Over the last six months I have enjoyed playing Tartary Army Corps. I love that they are fragile and lack the more sophisticated gear available in the Human Sphere. I love even more that they make up for it with cunning, big guns and training. I feel i have a good grip on how their 'human' troops work, I can play them competitively and am at that wonderful stage of nerdism where I pretty much know the stats of all my troops without looking at profiles. One of the more unusual troop types in Ariadna are Dog-Warriors. I recently purchased some on the merit that they are fantastic miniatures and a kind of cheap organic TAG. Looking at how they fit in my army they.... well they dont really seem to fit. I want them to work, i want to get away from my current crutch of fireteam Vets and Frontoviks. I want to tear the enemy apart with my god-damn teeth! Many of the roles Dog-Warriors have I feel i get from Irmandinhos, and more. Although tough, I can get four Ho's for the price of one Dog. How do you use yours? How many do you take? Tell me some hilarious stories of the hunt.
Apparently no one is biting ;) so I will. Dog warriors are hard to use you hit the nail on the head saying they don’t fit. Anyway I have run them in lists against very rem heavy armies like onyx and oss as the plasma and amounts of flashpulses makes it real nice to have total immunity, the most looked over thing about them is they spec fire Grenades real well. Most people just run in and chainrifle everything ( which can be fun too) Their lack of stealth makes them a very blunt instrument but their smoke and speed kind of makes up for it. In all honesty the Irmandinbros are better but the doggies are way more fun, they also can achieve some real glorious moments as they have super jump and can be really hard to kill.
I love dog warriors, they are fantastic. I always try to include 1, and I'll take more depending on the mission. They actually mesh well with Irmandhinos because you can choose the order your extremely impetuous models activate so you can use an Irmandhino to drop smoke to cover the advance of a dog warrior if you want to. I will sometimes simply move-move a dog warrior through an ARO as they are immune to flash pulses, and with total immunity they rarely take more than one wound. They are one of the few models that actually become more dangerous when they get wounded so sometimes it's a good idea to try and get them shot so they get bigger! Just watch out for viral..... In close quarters they are disgusting as they can lob grenades about with PH16 meaning even spec firing they are hitting on 13's in good range bands. Dual chain rifles means they can trade against bunched models and link teams brutally well, and with super jump you can get access to otherwise well hidden models easily. No roof top is safe. You don't need to go until you die with them though. Sometimes I just park them in an annoying spot as a roadblock and then suppress the extremely impetuous move so they stay there. To kill one you need to cause three wounds. Taking chain rifles or grenades to the face the whole time. They also have courage so they'll just shrug and stay where you put them too. They can clear mines very easily, and with relative safety to clear the way for your other troops. Pretty high CC so they can tank an ARO to engage a model in CC, and then either kill it OR just stay there. That enemy model is now irrelevant until the opponent's turn because it's engaged. Here's an interesting one as well, when they transform they get bigger and block line of sight. It's not often, but I have used them as "cover" before to move S2 models up the field without provoking AROs. They take a bit of practice but I have never had a bad experience with Dog Warriors. They are also very beginner friendly because it's difficult to get them killed, so mistakes aren't as problematic as they are with your elite squishies like Spetsnaz.
Organic tag and bigger Irmandahino, those are things that are pretty close to my experience with the dog warrior. But not quite. Let me try and explain it best I can. There's a reason why many times the nefarious CB points formula is brought up, someone will be quick to post "But the dog warrior is only 29 points." He's a budget bully. The dude is mobile with super jump, use his mobility to get him into your opponent's soft underbelly and watch him cause havoc. He's the reason why your opponent should be shelling out for TO bots, minelayers and other good point defense. Dog warrior doesn't go and man fight your enemy's best and brightest. Feed them a couple of orders and get them into the people who don't want to be taking chain rifle sprays into clustered budget links, run him into buildings filled with cowering cheer leaders, lob grenades over walls when your opponent doesn't have stealth. The dude is a 1 man riot if it's not engaged by the bigger fish in the pond. Even then, there's bigger fish that can't fight him up close even if he's not packing expccw's or martial arts level silly. Engage with a ARO piece packing a ML, HMG or Sniper and leave him there. Dog warriors are scary in melee, but they're an absolute nightmare to get off of an engaged miniature as few things can chew through his 3 wounds with any sort of efficiency. Get him across that board, sick the wolf among the sheep and watch your opponent hemorrhage orders when there's spec fired grenades, double chain rifles and wounds of beef to chew through... all for 29 points. And remember to have fun comrade. (seriously he's a great mini and a simple to use and fun model. Rarely outright disappoints)
Wouldn't someone withing 8" and no stealth proc ARO regardless of line of sight? That means you can ARO a grenade over a wall. Seeing as doggo wants to be in knife fighting range. This is an extra layer of annoyance I've used him to cause.
Thank you for the wisdom, and the enthusiasm. I think I'm going to model and Irmandinho throwing a stick smoke grenade.
I think the stock on Dog Warriors goes up when you have missions that concentrate a lot of action in the midfield, or you need some concentrated survivability in a setting where you may not be able to get it. Good examples for missions are anything with an objective room, Acquisition, Frostbyte. You know the enemy is going to be concentrating activity in the midfield, so the Dog doesn't have to walk very far in order to start doing damage, and there's probably a lot of targets for him to engage. For concentrated survivability, there are tons of missions where you have to get to the enemy DZ. Whether that's to grab something important (Capture & Protect) or just attack a hidden target (anything involving killing an LT or Datatracker) the Dog is really nice for that. Being able to attack with multiple decent vectors (Chain Rifles, Spec Fire Grenades) as well as having two opportunities to to Discover Camo (Discover roll, Intuitive Attack) means he can hunt hidden targets nicely, even on rooftops or in hidden areas.
Dogs are a big appeal to me as someone looking to pick tak up. Am I barking up the wrong tree for tak to look into dogs or are they strong when used properly Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
*groans in Russian* I am yet to use them in this edition but in the last they were awesome. If you can kill off any long range viral weapons (looking at you Haqqislam!) they seem pretty strong. I am hoping to use them next week for the first time. Also welcome to TAK. Guns Girls and Gulags mate
I have had dogmen win me games turn 1. When you go first some enemies will hide all their forces out of LOS, that basically means a single dogman can reach the enemy DZ and wreack havoc with speculative nades, smoke CC and maybe even take out a link with dual chain shots. Pretty muh the only danger to them is MSV ARO pieces, and you can avoid those if you move smart