Over the last 5 or so games I've played, wether win or lose, I've come to think a bit differently about QK and the game in general. Here's my experiences : - With the culture of tons of terrain, deploying and maneuvering fireteams is really clunky. - The fireteam leader bonuses don't feel worth the points of an expensive fireteam unless the team also has strong ARO's for every model. - The best sort of fireteam is composed of models you would want to take anyway. - A fireteam has more utility of it's bonuses on the reactive turn than the offensive. - For your big guns, differences between BS aren't as important as the ability to ignore camo modifiers and shoot through smoke. - Every time the AD troops get the most stuff done by the virtue of attacking from out of vision, while other things eat a crit to the face leaving me with crippled offense. - Smoke is incredibly obnoxious. Combined with piles of terrain it makes un-visored aro pieces feel useless. - Long range weapons you can't deploy very high aren't worth their cost. If you don't have infiltration or something, a sniper rifle never beats a shock marksman rifle. - Super-mobile melee threats can ruin your game fast. I feel Odalisques have more value than I've previously thought. - You still tend to mostly win if you can kill enough stuff, and less missions seem to require specialists. Rather the Data Tracker is important, for which I've always had terrible choices for. Hence, I have a fireteam of order-generating, ARO'ing Ghulam where I hide my Liutenant (I want the doctor to have a Nasmat, I often would really like to heal up one of the AD guys). The drive of the offensive is based on the excellent AD troops, a solo Djan HMG, and Odalisques. Another Djan with a sniper will hopefully be able to deploy in a decent sniping place with the new MI rule, but if that never seems to be the case I'll replace him with a shock marksman model. I play against PanO/MO, all CA variants, USAriadna, Nomads and Imperial Service. Mostly I'm itching to beat Ariadna and Onyx Contact Force (same player) which I've never done. Edit : updated list. Galaxy Brain QK 2 ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 8 2 GHULAM Missile Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 17) GHULAM Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 16) GHULAM Doctor Plus (MediKit) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16) GHULAM Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12) BASHI BAZOUK Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15) BASHI BAZOUK Submachine Gun, Chain-colt / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 12) HAWWA' (Forward Observer) Boarding Shotgun, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 21) DJANBAZAN Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 31) DJANBAZAN HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 35) GHULAM (Forward Observer) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 13) GROUP 2 5 2 2 YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW. (0 | 8) ODALISQUE (Fireteam: Haris) Rifle + Light Shotgun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 25) ODALISQUE Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 30) HAFZA (Forward Observer) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 17) YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW. (0 | 8) ALGUACIL (Forward Observer, Deployable Repeater) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12) ALGUACIL (Forward Observer, Deployable Repeater) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12) 5.5 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army Alternatively, copying the idea of sniffers from theGricks' thread, a list with a couple, an Azra'il because AP HMG's are cool and sadly having to ditch the expensive Odalisques. Having one unit protected from melee probably isn't going to help all that much, anyway. Copy Brain QK ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 9 1 GHULAM Missile Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 17) GHULAM Hacker (Hacking Device) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 20) GHULAM Doctor Plus (MediKit) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16) GHULAM Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12) GHULAM Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 16) DJANBAZAN Shock Marksman Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 29) AZRA'IL AP HMG / Pistol, Knife. (2 | 41) BASHI BAZOUK Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15) HAWWA' (Forward Observer) Boarding Shotgun, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 21) RAFIQ REMOTE Rifle + Light Shotgun, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16) GROUP 2 4 3 3 HAFZA (Forward Observer) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 17) SEKBAN (Fireteam: Haris) AP Rifle, Chain-colt / Pistol, Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 22) SEKBAN Heavy Rocket Launcher, Chain-colt / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 23) FANOUS REMOTE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 9) YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 9) YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 9) 6 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army
I highly recommend Al'Hawwa. This list looks killy, but your going to spend a lot of time getting to mid field to do objectives. I also dont really see the need to hide your LT. You can drop the Hafza and the Ghulam FO and take a ghulam LT. Also, with a normal Ghulam Hacker, there is not a lot of point. You have no bots that benefit from buffing so I think it owuld be best to change him to Liela. It is the same points, drops a half swc and gives options against other Khd's.
Who is the Nasmat linked to? The Ghulam Doc seems the only candidate, but she can't have a Nasmat and be in the Fireteam. It is either-or.
I almost included a Hawwa initially, but ran short of points. Dropping the Hafza didn't occur to me, good idea. That'll eat the nasmat and one YY has to downgrade to AP CCW, but it seems worth it. I like to have a normal hacker because he has the most opportunities to do something. So many times I have had Leila and went "Boy, it sure would have been nice to have U-Turn/Hack Transport Aircraft/Spotlight/anything against HI/TAG/Remotes". Or the Spotlight HVT special objective. ...Actually I think I'll replace the hacker with another forward observer and the drones with Alguacil forward observers. One thing I remember being annoyed by is that these order drones can't shoot anybody. And I really like flash pulses and being able to put Targeted state on things. The doc was not in the fireteam but rather the Hafza lieutenant was. He's gone now, though, and the doc is in the team.
Personally I'd play it like this: Galaxy Brain QK ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 9 1 HAFZA Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16) GHULAM Missile Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 17) GHULAM Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12) GHULAM (Forward Observer) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 13) GHULAM Doctor Plus (MediKit) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16) LEILA SHARIF Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Shock Marksman Rifle, D-Charges / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 20) DJANBAZAN HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 35) BASHI BAZOUK Submachine Gun, Chain-colt / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 12) AZRA'IL Feuerbach / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 39) RAFIQ REMOTE Rifle + Light Shotgun, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16) GROUP 2 4 3 2 FANOUS REMOTE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) FANOUS REMOTE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 8) YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 8) HAWWA' Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Boarding Shotgun, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 26) DJANBAZAN Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 31) BASHI BAZOUK Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15) 5.5 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army There's more annoying ARO pieces, while having access to a flexible link. The Hafza can join the link if/when the ML Ghulam dies on ARO duty, in order to retain the 5 man link
The AP HMG can go on Suppressive though, and is stronger on the active turn. There's even points for it and the other bashi can be dropped to 12 points with a SMG. How many pure ARO pieces are necessary?
As many as you like, it depends on your playstyle. :) I personally prefer the Azra'il Feurbach because an ARM 8 dude with 2 wounds tends to waste a lot of time from people and what ever loses the FtF roll against his EXP ARO usually ends up dead. The second reason is between the core link, the Bashi Bazouk and the Djanbazan HMG, there isn't a lot of orders to go around so relocating a big dude with only 4-2 MOV tends to eat up way too many orders. This is the reason why I prefer to just plonk him in the back line and annoy everything.
I’m personally a big fan of the djan sniper and az with fuerbach for board control purposes. If you want to be a real jerk, put a doctor prone on with the az on a roof with cover, but if you can just get a lip tall enough to cover LOS to the az’s base if she gets dropped. The just crawl the doc over and pop the az back up to start again. It’s 16 points that doesn’t come into play on the board really, but if you get that az back up just once you have pretty much justified the point sink. For real evil, if you are willing to sink the points, use a jannisary doc. I have ruined opponents games forcing them to dump massive amounts of orders into killing one tough model over and over, while I just use one order to undo that work every time.
Forgot to mention to give whatever doc you have a nasmat, that way they can still have an impact beyond their one patient.