i only use cohesive fireteams if the securitate are not my plan A or B. otherwise, i tend to include a grenzer and an interventor. but if i have an attacking haris or puppets and a szally, i'd rather have cheap regular (and veteran) orders and maybe and HMG or Feuerbach for late game ARO or DZ clearing. otherwise, grenzer on 17s a B3 is pretty good and always worth it.
Rephrasing it might make the choice simpler: if you’re putting the points into a Grenzer, and you want a defensive or rear-ranks hacker (so Interventor is best), you might as well buy a couple extra Securitate for that BS boost and Sixth Sense. Protect your investment, project power better, for just a couple cheap cheerleaders’ cost (and you needed more orders anyways probably). The extra mental effort to place a 5-man link isn’t much, if that link is defensive and static. The Marksmanship Grenzer sniper is so good, he’s very difficult to give up. It’s in 90% of my lists for sure, unless I’m facing lots of Eclipse or pervasive HD+ hacking (so Tohaa, CA, other Nomads, Aleph). He’s absolutely necessary against Ariadna of all flavors, IMO. The other times he does not make the cut is either lists built around 100% aggression/mobility (often a gimmick for me but surprisingly effective), or if I think the board is likely to be too choked up for even a single sniper to get a decent lane (common in American clubs with cool handmade terrain, including my own old club). In that case my only ARO game tends to be based on short-range troops in a 3-trooper link, and/or Jammers and hacking.
ITS Season 14 "Thunderclap" is here, and it has two semi-important consequences for our beloved mafia sectorial: Our 8pt MBH is now a 9pt MBH with Mimetism (-3). A lot of my army lists now either lose a Fast Panda, a Zondbot, or something else if I want to keep 1-2 MBHs in the list. Our Zondnautica went down in points (again) to make up for the fact that every biker now gets Mimetism baked into their profile and the Zondnautica already had it. ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 3 3 ZONDNAUT Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 21) ZONDMATE Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenade Launcher / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 5) ZONDNAUT (Hacker, Hacking Device) Combi Rifle ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 23) ZONDMATE Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenade Launcher / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 5) ZONDNAUT Spitfire / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 27) ZONDMATE Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenade Launcher / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 5) 2 SWC | 71 Points Open in Infinity Army I'm happy to have even more reasons to play my Zondnauticas as actual Zondnauts instead of MBH proxies now, but I'm not sure I will have the space for it that more often than before. Tunguska is and stays expensive, and with those 8pt (irregular) orders now being 9pts, things have not become much easier. EDIT: As as season-spanning change, our linkable Stempler now brings a Tac Aware Order, Marksmanship and ECM: Hacker (-3). I guess she'll be in more of my lists now too.
Ch-ch-ch-changes! Turn and face the strange indeed. 2x Stemplers as filler attached to a Hollowman SF, Perseus, and something else (Kriza HMG or HM Tinbot) is now very much worse using up your Core team slot IMO. 2 extra Tac Aware orders plus a repeater to throw White Noise whenever visors make Perseus’s life more difficult… awesome.
It is interesting indeed. Especially after the fireteam changes the Hollowman core link team did feel knocked down a peg, and considering it wasn't a link team that was lighting the world on fire to begin with that was unfortunate. But getting 1-2 Tac Aware orders for basically free (as often personally I was taking Stemplers just to keep the link team cost slightly more managable) will give it a good kick of efficiency. Especially as a list that goes down the larger Hollowman link route will be a bit more strapped for orders. But it does mean those Stemplers arn't nearly as expendable :P Happy for the Zondnautica points drop though. Regardless of what's good I'll still manage to shoe-horn a Zondnaut or two because riding a transformer motorcycle is badarse and I genuinely appreciate having the smoke grenade launcher alongside Perseus to have a bit more control at shutting out specific threats.
Can you use the Tactical Awareness Orders in a Fireteam? I thought a Fireteam broke if you used an Irregular Order on it.
While the wiki is down, the last bullet in the rules about Tactical Awareness is the following: "► In addition, if the owner of this Special Skill belongs to a Fireteam and is designated as the Team Leader, this Order can be used to activate the Fireteam."
Kind of related, not a rules question, does anyone else find it odd that a Lt cannot similarly use the Lt order to activate a link team, if the leader?
I think CB would have to reevaluate all the strong pointmen Lt if they could activate there Haris/Core with One (or even Two!) Leutnant orders as they often get swc discounts or are just the same pts as a normal trooper of they callibre. Risking Loss of Lt, as a Solo piece is part of the deal. Usually NCO is a costly skill that allows that. They could make a Leutnant+1 that has also NCO and Tacaware for a 4 order Trooper. ;D
I don’t disagree that a cost review might be required, it was only an observation that it is weird from a fluff perspective that a leader able to command a strike force cannot lead a link team as well as an NCO, or someone who is ‘tactically aware’. I’m not sure I follow you point about ‘risking loss of Lt on a solo piece is part of the deal’. You are still risking the Lt in a link. (Unless you are doing a move-move for a team out of los- even then you have still revealed the lt. Finally, the cost of NCO is really for use of the Lt order without risk or reveal of the Lt, not explicitly because they can lead links (re NCOs that cannot link). As I say though, just an observation I find weird (try explaining to a new player) not something I’m all that worried about.
