Clipsos and Kiiutan come in the Army Box, which is why they don’t show up in the list. I’ll run 2 Clipsos but the second Kiiutan is almost always Jaan Staar. Shotgun Clipsos is great, but not a Specialist. Serves a different purpose, so take the one you want for the scenario or how you plan to use them. Drawl are great but you usually only run one; an AP Marksman in your Tri-Core. More can work but he’s an expensive boi, and the SMG profiles are very short range. Healing is good, but you can’t heal Symbionts Armor back to Active, so it’s less useful on things like Draal. Can be nice on the Taagma Sniper though. Longarms are REALLY bad, especially in Spiral. Minimum cost for a Haris (they don’t have Triad!) with a Missile Launcher for ARO duty is 69 points, and they’re BS 12 with no visual mods (MSV or Mimitism). Compare to a Taagma Sniper + 2 Chaksa FTO Triad, which is 44 points and has MSV 2. Worse, we only have 1 wildcard who can join them, and she’s also not the best. Chaksa don’t have the stats to shoot, and for how expensive they are you can’t afford to have them underperform.
Cool cool, second Clipsos added to the buy list. Seems like Jaan Staar is a bit of a bugger to get hold of, which is a shame. That model render looks pretty ace. With the Longarms I must admit it didn't even occur to me to put them in a fireteam; the guy I played against was telling me about using a Co-Ordinated Order to put models in a Suppressing Fire state and I thought one of the non-SWC Longarms might have been good for that.
Only problem with that is that MK 12 Chaksa is the same price as an FO Clipsos, and if you’re going to throw a model into suppressive fire you’d rather go for the Mim(-6), BS 11 model that starts halfway up the board instead of the BS 12 one that has to spend 3 orders getting there. Not to mention everything else the Clipsos can do. The Chaksa does have AP on his mines instead of shock and a Direct Template weapon, but in practice he will have serious problems making his points back offensively or posing any significant problems to your opponent defensively. You can also just switch to a Kosuil, who has 2 wounds, better guns, goes in Triads and is a WIP 14 Specialist.
How do Jayward, welcome to the game, I like your choice of first faction! I'll try and answer your questions, even though I'm new to Spiral myself. - Clipsos and Kiiutan aren't on the list as they come in the army box, correct. They're both top tier units and the E/M Kiiutan is one of the best reasons to play Spiral over Tohaa vanilla. - Shotty Clipsos is cool, but comes in 4th for me - F/O is really important to our specialist game, as Spiral can struggle in that department if you're not careful. Hidden, -6, shock mine specialist for 25pts is a bargain. Second for me is minelayer, as that profile can mess with heads a little, and give strong Igao vibes to your opponent. Third is sniper as, even with only BS11 she can bring hidden threat from oblique angles. - Yep, same as Kiiutans and Clipsos. - Healing is list dependent, not meta dependent. first ask yourself how crucial a (Wounds) trooper is to you, then how easy it could be to get a medic there, then for Spiral you have a third question, is it's bottom profile worth rezzing? Draal, Nema and such can be brough back up onto their bottom profile which is better than nothing, but a far cry from say a Feurbach-toting Orc. Final thing to say is Paramedics and Doctors are great specialists for many missions, and the Kauuri and Kumotail are both cheap enough, and bring enough other stuff, to make them good picks. - Longarms have bafflingly strict fireteam rules, so can't benefit from mixed triad compositions or tricore, so are stuck with BS12, no visor, no mods, no buffs, and on one wound. They also nom up all the swc in a faction that can easily spend 3swc and not get a single heavy weapon for it (kaeltar, kriigel, igao, kiiutan, etc). Long story short, other factions can use them way better than us, which is a bit annoying. Buy them and use them though, they're good enough to plonk down now and again, but I strongly advise you to put them to the back of the buy-queue. Good luck!
Thank you both! I think I can see the shape of the problem with the Longarms from what you're saying; I tried testing the non-Fireteam Auxiliars and got a sense of how non-fireteam BS11 with no mods really sucks in a firefight and wasn't worth the SWC, and I can see how +1BS wouldn't solve it. (Well, I kind of liked the Rocket Launcher one since I got to try Guided, but still) I've been introduced to more of the missions, as well, and in particular the classified deck. I'd been warned that there were two that required hackers, but it seems like we're also really limited in access to Veterans, have no elites and one CoC, and the Clipsos is the only Forward Observer. Given that the Kiel Saan doesn't seem too common, that means the Clipsos and Kaeltar are covering about one third of the classified deck between them. How do you guys approach that? It seems hard to cover all the angles with any redundancy, but I'd rather not have my strategy for Countermeasures be 'hope for the best'.
Well the good news is: You're taking the Kaeltar CoC and Clipsos FO's anyways. The OTHER good news is: due to the Long Service rule, all characters count as Veteran. And you're probably taking Jaan Staar, so Net-Undermine is super easy. You can also consider Neema, Armand, or even Aelis in a pinch. My personal advice is to simply not play Countermeasures or Highly Classified, as the classified deck is not very balanced across factions (Ariadna and Tohaa get screwed on Hacking Objectives, ISS has ONE Engineer, etc.), but if you're going to play it, consider troops like the Kumotail or Kosuil. Maybe take a Wardriver Hacker. The Kosuil can do MI and Engineer stuff, while the Kumotail can do Engineer and Doctor stuff (though we have no remotes for Test Run). The Kaauri Paramedic is also a solid piece on its own.
I thought I'd add my little bit even though I don't play Spiral, but friends do. On healing. I think healing is good in general but you really want it in missions that require points on the board or just killing more points worth. Also even if you never use a paramedic for that, it's still a specialist that can hit buttons! Never forget that. A Kiel-Saan with two Kauri medics is potent! You've got your big bruiser pulling along two specials with +1B to the medkit and then E/M mines, MSV1, Discover +3, and Sixth Sense on top of all that for only 16pts! Talk about your support guys! They are it!
Kiel-Saan has some issues that make him a bit of an odd pick. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy, and he's a total wrecking ball if you can get him out of your DZ. But he's also WIP 12 and Hackable, and we have no Fairy Dust, no Firewalls, and only a single KHD to protect him with. And, since he's likely the ONLY hackable unit you have, all of your opponent's hacking is going to get laser-guided right to him. So when I DO take him, I usually take him solo (to get the most out of Stealth) and have an Engineer ready to follow up if he gets his circuits blitzed. He's really fun though.
Then again, if the opponent knows that they're up against Spiral – they probably won't bother setting up their hacking defense in the first place. and then boom – a nasty surprise awaits them!
Kiel-saan is the model that first drew me into Spiral, but I've had real trouble getting value out of him, bar games vs Ariadna. The closest comparison in terms of risk is Neema, but Kiel-saan is in a way worse spot. He doesn't have that juicy BTS9, and his fireteam is so restricted that he can't bring along relevant support. Neema, tri-core and Kosuil is a great little package in comparison.
@Jayward Hi and welcome to this forum ! Regarding your remarks concerning your army… Maybe during your first games objectives were not essential because you look like prefering troopers usefull to kill stuff. But when you go for objectives things go an other way i think. I usually play one clipso (often to perform objectives so the forward obs … but eventually for a killing scenario i would switch instant for a boarding one !) and play much kiutaan/grief op or both. Grief ops got a good discount and a msv1 but less relevant when facing big armored guys. In tohaa i used to play 3 clipso (maybe a bit too much :p) Chaksa longarms were such crap in n3 that i think this image is always stuck to them. One negative aspect still remain : they don’t own mimetism or msv. So if you use them as an ARO they might be not efficient as our BIG ARO, our tagmaa sniper. Profils compete one with others for some roles. And in term of ARO we have the tri cored viral sniper, the helots and even Armand Le Muet (able to have a symbiomate for instance) Against ariadna i love the clipso sniper, it’s not very rational i know but mimetism -6 + hidden deploiement can wreck an Ariadna game :D conclusion : you have to test SC units to find which one you prefer. SC is able to deploie a mindgame to make your ennemy loose many orders through units like holoprojed tagmaa, helots … i love that kind of « soft power » (i refer to an haqquislamit player who was playing without big guns and made it a very nice guide style accessible on the forum i think) But it’s works well when you know well rules and your opponents habits… SC is also able to bring some big guns and to have a more traditional approch which usually suit better to new comers. (Neema/ rasail/ tag/…) sorry for my english, i’ m not a native spoker.
