I've been thinking about how the Caledonians play missions like looting and sabotaging, and capture and protect. It's seems like they have some great options (albeit limited) for reaching out and destroying/ capturing the enemies objective but are lacking when it comes to defending their own. Since Adriana has no MSV2 to stop people smoking the objective and walking onto it, it seems to me that surrounding the objective with mines is the best defensive option, but CHA can't do this. What do you guys do? Just hope your ARO's from Scots Guard or Caterans are enough, or try to kill the opponents objective claimers/ looters in the active turn? Or am I missing something
Much of this is board dependent, but you've already touched on some ways to restrict your opponents movements. AROs from odd angles with Climbing Plus+ Caterans is one good way. Another is to go with Highlanders who can camp out behind cover to snag any hostile specialists coming in. Another cheeky way is to set up your SAS near the objective for engage AROs - using that Kinematika extra range to your advantage. Like anything in Infinity, none of these reactive options are the be all and end all, but by layering them together and presenting your opponent with this varied dearth of AROs from multiple angles, you make your reactive turn and ways of holding objectives just that much more resilient.
Interesting idea with the SAS and engaging, I might try it out sometime if I get a board that works for it.. although I'd be worried about the whole declare engage near terrain and get placed on a wall shenanigans
Board control is very difficult against those with smoke yeah. Try to go 2nd in missions where you've got to stand on an objective if possible as we're a better attacking force than defensive one
In addition to the above... We can also just put down enough cheap bodies directly on the objective, thus forcing our opponent to have to kill them before anyone can claim/destroy it. For example, 2/3/4 Vols with Chain-rifles parked on top of it will likely need a concerted effort to clear a path, and they won't break the bank in terms of points! They can also be turned into a cheap core link, (add a Highlander Grey with BSG if you have the points free for even more ARO nastiness!), to really increase their survivability.
ARO in depth is one of those trickier tactics that deals with this sort of situation. In essence your layering pieces so that the opponent had to spend so many orders/take so many risks that it is hard for them to reach the objective. For example, throwing smoke in the objective requires getting pretty close (generally within 8 or 16 inches) if you can identify the route the opponent will take then you can put out a Cateran that they have to deal with first, then an SAS to get past, and then gals/vols covering the final approach. Your opponent can probably still get there, but he's spending 3 times as many orders, dropping smoke 3 times against the different threats, or risking inefficient and unreliable strategies like spec firing smoke from inside an existing smoke template.
I like it, a step up from the old "let not your AROs cover where the enemy is, let them cover instead where he will be"