Been facing against my mate's Ariadna for years, and his Caledonia as well. He always had to make a trade, either Caledonia with less camo and McMurrough, or Ariadna with more camo and the worse Cameronian. Now Ariadna gets both with the Bearpode, which is much stronger than the Cameronian and tougher than McMurrough, with the camo power, smoke delivery and firepower of vanilla Ariadna. Gonna be a bit of a challenge. Historically, I've gone spammy with my armies to fight other spam and to resist this exact thing. Thats a bit harder now. Unfortunately we don't have a fantastic MSV ARO piece in vanilla, and his 19 smoke-dodge and total immune kind of dunks on TAG shots, missiles and flash pulses. Q-Drone is a hard sell as he can smoke past it. Hacking doesn't work and we don't get jammers or other great area denial that works on him. So looking for suggestions on how to make handling him a little bit easier. Dazers slow it down a bit, but don't love the platform as it means swapping out a specialist or not being deployed top of turn one. Same with minelayers, which I find more generally useful but which have less of an impact here. Could take more combi cheerleaders - the usual counter has been lots of crappy shots from different angles as it gets into the deployment area - but that doubles or more their cost. I could take ablative models in group two, which seems to be the best path at the moment, but they are limited in number and he can usually smash the crap out of things like Pretas or Taiga with his heavy shotgun in a way that his chain equipped friends couldn't. What do you guys think? How are you going to stop the rampage in your CA lists?
Not a CA player, but since Total Immunity doesn't affect save attributes, only traits, Plasma will still force 2 saves against such targets so a few Unidrons or the plasma rifle Q-Drone could work as threats, forcing it to slow down and waste orders on Smoke. If you want to take a big risk standing up a Charontid as an ARO piece might delay the Bear's rampage since the enemy will basically need an APHMG in position to remove such a hard target and the Bear is dead meat if it tries to charge all the way down the board in front of one. You can also start a trooper out in Suppressive Fire if you find you need weight of fire badly. If you can wrangle first turn a Greif Operator Impersonator might be able to pull off an assassination with its B3 Breaker Pistol.
I'm not concerned if I go first, can do all sorts of things if I get a turn. The suppression thing is possibly legit when paired with MSV. Grief operators doubling as a crappy impersonator or a speed bump. Worried that they will mostly just be a speed bump for him but its at least got some game. I also saw Le Meut as an MSV1 option. Normally never considered him, but man theres a lot of smoke in these games. And the Haiduk. Man that thing sucks, but its not saddled with a 1.5 SWC gun. These options all do something against the bearpode, but they are not great units or great counters to it and outside of maybe the impersonation Grief they are not units I'd normally want to take. How does total immunity work exactly? It says "immune to any ammunition, cancelling its special effects and traits, considering it normal ammunition". Can't fathom how that works with plasma but not other things, if its true then these rules could certainly be written better. If it does work, Unidrons are certainly the go-to if making the shift from REM to Line troop cheerleaders.
Immunity(Total) ignores all weapon traits and ammunitions except Non-Lethal, treating it as only N. If it's Non-Lethal, the TI trooper completely ignores the attack. Plasma ammo is actually already N with no special traits, it just targets both ARM and BTS instead of one of the two. Edit for clarity; Plasma isn't an ammo anymore. A "Plasma" Rifle is just a Normal Rifle with Impact Template and ARM+BTS saving roll.
it still inflicts damage so it counts as one of the coniditions that activate total imminuty. note the comma after states and "or" after that. also to note viral isn't an ammo type either anymore (now ammo type listed is shock+DA) but it still has an effect.
@dhellfox that section refers to Traits that inflict Damage, like Continuous Damage. Save attributes are separate, and Bioimmunity is the skill that interacts with them now.
i do admit there is a loophole there that need plugged but with the same logic can be made with vial weapons against a vial vulnerability (as there's no vial ammo type anymore) being reduced just to a single bts save edit nvm read vulnerability wrong
Vulnerability refers specifically to "a type of Attack, weapon or Ammuntion" listed. The example specifically lists the Dog-Warrior vulnerability against Viral as applying to *weapons* with Viral in the name, not Ammunition. I agree the wording could be clearer (Vulnerability:"weapons with Viral in the name" or Vulnerability:"Viral Rifle, Viral Combi Rifle, Viral Pistol, Viral Sniper Rifle, Viral Mine, Viral CCW" for example) and perhaps even RAW abusable, but the intent is obvious in this case; targets with Immunity(Total) must make Saving Rolls against the listed Saving Attributes unless the attack is Non-Lethal ignoring all other Traits and Ammunition, targets with Vulnerability(X) are vulnerable to what they say they are vulnerable to.
Should it though? TI includes weapon traits, effects, etc. So it should ignore the "ARM+BTS" altered damage / save?
Plasma is not a Trait, the only Traits a Plasma Rifle has is Impact Template and Suppressive Fire. They've broken immunity down into two things really. Immunity (ammo) which turns that ammo type into normal ammo, and Bioimmunity, which affects the Saving Attribute. For something to have old-style Total Immunity (ignoring ammo and choosing to roll on either ARM or BTS), they would need both Immunity (Total) and Bioimmunity. It seems to be an intentional change. Its also worth noting that Vulnerability to viral also means the Bearpode, and dogs, are not immune to the Shock effect of a Viral weapon.