So, I came to Acon late in the game - like just before Third Offensive switched things up and so I never knew the glory of a mid-field LGL Montesa Knight. I was eager to convert a Montesa on a bike after the changes hit, though, and was so pleased with the result that I've REALLY wanted to make him work. I know that there are a variety of other tools in the Montesa's price range that do things better, but I wanted to figure out how to make him competitive. I ran the Montesa a few times in NuAcon to varying degrees of success. He'd either get shot down right away or would make up his points before getting cut down, but he wasn't a star. I had similar results with him in VIRD. With both armies, I would typically run him either as with the bare bones BSG profile or because I wanted a fast specialist, as the paramedic. Last night, I played him in a Looting & Sabotage mission - because if he's gonna shine anywhere, it should be there, right? But instead of taking him with the BSG, I gave him the MultiRifle - first time I had tried it. MAN, what a difference that made! Montesa Knight did 90% of the work in my game last night and was a true MVP leading me to a 9-1 victory. Lessons learned from last night: 1) Don't plan to use his Impetuous Order unless you know you can do it safely - I know this is kind of a no brainer, but as someone who wants to use ALL his orders, it's taken me many games to be able to step back from that and know that the Montesa's mimetism isn't good enough to just let him take AROs when he blazes into view. I cancelled his Impetuous Order in Rounds 1 and 2, but let him use it in Round 3 as it took me in the right direction without triggering AROs. 2) MultiRifle GOOD! The Montesa's mobility combined with the MultiRifle's range let me maneuver into F2F rolls where I was getting the most out of my mods while stacking the negatives for my opponent. In all my previous experiences with the Montesa, I was angling to get him into short-range firefights to use his Chain-colt or BSG in good range. Unfortunately, this kept setting him up for bad face-offs in the mid-field against my opponents. But the MultiRifle let me keep them at arms length and his speed let me get in position to take shots in models' rear arcs. The B3 gives you some confidence in your F2F rolls winning against AROs and being to set up in Suppressive in my opponent's half of the table was fantastic. While not getting cover with the Montesa sucks, the combination of Suppressive and Mimetism really puts a cramp in your opponent's active turn shooting. 3) Don't forget the ability to Dismount! At one point in the game, the Montesa was fighting a Makaul with a Heavy Flamethrower. I'd used his mobility to outrange the Makaul (was at 14") - the Montesa fired a burst with the MultiRifle and the Makaul successfully dodged 4" toward the Montesa. If I activated the Montesa again, he'd be facing a Flame Template that would definitely hit him. So I dismounted behind the bike and out of range of the Flame Template, put three AP/Shock rounds into the Makaul and killed him. So use Dismounting to your advantage where you can! And yeah, he did the work he was supposed to with the AC2, but that's exactly why you bring him, right? (He cut the AC2 down in 2 orders), but it was great to see him do so much work OUTSIDE what I had really expected him to do. (And on a side note: Dazers really suck, but Zulu Cobras with Assault Pistols are really handy in dealing with them!)
Awesome! I feel pretty confident that the Montesa is a fantastic profile. Though the boarding shotgun has all the drawbacks of shotguns, mostly that they’re burst 2. Which is never ideal. The challenge I really see is that he’s an expensive model with niche applications in armies (SAA and VIRD) that have a lot of solid toolbox units for fewer points. So I’m happy to see that you got mileage out of the multi rifle, as I’ve only seen the boarding shotgun have success.
I see the argument being made by @Death By Monkeys I've not yet tested the new Montesa at all, so I'm not yet qualified to measure it in detail. But I can understand how the Multi might actually suit the role quite well.
When you need to do Looting & Sabotage, you basically have two options with VIRD: Patsy Haris or Montessa. Patsy Haris is a decent chunk of points and reduces how much you can spend on defense, so the Montessa's totally viable there.
Yeah, the biggest problem with the Montesa isn't that he's got a bad profile, it's just that competition for the price and utility slot that he fills is REALLY competitive in Acon and Varuna. I plan to experiment more with the MultiRifle. In all honesty, I've never been much convinced of MultiRifles, in general, but I really appreciated both the additional offensive range it gave me as well as the much-needed boost to defensive capability since he can go into Suppressive, but he can't get cover. Because the Patsy Haris has got +2 burst, you've got a chance of taking out the AC2 in one round rather than a minimum of two with the Montesa, but you've also gotta get all 3 members of the Haris across the board to do this. That's really the advantage of the Montesa over the Patsy Haris here.
The change to how LOF slicing works around corners made him a giid bit better. As a forward oriented troop he'll end a lot of turns staring at a wall securing two corners, now that he can actually cover both his left and right at once (and has a little extra security against Superjump tricks) a forward 2W HI that can shrug off a Warband's Chainrifle and kill it fairly reliably seems like a nice upgrade. Ofc it's potentially really for easy to kill him with CC and a Smoke thanks to that stupid Stealth Errata now....
Mixed fireteams/Coordinated Orders, where some members have Stealth and others don't, can force you to ARO to a model that doesn't have Stealth or lose any/all AROs.
Worse, since Stealth is optional per trooper, every friggin Stealth+CC multi activation can abuse this.
VIRD does struggle a bit to shift to strong attack. They're obviously not bad at it... Even quite good... But it can be difficult. Zulu Cobras are light troops who don't really start that far up the table. Echo Bravo is a beautiful unit, but limited in how it enters play, and is pretty easily anticipated. Crocs are solid, but their best attack profile (the boarding shotgun) is a really hard commitment compared to the Minelayer or Specialist profiles. Patsy's Haris is great, but that's not a sudden attack vector; the opponent will see it coming, and her team's more likely to advance in increments rather than rush from DZ-to-DZ in one go. This actually makes the Montessa a lot more unique in VIRD than just serving the role of anti-materiel. Does that still mean I'll bring it? Not sure. I just don't know how many gunfights it can win in this day and age. But the notion of it is growing on me, especially for missions where you may have to attack the enemy DZ to try and get something accomplished. My weekend had Supplies, Decap, Firefight, Acquisition and Unmasking. I can see the Montessa being not only good, but quite good, in all 5 of those.
Speaking as an occasional JSA bousouzoku runner, it is occasionally really useful to be able to sprint into someone's DZ in maybe 3 orders and then raise havoc there. Though it helps having 6 bikes to work with in JSA, one with smoke. I'd actually recommend the prospective Montessa player borrow a few bikes from their JSA frenemy to get some practice.
