New Recruit To Spiral Corps

Welcome!

Good selection of stuff there; the Spiral Corps army box has a pretty high percentage of useful models, and you've picked your extra stuff well. The only things on that list I don't tend to use are the Kumotail and the Servants, but even they have uses.

There's a few more things that make it into a huge proportion of my lists:
- Helots
- Taagma Viral Sniper
- Kaeltar Specialist
- Chaksa Auxiliars (proxy with the Servants)
- Maybe Kaauri Sentinels?

Spiral aren't generally looking for a straight-up gunfight, as they don't really have the tools. Instead you'll be looking to make it as difficult as possible for your opponent to get through your defence efficiently whilst you chip them down.

Helots are incredible at that; accept no substitutes. Unless the mission makes them a bad choice they're in all my lists. They're so cheap for what they bring defensively.

The Taagma Sniper is good into a wide range of things, can do the MSV-Smoke trick with the Kriigel, and is a Wildcard for links. The Kaeltar comes with some combination of Symbiomate and Symbiobomb (both great rules) and potentially CoC for security.

Chaksa with Flamethrowers are our best cheerleaders; 10 points for some useful rules and weapons. They used to be the best by miles because of a special fireteam with the Taagma, but they changed that in the fireteam update. They're still excellent value, and you could very easily use the Chaksa Servants as proxies.

Kaauri Sentinels get a lot of rules for their points, but you won't always get to use most of them. However the Paramedic is a solid pick, and if I'm finding myself with 2 spare points upgrading a Chaksa to the cheapest Kaauri is nice.

I'll leave the actual 'how to play' to players who are better at the game, but I hope that helps!

 

That's a really good start.
Check the pinned n4 tactica thread for an overview of the unit's strengths but as the other chap stated, We're not a firepower faction. Need to get used to fighting dirty and using shenanigans to win games. You'll want to leverage your access to impersonators as these are your best attack pieces, don't be scared of burning a couple of swc on them!
In terms of purchases, the taagma sniper is brilliant. Armand is probably our best gunfighter and makes a good all rounder too.
Kealtar is very useful.
Rasail are great midfielders as well.

 

I am a big fan of the Keriel Preceptors, specifically the one with the Surda Symbiobeast.
It is a fast striker, and with its own smoke it is able to cover its own advance as well as others'.

 

Syncs very well with the taagma sniper for sure

 

Welcome to sneaky spiral!

The army is in a weird but good place, and they can hang with pretty much any opponent in the game. Spiral are unique in having access to three very powerful and vey different impersonators. Jaan Star is a bully, and an existential threat to a lot of lists. The Grief Op is a swiss army knife who is great at scoring classifieds, but also can do damage with breaker pistols, or suprise attack with his combi at nice angles. The Kiuutan with E/M mines is just superb at punishing tags and setting up roadblocks. Kiuutan and Jaan can both be pumped up with symbio mate/bomb, at the expense of a command token, if you want to.

These days I really like to take all three, and leave my opponent in a state of anxiety. Deciding what to do with your impersonators when you can't go first is a big part of getting Spiral right, imo. Welcome, and congrats on a great choice. :)

 

"In hindsight, I can't symbiomate an impersonator or other marker state, can I?" - correct, but you can still place an impersonator on their 12.1" line out of marker state, and slap symbios on them. Often you'll use a command point to hold back two, so you can do this and the Kaeltar at the same time, so as not to make your impersonator's placement too obvious.

"What's the point of pherobooster?" Others will disagree, but I'd answer, not too much.

"The symbiobomb is a one time use like the symbiomate, right? And does it apply a -3 in F2F if I hit an opponent with one outside of LoF?"
You got it, but the good news is it always applies -3, as it's a deployable.

"For things like mirrorball, I place a marker in ZoC and from that marker the eclipse zone is made, right?" Yep, but be sure that the whole template is within 8" of the caster, or it doesn't go off. (At least that's how I interpret it!)

"Is the Dazer the same or does the Dazer just fill the caster's ZoC with difficult terrain?" Dazer is different, it's a deployable piece of equipment. as you say, its own ZoC is difficult terrain.

"And for all pherowere, even mirrorball, I need to pass a WIP roll to land it, right?" yep, you got it.

 

This is wrong, you’re mixing it up with White Noise.

To use Mirrorball, you declare a point (that must be in your ZoC) and if you succeed on the roll, then you set up an eclipse template on that point.

White Noise has the extra limitation that the whole template must be inside the Hacking Zone because it can be used from repeaters, and it would be quite more powerful if it worked differently.

But, this restriction does not exist for Mirrorball

P.S.: edit to fix the quote

 

Does any of you Spiral players ever field any non-Tohaa units, specifically Brawlers? And more importantly, do you enjoy it?

 

I originally planned a Spiral list with as many different Aliens as I could fit, as well as the cheapest (and worst) TAG in the game. A brawler engineer supporting an Anaconda in a Duo, or an added Tricore Taagma pretending to be a brawler for a surprise sixth sense ARO was part of that... The list would also include Omns from Varuna (Helots) who are, by all accounts, excellent. I could get to 11 different species (counting Symbio-things) in one list.

I haven't got around to painting the actual Tohaa, though (the Anaconda and the Brawlers are doing work for StarCo), and with recent developments, my dream of a multispecies band of brothers/sisters/podmates has changed. I'm now working on the Omnicultural Contact Friends, led by the inveterate charmer Nourkias and a couple of his exes (Bit and Ko)...

 

When we had diggers, I ran Brawler core all the time. These days it's much reduced. I still run Anaconda haris with a brawler engineer and tricore, but rarely more than that.

 

The strength of the Pherobooster is that it is a comms attack so dodge does not work against it, and it is unaffected by partial cover, as well as bypassing some immunities.
It is okay damage and will inflict the targeted state as well as a wound if the BTS save is failed.

Its downsides are that it is a technical weapon so it doesn't get an extra burst from being in a fire team. It is effected by ECM and Firewalls, and units out of line of sight can always reset against it. It is a Bioweapon so cannot be used on things with structure. It is only on one unit profile. Most troops are single wound, so putting them in the targeted state isn't so amazing since they will likely be unconscious.