NCA in N4

I’ve had a lot of fun in N4 with neoterra. I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re in a bad place. Bolts are an incredible link team and my Aquila and Swiss guard have had loads of luck as has my Clausewitz Uhlans TAG. Playing against hackers with neoterra doesn’t have to be miserable, especially if you can work out good lines of fire to said hackers. From what others have said in other threads, neoterra are limited in what to take for a more optimised list and depending on the mission it can feel like an uphill struggle (not my experience as the dice gods love my PanO). Other players may have a completely different opinion however.

 

I play Bolts, but I always played bolts, even when everybody said they were not good, they are really good in this edition and can easily form the basis of any force.

 

@SpectralOwl has a good amount of experience using NCA in a hacker heavy meta. Hopefully they can add to this thread.

 

The biggest thing to consider when playing NCA into potential top-end Hacking is how to score. Every Marker state Specialist NCA can deploy except for Uma Sorensen is a Hacker of some stripe, and all of them save the vulnerable Locust start in the DZ. Most of your bigger guns are also Hackable and hard to defend from it; Armbots, Heavy Infantry and the TAGs can all be prevented from firing quite effectively by a nearby Pitcher Repeater, which can make it difficult to project the long-range board control you need as NCA. In addition, you're heavily reliant on your links to keep a firepower advantage as well as supply Orders for your relatively slow-moving army and can't easily trade them.

Your game plan into this kind of matchup needs to account for mission and potentially specific opponents, but there's a few decent options- though none of them exactly let you leverage the faction's strengths. Bolts are always a good starting point; very few armies that can field Hacking good enough that you can't fight back against also have shooters good enough to take a chance against a Core-linked Bolt Sniper, slowing them down immensely as they will need to cover both MSV and standard visibility blocking. Bolts also provide a place for a few unhackable backup Specialists and gunners (never forget that your CoC Bolt is a Specialist that the enemy may not know about!), and have a massive target on their backs that draws in assassin pieces like moths to flame- something you can take advantage of with well-placed Hidden Deployment troopers!

Secondly, your Marker Hackers might not exactly be A-grade Specialist material, but a Hexa or especially a Swiss Guard can cut through most opposition outside of template range like butter with their guns. They're far too important, costly and Order-hungry to waste trading lightly, but revealing them to capture an objective can be worth it if your PanO WIP doesn't let you down. You can also actually use them as Hackers, which may drastically shorten their lifespan but can also save games if a Sphinx gets past your Bolts. If you're relying on these guys, or just in general, a few Auxilia FOs or some ground-level linked Specialists you can detach for backup isn't a bad plan in case a Hexa eats an unlucky crit.

Lastly, assassination runs. NCA is horrible at assassinating pieces, probably the single worst faction in the game at digging out distant, fortified troopers. But it can do it, and doing so will often surprise the hell out of an opponent who may opt for null-deployment against your guns or rely on soft midifield control. Over-infiltrating Locusts can get past just about anything and mess up a backline badly, but are deathly allergic to Direct Template Weapons, you need three of these hideously expensive Skirmishers to reliably get one over the line, and they won't add much to the list besides this alpha-strike capability, but it's not a play most people are prepared for. Otherwise you can rely on the far more cost-effective Garuda Tacbot, which is Hackable and therefore requires the opponent to make a mistake in their Repeater coverage, but it's such a common one you can count on getting an opening on Turn 2 if not earlier. You may also decide to trust your dice and bring the Squalo Heavy Grenade Launcher, which will statistically kill most Line Troopers in three Orders with a lot of variance, but you will be judged for this. People usually do not enjoy being shelled in their black-ops game.

If you're not playing into unfair Hacking-control builds, have fun. NCA actually has great internal balance outside that specific matchup, and can easily play any relatively direct strategies. The Machinist is almost mandatory if you're using Hackables since ORCs outright cannot Reset out of an E/M hit and everything else isn't much better, but otherwise pick and choose to your heart's content. Mass REMs with Hacking support is still quite viable, the TAGs are decent with my Squalo proving a surprise hit thanks to its solid armour and Hacking resistance, and of course the elite Heavy Infantry is just as good at shooting as it always was- though a standard HMG may struggle against TAGs or superheavy infantry without N3 crits.

As far as missions go, your best scenarios are kill missions and zone domination and any of your lists will be able to handle them as a matter of course. Button-pushing missions are bad for you since you're going to have to schlep a Specialist (or three...) out of your DZ and probably fumble at buttons unless you sprung for a WIP15 Deva, so they're worth extra consideration. If you see Looting and Sabotaging on the event list, give your TO dirty looks until they relent because you have exactly one viable unit to score in that scenario and it's an AVA1 Character that your opponent will gleefully kill immediately. If the missions aren't anything that will require specialised tuning for your lists, build one that can still score if it runs into the worst Jazz+Morans list you can think of, and one that you enjoy for almost every other matchup (though most anti-Hacking builds are also alright against assassin-heavy lists like some JSA or Haqq players can bring).

For the most general guide to playstyle, you want as much work as possible done in your opponent's turn. Press forward Auxbots and REM Repeaters to bog down the enemy before they can reach the objectives or your gun emplacements, leave up hard ARO of either high quality to delay or even kill enemy troopers or REMs because you can trivially fix them and they're annoying for their price. Bring your spec-ops guys for sneaky play; your Marker guys can be more mobile than you'd think, the Hexa Sniper is lethal on a budget and the Swiss ML is still the deadliest patch of nothing in the game and if it catches a link in motion that link is dead (honestly keeping enough points/SWC off the board that you can threaten the existence of a Swiss Miss gives you a genuine edge against opponents who know about it, since while the possibility it exists is there they have to play carefully or risk everything). Your Orders on your own turn are your most precious resource, beyond even the troops that generate them, and you must use every one efficiently to match your much-faster opponents- if you're not killing something useful or on the way to scoring OP, you're falling behind.

So yeah. That's the short version, I guess. /s

 

I have also run core and Haris together, I have not tested yet NCA in heavy hacking, thought with two Deva hackers and Bolt hackers it has some solid hacking base for the remotes to expand its reach, you can even have Bolts (hackers) with Bulleteers Duo to have a moving hacking bubble, not as versatile or reliable as the knights in Military Orders, but far cheaper.

 

The advice here is absolutely sage and should be required reading for all newcomers/those getting back into NCA especially with respect to dealing with hacking lists and mission scoring.

I am elated to see someone else mention the Deva for button pushing! I’ve used mine a lot and she’s done well. Not as well as the PanO units (the dice gods are fickle) but I’ve been pleased. Also so happy to see the hexa sniper get a mention here. She’s got renown in my group for taking a five burst hmg at optimal range from a link and not only surviving it (serious dice anomaly, was really fun to see) but in her turn killing the link leader.

I hope you have fun coming back to NCA and I’m sure @SpectralOwl and others will be only too capable and wiling to help if you need further advice.

 

Things I’ve had success with NCA since it’s my workhorse.

- The Humble Pathfinder: this little zippy boi for 15pts just zips into an objective pushes a button and then can go on a screen clearing run. For example running it up sensor sweeping a Camo marker out of Camo and then stepping around the corner to drop some Combi rifle into it. You don’t feel too concerned if you lose it cause it’s cheap as chips and precisely what it’s designed to do.

Bolt core - Foundation members are Bolt Sniper, Bolt Paramedic, Bolt Hacker (From here it’s usually the NCA Machinist and Uma FTO) but it changes depending upon what’s needed

Close Assault Pieces - Shona, Aida and Uma. I have a list which uses all three. Aida can be swapped and changed but Shona and Uma have been indispensable for me. Being able to ferret out is invaluable especially in mid game when people are bunkering down to prep for objective runs. They have moved up the table and makes their jobs easier. These two are usually paired with a TAG for heavy ranged support.

Pure Fusilier fireteams - My go to is the Sniper but ML is also valid. HMG is solid if you want a bit more active gun. 5 BS15 combi shooters and a main gun is solid for around 60-70pts especially when contested cheap Warband runs from your more expensive stuff.

 

Mate, uhlan. That thing is incredible.
Bs15 tags are awesome, but then give it a marker state and it become even more awesome. You've still got room for bolts, which have marksmanship and that is also awesome. NCA firepower is excellent. N4 is quite a lethal edition, and NCA is good at being lethal. You'll have a great time.

 

Uhlan is great, but one needs to remember it lacks any form of close range defense...

 

It's got a marker state, that alone is best defence against most CC threats, makes it unhackable etc etc.

 

Oh it can defend itself, just needs some caution when using it, I have used it way too aggressively more than once...

 

Lol, that's the curse of tags, I think everyone who's played for a while has overstretched and been punished! My best one was hacking a sphinx with a wardriver and running it back on its own forces :-)

 

And it has a +1B Feuerbach. Face to face rolls wise, even when not factoring a potential surprise attack, I don't think there's any Tag that can be so deadly when dealing with another Tag.

 

Since my NCA set on some dust i am not the expert in here, but running tunguska with Grenzer MSV MSR i have a sheep of the same color here;
Keep in mind, that Sixth sense is a huge boost for the survivability of you most valiable Sniper Bolt: The harris sniper of min oft falls to MSV2 + smoke or White noice tactics, pushing the solid BS down by -6 for shooting through zero/low visibility zones. Sixth Sense saves you from that, so you don´t have to fear nasty Jaguar + Intruder combos and the options of your opponent to decrease your amazing BS are basicly limited to alternate the rangeband or high mimetism:
MSV1 Bolt in a team of at least 4 ignores:
-beeing shot at through smoke or white noise/albedo
-surprise shot
-mimetism -3
-Cover/Nanoscreen/sapper
-stealth

The combination of a hard hitting BS15 TAG and the Camostate is a great one. If he is allowed to move freely, Uhlan can be a beast of an active piece. The negative MOD for the enemies aren´t as high as Swiss guards mimetism-6, but beeing faster and a little bit more durable is a good deal. Beeing bigger (and especially: higher) comes with both advantage and disadvantage: Uhlan can see more but also can be seen more easily. Plus not beeing able to enter prone-state can re-camo make a little bit more tricky than with Swiss guard.

 

I usually opt for a 5-man link with the firepower in a castle in the DZ, but a Specialist and the Machinist at ground level that can be broken out of the link at will to move by themselves. Keeps the Turn 1 ARO and active clearing power strong, but leaves the scorers able to do their job while a Haris stays behind to cover the objectives and backfield. This is definitely a playstyle choice though; I dislike moving Fireteams actively and prefer solo pieces for mobility-heavy duties. I've heard people having success with full Cores or Haris teams, and I've even fielded Bolts solo before to good effect.

As for Fusiliers, against anything short of powerful gunfighting units they may as well be Bolts for half the price. If you don't expect your Core team to be the primary defense of your side of the board (if, for example, you have a Swiss Guard ML and enough template coverage), take Fusiliers freely. I usually run my Fusiliers as a Haris on a rooftop watching an objective, with a Sniper, Paramedic and the LT/something that looks like one, standing up the Sniper later in the game to defeat unsupported objective-grabbers, but I've had fine results from Cores supporting TAGs/HI or even lone gunners or Specialists when budget was running tight.

 

Interesting to use Fusiliers as a defensive haris, I need to look at it.

 

How does it ignore albedo/white noise? The wiki clearly states "If a Trooper with a Multispectral Visor is the target of a BS Attack into, through, or out of a White Noise Zone, their Multispectral Visor cannot reduce the MODs of the resulting Poor Visibility Zone."

Consequently, the Bolt cannot reduce that -6 to 0.

EDIT: Just realized my mistake. The MSV1 can't reduce the -6 to 0, but the Sixth Sense still can. Amazing. I wasn't aware of that.