There is an Avatar lurking at the back of the table, the pitcher+GML combination is booted and ready, a Bearpode is careening down the left flank, a Su Jian down the right, and a Fiday waits on your doorstep. Your opponent is going first, and the Big Dick Alpha energy on this table is palpable - how do you keep your precious link teams alive? As a vanilla and Tohaa player, I am used to a mixture of dispersion and camouflage along with some useful ballistic AROs to keep the alpha strikes at bay. But with the fireteam rework, a lot of sectorials now sing out to be played. But the problem is, I'm not confident that these sweet models can be kept on the table long enough to do anything awesome with. So I'm wondering, what sectorial do you play and how do you keep it alive when your opponent is out for blood at the top of turn one? What are your defensive pieces and how do they fare against the various forms of attack?
So far I'm returning back to MAF (I've started playing 5 years ago, and MAF was my first faction), and this is what I have in mind so far. Hopefully in next week or two I'll be able to get some games in to iron things out. My core link can have different visors, so I can chose which one to use for ARO. I have a good hacker behind firewall, and I will try to place it in such way that he'll be inside pitchers range if enemy decides to throw it (or not, maybe it's a dumb idea, but either way firewall is useful). There are enough templates to fend off if someone comes to DZ. Due to strategos, I can reserve two pretas and try to bodyblock an impersonator. Biggest issue I think will still be the Avatar, so perhaps just duck, and wait for chaff to come closer to deal with it, and then try to hunt him during active turn.
Playing French so there's a mass of mines and chasseurs in the midfield. If there's a bearpode or equivalent waiting, a loup garou team covers off its route of approach as best it can, if not; hide in buildings with guns pointing at doors and wollfy waiting to receive entrants into CC. Basically; mines, camo, limited and specific ranged aro, everything else cowers like a bitch
Highly motivated patriots is the answer all. Avatar? Highly motivated patriots do not have cubes! Su-Jian? Highly motivated patriots are quite slow to kill. Fiday? Highly motivated patriots are volatile. Bearpode? Highly motivated patriots do not fear beasts. Highly motivated patriots? Better spaced out Highly motivated patriots. I have decided to "main" ISS, btw.
My big one is bears. I have played a lot against Cameronians and McMurrough in earlier editions using tohaa or vanilla CA, to the point where I became pretty fucking solid at it and could usually either stop them or minimize the damage. But the bear has dogged, it can punch through defenses that would stall a lesser beast. And sectorials don't have the tools that I usually used and I find "single big gun in core" is not an effective tool. As a long time Avatar player, I can say this is correct. This and the Cutter are two unstoppable sweeping forces and its not worth engaging them. Hide ARO or position them with LoF only over the closer areas of the board, so the Avatar must spend orders advancing and then retreating (always retreating, or it is dead) to engage them. Then just fuck him up in CC or with a pitcher lol. Yaogat won't do it unless you flank total cover so it cannot guts, but it can clear the bastard away so you can do stuff.
Well this is kind of a question that is very dependent on terrain. I played into ForCo this week on Acquisition with this list: Acquisition - RE ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 1 DĀOYĪNG (Lieutenant [+1 Order]) Boarding Shotgun / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 22) ZHĒNCHÁ (Forward Observer) Submachine Gun, Panzerfaust, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 35) ZHĒNCHÁ (Forward Observer) Submachine Gun, Panzerfaust, Shock Mines / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 35) SON-BAE Yaókòng Missile Launcher / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1.5 | 16) SHÀNG JÍ (Tactical Awareness) AP Heavy Machine Gun, Chain-colt ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 49) ZHANSHI (Paramedic) Combi Rifle ( | MediKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13) ZHANSHI (Hacker, Hacking Device) Combi Rifle ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 16) MECH-ENGINEER Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15) HǍIDÀO (Multispectral Visor L2) MULTI Sniper Rifle ( ) / Breaker Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 33) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) GROUP 2 5 WÈIBĪNG Yaókòng Combi Rifle, Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 15) HAC TAO Missile Launcher, Nanopulser / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (1.5 | 60) PANGGULING (Total Reaction, Repeater) Combi Rifle ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 19) PANGGULING (Total Reaction, Repeater) Combi Rifle ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 19) YÁOZĂO PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 3) KOKRAM (Forward Deployment [+8"], Minelayer) Heavy Shotgun, E/Mitter, E/M Mines ( | Deployable Repeater) / Heavy Pistol(+1B), CC Weapon. (0 | 41) 6.5 SWC | 398 Points Open in Infinity Army I lost the WIP roll, opponent elected to take deployment to try and force me to go first on Acquisition which has scoring that favours second player on the last turn. I elected to go second anyway, so I was deploying blind into my opponent who was going first and had Strategos for an extra reserve. So this is about as fubar as a situation can get when setting up a defensive position. This is from my opponent's perspective, this is the picture he took to mark a Croc Man's deployment position. At this point I am already fully deployed. Can't see anything of mine? That's by design, ForCo is packing a BS19 Bolt sniper. Anything I leave hanging out for long firefights is just going to get shitblasted, so I'm taking shorter lanes including with the Haidao. This is a rough approximation of the LOF for various pieces The Zencha are positioned so that they can go after anything that attempts to push deep into my lines, additionally my opponent is also unsure as to whether they are hackers and may reveal to hack his HI link when they attempt to take F2F up close with me. My opponent is also unsure as to whether a ML Hac Tao exists as well, and this will cause him to take the turn more slowly because his main offensive power projects through link teams. The Hac Tao was deployed on the building the Bike was hiding behind.
I'm not very good, I play RTF, and I'm still learning defense strategies, but here's my thinking process. Try not to be visible. Not completely null deployed, I don't want them maneuvering around me too much, but I don't want anything important to be picked off. Basically only put the disposable Ghulam and the Beasthunter at risk if I can help it. Put in positions to try to stop them from walking into the middle of my army. Layer mines and templates. I'm probably not going to win a 1-to-1 gunfight with a true blue shooting unit, so I try to delay or force difficult trades. Land mines to waste orders, Ghulams or Naffatûn in corners to make the enemy take a template hit if they aren't careful. Tuareg Hacker deployed where I think their TAG is going to advance. It's an expensive and feels-bad trade if it fails, but if I can stop a Seraph from rampaging through my lines it can be everything. Usually the Mukhtar Haris with Hacker is in cover on the opposite side of the board to encourage the TAG elsewhere.
Loving the diagram. Do we have a terms for that? The left-right horizontal ARO, and ARO concentrated in your table third or so? The TR combi bots, is that an artifact of 400 points or taken at 300 too? If you are new, the above diagram is a good visual indicator of one way to set up ARO. You don't need to know what those pieces are - just look at the types of firelanes they have. All short, meaning high power sweepers are not in good circumstances Concealed from enemy table half, so sweepers must move far up the table to clear them Overlapping, so any given approach has to deal with several dudes Where possible, only seeing into the open and not onto corners. So they must walk into the open to fight them This system is resistant to being swept by a strong HMG. However, it does not interact with the enemy until they come close - so some missions are a problem if your opponent wants to spend T1 scoring points. Also strong, close range alpha like a bearpode can efficiently cross the board before wading in (it's still the only answer to them though)
It only looks overly concentrated because I didn't draw the Hac Tao's lines in, I put it in the list as an ARO piece plus a potential back up scoring unit but the idea was to hold it until he committed the core link to the middle of the table hopefully on turn 3 and throw his final turn out of sync when order value mattered the most. As for the type of deployment it tends to be referred to locally as lateral AROs and shortstopping, usually a result from tucking in and refusing to present long range gunfights because you know you're badly outmatched in them and you don't particularly need to inhibit the opponent's movement. I've never run them at 300 or seen anyone else use them at that level locally. Maybe they are viable at 300, but given the demand for raw points efficiency I doubt many people pick them over the HMG bots because they're more flexible whereas the TR baggage bots can only take short fire lanes. See them quite a bit at 400 though, opponent has his own TR Mulebot in the bottom right guarding a shortlane. How I set up is very dependent on the mission and opposition too. In the situation above, I am outgunned, so I am avoiding my opponent. Against a faction with weaker projected long range gunfire like Kosmo or Vanilla Ariadna but extremely scary close range units I'd be positioned with more firepower directed down long lanes to better keep things at arms length. I played the same player the week before, and they were using Vanilla O-12. This time around I had the Son-Bae and Haidao holding long fire lanes because my biggest worry was getting a cyber masked Raptor deep in my lines. Acquisition is a super slow mission because of the scoring. On a faster scoring mission I would open the fire lanes up a bit to cover the center objectives. Still avoid firing DZ to DZ against ForCo though.
Mate, you have TWO hungries links on that list and you're afraid of an oversized P**** with a sepsitor? Run across the table and devour that motherfucker. (No joke, I legit killed two avatars doing that once and I plan on doing it again. ARM9 is hard, but let's see it survive 4 DAM16 DA hits) Remember: Shoot the killy ones, kill the shooty ones. Avatar? Cutter? CC the Motherfuckers. Bearpode? Shoot at it. It's that simple (no it's not, but sometimes it is).
Sound advice. And sometimes it is that simple. The dice gods do need to be on your side but it really does work! I once took the avatar out with al djabel in N3… good old days. Doubt it’d work now but I’m game for trying it! And you’re very right about those hungries. Damn terrified of them in numbers. Gotta down them before they get near you or you’re burger meat.
@DaRedOne 4 DAM16 DA hits... from ? I thought you meant hungries but I just noticed they don't have DA.
Thanks, I know what to do in the active turn, it's about reactive, how much you have to hide to avoid getting killed by avatar and how much board control you have to give up.
The problem isn't really to find an answer for a specific problem but find answers that work no matter the problem thrown at your list. A BS15 TAG can brute force Linked ARO Sniper with the odds in their favor and without a lot of risk (assuming they make it into positive Rangebands). They're a bit more scared of Feuerbachs and MLs, but odds are still in their favour. Chainrifles scare a lot of things, but not bears or TAGs. Expendable but durable pieces are good, but can be invalidated by something that can bring a enough overkill tho clear them with ease (i.e CC Troops with EXP CCWs and a friend, Linked Kriza Boracs or Karhu Feuerbachs). The best AROs are those in your favor, with the active trooper stuck between a rock and a hard place, gambling the odds with dire prospects of success. The holy grail of AROs is somehow stacking multiple ARO threats on the same Active Trooper(s) to do the same, but without the other guy seeing it coming after already investing multiple Orders in their gameplan. Hidden Deployment and Camo shellgames are about the only thing that can do it consistently and even then you need to make the right call predicting which path your opponent will take towards you. Scare Tactics are a complimentary bonus. You don't need two Noctifier MLs, they could still roll bad and die, achieving nothing. But if you can convince your opponent that you could have those two Noctifiers, he's maneauvering as if on eggshells for a turn or two wasting an Order here and there or gets baited to walk his HI into your Malignos Hacker. It's why I like Vanilla Factions in N4 (and some Sectorials). If your Faction has access to hidden serious ARO threats you get part of the bonus by simply playing that Faction/Sectorial and having a believeable gap in your Courtesy List. My absolute favorite are threats that are hard to bargain with. I'll gladly take on a HunDun with Achilles while taking on something else. Swiss ML, uhm plsno, where is that thing gonna be? Will have to maneauver around. TR Bots are better than ever. Easier to get cover, can go Prone and now less scared of Core Links, thanks to a lot of them suffering -2BS. On top of that they annoy the hell out of Bears. Thanks to TI you can tank a ML no problem. B4 HMG? Not so much. A TR Bot or two, 2-3 Flashpulse Bots somewhere on a roof Prone with a Hacker using their Repeaters. An array of as many competent HD ARO pieces like a Hundun, Hexa, Noc or Swiss and the best cost/performance Linked ARO piece you can fit. Fully Core Linked Bolts or Riot Grrrl MLs are a menace to behold now, relative to the slightly less competent roofsweepers. But that's just one composite strategy. Hiding behind Jammers/Mines/Skirmisher Hackers and a layer of Camo on the majority of your troops makes it annoying to try and kill your troops instead of playing the mission. TL:DR you can't cover everything, but you should try to cover a lot.
My sectorial places a Gator down and observes how the opponent drowns himself in cries, tears and vile.
