I think it's more that people dislike the expensive CoC when the only Lt. choices are expensive as well. A Cheap Lt. + expensive CoC (or the other way round) are perfectly acceptable, but when up to a third of your points are feeding into 2 troopers (and even with the Teuton it's a quarter, and costs SWC for a 4-4 combi that wants to be in CC with no way of getting there) you feel a little rail-roaded.
That's a perfectly valid point. Lt selection was always MO's weakness, and I'd really like to see them at least buffed. I don't mind having expensive or obvious Lt's, even combined with lower order count than other armies, if there's some upside - for example in the form of greater order efficiency. More NCOs, Lt (+2 Order), Lt (+1 CT)... c'mon, military training combined with religious and monastic background should result in very good unit cohesion and robust command structure.
My issue is that functionality is only relegated to the CoC sepulcher, as there is a limited number of forward deployment options the forward deployment sepulcher could be. So even if he was pretending to be a hospitaller boarding shotgun. The opponent would still bring anti HI tools to deal with it, which would still be effective vs the sepulcher.
Or a Machinist, a Trauma doc, a KoJ hacker - good bait for strong KHD hackers... for FD disguises there's Konstantinos, though he would be a better cover if he were, well, more useful.
That's my point, the forward deployment option is basically obviously just a sepulcher . So it feels like it pays points for the holo skill to not benefit from it. However it would be hilarious to have it pretend to be 3 boarding shotgun hospitallers
Holoprojector allows placing of up to three holos, so disguising as two models is also possible. And somehow, people expect either one or three, two can throw them off. Disguising as other HIs also has its merits, especially since you can hide your range capabilities, too. You can convince opponent that you have a shotgun while in reality you have a Spitfire, or hide the fact that you have a Grenade Launcher and possibly catch him too bunched up. A "Santiago" deployed in a good spot might discourage opponent from a flanking maneuver, because of that 360v. Sure, in such situation you're paying for FD you're not using, but mind games are often worth it.
Has the wording changed in n4 I seem to recall in n3 it was 2 or none. To me the range capability switch up is more utility for active turn. As the enemy might not shore up extra long range aros to deal with it. However in reactive turn. It is likely they'll just be using an hmg or spitfire in their good range to deal with my spitfire, which would always have the toss up between shooting back or dodging, vs the pretend shotgun only having had option to dodge. I feel like most of the pieces that effectively use holo mask have a potent aro weapon capable of punishing the opponent with multiple wounds for the mistake. (It tends to be varieties of sniper rifles). Your opponent might opt to proceed via a flank that has a warcor and a TR not. But when the warcor reveals to be a multi sniper suddenly this is a very serious issue. However when it reveals to be a singular spitfire, I feel the nature of the threat and surprise is far lesser. I feel like I'm not properly articulating my point as I'm a bit sleep addled. But the threat misdirection you can do with something with a more potent aro is better for most of the other holo pieces. On the other hand the cheap holo pieces also get to simulate their own threat to a higher degree while also concealing points in HD or AD .
@Skoll while Sepulchre isn't a unit with a powerful surprise ARO, he works well if you can make him pass under the radar, and capitalize on that. My favourite approach would be to play aggresively with an obvious Lieutenant or a TAG, baiting opponent to deal with it - most likely using more than a few orders to try and put MO into LoL, or to take out the obvious centerpiece - and then to capitalize on that in my next active turn. Look up "Kansas City Shuffle" ;) As @daboarder stated a few times, MO plays best when adopting a balls to the wall strategy, pushing your opponents hard from the first moment you can. It makes it harder for them to properly assess threat levels, think about obscure possibilities - like a sudden Sepulchre - or count carefully and notice that there's 20-something points missing, probably in the form of Trinitarian or Crusader.
I can see something like this: Zw9taWxpdGFyeS1vcmRlcnMBIIEsAQEKAA8BAQAAGAEBAAAYAQEAABgBBQAAGAEKAAAYAQkAAB0BBAAAKgEDAAAbAQIAACEBAwA= Just brute-forcing it's way forward with Joan and the Santiago KHD, the Tik and the Sepulchre offering either marker state, mimetism or just high BS as attack vectors.
For the moment, one possible effective use of the Sepulchre is masquerading as the cool new forward deploying Hospitaller. People aren't likely to come hunting it (it's not exactly "easy meat") and it's good enough to justify existing on its own. At the same time it's a VERY different kind of threat. As for "it's too expensive for Chain of Command" I've always seen it as a second active piece, to play the aggressive Lt again after your first aggressive Lt went down. Personally I like the idea of pairing it with Joan V2 and using them as a one-two punch, in a build along these lines:
If that is the case a possible use of the Seph's holo projector would be to disguise as 2... Lets say FD Hosps to make it looks like you have all 10 models on the field (assuming you're running LI) to hide the fact that your actual 10th model is a drop Santiago or Crusader. There's probably holes in this deception but you gave me a fun idea to look into.
@AdmiralJCJF in Vanilla you can Holo a bunch of Nokken BSG+PZF FOs and it would be somewhat believable. With expanded Link options for Hospitalers (maybe in Sval) the linkable BSG forward "corner turret" has some charm in a Haris. B2 BSG AROs on a ARM4 BTS6 troop, with the Doc waiting behind to walk up and pick him back up if necessary. That's a quite different beast than usual ARO pieces. Forward, rear facing Area denial waiting on things entering your half of the board before engaging. Feels weird, but could work, especially with a Trinitarian Sniper layered on top. You can even chain the link with the KoJ FD4" D-Charges Spitfire for shits and giggles. Not using a Core Link in that list makes it a big questionmark why to play MO for that particular list or a MO Tik over KotHS and Montesa. On a sidenote - Tik still dodging on 15s MUST be an oversight, right? Right? RIGHT?
Joan + Magister + Magister + Montesa keeps coming back to me as the "new and better" version of Joan + Magisters which I always enjoyed in N3. I do hope that Magisters get replaced by something else which fits into that role of "heavy Warband" well and which can continue to do this job for me.
If they got a price reduction , gained stealth and went to 6-2 that would make me extremely happy. if they are going to do a weird merger between them and teutons, then i hope they keep MA2 as berserk cant even currently be used after first round of combat and cant be used in aro. I'd also hope they get stealth, trying to navigate around repeater nets for units that WANT to live in the midfield is obnoxious. I've been playing JSA more and more recently, and letting your CC specialists lose in the midfield without worrying about repeater nets is fantastic , even better when my opponent forgets those arent magisters and suddenly the camo marker reveals itself to hack a target it has no valid aro against
Yeah, I hope they get the Tanko treatment, and I hope Teutons become the glorious heavy assault true selves they have always wanted to be. In other news, I've been thinking a lot about the Tikbalang of Montesa, and how to get it to sing in MO. Like every premier piece it suffers from "and now what the f*** am I going to do for my Lt", but something like this feels like it would work: This is assuming, obviously, that there's no advantage to Limited Insertion. If you CAN still protect yourself from having orders cut then you can do this better as LI.
Yes, but it's all up for grabs when it comes to the new season. And some of the Lt 2 + NCO + Tactical Awareness builds can abuse Limited Insertion to the point where I think that I hope it's not there, even 'though losing it will hurt MO.
I'd hope it doesn't go away, majority of the armies that gravitate towards single combat group didn't just get granted oodles of TA and lt.2 it's honestly a few and kinda far in between offenders. I'd also say that at least those armies can also get punished more heavily for having multiple orders invested in 1 model