I have a tournament next month with the folowing missions : Tic tac toe Looting and sabotaging Unmasking Supremacy Frostbyte I play a lot in tournament but : - it's always 3 missions so 5 mission list building is not something I'm used to - I"m unfamiliar with some of the mission So I would like some help/advice on what are the key points for my list (in vanilla). Some mission analysis : Tic tac toe : standard specialist mission. FD/Infiltration specialist are very good here. Some board control will help Looting and sabotaging : antimaterial with good CC is necessary. D-Charge could help but only as plan B or on good CC unit. Secondary unit with DA weapon could also be plan B. Plan A could be Bran or Uberfall, plan B could be taskmaster, tomcat engineer, prowler with D-Charge Unmasking : standard specialist mission with a need to good advance specialist plus a need for a mobile datatracker to kill the HVT. Exclusion zone make AD and bran very usefull Supremacy : standard fighting mission : kill and move up the board. Infiltrated/FD troops will help controling quadrant (FD intruder !). Good firepower is necessary Frostbyte : standard specialist mission with a need to good advance specialist plus board control to cover the heating unit and firepower to kill enemy troops. Antimateriel long range firepower could be a good solution to destroy opponent heating unit (intruder sniper ?). Tomcat engineer could help blow it up too. So now, list building : - Specialist are necessary here. I'm thinking at least 3 or 4 zero/moran/heckler in both list - Datatracker : one list needs a mobile and resilient datatracker. I'm thinking either taskmaster or kriza. Taskmaster bring more board control and could help taking quadrant in supremacy or do a last minute attack on the AC2 in looting and sabotaging. Kriza is good against fireteam and bring better long range firepower - exclusion zone : 1 AD troop or bran in each list. Tomcat is more unexpected to kill decoy in Unmasking but bran is good with AC2 So here I am. I will gladly take any advice on what unit seems good/necessary/must have...
Baggage is going to help you in Supremacy and in FROSTBYTE. You need an aggressive Data Tracker in Unmasking, but otherwise your DT pretty much just has to survive. If it were me, I'd take one list for Tic-Tac-Toe, Unmasking, Supremacy, and FROSTBYTE; and a second list for Looting & Sabotage. Infiltrating specialists are going to be very useful in all the missions other than Looting & Sabotage, and you'd do well to bring some pretty specific units to Looting & Sabotage. Yea, I'd bring a specialist-heavy list with a couple of Baggage bots, and a 'smash the AC' list that is otherwise tailored to be a backup list option to counter what would be a crappy matchup for your other list. That is, build part of the list to kill the enemy AC, and the rest of it to try and hard counter something you'd be really worried about taking your other list against, just in case. That way you can call an audible when you see your Opponent, his/her army, and the table.
Baggage won't help you at all in Frostbyte since the points of the killed troopers are counted, not the surviving points. Although baggage comes in quite handy in Supremacy (the EVO Salyut is my favourite for that). So far I'd build one list for Frostbyte and Looting & Sabotaging since both have similarities like in both you profit from a infiltrating Troop equipped with an anti-material CCW because the heaters and the AC2 can only be damaged by CC-Attacks. The other List would then be fitted to TTT and Unmasking with an array of specialists and the EVO Salyut (it helps with the antennas and can be used for spotlighting the Designated Target). IMO Supremacy doesn't need an extra list build.
Played all missions recently, so here my experiences: I used a Überfallkommando to kill both the enemy heaters in turn one and a Zero to activate one heater for my deployment zone as well. The enemy was under pressure after that. McMurrough can achieve that even more easily with his higher PH for speculative smoke and templar CC. Another good tactic is to kill the DT in the first turn. So HI Datatrackers like Riot Grrls in a fireteam are awesome. Again a good mission for a strong Haris/Core Fireteam advancing, as well as advancing in smoke/eclipse. You can rush the AC2 easily with McMurrough or the Überfallkommando (no need for specialists looting D-Charges) but you have to think about a strong defense against the same approach by your enemy: Mines, Koalas, defensive link.