I may have to rethink the Betatrooper. I was a bit too fast to dismiss it. It has a similar profile to the Shikami and Hulang but is much better optimized by not wasting points on close combat ability while lacking a marker state or smoke. 6" cautious moves and 6" climbs are pretty great. Also, unlike the other two units you've got access to heavier guns such as the multi rifle or spitfire. On second thought, I think your right. The Betatrooper is probably going to be played a lot more than the Shikami and Hulang.
Only if they can project the Lt weapon order and are not murdemachines. The Alpha is like Saladin, you know ;) Betatroopers candidate for murderball link if/when O12 gets sectorials: Tinbot HMG bot (+1pt from the HMG), KHD, Medic, fill the last 2 spots with either flesh or more Betas (if mixed link is not possible). They are HI, so a Hacker's Fairy Dust pushes them to BTS 6, with a tinbot (-3 to enemy hacker, plus the -3 due to Fairy Dust)... Only other KHD could suffer an issue from enemy KHDs ('cause those ignore the Fairy Dust bonus...). The difference is that Hector is one dude, and could have learned to get the Plasma Rifle from enemy units bypassing IFF, something he could have learned by sheer trial and error (remember: he can, legally, only fight against the CA...). O12 is a police force...
I'll have to argue against that... STR means you don't care about Viral. Remote Presence gives Courage. Combined with an Engineer, they can repair from 1 STR, or revive you from the other 2 Unconscious states. Climbing Plus allows you to really get solid threat angles. The lack of MSV2 can be a bit of a big deal (Muk only has it on one profile) but even as a Specialist it can be a solid Rambo piece. Comparing it to the Mukhtar I'd go with the Beta Trooper. ARM 6 Mimetic Trooper that can be put into suppression in some crazy areas because of climbing plus is solid. From the Space UN that happens to have authoritative control of the Sphere... Police Force is quite an understatement.
If that Lt has Strategos and give you an extra regular order for its group then yes, hide him under a rock and call it a day. Spoiler: It's pretty clear via Imgflip Meme Generator The scary part is that a vanilla army with the rooster of a sectorial seem on par or better than other armies with 3 times their roster; when O-12 get the full rooster plus sectorials is going to be too much unless the other faction get updated first. Beta and ADH templates are pretty defining, plus the only combat jump medics and KHDs, they are also pretty versatiles (smoke, HD+, TOs, ADs...), optimiced profiles also seem to be their thing...
Having CP will mean it will be mostly unreachable by an eng most of the time. Not reliable but it there.
I think that, besides Vanilla Aleph and Vanilla CA (Rasyat has Eclipse Smoke), they are the only faction with the full combo of regular smoke, Hacker plus, and Eclipse Smoke. Sure, Vanilla Nomads has those too, but the Eclipse being on the Irregular Extremely Impetuous Climbing Plus Chimera makes it... at least hard to see on the table, but fully hard to control and very unreliable.
Maybe in your meta... all around mine, the Chimera has been a great model forever, but so hard to use effectively (because of the Extremely Impetuous with Cimbing Plus) that few players, if any, bother picking her, even with how hard to truly kill she is if the smoke dodge fails.
Don't get me wrong, I think betatroopers are good. But I'm currently playing vanilla Haqq as my main faction, and Mukhtars are transformatively good. Which is fine, it's a comparison I'm making to indicate favourable things of the Betas, in the same way that I think varangians aren't quite as good as Makauls, but that still makes them pretty dang good.
I have some extra miniatures left over, that didnt fit into other factions i have. So do you see a place for Knauf and Miranda in this faction as they are competing with the Epsilon (Knauf) and Hippolyta (Miranda).
Whew. That sir, I take offense. Varangians are stupid good. Granted they lack triad, these guys allow Smoke+MSV2, Berserk (Crit on 12+), have DTW and either Impact weapons or Shock from SMGs with V:Dogged. To me these are two different animals. Makaul are super cheap regular triad filler that are close range deterrent experts. Varangians are support Warband that can hit like a truck, while granting Regular Orders. Makaul will most likely kill a VG in a straight fight, but with either two dtws, close range Shock rounds, or a straight crit from CC the VG did their job.
Yeah, WIP 13 Engineer with Climbing+ and DropBears for 13 Points... Irregular does not matter as they have to keep up with the Betas (Zeta) and can always drop a bear. Not sure what they are supposed to do in Spiral, but here they can shine!
They are very efficient, for example, the fact that the team syrius Sync is repeater allow them to set up very dangerous areas for hackable units but if the unit isn't hackable that same 5 point bot have a glue direct template. That can be set up with 0 effort. They have a safer (won't get 1 shot by a lucky crit with shock) and cheaper nisse as an active killer but they don't have to sacrifice anything in the list to include the smoke, the spammable warband which is regular, easy to control, come with the smoke; so they add that at the same time that they build their regular order count. And that warband is still fearsome in CC while still having a ranged weapon. Their Lt unit is fully designed to do that, not that expensive, Strategos L2 and counterinteligence plus anti infiltrator CC skills and gear. It's killable, but it's not a cake walk because infiltrators have to rely in their ranged weapons and other models will have to dive the DZ to get him. So they have a ton of utility, eficiency and orders on top of very good fighting models... We will see how they perform but I see few dissadvantages and too many advantages.
I don't think neither Hippo or Chimera are included primarily for their eclipse, that's an useful tool, but both are there to dive and kill. I'm not saying the Uberfall is bad, it's an amazing unit; but iif you want to keep a Chimera for smoke purposes you should add 8 points extra to his cost because a lot of time you'll have to pay a regular order to avoid them running into a firelane, plus an uberfall isn't regular so no order for the order pool in the case the smoke isn't needed.
Difference is, Uberfall is not much of an investment while Hippolyta crosses the psychological barrier in her cost - it is not a model that you can safely send in as a living rocket without feeling a hit in your points budget. Hippolyta is a Perseus+ so she would shine, like him, as a leader of a basic trooper fireteam, but we are at least a year away from that, if ever. Placing impetuous models in the backline so they wouldnt trigger enemy TR bots and linked snipers is rarely difficult for S2 models, even if they come with three very dumb furry friends. I have never encountered tables in missions with ordinary DZ where it wouldnt be possible. And back to the Smoke/Eclipse/MSV2/Noise toolbox, in Nomads all units that have those are expected in a generic competetive list, in O12... i dont think that we are going to see a lot of Hippolyta or that HD+ unit, unless there is a critical mass of Varuna players around.
I actually see Betas more like Namurr than Mukhtar. Especially in vanilla 012 I can see them serving a very similar if not identical function, without the same in faction competition that the Namurr is up against. They've got identical movement, similar resilience, want to fight in the same range bands, and have similar costs.
@-Ghost- str troopers do pass two bts rolls for each successful hit as indicated in infinity wiki They only don’t go dead instantly if they fail one So they do care about viral as DA ammunition
