heyyyyy yallllll. Can we talk about the taqeul? I've been playtesting lists to figure out its viability lately, and i think it might be possible that it is being undervalued. My current theory as to why is that the taqeul represents a unique conflux of extremely rare skills (regen, advanced command, symbiobugs). If you bear with me, I'd like to talk about those skills individually, and then the unit as a whole. Regeneration: this is prolly the most common of the skills the taqeul has (other than symbiont armor and courage). While only 6 profiles have it as a baseline, it is possible to get regen from metachemistry 1 & 2, so up to 9 total can have it. Of that group, only the taqeul and asawira have regen and are immune to shock. The asawira has a slight advantage on the ph roll; they succed on a 14 as opposed to the taqeul's 13. On a side note, the taqeul is the only unit that benefits from symbiont armor's ph bonus to regen. I bring up the numbers of troops with regen mainly to highlight that the skill is often thought of as a waste. On 7 of the 9 profiles it is on, i agree. Shock is so prevalent that the skill will almost never be useful. The asawira (from what i know) doesn't see a lot of play, which makes me believe that regen on multiwound models might currently be undervalued. In the games i tested, the 65% chance of the unit getting back up often warrented me spending orders to try, and sometimes led to my opponents spending an order or two trying to kill the taqeul while it was unconscious. Seeing as how our doctor only has a 1 point advantage on the healing roll, i think this skill is at least decent on the taqeul. edit: i never noticed that regen gives you shock immunity before, so the arguments about who regen is good on are a bit misguided. its still possible that the skill is undervalued in the meta. the asawira and taqeul are still the only two multi-wound models with it, which prolly means something good for them overall. Advanced Command: only three units can bring this skill: the taqeul, neema, and sun tze. I have no idea how often sun tze or neema see play; in our meta i see neema in about 5% of the tohaa games i play, and ive never seen sun tze, mebbe it is different in other metas. With so few profiles with this skill, I'd say its pretty hard to gauge the value of this skill. I often have games where i only spend 1 or 2 command tokens, and then i also have games where i spend all 5. In playtesting, the extra command made me feel comfortable spending them on things i might consider frivolous, like breaking a fireteam to reform it an order later in order to more safely move one of its members. In certain missions the extra command were nice for more coordinated orders, like bringing 4 kaauri up to a decent spot and then putting them in suppressive. I think any skill that opens up my decision tree by allowing extra actions is a good skill, even if the extra actions don't get used. Symbiobugs: only the taqeul can bring these. Basically crazy koalas, with a trade off of doing less damage but making the person that triggers them targeted. Whats great about them is they count as highlight for the classified objective "telemetry", meaning you can pass a classified without any order expenditure or dice rolling on your part, and potentially kill a model at the same time. For comparison's sake, there are only 5 units that can bring crazy koalas, only two of which can be yer Lt. as well: taskaster and o-yoroi. The o-yoroi is a tag, so i feel like the taskaster is probably the most similar unit. Now taking all that into consideration, i think we have in the taqeul a lietenant option that any other faction would be oh so happy to play. An amalgam of abilities from asawira, sun tze, and taskmasters, with 2 wounds on a medium infantry chassis? I really doubt people would complain if sun tze or taskmaster had regen, if taskmaster or asawira gave you an extra command, or if asawira or sun tze brought crazy koalas. I think any player from another faction that could bring a trrop like that, who also had a symbiomate would do it without a second thought. Take into account that the taqeul has tohaas highest non-tag armor and ballistic skills, and i hope you might consider that the taqeul could be better than you previously thought. Now, as for use in play, i found all three variants useful for Lts., depending on missions. For missions like decap and firefight, where you want to be defensive, i like the base combi version and spending the extra points on the diplomat. The advanced command lets you convert her order free as you wish, and you can spend the Lt. order on putting symbiobugs into standby or going suppressive. In my games i found putting a chaksa baggage guy nearby to be effective, i could spend the Lt. order putting bugs into standby, and another order reloading with the baggage. For more aggressive versions both the spitfire and viral are viable. The spitfire has better coverage, but the viral has more damage potential, i think it really comes down to personal preference there. The downsides i could find were putting too many bugs down (more than 1 set at a single time is prolly too much) and potentially overextending. Regen makes it safe to go pretty far upfield solo, but remember that overconfidence can also kill. I also found it to not be a great Lt. option for missions where a lot of buttons need to be pushed, especially when compared to the sukeul FO Lt. option. You could run it as the CoC version to do button pushing as well, but its low mobility is a hindrance there too. In conclusion, in the testing that i ran, i found the taqeul to be a very solid choice in all of the games it was fielded. It is not as flashy as some of the other options, and is definitely a more defensive choice, but it is also probable the most defensive and defensible Lt. we have as tohaa. I'm hoping some more of you will try fielding it more often, or at the very least find this writeup to be helpful in yer decision making process.
I run the Taquel a fair amount, and I agree that BS 13 without any vis modes is still pretty sweet. I generally take the Viral combi if I am taking it as a Lt. In missions like Decapitation I have found it useful to have a gun that can take out most threats with one hit. One more thing to keep in mind is that for at least this season Medium Infantry has Forward Deployment which the Taquel can take advantage of. While it may not be advisable to put your Lt further up the field the extra deployment also applies to the Symbio Bugs which is highly advantageous and gives better midfield coverage.
I like to pair the Taqeul Lt. with several Kawaii Sentinels to abuse the Coordinated Orders and move all of them "fast" across the table and then put them all in Supression Fire. Three Sentinels in SF + Takeul in SF + Symbiobugs (+ maybe a Symbiobomb) make a good defensive layer.
i legit never noticed it because it is in the bright red "important" rules box and not the actual rules. i don't get why they would format the rules like that.
the design choice of "the rules for the skill are all in this box, except for sometimes some of the rules are in a different big red box that can either be in the box or outside of the box, and sometimes there is a big yellow reminder box inside the box that has other rules that are relevant but not part of the skill's rules" always just blows my mind. like the morat special skill tells you that you have other skills in the rules box, but cc and regen tell you they have other skills in a red box that is outside of the rules box.
Just touching on something you wrote toward the end of the piece - can you expound a little more on why you see a defensive and defensible lieutenant as valuable in Tohaa, noting that most Tohaa lists will contain one (usually two) chain of command models? Is this a nod toward value in lieutenant hunting missions, or something else?
It is mostly a nod towards firefight, decap, and any mission where you want to protect your datatracker but the datatracker doesnt have to do anything, where the taqeul shines as a piece that can defend itself. A successful regenerate roll in one of those missions can means difference of quite a few points. I also think that with the bugs, it can operate as a good wall for missions where there is an objective at the edge of the deployment zone like looting and sabotaging. for the defensive missions, the Lt. order will usually be a waste for our other Lt. options because they want to be in fireteams, whereas the taqeul can spend it to go suppressive, or to deploy more symbiobugs. Advanced command is another good thing for defensive missions, as it allows you to spend coordinated orders on positioning kaauri sentinels and putting them into suppressive as well.
A Taquel in suppression is pretty survivable. I think a Rasail is probably more survivable (and cheaper), though. I do like the Taqeul profile, however.
I'm not sure I've ever seen this answered, but can Regeneration restore an inactive symbioarmour? I have a recollection that it can't, but I don't have a reference for that.
Do you mean bring the symbioarmour back to active? No I do not think Regeneration can, as the profile switches to the inactive profile once a wound is taken, and there is no mechanic for switching back to the active profile.
So the rasail has one more wound, but it has one less bs, two less armor, three less bts, and it can't regen. Rasail also has nanoscreen, but if you are playing it for just defense, it should be prone somewhere in the back where the only things attacking it will prolly have shotguns, template weapons, or high cc. the rasail has chaksa and mines, which are prolly about even with the symbiobugs. The rasail also cant be in coordinated orders, which is a small mark against it imo. I think the advanced command tilts the advantage to the taqeul for missions where all you want is the Lt. to be alive at the end. That being said, if the rasail had minelayer as an option for the Lt. i'd say they were about even. Of course, it prolly just comes down to personal preference. I personally find the rasail to be overall pretty underwhelming, and my advice to newer players is to steer clear of it and to try the taqeul instead.
The Rasail is awesome for spending Move+Shoot Orders, killing everything until you are close. Then, you proceed to kill everything left alive with bullets AND fire. And, if you don't mind the odds, sometimes it's fun to use the Chaksa's pistol for a 6-dice (with Spitfire Rasail) attack. People always forget about the Chaksa's pistol, and it can give nasty surprises to your oponent; while not our best shooter, with Cover + Mimetism the Chaksa is more survivable than it looks if you don't want to throw it to it's death as a sacrificial piece.
I think I've played with or against the Taquel maybe three times, so I don't have a huge well of experience to draw on, but given the Taquel is packing effectively half the wound count of the Rasail (which brings four wounds in total thanks to the Chaksa, and that extra wound on the Rasail is a bigger deal than you give it credit for because it allows more efficient use of symbiomates) and how used I am personally to tripping and eliminating perimeter weapons safely, I'm really struggling to agree with you on this one. Ironically I think I'd be much happier with the Taquel if it stripped off a lot of the bells and whistles that you're using to compare it to the Rasail. I don't want advanced command (it's a crap rule for its cost, something like ~5pts just for that extra command token which Tohaa doesn't need), and regeneration, courage and even their ARM and BTS stats are all bulky rules in terms of cost (note I don't suggest stripping literally all that, but 34pts for a model that will be functionally inactive a lot of the game is a very weak value proposition). I really like symbiobugs for flavour and want to use them, and will again soon probably, but recommending a Taquel to new players over the Rasail I think is doing them a disservice. Still, you've made your case for them in the post above and as noted I don't have loads of experience with the Taquel, so maybe I should play a couple games with one before doubling down on this.
By dropping off all of these features we will get another preceptor. Imho sometimes even 5 tokens is not enough if you are striving to reap max tactical benefits while driving multiple triads in 2+ combat groups.
I have to admit I'm really struggling to understand what benefit people are getting from a fifth command token. For context, I so regularly found that I wasn't using my command tokens that I now take a delegate to use as a netrod in every list. Even with the delegate in every list I've still felt a squeeze only very rarely, e.g. against JSA when the three tokens I dropped coordinating the sensor sweep basically sealed the game top of one. And even then I had enough - I wouldn't have paid for more. It feels like a rule from a different time when people thought that reforming triads was something you needed to do more than once every few games.
Truth be told, i had about the same opinion as you before doing my test games. Then i played about ten games with lists meant to see how viable the taqeul was, and i was honestly surprised at how good it was. Whenever a new profile comes out i tend to do the same (for some reason ive never done this with the kosuil), and this was the first time the results were so different from expected. I do think the rasail and taqeul matchup might just be personal preference, but i do think the taq might be better for new people, if just to lean how perimeter weapons work, and to give some leeway with command tokens
