If it is a terminal teamplate weapon, you can hit several troopers at once. Then, it doesn't matter if the Makaul dodges or not, as you have accomplished two objectives at once: 1- You have hit (and maybe hurt) several models. You only need one to go down, and as the Makaul is there to provide Smoke and Fire, you might have killed either the "shooter" of the Triad or the Specialist (or both). Rememer, the Makaul is the glue of the Tohaa, but not the one shooting or completing missions; he carries the Triads to Victory, but doesn't get points on it's own. 2- If the Makaul did indeed drop the Smoke, while you don't see them anymore now they also don't see you. Use this to complete objectives unoposed, lay mines inside the smoke, throw grenades, use intuitive attack with another teamplate...
Yeah Chaksa servants are nice but I'm more thinking about the TR bot. I'd honestly rather the 2nd level of unconcious for the other chaksa and forgo the ability to normal dodge/go prone. The Tohaa's Baggage bot is excellent though being 10 pts of baggage and flame but our neurocinetics one is a bit average. We don't have the option of buffing it with Marks2 which turns a basic TR bot into an active/reactive murder tool. Haqq don't lack combat rems. They get the base baggage bots, specialist bot and of course the TR HMG which you can buff. Also having Flashpulse bots of overdrive flash pulsing b2 is pretty nice as well. I'd actually spend orders repairing these rems if I feel they can hold the enemy at bay. As for makaul's I may be misunderstanding. I'm assuming that the makaul is not the active link member when it moves. You cannot smoke which is a BS attack not a dodge skill to block the missile attack. They could all dodge or the active member reacts by shooting and the others eat it in the face.
You are right I corrected me later, looked it up then. I always played it that way that duo doesn't work not sure there I got the wrong rule from ;)
As orders can be "wasted" on many different actions, I consider removal of key element of an enemy's plan not a wasteful expenditure of an order.
Which sounds like good strategy untill you realise opponent's strategy is you to waste orders ^^ Whole point of symbiomate on Sukual ML is that unless you crit him you need at least 2 orders to get rid of him. And failing any F2F against ML is nothing pretty... It's similar to WB. They either force enemy to "waste" orders dealing with them, or they do some nasty asymetric trade (usually both things together). Most often it's a win win for your opponent ;)
A lot of this advice can really translate to "play against a noob" or "play against a cool dude who wants to challenge himself by not bringing symbiomates" (@Cothel ). I take particular exception to the notion that fire does eff all against Tohaa anymore. Who even brings an Ectros when you have AVA 4 Sukeul? Once in a blue moon you'll see a Gorgos just because your opponent thinks it looks cool (it does) but otherwise fire just works exactly like it does for every other faction. Seriously though the thing you have to really worry about is the makaul death march. You can't just hide because the makaul death march will get you. You have to ARO aggressively because you have to stop the death march and that means you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable to the symbiomated sukuel HMG's and missile launchers. That's why order spam works: your cheap ARO troops become your own version of symbiomates. Warcors and flash pulse bot sacrificial lambs. Tohaa's only current weakness is a lack of Sixth Sense 2. As @Harlekin pointed out that means that smoke plus MSV 2 can work. But that is still dangerous against the oh-so-fun ARO triad of Gao Rael Sniper+mate, Gao Rael Sniper+mate, Sukuel ML+mate, especially if your MSV 2 is on something that needs smoke to get into its good range band (like a spitfire or even an HMG on a wide open table). That's why I prefer camo and holo 2 units to get into favorable range bands and use surprise shot. But if I'm running ISS, yeah, it's MSV plus smoke all day every day. EDIT: I just wanted to make sure it was clear I consider @Cothel a cool dude. It occurred to me that line might be misinterpreted as snarky; that's not my intention at all. Also, some of the best dudes I know play Tohaa :)
I'd say the main point of the chain-rifle fast warbands is to put pressure in the enemy, since there is no good answer against a good played one. The same can be said about making the opponent waste orders... and if both armies go the reactive playstyle (if they can) then it is quite likely because both lists go around one or two order-sinks... in which case it is always interesting to "waste" your own orders to remove enemy cheerleaders as soon as possible: an enemy troop killed before the enemy's first turn represents 3 orders never used!
That's nearly 1/2 of the list just for ARO duty. White noise/smoke, a hight burst weapon on something with decent CD and three or four orders carefully slicing the pie is all you need to dissasemble that. I'd love to play against that. After that, it'll be easy to dominate 150 points and 1.5 CAP worth of enemy forces.
Or even better just ignore it and do objective they are not really fast and if you are able to escape their aro he will use many orders simply to get them in a better position ;)
The other thing is that Makauls are waaaay too good in CC. A 40+ point CC specialist like an Umbra Samaritan still loses to them.
Since when is 98 points almost half your list? It's costly on SWC, which is why I wouldn't, personally, use it, but all you really need in the active turn is a single 1.5 SWC HMG or Spitfire, anyway. Makauls and burst 4 k1 rifles and viral rifles are all more than adequate in the active turn and none of them cost SWC. Personally, I would prefer to spend some of that Gao Rael SWC on a Nikoul, instead, but that doesn't mean the MSV2 defensive triad doesn't show up regularly due to the fact that it specifically shuts down the MSV2 HMG through smoke trick against which Tohaa is particularly vulnerable. Minimum 6 orders of slicing the pie to disassemble, 7 if you're using smoke, and realistically more like nine since all three have symbio armor. Do the math. You lose two orders in your first turn. The most you can hope for is to eliminate three from your Tohaa opponent, and that's if you get really lucky. If you get unlucky you lose a permanent order to a missile launcher or shock crit. And every extra order you spend you are risking that unlucky face to face roll. Meanwhile, in the really well-constructed lists, all three of those triad orders are alone in a group, anyway, so at the bottom half of your turn you're *still* facing the 10 order-powered Makaul march of death. You can reliably take it out with two order groups of 8+ each with a BFG 9000 in each group. In other words, with well-constructed order spam. The BFG-9000s can be spitfire-equipped camo troops getting inside the missile launcher 24" range, or simple HMG's with a high enough BS and burst to crack the return fire. Combi rifle-equipped camo troops won't really do the job; they don't have high enough burst and/or do enough damage (though viral rifles and boarding shotguns will...the former through extra armor saves and the latter through ignoring cover).
First, I said "dissasemble", not eliminate. If you kill just one member of the Triad, then it's way less problematic because they loose the burst bonus. Second, Symbiomates are not included free in every Tohaa list, you have to pay for them. Add 42 points and 1 CAP more to field the Triad you mentioned, which ends up costing 140 points and 4.5 CAP Tohaa ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 KAELTAR (Cadena de Mando) Escopeta Lig. Pulso Flash + 2 SymbioMates / Pistola, Pulso Eléctrico. (0.5 | 21) KAELTAR (Cadena de Mando) Escopeta Lig. Pulso Flash + 2 SymbioMates / Pistola, Pulso Eléctrico. (0.5 | 21) SUKEUL Lanzamisiles, Escopeta Ligera / Pistola, Pistola Breaker, Cuchillo. (1.5 | 36) GAO-RAEL F. de Francotirador / Pistola, Arma CC. (1 | 31) GAO-RAEL F. de Francotirador / Pistola, Arma CC. (1 | 31) 4.5 CAP | 140 Puntos Abrir en Infinity Army Third, regarding maths... Ok, I'll do it just for you: first Order, deploy Smoke/White noise. Second Order, hit one memeber of the Triad with high Burst weapon and eliminate Mate. Third Order, repeat and now there is one Tohaa Trooper and one Triad less. If AROing Tohaa was lucky, one more Order will do the job. Looks like I still remember how to count.
I play Tohaa, believe me, I know how this works. There's no good or easy way to remove a Symbiomate, I jsut provided another option that was not mentioned in the thread. How one deals with the Symbiomates is up to the player.
Which is my point. There's no counterplay around Symbiomate, you just have to accept you that you will use at least one more order to remove the owner of symbiomate and live with that (and just hope you won't lose F2F against linked ML ;/ ). It's not symbiomate has any disadvantage/weakness which can be exploited (someone could say that crits are but it's not something player can have influence over).
Actually they have a bit of influence over it, take a weapon with a high ROF, higher chance for a crit...sure its not fool proof but this is a dice game so luck is always a factor ;) couldn't kill a HI yesterday with around 16 k1 hits....
I think it's not a Duo, but 2 man Triad then. It would've mattered if any of them was capped the same way Core/Haris is, though. I'm sooo curious whether we are getting a Khwariji Haris in Ramah... And occasional "roll better" Or "use more dice", as if it's not an answer to almost literally anything as long as you can get into position. Other than that, I've enjoyed this thread. I think I'm starting to get how artichokes actually work.
I cropped the post for the sake of space, but the entire post by @sgthulka is fantastic. From my own perspective, acting like Tohaa have a lot of inbuilt disadvantages is... Silly. They're top tier. Sure, Symbiomates do fine for absorbing some Orders in ARO. The thing that makes them really effective though is that they can make an offensive plan pretty much ironclad. Normally, to keep an opponent from aggressively taking ground, you can deploy mines, models in Suppressive Fire, link teams, etc. and just hope to squeeze through that one crit or lucky hit that makes your opponent pause and modify his plan. That doesn't work with Tohaa. The scariest application of Symbiomates isn't when a target sits there waiting to be shot. It's when they soak a hit from multiple antipersonnel mines while engaging your Suppressive Fire defender all in the same order, blast through a defense in one order when you realistically expected it to take 3 or 4 orders, and that attack opens a lane for a Clipsos to grab an objective while a pack of Makaul come rolling into your half of the table. Reiterating Sgthulka's point too about hiding, total cover and getting rushed: Tohaa do this really well. Sukeul and Gao-Rael are great. Any deficiency in their stats (and let's face it, winning a gunfight with a Burst 3 MSV2 Sniper Rifle, or a Burst 5 Mimetism HMG, is not a hard thing at all) is covered by them having multiple Wounds and mates. If they clear the way, you're getting Makaul in the face while Clipsos run the objectives. There's so much focus on Tohaa somehow being indifferent gunfighters, or somehow not hitting hard, and that just isn't a thing. The top ranked US Tohaa player from last season is in my meta, and his typical Tohaa list is running Burst 5 weaponry, EXP missiles, Shock, Viral, flamethrowers, K1, crazy multi-model CC dogpiles all in the same list.
Yeah Tohaa are strong I got many good games and they are really diverse thanks to their triads, being able to move a killer, a specialist and a makaul with one order is simply awesome. I am still pretty new to Infinity, started with Tohaa and my main problem are HIs and TAGs, everything else I am pretty confident against. Another counter in my opinion are huge maps, our main strenght are Heavy Flamers and different kinds of combi rifles, still we got Missile Launcher, Sniper and HMG on good units... Yeah Tohaa are strong but the problem is not really the symbiont armor its the triads in my opinion. In most situation the symbiont tank one hit because I use them the first time I got shot with decent dmg.
