While generally factions can do a lot of things and have access to a lot of tricks, usually they have some defining points, like Yu Jing's HI, or Haqqislam's Ghazi. What is the playstyle of O-12? reading their stats alone hasn't given me a very good image of them except ive noted they have a lot of high tech stuff, having a plasma carbine in the hands of the lynx unit for example!
I think you hit the nail on the head! O-12 has some really great tech! good enough tech that we even can stand toe-tote with CA in that aspect. We have access to possibly the cheapest Hacking device in the game, and also a HD+, smoke, msv 2, and a wide number of negative modifiers all in the same army. Much like the Ghazi to Haqq or HI to YJ, Some units that really help define O-12 are the Varangian Guards, and the Omega. Particularly the Omega – taking that vanilla HI that everyone has access to and putting a really great piece of tech on him (ODD). The delta and the delta character also help define the flavor of O-12 – they're flexible and technologically a cut above other human faction AD troops. And of course, GLUE! O-12 sports Madtraps, a number of "Riotstoppers" – both light and heavy, ADHLs, and Akrylat-Kanones. IMM-2 is a really dangerous state O-12 can easily leverage on the enemy. As for play style – expect some high-tech, high investment HI and MI supported by cheaper, flexible LI. You have a number of durable hammer pieces that want to pummel the enemy into submission protected by remotes, skirmishers and war band. While the army has only 2 sensors and limited sniffers, expect to be spraying camo tokens and enemy troopers alike with a number of direct templates. There's a lot to set O-12 apart! A lot of it lies in the subtleties though, our shooters are decent, our specialists are decent, our hackers are decent, TAG, HI, LI, all decent, O-12 is very well rounded all things considered.
Without having played a game yet... My initial feeling is aggressive board control. They have units that can hunker down in cover and be very difficult to pry out, glue templates, Mad Traps and other deployables, and repeaters with a substantial number of hacking devices(HD. HD+, KHD) all with good WIP makes for a dangerous board.
Having played only a few games with them, I would say the playstyle that comes out more often than not is control. They have good board control during their active turn and during reactive. To that end the are an army that is greater than the sum of its parts. Which is also their weakness. Each part is designed to harmonize with the rest of the army but not always tool boxy to stand alone. When troops start to die, then they start to loose effectiveness as a whole.
To paraphrase a local tournament winner, the playstyle was slow down the enemy with gangbuster and sirius, and abuse smoke+msv2 (epsilon and varagian). Now, i think yujing playstyle was also smoke+msv2 ?
They say that, but considering how Yu Jing players need to move to provide smoke support for Rui Shi and how unlikely they are to use Bao together with how much of a game changer using a Hsien is, that's a lot closer to Haqq and their Djanbazan.
Definitely midfield skirmishes and a heavy focus on control rather than outright lethality through liberal application of weapons-grade adhesives There is also a good deal of flexibility to make lists with different focuses. -Remote and hacking heavy (AVA2 TR bots, cheap dakini HMGs, wip14 engineers...) -Visual mod play (smoke, msv, white noise with good repeater coverage) -Heavy AD (bit of a reach, but a delta plus cuervo is viable thanks to them being amazing and well supported by strategos)