators ... Or coordinated fire.
@Ayadan I made a comment that most lists would have a HMG or two to combat regular snipers, so that Dakini would have to face either a Sniper that's unlinked, has no CH levels or no MSV, not a Varuna Kamau. Now, Aleph and SP in particular are well equipped not to have to bring special profile selections along to deal with Kamau since their access to reliable Eclipse on good or even key figurines is second to none. Theoretically they don't need HMGs at all. For other armies, the presence of Kamau Wildcards in a meta can have some pretty negative effects on list building.
Hard to even know where to start in replying to that one. I guess the big thing I'd say, first and foremost, is that focusing on constructive solutions is going to be a lot more useful than whining on the internet. I get it, whining on the internet is fun and doesn't cost anything, but it also doesn't help players enjoy the game more. Second, the idea that these solutions don't work is short-sighted. It's pretty easy to overcome the gameplay limitations you're describing; there's nothing Theory Crafting about it. For example, rather than deploying 4x Daylami to react to the Kamau, you deploy the 4x Daylami in the area of the table you want to control. Rather than reacting to the area the Kamau denies, you actively project strength in the area you think is important. But if you think the best use of this thread is to complain, then you do you.
But then you don't try to take it out, you kill the rest of the army, or just achieve objectives. With smoke you can safely advance on everything else; white noise or eclipse (or Albedo) let you ignore the Kamau as you line other stuff up. Or you bring camo and just walk past the firelane the Kamau is covering 'cus there's nothing you can do to stop a move-move from a marker. Or AD and drop into a blind spot and get your murder on. It sounds like a lot of people are just fixating on a single trooper, refusing to change or adapt their tactics and calling foul. The Kamau is not a nail, stop trying to hit it with a hammer and select a different tool for the job (or break out SAA, bring a core-linked Bagh Mari HMG and annihilate it!).
Dealing with Kamau Sniper ARO as OSS is a joke. White Noise Assisted Fire Activate Fireteam inside White Noise Walk combi Dakini out of White Noise Shoot with HMG Dakini If they shot your combi dakini, you have 92.70% chance to down the Kamau (67.59% to kill) If they dodged, you have 79.04% chance to down the Kamau (49.42% to kill) Also, being a REM, they might not even completely kill your combi dakini, but even if they do, trading a 13 points model to kill a Kamau is pretty damn sweet.
Just to make sure I'm following your thought process correctly. 1. White noise is thrown down obscuring the Dakini team 2. HMG (if not already Aspara'd) is buffed 3. Sacrificial lamb Dakini leaves the white noise, triggering an ARO from the Kamau so it cannot ARO when the HMG shoots 4. Dakka dakka 5. Profit?
Yeap! The opponent is forced to declare an ARO when the sacrificial Dakini enters their LoF, so they can't try to benefit from the usual Sixth Sense boon from getting shot at since they will already have declared an ARO when they get shot. So you either trade a Dakini with their Kamau, or they dodge and give you a insanely high odds shot.
Also works with the new gwailo in fireteam with his sensor drones: you can throw away a 23pts REM and thanks to albedo you get free shots (either B3 HRL hitting on 13 or B5 HMG hitting on 10)
Yup. Agree with this. Better to figure out how to beat it than whine. You are assuming that the Kamau is not covering the most important area on the table, which means you are assuming that the Kamau player is not as good a player as you are. And, in the case of the Kamau you are still facing Helots covering where the Kamau isn't, and BS11 Daylami don't fare well against camo markers.
I'm not assuming anything. I think you missed part of the conversation. If the Kamau contests the important area, you can put your countermeasures in place to contest that area too... Any of the half dozen counters already presented in this thread. Either the Kamau is in the line of fire, or it's not, but either way, it's possible to leverage an advantage if you're prepared. As for the Helots, they're BS11 with no negative modifers but cover. Virtually anything will beat them, from Camo Skirmishers on up. A linetrooper in Suppressive Fire is typically leveraging comparable or better odds, and I don't think anyone's panicking about taking those down. The big danger is their ammunition types, but there are ways around that too. There's a surprising amount of misinformation out there. I still hear of players who are playing Decoy + Limited Camo, and not Decoy / Limited Camo (a pretty huge difference.) Similarly, I see Limited Camo being played wrong all the time. It's important to dispel misunderstandings.
In fact, VIRD veil of mistery and power falls apart once you've started to play with it against a competent player. VIRD prefers to let its ennemy impal himself on the ARO pieces before moving. If you don't have Albedo/White noise, let VIRD begins and prepare an ambush for the poor guys forced to go outside of the DZ and kill them. Once those 3-4 guys are dead, classic VIRD lists have no other options than to make the whole core move and that's what you want. They are all squishy and easy prey in reactive at close range. That's how you operate to kill VIRD if you can't reach their DZ.
Wow, straight to personal insults. Classy. It is a convenient, if disingenuous way to dismiss criticism you're not capable of fairly dealing with I guess. It's unfortunate for you that you'd choose to be a person who stoops to that though. Not that you seem to concerned with actual truth here, but anyone who bothered to have a look at my post history would conclude that's a poor characterisation I think. And a pretty rich one from a player who's spent years whining about PanO, from a faction that's famous for it. Did you call the players who complained about Securitate because of the comparison to Vanguard whiners, or the ones that literally threatened to quit the game if Tarik was linkable with FAT2? Or is this just rank hypocrisy, based only on what faction gets criticised, because now it's inconvenient to hear criticism now your faction have their hand in the cookie jar after literal years of being the squeaky wheel faction? You're clearly a good player, and you often have interesting things to say. But your views on balance re: PanO are pretty biased IMHO, and personal insults like that just don't really help. I think in general systems who greet genuine criticism with personal abuse tend to accumulate systematic errors and fail over time. So it's not doing anyone a favour. In terms of being constructive, I get criticism can be annoying and that looking for solutions is often more productive, and I often do that too. But not at the expense of misdirecting the topic, denying or ignoring genuinely fair criticism, or personally abusing people who make it or who challenge the ego who wants to ignore it. Thirdly, if the way to overcoming the gameplay limitations of some advice is to actually do something different instead, then the advice wasn't good in the first place. That was my point. I agree with you that deploying 4x Daylami in this different way than you advised earlier is better, and not a bad general tactic. It can run into some challenges vs Varuna in particular however, seeing as important areas of the table are fairly likely to see the attention of Varuna units that can trivially mod Daylami out of the ability to hit at all or close to it (eg Cutter, Croc men, Kamau HMG + Nimbus, Bulletteer). You make the case that 'virtually anything' will beat Helots because of their BS11 (that BS is fairly standard for a lot of factions, as I'm sure you actually know BTW). Daylami are worse in reactive firefights but somehow they're some magic solution though? Why, because they're in a different faction? Funny because I've been playing Daylami exactly like that for literally years now, guess I should just be grateful to have you to tell me about it now. Lastly, I don't think the best use of this thread is just complain (if you actually bother to read the post you quoted, you might notice there's even some constructive thoughts about how to deal with Kamau in there). I do think it's worthwhile to actually genuinely and honestly (ie good or bad) discuss the topic of the thread though. How about that, crazy I know.
Do you have a photo of a table where this is possible, preferably with annotations and tactical analysis, because it doesn't sound like what you're arguing is even remotely possible. Remember that the problem is that Kamau snipers require special list tailoring, not that they are impossible to deal with. It's very possible to set a Kamau up so that it makes the game far, far, in excess of the 76/1,5 that such a link can typically cost. Sure there's ways around it, but this is not reflected in the cost. This is a very hard nail to hammer down, which means if you want to go around it you can funnel your opponent to waste extra orders and expose their fireteams to Helot ARO or Zulu-Cobra jammers. Look at the larger picture. That's even assuming that you can get around the Kamau, which many tables don't let you, or that the VIRD player hasn't invested in two Kamau snipers to cover several angles and lanes. It's funny that your solution is to change faction to one that's better equipped at dealing with it. That's a bit extreme case of special list tailoring for just one 32/1,5 unit, don't you think? Edit: all this because Kamau has one ability that pushes it ever so slightly over the limit of what active turn advantage typically gives a player.
No, they don't, unless you consider infiltrating skirmishers, AD troopers or warbands to be "special list tailoring". You mean a trooper designed to make opponent's waste orders dealing with it, makes opponents waste orders dealing with it? Your assertion that its effectiveness is greater than its cost is simply your opinion, not backed up by anything. Ah, there we go, you're fireteam focussed. You can use single troops you know, you don't have to move the fireteam, even in sectorials, it's more often than not a better idea against a castling opponent, for exactly the reasons you identify. Sending a camo hunter to clear out enemy skirmishers is pretty standard, why would you expect not to have to do it against Zulu-Cobras or Helots? Already addressed; playing on crap tables leads to a crap experience. Extra investment into the fireteam means fewer SWC elsewhere to deal with, making clearing the rest easier, plus the Kamau are restricted in their deployment if they want fireteam bonuses. See my previous point if your tables allow a single fireteam's deployment to lock down an entire board. There are plenty of sectorials that can deploy MSV + high burst weapons + core link to annihilate the Kamau in a firefight, that every army can't put those together is clearly an issue for you.
Let me amend that so you can read it as it is meant: "Zulu-Cobra jammer or expose their fireteams to Helot ARO" You're getting very hyperbole, your perfect tables don't exist without causing massive problems for other units and weapon imbalance issues. To reiterate; You don't need to deploy the Kamau to lock down the entire table to get vastly skewed results from your investment. Your fireteam isn't much of a restriction on many tables due to the prevalence of urband terrain. A Kamau in a Core isn't a large investment. At all.
Repeating the same things doesn't make them true. You believe the buy-in for the Kamau is too low, that's still your opinion with no actual facts to back it up. I disagree. Again, bad tables = bad experience. You know the solution, you choose not to use it. It is a quarter of your points (in a typical 300 point game), on a single, tough, ARO piece, that can be played around (like all ARO pieces).
Aight, it's the most powerful ARO piece in the game. It's great on the active turn too. It costs 75 points. That's out of wack; it being able to outshoot TAGs that cost more than its entire fireteam is a serious problem. And that's just on the defense; I don't think anything beats it on its active turn. So yeah, the buy-in is too low. If you think it isn't, then you think that basically everything else in the game should have its point cost reduced. Varuna seems like it was made by a PanO fanboy on the design team.
