Ramah or Vanilla

The biggest benefit of a sectorial is mostly, that you can field a fireteam core.

 

The biggest point, imho, is: do you feel comfortable with fireteams ?

As you said the bright side is:
. High Ava of units
. Fireteams

The Con are:
. No avaible of every unity

I think, for me, is easier to move and hide a single unit and fire than a fireteam. I have been seen Ramah as a glass cannon. Strong alpha, but you can have it with Hassasin, and have a fireteam, and you can have this in vanilla, with Fidays and old Al, plus daylami PZF and mutts ( ok they normally don't kill but control).
I sometimes prefer less number of killer specs ( Tarik and khawarijs, Janissaires etc..) but a large number of corpses in the table.

And you? Which kind of play you like ?

 

Though having a good Haris at your side isn't anything to scoff at, either! Vanilla can't pull that one either...

 

Why are you going?
Which is more familiar to you?

 

I trully understand you. But Ramah is short handed faction. But to compensate you have those FD1 mukhtar, plus Hakins, and good move troops.
Namur can give 6 cautious movements. So you move 12 in 2 orders in complete safety, against 8 from other troopers.
And you have odd angles with Tarik and Khawarijs. So it compensates the lack of long range weapons, plus, one thing I normally do is the use of one or two HMG REM.

 

This seems to be a deliberately built-in weakness of the sectorial. We get a lot of guns that wreck face out to 24, but outside of that it's really just HMGs. Not that HMGs are bad, but the units that carry them are fairly plain. The real juicy aggressive guns, especially the linkable ones, all drop off after 24.

 

The biggest winner with the arrival of Ramah is vanilla, IMO. A lot of the power pieces introduced actually do just as well solo (Tarik, Mukhtar, and Namur + others) and benefit more from an aggressive midfield posture (cheaper midfield units like Farzans and Al Hawwa) than they do from FT bonuses. Just my opinion, but I think Ramah suffers greatly if you don't go first.

 

I thought I've seen a couple of Missile / Rocket Launchers out there?

• Ghulam ML is pretty vanilla, but with a full Fireteam behind, I had good result with her in QK and HB.
• Khawarij can have a HRL, and with a very respectable BS 13 and Fireteam capability it sounds very good.
• Al Fasid HRL, well, lacks the fireteam, but I still think he's interesting.
• Janissaries pack a Missile Launcher, and I actually tended to prefer one over HMG for my QK Janissary fireteams: up close, the team's AP Rifles were giving me enough firepower.

Then there are Sniper Rifles.
And troops like Nahab, who can mitigate the problem by elastically dploying wherever they will be of use.

 

I don’t understand where the notion that Ramah has no long range firepower is coming from. Janissaries, Zhayedan, and Ghulam can form fireteams and have access to missiles, sniper rifles, and hmgs. The Al Fasid has an HMG. There’s Maggiex2. There’s Shihabx2. Khawarij have HRLs. Tuareg have sniper rifles. Almost half of the profiles can take long range fire options. Yes the majority of the new troops have mid range guns, but that’s not the same as saying the faction lacks good long range options.

 

I think it comes from almost all of those from being standard profiles with standard guns, with no real standouts. Janissaries and Al Fasid end up being pretty basic HI, and Ghulams are just basic line troopers. I can't speak for everyone, but I had written off the Khawarij HRL as a purely defensive weapon on a model that wants nothing to do with the reactive turn. Looking closer, it does seem to be a very efficient way to get some long-ranged offense in the core team. Overall, I think you're right. Ramah is okay at longer ranges, but all the really great options fall into the 8-24 band, so peoples' attention gets drawn to them.

I've definitely gone off and on with this thought, but there do seem to be a few strong options to slow your opponent down if they go first. ambisinister already mentioned the AVA 2 on TR bots, but I also want to draw attention to the Hortlak sniper. It's a bit pricey, but seems to compare pretty well against the other elite snipers out there, when it gets to make use of NWI. There's also the AVA 3 on flash pulse bots.

 

Let's be honest, what you gain from rangebands with those weapons, you lose on burst, and more.
I'd consider linked snipers with extra mods on play, but otherwise trying to use those B1-2 attacks in your Active turn sounds like a rather desperate move.
If you run linked Tarik, he can shoot at total mod of -9 better than some of those options above in their optimal range. Sad, but...

 

Haqq Remotes are not that great. I'm just looking over the AVA in RTF and teh biggest swing is the Fanous is AVA is 3. This just allows you more chearleaders in a sectoral. The rest look fairly normal, and Haqq remotes are fairly plain. If you want a remote based list don't play Haqq or RTF.

RTF ghulam(with friends) fireteam is very offensive. My preferred version is below. I prefer having the Nafatun instead of the Namurr, Having a large teardrop template is fun. The Namurr give you an option to have AROS, while everything else hides due to it fragile nature.

Ramah Taskforce
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

6
GHULAM (NCO) Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher (Normal and Smoke Ammo.) / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 16)
GHULAM Doctor Plus (MediKit) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16)
KHAWARIJ (Fatality L2) Spitfire / Pistol, AP CCW. (1.5 | 32)
KHAWARIJ (Fatality L1, Multispectral Visor L2) Mk12 / Pistol, AP CCW. (0.5 | 36)

NAFFATÛN Rifle + Light Flamethrower, Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12)

Or ​

NAMURR (Fireteam: Duo) Rifle + Light Shotgun, E/Marat, D-Charges / Heavy Pistol, E/M CC Weapon, Knife. (0 | 38)

3 SWC | 150 Points

Open in Infinity Army

In general RTF is more offensive than Vanilla, but it lacks cheap specialist that vanilla has a ton of. I would check the scenarios, of they are combat oriented, go with RTF, otherwise Vanilla.

 

Wait, wha? 8"-24" +0 / 24" - 48" +3 / 48" - 96" -3 Missile Launchers are available in Ramah on platforms like AVA Total BS11 ARM 1 Ghulam, AVA BS12 ARM2 Zhayedan, AVA5 BS13 ARM4 Janissaries and a BS12 Remote.

That's more than enough to reach out and touch people. Especially since the three first platforms are F: Core. I wish I had options like that in Ariadna.

And that's still before we consider the B2 Multi Sniper.

 

Ramah does not have any Multi weapons outside of the TAG's HMG.

 

If we were to apply that logic, we'd be back to 2ed thesis that HMG is be all, end all gun of Infinity.
Which I don't agree with. I had good results with linked MLs and HRLs at long ranges - including cases of outranging TR HMGs in my active turn.
I can't coment on Tarik's Spitfire in a full Core Fireteam yet (though there seems to be pretty a discussion on the forum whether Fatality L2 is outright broken, or merely a little too good).
I'm especially fond of HRLs, as they get Burst 3 with Fireteam bonus, which I consider a reasonable value for offensive use (assuming we have Range advantage, and the opponent doesn't), but I have used linked Sniper Rifles and MSRs too.
What you gain with ML/HRL is the template effect. Sure, it is situational, but it allows you to put more than one enemy model at risk. Especially in ARO against a Fireteam. Or, if your opponent is good enough to anticipate that, you force him to maneuver for that...

 

Yes, we get missile launchers on line infantry, 31-point light infantry without anything to keep them alive, heavy infantry, and a missile boy. That's pretty standard, but nothing special. And not really strong aggressive pieces. If you want to get things done at long range with Ramah, you're mostly looking at HMGs, but again they're either standard (ghulam, shihab) or pay for a lot of other stuff (zhayedan, al fasid). The big standout is the khawarij HRL that Erehile suggested. BS 13 HRL linkable with line infantry. It reminds me a bit if the Frontovniks, but they can do it better for cheaper

Oh, and there's no MULTI sniper in Ramah. There isn't even a viral sniper there like HB get.

 

Well, I don't make sweeping statements here. We're talking about long range. The main change since N2 is that HMG doesn't have good range mod for almost every practical range anymore. When scuffle breaks out in the midfield, you will often end up reaching for Red Furies / Spitfires and the like. And of course, if you can outrange something with Sniper Rifle or ML - they can do very well against trivial targets with some link bonuses no matter specific platform.

However, shooting with SR / ML at linked mimetic when you can't really get into his +0 / -3 range (and you cannot often rely on having those 8 inches of ML superiority) will get you bad odds. Roughly 30% to inflict a wound, 30% to get downed yourself for Khwariji HRL. These are odds you will welcome in Reactive turn, but this is not something you should do in your Active.

When I say that linked Tarik will do it better (and safer) than almost anyone else at up to 36 inches (assuming the target doesn't shoot very well past that), that's because it's a hard fact, and not because I want to engage in debate on topic of the best weapon ever in a vacuum. Not that odds will be amazing in that case, mind you, I would avoid engaging in such a situation if I have alternatives.

Linked Hortlak sniper (which is probably the best long-rage option we have in widest array of situations) and even Zhayedan Sniper in a Haris can do very well assuming you outrange your target, but the former is basically limited to a LI list (also true for Zhayedan Core - and why would you even do that) while the later require you to take Zhayedan Core/Haris which will cost you a lot and compete with link choices that are pretty much RTF's selling point.