Hey, I've been out of the game a while and stepped back in today to play a tournament. I went a crappy 0-1-2, which is unsurprising when you have played a total of one game in a year and haven't been paying attention to the N4 changeover all, But hey, it happens. My last round opponent was rolling Tunguska. It involved everything being a repeater, repeater pitching and a lot of guided missiles from a hiding remote. Basically any time I moved near his dudes I ate a spotlight.. and the targetted state seems to last forever. It's extremely hard to play around and repeaters get pitched. And KHD doesn't ignore firewall mods anymore. Just wondering if anyone had tips for playing around this kind of combo?
Considering you're using Combined, a Speculo or any of your AD options should be able to fight through to the missile bot launching the rockets or the Hackers it needs to acquire targets. Failing that, good Hacking lists aren't usually as good at shooting so you should be able to go full Rambo with a good non-Hackable active piece and make yourself some room. Lastly, HDs or KHDs through Pitchers from you are just as effective as theirs.
- use pretas to clear midfield repeaters, cause they're cheap, dogged and have climb+. - if enemy is unconscious, stay nearby, as guided has to use circular template all the time. - use greif or speculo to deal with ML bot and/or engineer. but this might be really difficult, as layered defense most likely will force you to do a 1:1 trade for ML bot, which he can just repair afterwards. - trying to KHD a decent (BTS 6+) enemy hacker through their repeater in my experience is a waste of orders, but if there's no other better option, then you have to. If you're playing Combined/OCF/SEF you most likely gonna have a camo hacker, use camo to get in range and then try to deal with one of them at a time. It's day and night when you're hacking through enemy repeater or just in your ZoC. - Kerr-Nau and Bit&Kiss are solid options for CA/OCF, they have pitchers, so you can try to deal with their hackers on your turn. - just mentally be ready that what you're sending to/past midfield gonna die, just try to as much damage as possible. - if it's camo, remember that there's nothing forbidding to recamo while targeted. yes, +3 MOD for discover applies, but at least you're safe from guided. - you can save 1-2 orders to try to reset out of the spotlight state
This isn’t a direct counter but a method of mitigation. Guided weapons must use a circular impact template when attacking. If you take your KHD hacker, cybermask it(no longer requires a roll) and place it next to your targeted model, it will protect it. Models in impersonation can not be affected by templates.
Tunguska in particular has a strong hacking game through access to some very strong hackers and the ability to easily put down a repeater net with their bots and pitchers. Interventors are some of the best hackers in the game. To mitigate being targeted while you move around the board you need passive defences like marker states or a tinbot. using spotlight on the active turn is very inefficient so try to make sure that you're giving your opponent as few opportunities as possible to light up different models in ARO, make them spend those orders in their active turn if they want to setup guided attacks. Only expose those models you absolutely need to expose so try to ensure you're activating as efficiently as possible. Also, keep your models at least 2" apart to ensure you're safe from taking hits to multiple models at once. Ultimately how you handle a tunguska hacking net with guided missile bot support is going to come down to the specifics of the mission and your list. But unless you're running an all heavy infantry or other weird skew list you should have the tools necessary. Honestly, many factions can reasonably build a balanced list including this type of setup; Druze, Onyx, and Haqq in general have access to all the necessary tools (I'm sure other NA2 factions do as well...)
Given how KHD's are nerfed in N4 I'm not sure CB wants there to be a counter to this strategy - the fact that it's the favored tactic of the "designated protagonist" faction might have something to do with that. Best counter to it is to have models you're worried about being attacked stand next to an enemy repeater or unconscious enemy. You can also put Impersonators next to important things.
The Anathematic Hacker, with Trinity +1 Burst, will totally murder any and all Nomads hackers, even through their own repeaters. He's so resilient, in fact, that he could even ignore and try to tank one or even two hacking AROs, just to focus his entire burst on murdering the weakest link in the Nomad hacking network. The only thing he might not be able to handle is a hacker with Firewall-6, like the Mobile Brigada - and even that might be worth a try, due to his insane WIP of 16. Just keep an engineer ready to fix him if they manage to Isolate or Immobilise him, and even better, buff him up with Fairy Dust.
You might need to use Oblivion rather than Trinity to get high enough damage to punch out an interventor through their own network (or even Spotlight + Missile if you're bold and have an engineer on standby) since an Interventor's BTS is very high - or otherwise, use our excellent pitcher throwers to get a pitcher down near the enemy Interventor so you don't need to deal with the firewall and can use trinity. But yep, Combined can definitely engage and neutralise even an Interventor with some forethought and the right tools.
lol no it won't. He'll just get pwnt by an Oblivion, or murdered with AP Trinity (which Combined Army doesn't get access to).
No, Anathematic trying to tackle an Interventor through a Nomad repeater even focusing their entire burst comes to a: 19.5% to wound with Trinity vs 10.2% to get isolated by Oblivion 27.9% to isolate with Oblivion vs 26.2% to get isolated by Oblivion Trying to tackle Jazz with the -6 Tinbot that you mentioned: 28.1% to wound with Trinity vs 16.2% to take a wound from Trinity (+1 damage) 20.8% to isolate with Oblivion vs 27.6% to take a wound from Trinity (+1 damage) For a model trying to invade a repeater network and potentially fight multiple hackers those are terrible odds to be running risks on 70+ point units. Would not recommend. On the original topic though the Anathematic is a decent answer to Guided weapons. Put your important stuff under camo markers, camo/impersonator spam is the counter to guided weapons as they're not able to hack your stuff under the marker state (or fire missiles at it if you're already targeted).
I'm fully in 'hope its not nomads' territory. One countermeasure is to make sure you have a list without good missile targets, as to make sure that whatever gets erased off of the board isn't too valuable. If you go first, sometimes you can kill the bot or the hackers. But its difficult to do this consistently. Pieces like a Speculo as mentioned can usually get a guaranteed CC attack, but thats far from a guaranteed kill with how finnicky a monoCCW is. Other pieces are too weak or too far back to reliably reach a target through dedicated defense. Given most of the missile lists I've seen have been missiles, hackers, repeaters and a ton of defense, I wouldn't bet on being able to get through to try and alpha. An HGL Tag is an option I've been looking at. Super unenjoyable play pattern though - go first, bomb the bot and wish it was N3 where bots had crappy Dodge is a pretty good summary. Given you need to take a massive, expensive TAG to take out a 19 point bot and that its the TAG that will die if you don't go first, its a pretty shit countermeasure. Otherwise, I guess loaded dice are a thing - some random armor rolls are all you are gonna get with the level of repeater delivery that exists in the game atm. Yes, I'm not impressed with how targeted and missiles work right now, how could you tell?
That math looks wrong. I get: Anathematic vs Interventor, trinity (B4) vs oblivion: Anathematic 22.87% to injure Interventor, 2.66% to kill Interventor 5.05% to isolate Anathematic Anathematic vs Interventor, both using oblivion: Anathematic 34.04% to isolate Interventor Interventor 13.97% to isolate Anathematic Are you using the N4 calculator and accounting for the Anathematic also having access to a firewall? (Edit: NB neither of the above assumes surprise; if you can pull it off, it ups your percentages a little as you'd expect. And if you can use Bit and Kiss or Kerr-Nau to catch the Interventor inside your own repeater, you cook 'em alive - it's a disastrous face to face roll for the Nomads given the relative importance of the Interventor.)
@RobertShepherd The guy he was replying to proposed a situation where the Anathematic didn't have firewall protection.
I certainly don't read those words anywhere in @Natsymir 's post but I won't speak for him. Just in case it needs to be said, though: you really shouldn't try to take fights without employing the maximal possible effective resources at your disposal. If you're going to take on the best hacking faction in the game on their own turf, don't bust out of a hidden deployment state until you're ready to take the offence, and give yourself a firewall when you do. Interventors and -6 tinbot team Jazz are serious top shelf, high watermark stuff. That we can actually threaten them on their own terms is a testament to the strength of combined army, but even we can't do it incautiously.
The specific quote was "The Anathematic Hacker, with Trinity +1 Burst, will totally murder any and all Nomads hackers, even through their own repeaters." Which is just wrong. We can't really threaten them on their own terms, no. Nomads have gotten way better at hacking in N4 and CA has gotten slightly worse. Gotta make things easy for the designated protagonist faction, I guess.
Becomes even better if you have a Caliban engineer next to your anathamatic to repair isolated so you can try again if need be.
Getting rid of a Repeater network deployed by Pitchers is a chore, but Deactivators work decently at it removing them on a roll of 16 or 19, which is typically better than they put them there on and also typically more order efficient than your opponent both setting a repeater network up and Spotlighting you. Just putting that out there. Edit: 17 or 20 for Dr Worm, depending on whether you want to be inside the Hacking Area or not