Exrah, our new wet dream...

I’m over the moon about Exrah coming back in some form!!! Whether it’s a whole new sectorial, or some flavor units sprinkled throughout vanilla/existing sectorial’s, it’s something new! At least for me as I never got to play with the cool alien bugs since I started in N3 their planet was already by by T.T . I always thought they looked really cool and unique. I hope they keep some level of insectoid aesthetic but with the amazing 3D sculpting of modern CB. I’ve overall enjoyed the shas and MAF reworks and really look forward to whatever this brings. Fingers crossed for N4 Caskuda too! Lol

Much love to CB for keeping the game alive and trying there best to deliver fun new toys to play with both in the form of beautiful models and game mechanics/profiles. it’s not easy to keep thousands of people happy and engaged year after year. :D

 

I'm surprised no one was talking about them here. For the sake of reference I'm posting what we know so far.

I feel CA came out on top so far with what’s coming out. The Exrah are fantastic troops. The Base Operators are fantastic I think.
I feel like three of them, a Void and a Exos, will be the standard for them.

I’m actually not that much into the Caskuda right now but it seems fun.

 

...
I am going to buy Exrah reinforcement box. At least something) I am less interested in Caskuda, but hope, they would be useful even without it.
A little worried about their hands and how fragile they would be, but I hope for better.

Going to try them with shasvastii, because they are my favorite among CA species.

 

honestly, I find them underwhelming.

All of these guys having only half a wound is kinda mehish, even if they do get a discount, I can't see them working anywhere else outside of reinforcements.

As a fire and forget reinforcement troop they're workable, but I can't work up much excitement for these guys.

 

Same here with Shasvastii.

I see no problem with their Exrah rule. If you never take a doctor, they are dead anyway. They don’t even leave a body for classified objectives, spotlighting, or whatever you can usually do to an unconscious trooper.

Base Combi/LSG 17 pts.
Base Combi/LSG 17 pts.
Base MK12 20 pts.
Exo Plasma Carbine 19 pts., .5swc
Void Red Fury 26 pts., 1swc
=99pts.

I think they cost very well for what they are though. If I recall correctly, the Base troops are ONLY in the Reinforcements. At least for now.
Almost all of the others also have only 1 wound and cost more. The Hwarang being the only full 2 wounds. They also cost what they should because they are hackable as soon as they hit the table and not much in the way of weapons.

 

Bugs in vanilla or we (I) riot.
On a serious note, I quite like the new designs, although it's a bit too close to shasvastii in a few places. On the rules side of things these feel almost as if N2 profiles were transplanted into N3, nothing is quite on the level of dawon tactbots/korans etc, but we already got that sor of thing with a kaitok so no reason to complain really.

Caskuda is another great AD option, as if we didn't have enough of those in CA (seriously, we got like the most and best of combat jump in the game already) But I'm sad that it already got FAQ'd to not have +2DAM on its Combat Jump(explosion), so aside from meme plays it'll only be dropping on the heads of netrods and imetrons or maybe immobilized-B troopers, since it's pretty anemic in CC and one successful dodge against it by literally anything will put a stop to anything it might try and do to your opponent's backline, but bulked up fraacta is still great, even if it is vulnerable to hacking etc.

With the base ops I'd give a metaphorical arm and a leg for the 19 points engineer in vanilla to have a decent shot at fixing the Avatar with coordinated order shenanigans, but aside from that these take the bloated line troops of CA syndrome to the next level, but making a pure coreof multi-rifles +1B will go big brrrr in the midfield.

EXO's CoC is a nice addition, especially for onyx, but would be a nice pick for vanilla too, and I bet if we get a commlink+1/+2 it will be the unit to recive it in CA.

Vector ops are nice on paper, but I don't think it would work too well in the everybody-gets-a-template-weapon-and-more meta, but if we get it in vanilla it'd be a nice option for rooftop jump-and-shoot under the cover of daturazi's smoke.

Void ops are honestly the most underwhelming for me, X-visor and 360 visor are a cool piece of kit, so maybe late game suppressing fire in the midfield will work with them. Or at least the killer hacker with NCO sounds like a valuable thing to have in reinforcements, and on the artwork it got wings similar to caskuda, so maybe a combat jump profile outside reinforcements?

Did I mention we get a Q-drone as reinforcements? Well we do and I would be surprised if I don't end up jamming it with a plasma rifle first in every reinforcement list I build (again, dies to templates as all but caskuda do here, but it will take down with it pretty much anything that tries to trade it up close)

The best I could come up with so far would be
M-drone 16 pts.
M-drone 16 pts.
Q-drone Plasma 24 pts., 1 swc
Exo Plasma Carbine (CoC) 19 pts., 0.5swc / Base ops engineer 19 pts depending on what you run in the main list
Vector Multi Marksman 24 pts., 0.5swc
for a total of 99 / 2(1.5)swc

At least if tacaware stays on sensorbots this seems like the best option so far, but who know maybe umbra legates will get enough of a discount to try them as a reinforcements pick.

 

I don't understand CB logic for point costs, IMO base operators are so bad compared to the other profiles, you should never ever take them unless you really want that MK12 or overpriced Engineer for some reason. Other weapons you can get from other profiles that are 2-3 points more for +1BS and +1ARM I dunno if I am missing something.

 

If you want a core team you don’t have much choice. It’s minimum 1. I wouldn’t necessarily take it for them, but make the Exo and Void better. But I think they are pretty good. The cheapest is not bad with a Combi-Lt. Shotgun with 6-2 move super jump. They are going to be able to get to almost anywhere fast. But I really like the Burst 5 Multi-Rifle.

Base Multi-Rifle 19 pts.
Base Multi-Rifle 19 pts.
Base Combi/LSG 17pts.
Exo Plasma Carbine 19 pts., .5swc
Void Red Fury 26 pts., 1swc
=100pts.

For a Haris I like
Void BSG, 19pts
Vector Spitfire 26 pts, 1.5swc
Exo Plasma Carbine 19 pts., .5swc
=69pts.
+ 2 M-Drone 32pts
= 96pts

 

I was thinking similar. Mdrone for repeater/efficient fast specialist, Qdrone Plasma rifle as a hunter/ARO presence.

Back up haris of a Void operator KHD, Base operator Engineer and Exo CoC/carbine. Brings some midfield utility to target hackers, repair the Q drone and otherwise protect against LoL. Use their 6-2 speed and super jump to keep them safer on top of a building.

Comes to 99pts.

 

Vectors look like the only really good thing in there. Voids will be taken to enable the Vector haris, but that's about it.

 

I'm with you here, base operators are like 10 points more than I'd want to pay for them. In vanilla and onyx you can have unidrons for 4-6 points less with a much better gun, 6 more BTS, and two extra stages of "half-wounds" in a way. All for super-jump? A skill I'm probably not going to use on these guys because I'm not going to take them as my active turn shooter.

It's a big shame because I love the new Exrah designs. I'd love to field them all in vanilla, accepting it won't be a very powerful army, just for the look of it - but it'd be nice if they sucked a little less. Speaking of though, did they say some of these won't be playable outside of reinforcements?

 

That’s the impression I was getting but when I watched the video for CA Carlos seemed to emphasize the word “yet” when he said they’re not going to be available outside reinforcements besides Caskuda. I could be misinterpreting but it sounded like, not now but at some point.

My guess would be that they grant them regular profiles after the new season begins or at some other close ish milestone. I really hope they do though. I really like them and just want the opportunity to field some outside the optional reinforcement rule. I know we can proxy the models too but it would just be cool. Especially since every other vanilla faction (plus JSA & Spiral) will have a cool mercenary exrah to play with.

 

Write a custom mission for either an ITS event or casual play. You can do this, and it's tons of fun.

Some basic options for that:
- Allow reinforcements to start on the board at beginning of game, but in a different sector from your main force. Deployment could be opposite-corners, probably the easiest one to try.
- Start with -only- reinforcements on the board, which must survive until the main force arrives Turn 2.

 

Are we sure that only Cascuda will have non-reinforcement profile? Because to me it sounded that only Base operators won't have non-reinforcement profile, but it can be only mine misunderstanding of the video.
Also I think Bostria implyed in the video future Exrah sectorial for CA. They hinted it even on the Adepticon.

I agree there is something fishy with base operators point cost. It is visible if you compare them to Exos. Take away chain of command which cost 5pts and basic Exo with plasma carabine would cost 14 pts. Base operator armed only with combi rifle would cost 15 and he is worse. Maybe there is some mistake. We will see in 2 days.

Void operators concept art is imho also interesting, because to me he looks like combat jump unit. Maybe they are some type of hybrid unit like Nyoka or Crushers? Or maybe it is only coincidence and they are normal MI.

 

The Void operator definitely looks more like a combat jump unit, but even if that were the case for his regular profile, he'd still be a fairly bad one.

CA is a faction already with an abundance of drop troops. Anything meant to compete in that space needs to be distinct and competent.

 

That’s a great idea if things go that way. Thanks! And it’s neat to make fun missions aside from ITS too anyway. So that’s a great solution.

 

Yeah I’m getting mixed signals as well. Excited to see how things go. I’d love an exrah sectorial. I’m not expecting it because they have a lot of other things to fill like a second O-12 sectorial that they talked about way back. But I’d definitely not say no to it. Or even a reworked Onyx that includes more Exrah.

 

Yes, the announcement article confirmed it will be available to Vanilla and Onyx as a non-Reinforcement, the normal profile was also shown during the Exrah video (it's the one with Combat Jump [explode])