Hello all! The new Sphinx is coming and as a Shas Player who never played her (because I don´t like the old model), I hope you can give me some advice how to play her in N4. I read the Thread notes from WiT? and its helpfull but maybe somebody can share more expirience with me? Where are her strength and weeknesses in your opinion in N4? Is the missing of stealth really a problem? How would you deal with it? As I understand in N4 Surprise Attack works also with Templates, right? That would be anwesome for attacks with her Flammers....
I'm still on the fence. Still feels too expensive for having a Spitfire as it's primary weapon (Edit - my issue here is that I feel it should've been an AP Spitty), and for losing it's EXP CCW. That plus losing Stealth makes me sad. I know everyone hates cross-faction comparison... but the Cutter is 4pts more
On the flip side, the new surprise rules mean that shooting the flamethrowers from camo is safer than it’s ever been.
Use her speed to squeeze out an additional recamo and make every attack a kill with her. She works by modstacking more then anything else so stay away from 6th sense and msv if possible and use her speed to attack the fleshy bits of the enemy. If a msv are fireteam locks you down, then recamo, run up to it and use the double flamers to burn it down, kill some ordermonkeys and leave her in sup fire. In general it is better to leave her in sup fire if she is past midfield line (but not when smoke is nearby) but that should not happen to often. And dont worry about her having only a spitfire. The rangeband doesn't matter that much since she is quick and can use camo+climbing plus to get savely into the midfield and thanks to the -9 she dishes out most of the time the one point of less damage is offsetted with 1-2 additional hits usually. At least that is what works for me
Terrain (Total) does mean you could get some work from massed Shrouded Dazer minelayers - 7"/13" move per order and retreat back into the terrain zones for defence. My issue isn't range bands, it's the Sphinx's inability to put down armour. Even the Gwailo is carrying an AP Spitty... There's a pretty solid core of stuff in Shas that is immune to Dazers and which you can therefore leverage alongside the Sphinx;
Thing is, the Sphinx isn't meant to go against heavy armored targets. It is meant as a capable tool for terror. Gutting the opponents orders and leaving his game plan destroyed and his strong peace starved for orders. Pretty fitting the shasvastii way. On another note: That it lost stealth is unfortunate. When a TAG should have stealth it should be the Sphinx.
This. Sphynx is mostly a tool to kill chearleaders while not worrying about getting killed in the process, unlike Noctifer. Fortunately, we don't need a TAG to go against heavy armor in Shasvastii, since we have AVA2 Speculo Killers and MVP ML Noctifer (killed an Aquila Guard first turn this last Saturday, I love him so much)
And i would recommend spying this article from one of our best ennemies writter on general thought on playing a tag :) https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/a-primer-on-tactical-armoured-gear-operations.805/
As i've said before, Sphinx is 100% geared towards bullying cheerleaders and order monkeys. It can't crack armour, and (especially now), it really really needs to be careful around hackers, repeaters, CC troops, and anyone armed with AP ammo. On the bright side, it doesn't have to live in fear of flamethrowers anymore, so that's a plus. But yes - don't be confused by its role. It's not at all like other TAGs.
Think of a Sphinx more as something in your list 2. It won't be great in every matchup, the Spitfire forces it go get closer and that means Hacking is a serious factor to consider. Against low Hacking without a heavy TAG? Yes, please. With Flamers no longer downgrading it to Mimetism, cheap Warband screens mostly gone and new Crits making stray Rifles getting lucky less of a concern a free reign Sphinx is pretty good. Imho the game turned a lot more lethal with AP, K1, or worse everywhere. Sensor took a big hit with the death of Sniffers and reduced Order pools. It was never as safe as now to have Hidden Deployment to make sure you get at least on turn out of your Active piece. Wouldn't run a Sphinx against a hacking heavy Nomad/CA/Aleph setup. Wouldn't run a Sphinx against a Cutter/Squalo with MSV Link. Wouldn't run a Sphinx against anything Smoke + CC heavy. Would run a Sphinx against about every variant of Tohaa, Spiral and Ariadna. Would run a Sphinx in most matchups against Vanilla Armies light on Hacking.
if enemy doesn't have climb+ CCers, you can possibly park Sphinx on the wall, just tad higher than S2 value
Dazers plus Multiterrain meme lists seem like a good idea but I haven't faced or fielded on yet in N3. Given that they are just Difficult instead of Difficult and Saturation now, I'm not sure I'd build around one exclusively. A Sphinx betting on that to keep its hide safe in retreats would probably be a poor idea, but it's nice to at least slow many of the opponents' candidates for pursuit.
Got a little disappointed realizing it wouldn't have much anti-armour punch this edition. This discussion has helped, though. I think the big thing to look out for are the missions where players put down saturation zones. Another use for our Very Large Gwailo.
Coming from Yu Jing as my first faction, I view the Sphinx as something like a Su Jian with a marker state. Use your speed and bulk (and marker state with the Sphinx!) to push your way into the enemy backline, and then have at all their fleshy bits. Once you've done your duty, put yourself in a hard to remove position and dare your opponent to come after you.
Ran this against White Company yesterday. Mission was Frontline. ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 1 MED-TECH OBSIDON MEDCHANOID Combi Rifle, D-Charges ( | GizmoKit, MediKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 22) SEED-SOLDIER Combi Rifle, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 16) SEED-SOLDIER Combi Rifle, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 16) SEED-SOLDIER Combi Rifle, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 16) SEED-SOLDIER (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Panzerfaust / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 17) SLAVE DRONE PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 3) SLAVE DRONE PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 3) IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) Light Flamethrower(+1B), Flash Pulse / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 9) SHROUDED (Minelayer) Boarding Shotgun ( | Dazer) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 23) SPHINX Spitfire, Heavy Flamethrower(+1B) / DA CC Weapon. (2 | 93) SCINDRON Flash Pulse / CC Weapon. (0 | 0) IKADRON (Baggage, Repeater) Light Flamethrower(+1B), Flash Pulse / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 9) MENTOR (Lieutenant) Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 23) GROUP 2 2 Q-DRONE Heavy Machine Gun / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1 | 25) Q-DRONE Heavy Machine Gun / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1 | 25) 4 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army Opponent's list was a Shona duo (Varangian), a 5-link of Fusiliers (multisnipe, HMG, FO, and 2 normies), a Kaplan/Hawkwood/Friend haris, a couple lone Varangians, a TR bot, Danavas hacker, and a Guilang minelayer. The idea here was to (shockingly) not run a Fireteam, but play to the mission heavily by leaning on the Shasvastii-specific rules like the Seed Embryo scoring, Dazers to slow mobility, heavy camo and forward deployment, and a hefty 93 point unit that can hide in market state. It's relatively safe from LoL given that the LT is in a marker state and has a Decoy. Overall it went very well...what you need to realize about the Sphinx is that it doesn't have a massive blaster or Sheskiin's lolzy crit cannon...you have to use the incredible mobility to reach attack vectors that would otherwise be impossible. I'm playing around with the idea of two lists - one with a Sphinx, and the other with double Noctifier MLs and a Speculo so the opponent isn't sure which variant is showing up to play.