There are far easier, far less order intensive and far less unit intensive ways of breaking a TAG out of suppressive fire than running successive warbands at them and throwing templates/pistols until they fail guts and break suppressive fire. To start off with, why are we assuming that the Evader is engaging our TAG within 16"? TAGs are big, TAGs are awkward to move around, TAGs can't go prone. If the Evader manages to engage this TAG outside of 16" and within 24", all of sudden it wins the F2F 64% of the time, and does 0.46 wounds per order. Active (0.46 wounds / order): Wins F2F: 64.8% Causes 1+ wounds: 35.2%, Causes 2+ wounds: 9.0%, Causes 3+ wounds: 1.4% Failure: No wounds caused: 46.0% (29.5% chance active player causes no wounds) (7.8% chance reactive player causes no wounds) Reactive (0.25 wounds / order): Wins F2F: 26.6% Causes 1+ wounds: 18.8%, Causes 2+ wounds: 5.6%, Causes 3+ wounds: 0.7% There are other, far scarier and far more mobile gunfighters that can easily engage a suppressing TAG outside of 16", and maybe even outside of 24" full stop. Just to name same of the more notable ones that could do it the easiest - you've got the Karhu, MO Tikbalang, Bultrak, Guijia and the Zeta. Hacking attacks are also an easy way to drop a TAG out of suppressive fire. Even aside from the obvious of declaring a reset breaking suppression, entering any of the states imposed by a hacking attack aside from targeted breaks suppression regardless. In the current game, almost every faction has access to some kind of infiltrating camouflaged hacker and/or consistent tools to project their hacking network - it's a common top of turn 1 play to engage in hacking attacks against TAGs deployed in total cover - hacking a TAG set up for suppression is not difficult. Close assault units are another way to attack a TAG in suppression. Since we are assuming we are throwing warbands at a TAG such that we can consistently land pistol shots and templates, why aren't we assuming those (presumably smoke throwing) warbands aren't throwing smoke and getting into CC with the TAG? What about camouflaged and infiltrating CC units like SAS and Oniwaban? What about impersonators? What about mobile and fast CC units, some of which have access to marker states, like Nourkias and the Namurr? Even if we assume our TAG here is the Gator, notable for it's resilience to a lot of CC threats, there are plenty of CC units that scare it deeply. Zamira, Zuleyka, the aforementioned Namurr and Nourkias. There's also Zellenkriegers, the UFK, Bearpodes, Ajax, Hippolyta and Penthesilea. Again, even if you don't declare a CC attack and the TAG survives, the TAG's suppression will be dropped having entered the engaged state. Suppression is a niche tactic that has many limitations, even on units with favorable loadouts and skills for it (X-Visor, mimetism, plasma/viral weapons). On TAGs, I've never seen it before, and never seriously considered it as a viable tactic. I do sometimes see TAGs posted on ARO, but when they are, it is from long ranges, in careful positions where they can guts into total cover after taking heat from powerful guns. I'd go as far as to say that having Religious Troop opposed to nothing at all makes a TAG less survivable - it means you can't guts into (total) cover after taking a bad F2F without rolling a dice. At most, the lack of courage on Nomad TAGs means it does the occasional role TAGs take as long range ARO units might be worse than say, what their PanO cousins could do. In most games, where the main job of TAGs is to do active turn gunfighting, it's meaningless. To me, that reads as a minor, appropriate and thematic limitation for a faction that is (supposedly) meant to have a weakness in the areas of command and control.
Easiest way to break suppressive fire to any TAG is simply to fire at it with a weapon designed to crack a TAG beyond the 24" range (usually their optimal range), alternatively smoking it and engaging into CC is a tactic most armies can do and affects almost all TAGs (or moving from the back arc and engaging it in CC). Hacking mentioned is also a relatively simple way to force any TAG to drop suppressive fire, there are so many effective ways to force a TAG, any TAG, out of suppressive fire that "someone came to pistol range and won the F2F roll making my TAG roll a guts roll and fail it making me loose my suppressive fire" is a scenario I would consider a bit niche, same goes with been hit with direct template weapon.
Range would work if you had the line of fire for it. I would also say a key strategy to running a tag is not to overextend it and to put it in suppression where it does not have to worry about that issue. As for hacking not everyone brings it or it dies early. someone tried to run a repeater to a tag in a game I played just to be shot and killed by a hexa sniper so they then had to gun fight a squalos. Also with a lot of tags having EMC hacker -3 and evo hackers being a thing that is a total of -6 with fairy dust which will drop most hackers to 7-9, I know some people willing to take that risk to remain in suppression.
I can tell you why I shot it with a pistol form a myrmidon and did not throw smoke: 1 It was on an objective and want it not to be. 2 Even if I thru smoke unless I did a long throw or spec fire there would still be a moment where the tag would see me on my next order. 3 The rout which would let me negate the effect of point 2 had msv on it so smoke would not have worked have saved me. 4 If I hit that and it failed guts then that would clear the path and the objective. Was it a cheeky choice, I feel it was cleaver. There TAG failed their guts and moved behind full cover leaving the objective open. Was my opponent happy, no. As for are TAGs in suppression being viable, it comes down to the board and placement of the TAG. I have put a Jotum or Squalos in suppression and really ruining people's day. I often see people overextend their TAGs and get it killed or possessed. I did that when I started playing NCA a few times coming from Steel. If TAGs in suppression is not viable and there for courage/religious does not matter then why is the harm in giving it to them? I have heard some say that courage on nomad tags would make a super tag, how? To me the supper TAGs are hand down the Avatar, the Cutter and the Sphinx in no particular order. This is not like saying the szally need NCO which would also be reasonable given it it 2 swc.
Yeah, thought with the recent update where they finally fixed the obvious typo of the Maggi having religious and courage that CB and other nomads may be amenable to reconsidering the possibility of a 4 meter tall mech suit not getting startled by a combi-rifle.
If you want any ideas to be taken seriously, and if the idea is actually good, then there needs to be a minimum effort to summarize. 5000 words to explain why Nomad TAG should have a courage is a bit much. If a Myrmidon is shooting a TAG out of 8" (while linked, I gave it the best case scenario). You should expect to spend around 7 orders to have the TAG fail its guts. As the Nomad player, you're going to be very happy that this myrmidon forgot their smoke grenade at home.
I think you may have missed the point of the thought exercise. Are there other options for knocking a TAG out of suppression? Yes. for simplicity, let us say there are N number of ways to knock a TAG out of suppression. The issue is for nomad TAGs there are N+1 ways to do it, and that extra way is just "shoot it... with anything" and shooting with any gun in the game happens to be very easy. Chain rifles? Yes. Pistols? That will do. Marksman rifle? definitely works Combi rifle? Surprisingly good at the job. If you can get the shot from beyond 24 inches, then an alguacil with combi rifle can do it. So let me ask you, what other faction has to worry about a line infantry at 25 inches knocking their TAG out of suppression so the actual anti-tag guns can do the job in half the number of orders? Would you ever see a guijai or maggi willingly dropping suppression while in cover because an aguacil is shooting it with a combi rifle from 25" away? No, they'd just tank it because they have a 90% chance to pass the saves and standing on the objective with a tank often will win you the game. But for the gator that is a real possibility, and it happens. I repeat. Would you ever see an unharmed guijai or maggi willingly drop suppression while in cover because an aguacil is shooting it with a combi rifle from 25" away?
Thank you for the criticism, I can tell you from experience though it didn't work. The first post was pithy but most of the responses ranged from factually wrong ("Nomads don't have courage or religious") to straight up rude. Maybe this is more to your liking: There are N number of ways to knock a TAG out of suppression (hacking, jammers, etc). The issue is for nomad TAGs there are N+1 ways to do it, and that extra way is just "shoot it... with anything" and shooting with any gun in the game happens to be very easy. Chain rifles? Yes. Pistols? That will do. Marksman rifle? definitely works Combi rifle? Surprisingly good at the job. If you can get the shot from beyond 24 inches, then an alguacil with combi rifle can do it. So let me ask you, what other faction has to worry about a line infantry at 25 inches knocking their TAG out of suppression so the actual anti-tag guns can do the job in half the number of orders? Would you ever see an unharmed guijai or maggi willingly drop suppression while in cover because an aguacil is shooting it with a combi rifle from 25" away? No, they'd just tank it because they have a 90% chance to pass the saves and standing on the objective with a tank often will win you the game. But for the gator that is a real possibility heck it may actually force you two inches away from the objective if there is better cover available meaning you don't even have to kill the TAG. This situation can and does happen, but only for nomads. As for it being a good idea, it was good enough for 8 other factions and for at least 2 of them it was a new concept.
Tbh, I'd be fine with it. It'd be nice seeing the "omg nomads so OP" claims from YJ and Pano forumites at the very least.
You don't need to list all the guns to make the argument that "guns trigger guts". Also, if you're shooting with poor guns, all you're going to do is trigger guts (with pretty poor odds of success). Chain rifle will make the TAG roll for guts, but you're likely just dying in exchange. All that for a 35% chance of moving the TAG. Pistol will do the same if you're within template range, and have outrageously poor odds of doing it (20%~ per shot if you're a linked, mim -6, in cover Myrmidon, the odds are outrageously slow if you're not.) Expected 8 orders to have it likely move out of the way. Combi and Marksman rifle are a bit better than the pistol (25% per order if you're BS12). Expected 5-6 orders to have it likely move out of the way. They're all fairly terrible at it, and comes with a very high lose-state of just dying if you fail (because the TAG ARO actually threaten the active unit). The Unharmed Guija of Maggi couldn't possibly drop suppression, because they don't even make it to the table. Now, from a game design point of view, being able to push aside the hard ARO of the faction that excels at zone control ARO seems like it's fine? Nomads have a lot of ways to defend themselves outside of a hard ARO TAG, and their TAG are excellent. Very little faction have as good of a zone-control ARO (Tohaa and Haqq/HB arguably have it better), but those factions have a much harder time justifying the inclusion of a TAG to even have a chance at a viable hard ARO. It just looks to me like a very mild weakness, I don't think the argument of "the other factions can do it" is at all a good argument for it, because there is a lot Nomads can do that the others can't, and it's a good thing for faction identity.
"all you're going to do is trigger guts" that is the point, you can trigger guts to make killing a TAG significantly easier and it only happens to nomads. Yes the chain rifle likely dies but it also lets an evader kill a TAG in 5 orders instead of 10, particularly important since the evader dies on order 6. Also your math is even off, if you have a 25% chance of success you expect to take 4 attempts or less, not 5 or 6. Which means you still come out ahead of the 10 orders. As for maggi and Guijai not being taken, fine replace it with squallo, Drageo, Marut, or any non nomad TAG in the store. What undamaged armor 8 TAG in cover and suppression would willingly drop suppression because of an alguacil at 25 inches? As for game design, I disagree. By denying your TAGs courage or religious you are removing a useful and important defensive tool for the TAG, but that is thoroughly covered in the TAG Primer. Taking the TAG is an opportunity cost of not taking other models, and thus if I pay the points for a TAG it should play like a TAG, and CB made it known in N4 TAGs stand their ground.
Dude, you're playing the faction that gets the most toys out of anyone. Don't get mad because there's *one* thing that other factions have that yours doesn't. I wish CB took more away from Nomads, tbh.
This is not how math works. You don't add the percent, you multiply them. Then you figure out what threshold you consider to be "a likely outcome", I go with 80%. The chance of getting a success for 4 tries at 25% is 69%. The chance of getting a success for 5 tries at 20% is 68%. (And to give you an even more polarizing example to show how the math behaves...) The chance of getting a success for 20 tries at 5% is 64% Yes, but PanO rely way more on their TAG as ARO than Nomad do, so it makes sense form a game design point of view that their TAG would be more reliable for it.
That is not how expected values work on a binomial distribution. You are adding a threshold of 80% that does not make it "likely" or "unlikely" in a mathematical sense. Your cut off does not change that the expected value of a binomial distribution of x=1, n=4, p=25% is one success. The sample space still has zero but also space for more than one success, but the most likely result is 1, that is how expected values work. Even ignoring that the expected value is one success, your own calculation shows the probability of one or more success ~69%. Is 69% significantly higher than 31%? You wanting an 80% or higher success does not change which result is most likely and what the expected die roll would be. So Pan-O gets to rely on TAGs in suppression? Okay. I guess so does YuJing and Haq then? Wait, but those are so bad they never see the board, unless I misremember? As I said before taking a TAG is a huge opportunity cost, one that according to you is too great for YuJing and Haq, but they get the ability anyway. If I take the Gator then I may not have points or SWC other options, I may not bring morans or a spetkr or whatever, so If I bring a gator shouldn't I be allowed to rely on it just as every other faction does with their main battle TAGs in this very basic way?
As I mentioned previously, under ideal circumstances for both parties (cover all around, best range bands, etc) an evader with AP Spitfire takes ten orders on average to kill a gator if the gator is in suppression, but the evader dies on the 6th order. If the gator is forced to drop suppression, then the evader kills the gator in 5 orders. To answer "when would this happen?", let me set the scene. Last turn your evader was shot at and decided to go prone behind a couple of barrels, TAG moved up into 16" and now claims cover and the objective. For the TAG's last order it goes into suppression. It is now your turn. If your evader stands up it will be shot, if it tries to get to other cover it will be shot in the open. You can either spend ten orders trying to kill the TAG, and likely die on order 6, OR use a nearby combi rifle that is just outside of 24" from the TAG to try and force the guts check. Now if this was any other faction's Main Battle TAG, that combi would do diddly squat. a Guijai would let you shoot all day long even if the TAG can't shoot back. But because it is a gator, you can force a guts check that can save that evader! All you need to do is force the guts check and have the TAG fail it on or before order 5. I suggest using mimetism models, a burst 3 or better gun, a red fury, or even an algaucil standing right outside that 24" range (So ideally, a heckler red fury). As long as that TAG fails the guts check on order 5 or before you have (mathematically) saved the evader and killed the Gator. The difference is 5 orders and who dies. This is not an unusual a scenario when using a TAG to claim an objective. You find a nice spot where the fire lanes are short to mid, and go suppression while standing in a very important spot, TAG play 101. But only with a nomad TAG can you use a combi rifle to force that guts check, because let us be honest what armor 8 TAG would willingly drop suppression to take out that combi-rifle? Honorable mention to morlocks and jaguars for a flat 35% chance of breaking suppression assuming you are willing to sacrifice them.
69% chance of getting something is more than 50%, it's still not an expected result of 1 success. You're not expected to spend 4 orders to get 1 success. You're expecting that 69% of the times you spend 4 orders, you get at least 1 success, which means that 31% of the time that you expect to "spend 4 orders to get a success", you don't. You can't just add the percent and say "this is what I expect the amount of orders to take". If you were to play 10 games, and spend 4 orders per games attempting to guts a TAG, then you'd expect to succeed in 7 of those games, not the 10 it would be if the actual expected result of 4 shot was 1 success. If the Gator is preventing you from bringing the amazing table support that Nomads do then idk how you're building your list. It's not expensive enough that you can't fit the extremely cost effective options that the faction bring. You end up spending a bit less budget on table control, but the TAG is good. So no, I don't think that if you brign a Gator you should be able to have the strength that the other factions do. Just like a PanO player bringing a hacker should not expect to have the hacking strength of Nomad. (Let's also note here that the argument that you should be able to match other faction's strength while talking about something as completely insignificant as courage is anywhere remotely close to the gap in strength in other aspect that Nomad has over those factions to support their TAG, lmao.) Stopping to consider only what is written on your actual TAG to determine the strength of your TAG in your faction is so short sighted.
