Hello all, I've jumped into Druze as an army I have wanted to build since I saw the old box released but I was out of the game. So I dove into the deep end, hunted down an old box, a new box, the LE models, Brawlers, and all associated support. It's as much a hobby project as an army to play. So I guess my question is this, how do you mitigate active turn murder machines with the limited toolset available? Hide and guard corners? Spend a coordinated order to drop units in SF at the end of the turn? With Nomads I have all sorts of tools available to pick apart a link or slow them down in the reactive, in Druze things are a bit more limited.
You have to prioritize and pick the right tool. Normally, you can do two tasks per turn, not more. The rest is setting up and taking good defensive positions. I love to let my opponent run into a castled up defense and then taking a Bashi Bazouk to snack the extended pieces. For this, Fugazis are very important. If I have to strike first, I would choose a Hunzakut or Saito, but only if they don't have to take more important tasks around the mission. But they overcome the lack of speed and as a marker, they reach good points to attack. So pick your targets carefully and set up a good defense with REMs (including EVO) and your core-link, then kill extended units and retreat.
The Druze core fireteam ARO (probably one of the MSRs and Clipper) combined with 2 Hunzakuts, a Peacemaker and potentially Saito or Armand is a hell of a midfield for even the best Alphas in the game to chew through. The Brawler MSR can eat warbands on the Impetuous by using the Pecaemaker as a reserved and counter deployed lure. I've had the MSR kill a lot of stuff in ARO. They are just shy of the dreaded Kamau in effectiveness. The Hunzakuts are amazing speedbumps. They have so many ARO options on good bands, AP mines and even Repeaters to leverage Hackers with SSL2 because of the fireteam to stall out HI, REMs or TAGs. They cost 18 points, and trading one to stop a serious threat is worthwhile. The Peaceamaker alone is a great speedbump. Set it up so the Auxbot is the 1st thing your opponent has to deal with. You have great AVA on Pathfinders and Fugazi for cheapish flash pulses. In later turns the repeaters can be midfield. Druze may not have the best hackers, but they do have some of the most effective hacking because they have top tier repeater coverage. A lot of threats are slowed down, or stopped altogether by an AHD with SSL2 and decent repeater coverage, and the Brawler AHD is the cheapest in the game. Don't be afraid of playing mind games with the Bashi holo1 at deployment rather than walking on. Bashis on the table are also all (but one) good at Supression fire. The ABH are also really good for SF AROs. IMO Druze are built to absorb alpha strikes and are one of the better factions to play in the Reactive turn. They tend to deploy like one big shock absorber, and each bit your opponent takes out doesn't cost you a lot of points but can cost them plenty of activations. They typically can refill the core fireteam to full effectiveness all game if they are built to do so. Dogs are an issue and need to be handled very carefully in the reactive because they aren't hackable and can do so much damage. Murder them in the active with extreme prejudice.
Remember that G: Sync troopers benefits from any Supportware that affects their Controller, so an EVO hacker can give both the Peacemaker and it's Auxbot burst 2 in ARO. In does the same to any Fugazis and Pathfinders you have too.
That's helpful and the direction I was leaning. If I get turn 1, do mission stuff, setup AROs, put down mines and camo up again, suppression fire as necessary, EVO support ware for the Fugazis and Pathfinders.
I'm happy to agree with everything that @jfunkd said - that's some great advices :) Druze are good in reactive and have many good tools to defend themselves. It's not like they will prevail against all the threats, but they can slow down most of them. Sure, I lost few games against such active turn beasts like Achilles, linked Joan or Kriza, but still in those games usually the attackers had to bleed through my defences (and mostly died in the end). One thing I'd add is that if you're going first and you see some tough active killer beast, that you won't be able to take out, you should go for the mission, or - depending on the scenario - try to kill as much orders as you can. Create a hard path for him/her, using AP mines, repeaters, flamers et cetera, and you can even give the Clipper Assisted Fire. Which, in addition to Fireteam bonuses, makes the REM really scary - for almost anyone. Even a plain ABH with Akrylat Kanone can be a good ARO unit - cheap and quite expendable, especially in your second, smaller group. And from my experiences it's sometimes hard to pick one of the 2 great snipers for our Fireteam Core - I know that MSV2 is a big advantage for Brawler, but Druze's Mimetism and overall toughness is also great. It's a risk to leave home without MSV2 against all those warbands (and those doggos), but I had also very good results when using the bald Druze sniper ;) And he's just cooler - IMHO ofcourse ;) PozdRawiam / Greetings
Every time i try to use a sniper as an ARO piece, he gets destroyed on the first order of the game by an HMG. So i've just been relying on flash pulse bots and warcors. They are cheap enough that if you lose them, it's no big loss and your opponent is sometimes reluctant to shoot at them, knowing that they would be wasting an order to kill 3-8 points. Mines from Hunzacuties and a well placed Peacemaker are also in my tool kit.
