Updated to add some table photos, also added some hidden deployment locations to help illustrate events. @Lazarus0909 Thanks for posting your correct list, bud. Worth mentioning that I didn't even attempt to organize which of your pools were which in my original post, so thanks for posting the factually correct ones. I'll update to include your accurate info. @DirkWisely good question. Part of it is intuitive, but let's try and rationalize it. The rules will be a bit different for each: The Hexa: Stay adamantly away from MSV2+ troops, of course. Never be in a position where you're within 3 Orders of an MSV2 trooper or an HMG that's in range. If you're 4 or more Orders away from an enemy MSV2 trooper or HMG getting in range, that's up to you... Is it worth forcing your opponent to burn those Orders? But yes, I always try to avoid making the piece removal easy. If I do reveal the Hexa while those major threats are on the table, I at least force the opponent to risk many Orders, or coming out of cover, in order to challenge my unit. In my last game vs CA as an example, the rooftop that I chose was not viewable at all to the Yaogat Sniper, unless the Yaogat spent an Order climbing off his building and hiking about 3 additional Orders just to get LoF. To actually get Partial Cover, it was more like 6 Orders. This isn't something my opponent was willing to do, which meant my Hexa stayed in a comfortable and dominant position all game. Always pay attention to the weapons your opponent has, because staying outside of 32 inches (or 24 inches for Spitfire) is going to be your best defense. Additionally, don't take the shot too early. If you can force your opponent to spend multiple Orders walking somewhere, then take aim 2 Orders before they can reach Total Cover, you've forced your opponent to burn Orders moving a model that's likely to die. Also, I try to keep a Doctor close, but not so close that the presence of the Doctor is a clear giveaway that a model is hiding there. In fact, you can even put a Doctor or Palbot in a random location, to help misdirect your opponent into thinking there's a Hexa hiding in a place where there's noone at all. You can also put the Hexa right next to your Fusilier Missile... If someone challenges the Missile, reveal the Hexa too, forcing them to split the Burst and helping to ensure both your ARO pieces will live. Fusilier Missile: Since you can't time your reveal like the Hexa can, it's more important to make use of rangebands to stay away from HMGs. There's a good chance the Fusilier missile will die... The odds are rarely entirely in your favor. The best you can hope to do is force an opponent to devote serious Orders to removing the threat, and (best case scenario) the odds do go in your favor and you remove a critical enemy piece. Some opponents won't want to run the risk of challenging the missile, which means they'll avoid LoF, drop smoke, etc. to simply avoid tackling you. But once again, if your opponent has dominant HMG pieces that are starting comfortably within range, you probably don't want to throw your missile away. Only use the missile if you can either guarantee the -3 range band, or you're forcing your opponent to advance several Orders to challenge you (like the Spetsnaz did in Game 3... That was almost best case scenario, consuming 4 Orders of advancing, pulling the Spetsnaz into a sketchy position, and the Fusilier Missile survived with a passed armor save.) So yes, if you're starting within range of HMGs, stay prone. If you can force the HMG to burn Orders to relocate, consider standing. If you can afford to give up table control for the first turn to hunt the active turn killers like HMGs or Spitfire, that really helps. Sometimes the right move is hiding the missile all game, so that you can stand up on Turn 3 and lock the table once your opponent's gunfighters are all dead or out of position. Obviously, feel free to support with a Doctor here. Everyone sees the missile, so keep a Doc or Palbot close. Long winded, but hopefully that helps. @sgthulka Great to see you there! Hopefully we'll cross paths in the next few months (are you heading to Rumble?)
I just have to say that this was everything I voile wish for from a written battle report. For someone who has plenty of time to read but ledd time to play this was truly a pleasure to read. Plenty of sources online claim that neoterra, and MAF especially are underpowered or just plain ”ok”. Yet your batrep include both on top tables! Which makes it clear that infinity is alot about the players rather than the units. Keep up the good work, and please write more batreps!
NCA weak? Boring it might be, but I find NCA several times stronger than MO ;P (almost all missions except of few typical killy ones) Usually you can take several "nice" things and still have some points left for an additional TO or AD or whatever you fancy :) (imho NCA problem being that Orcs/Bolts are really inferior choices and theres little reason to bring them)
My perception of nca is that thet are decent/pretty strong. Alot of ppl doing videoes or reviews claim that hexas are bad and swiss/Aquila are too expensive. However, units such as Hexa Sniper, Krakot and even Combined drones seem terrifying. For me as a reader its a fresh perspective.(although most seem to agree that krakots are really good)
Yeah NCA is definitely a very strong (if largely plain, though Black Friar and Locust clearly count against this) sectorial. Just wanted to +1 what Barakiel said about the missile and the hexa. The missile incident was indeed a classic case of how to play a "traditional" ARO piece - forcing the opponent to either engage in your good range and waste 3-4 orders setting up a dream engagement, or engage on more even terms for fewer orders. Much as it sickened me to have to play right into it, the board positioning where it could see just about everything ultimately made removing it too important and costly no matter what I did, and that's what you're hoping to achieve as the reactive player. The TO pieces tend to be as much about timing as anything. Sometimes you reveal them active turn to get the Surprise shot and use them to do things like stack mods against a crucial foe. E.g. -12 an enemy TR bot (range/cover, TO, surprise etc), nab a key suppressing model or whatnot. Sometimes you reveal them on the reactive turn to catch a key model in the open (especially a non-active link team member), because you badly need to divide an enemies active turn burst, or because you're left with no other choice (stopping a template weapon from reaching a vulnerable flank). In both cases, experience and mod stacking are your friends. Even if they do have MSV, remember that the bad range band and cover can still make even a dangerous heavy infantry need 8s while you still need 12s, which is certainly enough to even the score a bit despite the burst discrepancy. "The best armor is to be out of range" after all :)
@barakiel Unfortunately I'm not gonna make it to Rumble this year but hopefully I'll have the privilege of playing you again soon. I'll have to step up my game, though, if I hope to catch you on a top table somewhere!
@barakiel I didn't ntice you going for a TO Gotcha + Fusilier Missile bait in any games here, some thoughts on that? More often than not I find myself setting up my reserve model (usually Hexa MSR or a Swiss ML) to guard the Fusilier ML against the most likely threat. There isn't much that can handle a linked Fusilier Missle + Swiss ML/Hexa MSR at once. Since you'll usually see most/all of your opponent's troops before deploying your TO guy, it is pretty easy to set up against the position from where the attack will come from. Since the Fusilier ML has SS L2 it's also pretty unlikely to be a MSV trooper and even if it is odds are the numbers are still in your favour or you can simply keep the TO trap hidden. This works especially well against Links, which are easier to predict and have a larger footprint to exploit.
Hello. Great report. Could you describe your choice of CSUs and pathfinder(surprisingly in our meta there are no pathfinders)? I think that auxilia(which is 1 point cheaper and have much more power) is still better and you don't want to take more(and less) than 2. Why not to take Peacemaker?
Thanks for the added comments, all. @Teslarod good question about grouping the Hexa with the missile launcher. It did come up a little bit in Round 4. My photo work was awful in this tournament in general, so it doesn't do a great job of illustrating my moves, but the Hexa was pretty close to the missile there. Generally though, the logic behind spacing out my ARO pieces was twofold: The objectives for this scenario lineup were all over the table, so I also wanted table-wide ARO coverage to help contest enemy movement. The second was Soldiers of Fortune. I was deathly afraid of Yuan Yuan and McMurrough showing up, and so I didn't want to cluster my assets too tightly. A lot of my deployment was more widely distributed than it normally would have been, since I had to go into each round expecting messy Chain Rifle death and need to cover as many angles as possible in case YY showed up. @Foxbringer yeah, good questions. The Pathfinder is the one PanO unit that appears in every list I make, regardless of Sectorial, army, opponent, scenario, or any other factor that might influence how I build my lists. There are several reasons for this: -Triangulated Fire. PanO is bad in close combat, and I also frequently run lists without visors (with no smoke access, or having to pay a 1 SWC tax for smoke in Soldiers of Fortune, one big reason for a faction to take a Visor just isn't relevant to PanO.) With that in mind, sometimes it's helpful to be able to threaten cross-table shots with triangulated fire. It isn't always easy to position for triangulated fire since it's a long skill, but if you're going against Camo units that usually like to remain hidden anyway while you're maneuvering to set up a shot, this usually isn't a danger. It's very nice to be able to nuke a TO unit with a long-range shot. Also, as came up in this tournament, Triangulated Fire is an amazing way for disengaging your squishy, melee-incompetent PanO troops from close combat. In Game 4, my opponent set a perfect trap for my Swiss; engage with a Mofilament opponent, while covering with an Assault Hacking device to attempt Immobilize or Isolate while my Swiss Guard swung in melee. If I didn't have Triangulated Fire to kill the Cube Jaeger, my Swiss wouldn't have been able to disengage from that trap and win the mission for me. -Sensor: Discovering Camo markers one-at-atime with WIP rolls is the worst way to fight Camo, and plays directly into the hands of your opponent by forcing you to waste Orders with a very high chance of failure. It's just a naturally inefficient way to deal with Camouflage. If you run a Sensor or Sniffer-equipped unit into an area that's full of Camo Markers though, you can discover with 95% probability and also prevent enemies from re-camoing in future turns to try and outmanuever you. Major bonuses. Sensor is a hugely critical ability. I know some people are a big fan of Satlock too, which I basically put in the same category; it's a way of forcing a Camo marker to either reveal itself, or run the risk of suffering major negative effects unopposed. -Fast Specialist. NCA is very good at shooting things, but it's not very good at maneuvering around the table. With no AD or Infiltrating Camo Specialists, their biggest disadvantage as a Sectorial is when it comes to pushing buttons. Because of that, you really want a unit that can blitz up the table once you've shot everything down, and interact with objectives with maximum efficiency. An Auxilia is good for attacking or defending, but if you've already put your opponent in retreat and you just need to push enough buttons to win, it isn't a great candidate: 4-4 MOV and WIP12 aren't ideal. The Pathfinder, with 6-4, WIP13, and in-built utility (Repeater if you need to Hack, Forward Observer for Classifieds, Sensor if you need to reveal mines or lurking camo troops) is a very fast, self-sufficient objective runner once your big guns clear the way. It's also Shock Immune and has multiple levels of Unconscious, so if you do run into trouble, you can even repair it and keep it going. If you need to, you can even add Marksmanship to make it a better gunfighter. It's a very good workhorse that solves a lot of NCA's natural vulnerabilities. As you can tell from my wall of text, I really can't say enough positive things about this REM. CSUs: CSUs do some things that Auxilia can't. -Not vulnerable to Hacking. If you every faced someone with a good repeater net, you quickly realize how vulnerable Auxbots are to this type of play. And without the Auxbots, the Auxilia itself isn't much good. CSUs don't care at all about Hacking though, which is nice. -Metachemistry. Most of the time, Metachemistry does very little. But every once in a while, you get that 8-6 MOV or Superjump and then it's Game On for the CSU. Being able to gain little situational advantages from Metachem is great. -Boarding shotguns/Nanopulser. Flamethrowers and shotguns are not interchangeable at all. Trying to clear something like Heavy Infantry with a flamethrower is no good, and sometimes the Auxilia's combi just lacks the accuracy or punch to back it up. The shotgun, however, can threaten even seriously armored HI or TAGs, and will force them to stand in place and make the choice between shooting or Dodging. When you run an Auxilia at someone, they know exactly what's happening; you're going to Combi/Flash Pulse with the Auxilia, flame with the Auxbot. Since they know what's coming, they're typically Dodging to avoid the fire, and hoping your Auxilia's a bad enough shot that there's no real risk. With the CSU though, you keep your opponent guessing. You force their declaration, and they don't know if you plan to shotgun or nanopulse. The result is that you can fluster your opponent, make them commit brainpower to analyzing the situation, and potentially convince them to pick the wrong choice. I'm a big fan of forcing opponents to commit to decisions; the more you can force your opponent to make decisions with bad outcomes, the more you can fluster them and derail them from their overall gameplan. CSU are a brilliant unit for this. Besides, 2 CSU cost 22 points, and two Auxilia cost 28... Or 30, if you take FOs. The difference in points there is practically an entire Regular Order. Those little point increments add up. As for the Peacemaker, I like it a lot as a unit. However, I find that the Spitfire eats up a lot of points and SWC (not a bad unit at all, just not what I was looking for in this mission lineup.) The shotgun is a lot cheaper, but also a lot more limited in what it can do, and since I was expecting a lot of Chain Rifles this event, I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to keep it alive if someone dropped a YY next to it on Turn 1.
One thing I would add in favor of the CSU is that a direct template weapon with Sixth Sense Level 1 is absolutely money when defending your deployment zone.
It's interesting how differently people see things depending on meta. For one, it appears that in my city some people see NCA as a (for the lack of better words I could come up with) "tryhard's choice" of sort, although I can't say too many people actually play it. Then again, @Foxbringer , being (as far as I know) a more dedicated tournament player, may have a much better insight than I do.
I think, that NCA isn't so difficult as you can say. It has very good units specialized in shooting, synchro flamers and possibility to take many orders. But lacks of specialists, so the main newbee problem is a lack of orders for spec with 12WIP for trying to press even 2-3 buttons. I agree, that maybe it depends on meta.
Yeah, I don't think NCA is particularly difficult. You just have to be willing to play to the strengths of the faction, and recognize its shortcomings. You won't have mine/minelayers in abundance, unless you're willing to play the Drop Bear game (which, I admit, I need more practice with and don't have a great grasp of.) You won't have smoke, of course. You won't have midfield specialists unless you're willing to through the nose for them, and even then I don't consider the Locust AHD a good purchase. You also have to be ultra-conscious of enemy Hacking capability, because so many of your choices are susceptible to Hacking in one form or another. When I see other people play NCA, the biggest challenge I see them struggling with is the "pacing" of a 3-round ITS mission. When to push up and get objectives? When is it safe to reveal a TO Camo unit and advance it into the midfield, to poise for future turns? What's the right balance of advancing Specialists up, versus aggressively playing attrition? That notion of pacing or timing may vary from meta to meta. Interestingly, I don't see NCA at all when I travel for North American tournaments. Last year, I was the only NA player in the US Top 5, Top 10, or even top 30. I think there were only 4 NCA players in the global top 50. When I play NCA at a tournament, I very regularly get comments like "Oh, NCA, I don't know them well" or "oh, can I ask some questions? Only fought them a couple of times." I know @Plebian has started competing with them now though, so NCA will get a bit more North American competitive visibility these days.
Great write-up! Two of your games were vs. Cube Jagers. What could you say about their effectiveness? Are they worth it? Why were they taken so often?
