Hello again! This is one of the biggest questions I see. I have had people PM me, I have had folks ask me in real life, and I have seen discussions on chats about "How do I Fiday??" Fidays are equally the best and most difficult unit to utilize in Haqqislam. So I would like to discuss how I have had great success using Fidays, and what they do best. Hassassin Fidays are one of the most iconic units, and when a player faces Haqqislam, the Fiday is always on their mind similar to when players face Combined Army, the Speculo is on their mind. Unlike the Speculo though, the Fidays provide more tools. The Speculo is great, don't get me wrong, but I would take a Fiday any day of the week (especially Friday) over a Speculo. Fiday's bring an arsenal of tools for problems, and while they are not Impersonation Plus, it rarely matters. Lets look at my favorite Fiday profile, the AP Mines Fiday. This Fiday is dangerous to almost all parties. We have CC 21, MA3, WIP 15 and PHYS 12. Good stats, but where it comes into its own is the Rifle+Light Shotgun, Smoke, and Antipersonnel(AP) Mines. This is where their tricks begin. Another important note, you do not need to start in the enemy deployment zone. It is rare that I will risk the roll to deploy in the enemy deployment. While they have great WIP to deploy in the enemy Deployment zone it is not normally necessary. Do not be afraid to spend multiple orders setting up traps and ambushes. If there is an easy line, use that Light Shotgun, if there is a lone target, use that rifle. If you have multiple light threats, use Stealth and the Knife. The Knife is excellent against many support elements, especially Sophotects. Come up from out of line of sight, and use the Knife to gain the Shock Quality. Adding MA2 to this makes it a DMG 14 Shock Weapon. To understand some of these tricks, you need to know one important fact about mines, and that is ARO's can set them off. You can use this to trap strong, defensive links. Drop smoke on them, and lay mines around them, or stay against a wall, and drop a mine around a corner.Use mines to make Link Teams have to make bad choices. If a Defensive link is castled up, use a mine to knock out a non-reacting element when you face the team. What are a Fidays targets? Light elements. A Fiday wants to target units it will more than likely kill. It will not win against other CC specialists, and other warbands. Units with templates will be far too difficult. The line troops though, and support elements are prime targets. Fidays disrupt a players strategy by hunting these targets. So I understand all these neat toys, that's not the hard part...how do I actually deploy the Fiday? Well that is the question, isn't it and a common one. How do you deploy the fiday to assure their mission is successful before they die? The primary thing I do many times, is deploy prone on second stories, or inside buildings that I can smoke out of, or only provide the enemy one opportunity to discovery. Against Sphere forces, you will have to be discovered twice, the first time at -6. You can use this to get good positioning. Do not be afraid of losing your Impersonation and Surprise Attack. Positioning is the far more important goal. If the enemy Holds or Discovers, keep moving. If you can find a bridge that leads into the deployment zone, use smoke and move in. Are you playing Transmission matrix, or frontline? Don't activate them at all!. They are still 31 points that has to either be countered with more units, or points and this takes resources. Are you playing Decapitation? Then make a straight line for the Lieutenant. It should not be hard to get to them. If the Lieutenant is deployed on an upper level, that is one rare time you would want to roll for the enemy deployment zone. Is there an enemy TAG? Smoke the TAG and engage in CC. With an AP weapon, CC21 you can either fish for crits, or use MA2 to deal DMG 15 AP. Even the Jotum would be threatened by that. The Fiday's purpose is to control your opponents mentality, and strategy unlike any other unit. Even if its sitting on the board unused, the Opponent will always devote time to it. It is a threat that cannot be ignored. So if your concerned about its use, simply take down a cheerleader, or two, impersonate and simply let him sit.The Fiday is an art form that takes time to learn and master. When using him, your looking for the best answer of his many to a problem. The Old Man on the Mountain would say, "Patience, and practice."
I actually just decided to try using fiday's at next weeks infinity day at the shop, this is amazingly helpful, thanks so much!
Very accurate post about how to use Fidays. Congrats! I agree with you fidays has more and better tools than especulo. They are great for killing fireteams or hitting light and valuable targets, as well as get done a lot of missions. However I dont agree on your comment about especulo and impersonation plus. If you go second, impersonation against aliens is actualy a handicap and fidays lose a great part of their value. Even more especulo can kill whatever troop you want to eliminate, light or hard armoured. I will choose always fidays on fridays, but once per week day I'd play with the especulo for sure.
@theGricks already have said it: fidays have more tools than the speculo, but that is the difference between them, and the fiday must take off light targets. Both have similar habilities but not the same role. Where speculo brights is take down most heavy and expensive targets, because she can do it with "one order" thanks to the monofilament. I'am really agree with not to deploy the fiday inside the enemy's deployment zone. It is too riski and the profit most of the times is none. Maybe only against aliens you can asumme this, but against not aliens you can expend two orders without being really discover until the end of the orders. That is 40cm or 16'' movement. You can go wathever you want to go. I found that one of the most dangerous things to the fidays are the madtraps, crazy-koalas, mines, because sometimes make the aprroach of our fiday almost imposible or a trip of one way. Here is where Yasbir have his moment. With the holoechos can easily clear the path for the fidays. :) Greetings
One way I love to use Fidays is as an area denial guy. Anywhere covered by him is not a safe zone, and you can pile up the pressure with that impersonation marker.
Seeing as I am now waiting for a Fiday to arrive... this information is indeed useful. ( For context, due to having gotten myself an old Ragik... I somehow felt the need to dip into Bahram for a tiny bit. )
Bahram is an interesting beast. They are diffidently a sectorial that you have to force yourself into remembering the mission. They are a sword, as such they do great at killing, and can deffinitly do the mission, but you need ot find that fine line with them. My ITS games are usually bloody, even objective based ones because they are all light infantry (the HI are really not HI). High losses in points, but winning objectives is the name of the Bahram game.
Sounds like the average match to me. So would you say they fall into the category of ''Kill first, push button later'' or the ''Push button while you are killing'' categories?
Kill first, push button later. Their killers are order intensive. You want your Fidays to hamstring the enemy reactions and abilities.
Well, to be honest, Asawira is just 1 armor short of having "vanilla HI" stats. I don't feel it isssuper important, although not an ARM 5 bump either. I'd rather say that HB aren't doing massed armor, that's for sure.
I do love my Fidays. Most of the time i'm risking my roll and i'm nailing it (which is funny - i can do that and Daylamis [last game whole three of them succeded with rolling 1, 4 and 7] but i've NEVER managed to land Ragik), but what makes Hassasins Certified G excellent is his roadblock value. You just cannot leave him be, unless you are cocky enough to believe in your cheerleads CC. I'm not using him all the time, but most of lists contained BSG version (roadblock) or AP Mines (alpha strike boi). He is pricey for us tho and he ain't no specialist, so you know that you have to make him worth. I find him less appealing to play against armoured cheerleaders, because Knife' silent trait is too good to pass on, but hey - you never know.
The Hakims are the best thing that ever happened to Fidays. Now there's a doctor for when your Fiday falls unconscious, deep up on the board! If you use a Nasmat, you can even do short little suicide runs through enemy fire just to get to the Fiday and get him back up for some more jihadi ninja action.
Oh, no, no, no, my friend, jihad is terrible for business!!! [ /merchant from the start of the movie Alladin ] But there is never a crime in killing one who impairs the Search for Knowledge! Fidays do take a lot of practice. They're definitely not hard-target killers like Speculo or Oniwaban, gotta use Fidays to wipe out the squishy targets.
Well yeah. They want to kill you in your fund raising speech, or your pajamas or something. Not in your power armor. A fiday is terrorism.
My like predates that last line, but I'm not going to unlike. That's the point I have to disagree with. A Fiday is a government-sponsored assassin. Government agents don't engage in terrorism, government agents engage in acts of war. It's also hard for me to object to Hassassins because they tend to have very limited targets with little to no collateral damage. They don't blow up a busload of people to scare the public, they very publicly kill the one person (or small group of people) on their target list.
I'm going to disagree back. These being acts aimed at inspiring desired behaviour (usually obedience or inaction) through insilling fear and sense of insecurity, to sow terror, is literally how the word "terrorism" came to being. Insisting that same thing being done by different people somehow becomes different would be a fine doublethink, or just plain old double standards. And let us not even start on how it can be bent further by "but they are not legitemate enough government in our eyes" excuse. On top of that, Haqqislam barely controls the Old Man, so there's also that, if you insist.
I admit, it would be a lot easier if Haqq actually defined what 'impairing the Search for Knowledge' actually was. There's never been any exposition about what gets someone on the Hassassin hit-list. I mean, I could see someone who consistently shut down investigation into something that is not their personal dogma easily ending up on that list, but what exactly the head of that university did to get targeted has never been specified. But yes, it is a double standard. Governments have different rules that they play by than private individuals do, and they've had those different standards since about 1648. If you or I went out and killed someone for impairing the Search for Knowledge, it'd be murder or perhaps terrorism. But because the Hassassins are acknowledged agents of the Haqqislamite Government, it's not terrorism, but an act of war. It's not murder because the office of the President of Haqqislam says it's not illegal.
