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Dealing with 5-man Link Teams

Discussion in 'Haqqislam' started by Zelaponeepus, Aug 24, 2019.

  1. Zelaponeepus

    Zelaponeepus Well-Known Member

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    Hello,

    I’ve been playing Haqqislam for most of 2019 now. It’s been a great time, and has made me fall in love with Infinity all over again. I’ve also been doing pretty well with the faction through trial and error. I’ve won several tournaments with them and have generally felt more competent with the faction than with previous armies.

    With that said, I’ve gotten far enough along that I’m starting to see a couple consistent pain points; namely, well equipped 5 man link teams. I’ve had several matches now where I have been totally pinned, and incapable of dealing with a link team. My usual strategic go-to is “play to the mission,” and a portion of the time it works well enough to just ignore them.... but then the other portion of the time I’m just totally run over by them, and lose the ability to cope with a full order pool that I wasn’t able to shrink during the opening stages of the match.

    The biggest perpetrators are linked kamau and anything from IA.

    I’d love to hear any thoughts on go-to strategies for coping with a heavily equipped 5 man teams when the usual fiday and mutt solutions aren’t paying off. Ive found that the ssl2 has really cramped my usual bag of tricks. Ideas?
     
  2. Knauf

    Knauf Transhumanist

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    Just to make sure: You are referring to Vanilla Haqqislam here?

    I've found Hunzakuts LGL speculative fire to be a nice way to deal with core fire teams. If you target the ground, you can ignore modifiers for partial cover and things like Mimetism (hi, Kamau).
    This means, you are hitting on 8s most of the time, which is not too bad of a gamble considering the potential damage you can deal to a 5-man team of LI. You'll want enough orders in your list to brute force this though, if necessary.

    Another idea is to flank them with a Ragik BSG and try to get a nice angle for the template. Taking out one team member will usually make things much easier for successive orders and Dogged is really nice to have in order to compensate for a bad roll.

    Bashi Bazouk can pull this trick as well for less points and with Holo 2 instead of Dogged. You also have to somewhat anticipate the opponent's deployment due to them being Parachutists, but at 15 points you can't go wrong with the BSG loadout.

    You are, of course, aware of Fiday, but I still want to mention them here, especially the mines loadout. When it comes to fireteams, going after the more vulnerable models first is often the way to go. A Kamau with a 4-man fireteam bonus only is suddenly looking a lot less scary. A Fiday is on the more expensive side, but he can very reliably get into a spot to take out a fireteam member, especially with mines.
     
    #2 Knauf, Aug 24, 2019
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2019
  3. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    Coordinated Order w/ multiple Daylamis with Panzerfausts should do it. You can't split burst in ARO.
     
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  4. Anansi

    Anansi Achilles' Thigh Oiler

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    I mean, sure, but you're going to pay the iron price.
     
  5. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    Losing a Daylami to take out a Kamau MSR is a great trade.
     
  6. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Yup.

    Losing this:
    DAYLAMI (CH: Limited Camouflage, Inferior Infiltration) Light Shotgun, Panzerfaust / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 8)

    to kill this:
    KAMAU (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 32)

    is ALWAYS a worthwhile trade.
     
  7. Zelaponeepus

    Zelaponeepus Well-Known Member

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    I should have clarified—I’m playing with vanilla Haqqislam.

    For those who are suggesting using Daylami, how many are you bringing? I typically have 2-3 in a list.
     
  8. Errhile

    Errhile A traveller on the Silk Road

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    Classic ways of dealing with Fireteams include:

    template weapons to take on them at once (as many as you could fit under a given template):
    • Grenades & grenade launchers are safe, but not really effective, IMO: they will be Dodging at their full PH, while you'll be rolling to hit with, likely, Speculative Fire penalty and range penalty as well. Still, this might be useful to make them change position to have less team members under the template.
    • Direct Template weapons like chainrifles or flamethrowers. Haqqislam has a decent selection of these, and they are rightfully feared by fireteams. You are likely to lose the attacking model to ARO, but there's no roll-to-hit problem.
    • Shotguns. If a team is lined up (eg. agaisnt a piece of cover) there's nothing better than getting at them with a shotgun, up close. You get a very high range bonus, which will make it difficult for the opponent to roll above. Bonus points if you did it with a Camo or TO Camo Infiltrator (sre, a Fireteam of 4+ models will ignore the Surprise Attack modifier, but they'd need MSV do ignore the Camo).
    • Mines. Especially if you can lay one (or two) around a corner, before coming out with your shotgun. Mines do react ot enemy AROs, and they enforce a negative modifier on Dodge.
    Slicing the cake:
    • engage fireteam members one by one (using Cover to shield you from the rest of them). I'd definitely advise using a heavy weapon with range and burst advantage (eg. use a HMG to take out Rifle-armed targets) first! Once you've knocked out one or two, suddenly the Fireteam becomes much less scary.
    • hunting down the Team Leader. If possible. If you get him, the Fireteam is disbanded (well, unless they had No.2 skill. check for that in the Courtesy List!), so even if the rest of them killed your attacking model, you could be picking them off relatively easily now. Well, at least until the Team is renewed in the opponent's turn, so calculate your Orders!
    ...and there's always the Fiday.
    • use Smoke to blind them (naturally, doesn't work for the Fireteams with MSV L2)
    • find your way to their hearts. With a blade :smiling_imp: - a Fiday should be able to kill most typical LI & MI. Sure a HI fireteam will be a problem... but also rather expensive to your opponent anyway.
     
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  9. KedzioR_vo

    KedzioR_vo Well-Known Member
    Warcor

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    Yeah, me playing in bigger tournaments is mostly the constant battle of Vanilla Haqq vs Sectorials. It seems like most of the higher places in tournaments in Poland are taken by Sectorials, so you have to fight through them.

    My typical solution against links was a combo of Djanbazan HMG + Kasym's smoke. Just because against a non-MSV2 link it lets you shot one guy at order. It works well against most fireteams, and it's important to start by taking out the weakest enemies. Now, after RTF came out, we have more interesting options, like Mukhtat MSV2 with Red Fury, who can not only take advantage of the smoke screen, but also his mobility let's him get close to the enemy and use his better range modifier against worse on a sniper.

    Another option is Fiday, or in my lists - Djabel. I prefer the character version, he's a great killer. Smoking the enemies and then doing the business in old-fashioned way ;) And he also shoots good, so his shotgun can help you take out few fireteam members.

    As it was mentioned above, Hunzakut with LGL is some kind of solution too - but in clicking missions I rather have FO version.

    You also shouldn't forget we have Kasym for example - fast, expendable direct template weapon. He can get close to enemy in few orders and us Chain or even CC if someone of the Fireteam is in his range. Ofcourse it's table dependant, but works from time to time. The same with Ghazis, they sometimes can run the whole board to put a nice Chain/E-Marat or Jamm someone important ;)
    We also have KRakot with 2 chain rifles and he can do this too.

    And Daylamis - yeah, they're great. I usually take 2 7pts guys and sometimes the infiltrating one. Now, since we have Libertos, I think the fishboy is better. Still a group of cheap, expendable ARO/attack pieces doing coordinated attack is nice. Especially that Libertos can get quite close to enemy and coordinate with Daylamis :)

    Okay, the post is quite long, so now short things - infiltrators/impersonators with mines (put the mine, then attack and let the Fireteam decide what to do). Or Nahab Red Fury attacking from the flank.
    There are many options :)


    PozdRawiam / Greetings
     
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  10. emperorsaistone

    emperorsaistone Well-Known Member

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    3-5 of the non infiltrating ones. I prefer them because they play crucial part of my ARO strategy and so I need them to be, where I want them to.
    But if you have problems with cores, a infiltrated one might be the solution.
     
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  11. Errhile

    Errhile A traveller on the Silk Road

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    Personally I'm not that big on Daylami (* though i play Sectorial only, so that refers to my Bahram), and definitely not a fan of the Infiltrating ones: not only they're hit'n'miss regarding deployment, but they are also way too much miss than hit. Can't really trust them, IMO.

    Now Ghazi Muttawi'ah, that's an entirely different thing: a Direct Template weapon capable of putting the fear of God in the hearts of even the most godless Heavy Infantry fireteam :P
     
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  12. BrianJ

    BrianJ Well-Known Member

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    As others have mentioned, I’ve been including 3-4 non-infiltrating daylami panzerfaust in basically all my lists lately to deal with the linked hard ARO threat. I don’t like to risk the inferior infiltrator rolls and prefer to be able to lay out those pieces either as AROs or in good position for coordinating in turn one.

    As mentioned Fiday’s can absolutely do the job but will take a lot more orders (unless you sink that WIP deployment roll) and practice, especially against a savvy opponent who will block you with bodies and reactive threats like helots, koalas, and TR bots.

    I’m probably not alone in taking the redundancy of both options
     
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  13. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    About that, not more than 4 (I play Hassassins, not Vanilla). Usually split between infiltrating and non, because Inferior Infiltration is really chancy.
     
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  14. Knauf

    Knauf Transhumanist

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    Don't you consider the 1 point increase for Limited Camo to be worthwhile, even if the infiltration roll fails?
     
    #14 Knauf, Aug 25, 2019
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2019
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  15. Zelaponeepus

    Zelaponeepus Well-Known Member

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    I was under the impression that failing the roll removed their camouflage, but then I went to look it up and it seems like it doesn’t, so that does feel like a big deal.

    I’ve definitely had some success with Daylami up until this point, but they’re pretty hard to predict; which makes me hesitant to rely on them as my primary strategy. They also seem to get outranged in most fights after I’ve failed to infiltrate them. So bringing a few of the 7 point version is something I’ll try out.

    Another issue I’ve had with the coordinated Daylami panzerfaust is having them in the right spot for everybody to release their shots in one go. I’m curious if you’re all deploying them close to one another to address this? With the feedback in this thread I’m wondering if I could be deploying a group of them in proximity to one another so that they can all strike at once?

    Appreciate all of the feedback. I get a lot of great feedback from my local scene but it feels good to hear from other haqq players (of which there aren’t many besides myself around here)
     
  16. Xeurian

    Xeurian Well-Known Member

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  17. Zelaponeepus

    Zelaponeepus Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for quoting that! Good to see I wasn’t crazy.
     
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  18. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    I've been playing a fair bit of vanilla Haqq recently, and have been pretty happy just brute forcing down Kamau and Haidao with a Shihab. Backed up by a monsrucker to fix it if it breaks and a Barid hacker lieutenant to put up supportware, it's overall a reasonably inexpensive package with both offensive and defensive applications.

    Of course occasionally you'll have an enemy player spicy enough to fire stun rounds instead of DA, which is usually when the fight transitions to trying to get a Mukhtar red fury upfield somewhere that it can slice up the link team. Gotten a surprising number of kills putting plunging fire down onto rooftops thanks to the 6" climb moves a Mukhtar can make, although obviously YMMV on whether you'll have tables that allow that.

    A fiday is a passable option as well but suffers the downsides against Varuna of a) being as expensive as the kamau it's likely suiciding to kill, and b) being very effectively AROed against by helots. I much prefer to do poke damage with Fidays and keep them alive and re-impersonated at the end of each turn, so will chunk them into a Varuna link only as an option of last resort.

    Against every non-MSV link, there's mutts.
     
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  19. oldGregg

    oldGregg Well-Known Member

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    I bring 3 of the infiltration Daylami, along with a fiday and some midfield specialists. Mines around corners work like a charm. Bashi are an excellent choice as well.

    Others have suggested non-infiltrating Daylami but, in my opinion, those are a trap. You get so much more value if you land 1/3 of the daylami in a decent spot and the math is in your favor to do so in a multiple match format. The ones you don't land still can get value and threaten lanes, so you aren't really losing out on anything.
     
  20. theGricks

    theGricks Well-Known Member

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    Fidays are my answer to links. Specifically the fiday with Mines. Drop a mine to touch a couple of the link team members, and then go and shoot against them. The linke has two options. Shoot back and lose one+ member, or dodge and lose the team bonuses of two dice and higher BS.
     
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