2nd place on 12, my 1st tournament *ever* with this Squalo, 17 orders list

Cool list, what where you opponents playings in the 3 rounds? Does your meta have more open tables or lots of scatter? Lucky when ever one of my tags get possessed it jumps off a building to its death, lol.

 

Four things I'm curious about

1. What do your tables look like. Got any pictures?
2. Have you played into anybody who uses infowar to bypass your main ARO with the Kamau?
3. Have you played into anybody who shells you back? Say StarCo or Druze.
4. Have you played into anybody who bypasses your main ARO presence with Impersonators (or goes aggressive with Infiltration+)? What do you do when your TAG gets one shot by a Speculo?

 

Nice I have played against the Kamau Sniper a few times now it is really good as long as you keep the 5 man, as soon as the link goes below it becomes much easier to deal with. Beware a Dakini HMG in a full link with support wear as it is 5 dice on 14 vs 2 on 16 the best model in the game to take on the Kamau I believe.

I would be interesed to see how your list plays into Camo spam?

 

TL:DR Congratulations and well done. But you might interpreting a little too much into it.

Not to rain on your parade, but neither the list, nor just 3 Rounds, nor 2nd place out of 12 is very conclusive.

The list has glaring issues, there is nothing able to do any sort of lifting apart from the Squalo and Kamau Sniper. In ARO it is a swamp for your opponent's Orders, but with 9 Helot Tokens I have trouble seeing how you'd fit that into a DZ without exposing your Order Pool to proper counter attack.

The Kamau never dying is more or less luck. AROs are always risky and in his Active Turn it's on your opponent to do something troublesome or walk his pieces into the meat grinder.

10-0 wins teach you nothing other than that your opponent rolled over and died against your dice for some reason.

For reference I don't play many tournaments, but even I have won a 40 player, 5 games event against some of the the best people available in my national meta. That doesn't mean I'm great at the game, quite convinced the win is thanks to Vanilla Aleph being borderline OP and a generous amount of crits over the course of those 5 games. For the record I'm 16-3-1 with the Faction.

So yeah, give it your all and keep up the good work. Keep playing the list, you might notice it will be a bit inconsistent with a larger sample size and figure out your own adjustments. Alternatively you could look for mor challenging opponents to strain your skills and your list some more and see where it takes you.

 

I do think you have hit on one of the main advantages of playing Varuna is that it is faction that can be build very defensively putting out some of the great and cost effective AROs, in a game where the active player seems to be getting more advantages as releases continue imo. you have a lot of great tools in the lost keep playing and let me know how you change the list over time.

 

So what do you do if your opponent can ignore your Kamau at will and just kills your otherwise quite weak ARO pieces?

 

The list is running 7 ARO pieces, none of them particular weak. I think the list is weak on mid field specialist and is a bit all in on the tag as an Attack piece, but the answer to your question is he plays the game with what he has left.

 

Yeah they're pretty weak dude. Helots are gonna chew a couple of orders protecting particular firelanes while you pick them off, but say a Hac Tao or Avatar or something nasty decides its gonna come down that lane the Helots are shooting back between -6 and -12. They're not really gonna stop shit.

And that's the problem. His list doesn't have a whole lot left when you take the Kamau and Squalo out of the equation, and some enemies are very capable of minimising or preventing the impact from either of those models.

We don't have WBs, we don't have skirmishers with Camo mods, you don't have any remotes that can be pressed into combat service. You've got a bunch of Neurocinetic models that can't fight worth a damn in the active turn or from a distance over 16", and a whole heap of flash pulses which again don't do a whole lot outside of annoy people and waste orders. If the opponent turns up with an answer to the list, which exist, it's done. There's no plan B, no other models that can be pressed on to leverage or play around the opponent.

 

@Teslarod - Goddamn that blanket is wet man XD

I agree with him but in much drier language. Yeah the list really seems to lean on those 2 units. Once they go down its mostly chaff left. I think in my squalo lists I usually have at least 2 other models to pick up weight once its dead.

Just as a thought experiment, assuming you're going second and its a fairly standard table by tournament/national/international meta standards, how would you deal with your standard Druze list? They can spec-fire e/m 24". Their X-visors and FT's will help outrage and outgun your helots which will help them get close enough to spec fire your Squalos and kamau.

Also, I've been on the receiving end of a SP rambo charge led by Phoenix and 3 minions one of whom carried eclipse grenades rendering my Asura Spitfire useless, ultimately ending with her being hammered into a fine paste. You'll have that same issue with this list. Only my list had backups for when she died via Dakini HMG and proxies - which let me do a lot of damage in return but ultimately I still lost that game.

I encourage you to also try that list with non-killing ITS missions to see how well it holds up.

 

It could be 3 Camo token too.

 

@Shoitaan there will allways be bad matchups. And have you seen Druze in one of your last tournaments?
And yes, there is a problem if you lose this two units and yes, you can optimize the list further. But the Kamau link is really nasty for most other lists atm.

 

You should be able to continue a game after you TAG gets killed. I've lost 3 wounds on an Iguana to one unlinked Fusilier combi burst. Actually one of my favorite things about TAGs is that after all the effort it takes to kill one you're only down that one order giving you a lot of stamina for the counter attack. Between TO, AD, or Camo all hiding safely ready to go Varuna has a lot of options to keep your momentum up.

My first game my Kamau HMG died on his own order, first f2f of the game, against 11 BS. I'm glad yours are doing better. I think mine was a transfer from JSA.

My advice is to always keep blindly doing whatever is working until it is not.

 

My biggest point of focus would be picking up one more Regular Order in Group 2 and then swapping in the Fugazi and Pathfinder, so you can do your Sniffer/Sensor sweeping while still leaving 10 orders in Group 1 for HGL action.

I have run something similar in NCA, just without the nastiness of the Kamau in ARO (but defensively strong in its own way too). This can be very effective in the right meta (especially one where order spam is getting out of hand).

I'd try VERY hard to get a Bulleteer in there, just so you have another offensive option if your TAG does go down.

 

Sure and I accept this. But my point was that in the list overall, there isn't enough to complete objectives one the two stars go down. This is a great kill focussed list while the squalo is upright. With it down the link needs to do a bit too much work leaning hard on the kamau. While I agree it's a horrendous piece of work, I'm just concerned about the hopes of the army being pinned on a 1w model.

 

Unless you are running an LI list it is hard to build a list with a tag not doing most of the hey lifting. Also Pan-o Has always been weak side reguarding specialists.