About FRRM in N4

Ive found they've got legs in n4 so far though I admittedly havent played competition level for quite some time thanks to covid.
What I've found is that the toolbox of kit for gear checks is largely present, it's just that it's such a small roster that it forces a very narrow number of viable builds for some ITS missions.
MRRF have good access to msv, good minelayer ava and 6sense dtw from camo, access to smoke (m5 and 112 motorised), fast biker specialists, infiltrating specialists, ad specialists/gunners, linked viral for anti-bear and anti-dog warrior, 6sense hackers (linked alguacile and wardriver) and good engineer and dcharge access (and a tag to repair in theory) and a big splat of characters for veteran status for those annoying classifieds.
What it does devolve into though is knauf in every list, wolffy in every core as a pointman and max/near max ava chasseurs as the core of most lists for most missions. I think they work but they're fragile and don't have good answers to heavy hitters like avatars and jotums.

What I find is that missions that require d charges are superb for mrrf, we've got millions of d charge carriers. Destroying servers and ac2s is very doable with our host of infiltrating and AD d charge runners.
Grab and run missions like supplies are OK for mrrf as we've got some smoke, lots of camo, bike specialists and ad specialists.
What really unpicks us are the "go forward and hold this area" missions as we're fragile out of marker state and lack big guns and hacking projection for dealing with big nasties.
Missions where you have to clear or hold an objective room are likewise problematic as we only have two models that can reliably engage in CC and win

 

Bolded part particularly relevant, It's not just the missions but it's the overall metagame that's an issue for them too.

I think the vast majority of people are in agreement that there's a massive over saturation of DTWs that forces alot of elite 1 wounders out of the game. Any time MRRF find themselves in a situation where they need to push quickly they can be prone to falling apart very quickly. MRRF's options are badly limited in this regard, and @Urobros I'm sorry but that list is objectively awful because of it. You're all in on a few 1 wound guys, your pointman is a 1W BS12 no vis mod link that carries your LT.

You're playing with at best mid to low level threatening pieces with no durability. Your entire list archetype is built on quantity not quality in a metagame that doesn't allow for quantity to overwhelm quality anymore. Even then, you don't even represent quantity either. You have fewer orders than most "elite" lists who stack on the bonus orders through LTs and TacAw. You start the game with 14 orders total, an Avatar starts with that in one combat group.

Local USARF player had a very similar complaint about them in N4, they're one or two failed F2F rolls away from utter disaster at any given moment compared to factions that can build around more durable super soldier active pieces/fireteams.

Again I must point out Kosmo is MRRF but better. They take MRRF's tricks and then support them better with a wider arsenal to draw from. Metros are annoying, Rokots are fucking terrifying and warp how you have to play the game against them.

 

I loved Merovingians back in the day. They were my first foray into Ariadna and jaques Bruant had loads of fun gunning down my foes. These days I’m afraid that frrm suffers a lot from being an older army. They have units that are far less optimal than their counterparts in other Ariadna forces let alone in other armies. If you want to play them though, then do so! As long as you enjoy the game. There are some things that are still useful which is why I think they were added to Kosmoflot. They do seem to have an abundance of certain things as @csjarrat mentioned that can make them quite good for some missions, especially in smaller games.

I’m hoping against hope for them to be redone at some point, I did briefly consider redoing them using current ariadna minis but my desire to do so was replaced by a mountain of other stuff. There’s also the below point that @Triumph made:

This is unfortunately true and is likely why they won’t get redone anytime soon.

I wish you luck if you do play them! Let us know how the game goes and may the dice gods smile upon you!

 

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Would be more like something I'd look to run for a button pushing mission.
You've got a core team that covers a lot of classifieds and covers off several range bands and has a spread of ammunition types as well as a competent door-kicker. Chasseurs cover off some areas with mines, knauf does his thing, biker brings smoke and fast specialist. Paracommando and zuoave are decent secondary attack pieces.

 

Ap spitfires are OK, but really big game Hunters normally rock higher damage codes or da/exp ammo. Armour ten only goes down to arm five out of cover. Assuming you're shooting unopposed at a jotum, you'll get three hits, that might only result in one STR removed per order. Its not a terrible option but when you look at other options throughout ariadna, you've got linkable dam 16 ap HMGs doing the rounds, camo autocannons, camo ML etc that all punch harder.
Metros are OK but they lack dtws and that's really what makes that type of troop useful, they can draw a discover and then template afterwards but metros can't do that and the BS is very low which negates some of the point of the panzer. Again, not terrible, but not brilliant. For me, I'm hopeful that the new link rules are a big reset across the game and that will give us better flexibility. If we got a mimetic moblot that was NCO and linkable that would be a great start. A rem racer at ava 1 would help the hacking game a bit or a digger/beast hunter would be useful to fill some of that CC attack gap that the faction has. Briscard ML would be a fantastic gap filler and could be proxied with the existing hrl

 

Leaving the debate of whether or not that's true aside, as I said, Kosmo has this unit as well. Nothing you're arguing really addresses this core issue that MRRF has of just being an inferior Kosmoflot.

You're missing the point, fragile LT in a core link is undesirable because it places an anchor on the link in terms of how aggressive it can get. The more you push, the more you expose your fragile LT to danger. This is compounded by your choice of list featuring nothing but brittle 1W units that are prone to dieing any time the dice don't roll a perfect alignment to the odds. You are more likely to run into a situation where you need to leverage that core link earlier than other players because Bruant eats shit from a single bad roll.

This is slightly difficult for me to answer in a fashion that directly translates for you because I do mostly play 400 point games.

I can offer you this though, Direct Template Weapon spam is overly present in the wider metagame in general and is a common complaint for the current state of the game and MRRF as a faction is extremely vulnerable to it.

I did travel for a few hours recently to catch up with a group that plays outside of my local group and is still mostly playing 300 points and there was indeed an overabundance of DTWs, the worst offender being a Vanilla CA Avatar list. 9 of their models featured DTWs not including the Avatar, with the bulk being made up by 4 Taigha and 3 Witch Soldiers.

 

To answer the question on what I face, primarily haqq and sectorals and CA and its sectorals.
Frrm seems to have enough tools that I can hold my own until EI aspects start hitting the table, then it's a crapshoot of whether knauf can gun them down or whether duroc can shank it in CC. If the dice aren't favourable, I'm screwed.

When looking at mrrf vs kosmo, the unique stuff is knauf, loup garou and chasseurs.
Briscards aren't too dissimilar to frontoviks and they have less msv but gain mimetism which wins gunfights. Metros work similarly enough to rokots but rokots have dtw which is better for their role and swc free spec fire is nifty too.
If you can leverage enough out of knauf, loup and chasseurs, you've got a reason to run mrrf over kosmo mechanically (aside from models you own), and I can see some go arguments for them as a faction for certain missions. You just run into difficulty with the "big daddy" units out there in a meta skewed towards alpha and dtw

 

Yeah I think we're all on the same page mate, I love my frenchies (my first army for infinity). They're more playable than I thought they were going to be in n4 and have gained from the position they were in in n3 for sure. Main issue is that a lot of other factions have gained a lot more leaving mrrf feeling a bit old fashioned and lacking in tools. I'll still be running them out frequently and enjoying getting them on the table for sure.

 

The problem is not just because MRRF is inferior to Kosmo, but because Kosmo is a reskinned MRRF but better. People disregard MRRF because they ask themselves, "What's the point of playing MRRF? If I want to play the models that do what MRRF do, I can play MRRF by playing Kosmoflot and also get a better army at the same time."

Exact same complaint for White Banner. If a Yu Jing player wants to play the type of gameplay that White Banner favours, they can get most of the exact same units but support them better in Vanilla Yu Jing and make a list that plays pretty much the same but is much stronger overall. You get the same game play experience but better which invalidates White Banner the same way Kosmo invalidates MRRF.

It's not the same as say someone who might complain about hypothetically Military Orders vs NCA. It doesn't matter as much which one is better because you get a different game play experience from each. That's where it's less of a problem for two different sectorials to sit apart on a power curve.

MRRF and Kosmo though? Needs to be fixed so one isn't just a shitter version of the other.

In regards to the original topic in the other thread though, that's why myself and others who are playing at 400 points just disregard MRRF as an issue. Anybody still playing MRRF is a veteran who knows what they're getting themselves into with a poorly aged sectorial and are playing it purely for their love of the army, so whether or not it functions well at 400 points is a non issue for us because it doesn't function very well at 300 either. It sucks at 300, and it sucks at 400. Anybody that was concerned about being competitive is going to be playing Kosmo so there's nothing of value lost.

Meanwhile moving to 400 does actually fix other sectorials such as White Banner so overall it's a net gain for us.

It's really not. I played into Starmada that day as well and they had a tonne of DTWs as well. You know it's pretty much impossible to play Starmada and not spam DTWs?

Not including the generic crap like support REMs, Warcors, etc. Starmada has DTWs on the majority of profiles for 19 out of 23 units.

Hell I was playing Invincibles who literally don't even get warbands or Chain Rifles and I still had DTWs on more than a third of my two combat groups.

CB have sprinkled DTWs with extreme liberty across units. There's alot of stuff that has randomly picked up Nanopulsers and Chain Colts or carry a variety of shotgun options.

It's not being able to deploy templates, it's being fragile low ARM 1W models that have to attack into waaaay too many DTWs. An opponent has far too much opportunity to just tuck into a defensive location and say "Ok, I don't really give a shit come and get me," and you're forced to walk into him and just start trading wounds when they template you, and when they're either cheaper than you or tougher and more expensive than you this trading wounds business sucks ass for you.

Basically DTW spam leaves MRRF in a situation where they are often forced into participating in trades that give them terrible odds of success. They fight something expensive that doesn't give a crap and sets them on fire with a DTW and often doesn't die (Bruant trying to dig out a base ARM4 HI has 65% of doing 1 or no wounds even while uncontested), or they fight cheap Warbands who are never a good trade.

The counter for this situation has a name, and it's Duroc. However this takes us back to MRRF is pointless when the metagame demands a Duroc to be effective. Just play Kosmo which supports Duroc (and his overly touchy Bear friends) better.

There's a wide variety, pretty much everything largely due to the majority of people playing multiple parent factions. Naturally playing at 400 points means generally there's less warband spam as people are taking more expensive models, since we switched to 400 things like Libertos have become way less prevalent and we don't have much of an issue with Diggers either, when I make space for a couple of warbands it tends to get filled by ones that bring smoke.

I think the only thing that is probably out of the ordinary to the local area is that it is very hacking heavy. Everyone that can hacks, even when we were playing at 300 hackers and guided weapons were omnipresent. As a result only the top tier TAGs tend to get played.

 

So with new fireteam updates. I feel like they completely gutted MRRF. Being able to mix moblots with everything was gold imho. But with the new fireteam rules and moblots not being able to mix with anything unless suffering the negative that it wont be a "pure" fire team, is less than desirable. I hope that this is an indication the MRRF will get revamped soon but time will tell.

 

Yeah we've been rolled back to n2 without all of the benefits of the old attacking from combat camo etc. I think mrrf can safely be shelved now. The only things that could shoot for shit were margot, knauf and linked moblots. Unless you want to take a pure moblot team which are hugely overpriced, you're capping out at hitting on 14/15s or relying on knaufs mimetism and burst mod or margot shooting someone from behind

 

Best I can tell, the OOP Sectorials from PanO got the same treatment. Hopefully it's just a symptom of being OOP and CB actually bother fixing that, because between MRRF having completely inadequate shooting and NCA having completely inadequate scoring that's a poor record of support for ailing gactions.

 

I really don't think it's that bad. I'm excited to try linking a team of infiltrating moblots, that's a pretty nice change. Plus, everyone is suffering the same BS reduction to link teams that are mixed. That's not to say FRRM doesn't have problems that need to be addressed, but this doesn't appear to have done any more damage then being shelved for now has already done.

 

Unfortunately models with the infiltration skill cannot form fireteams.

 

My whole group missed that infiltration wasn't changed. Need to read more closely next time. I still don't think this change has killed FRRM though, at least not the way I play. I don't do a lot of moblot mixing, when I did, it was sticking the HMG with a briscard link, thus I would only lose one BS. Moblots are still a strong profile and para-commandos are really good and then there's mirage 5. They are far from being a strong faction, but I do think they can still do work, albeit with greater difficulty than others face.

 

FRRM had quite a few quality of life changes and some profile improvements going into N4 which made them much better and more fun to play. They did suffer a big nerf by no longer having broken Chasseurs, but that was a change that needed to happen.

It's definitely an uphill battle, but FRRM does have some neat tricks that aren't very common:

• So many profiles with deployment abilities that you should always be very movement efficient. I rarely need to move-move more than once to do a productive action.
• Lots of camo speedbumps to protect your deployment zone. Chasseurs + camo metros can really slow an opponent down and use up their mental energy. If you deploy second you might even get a decent fireteam pin with a few well placed metros.
• A great option to trade against deadly long range ARO models with Knauf + 3 metros w/ Panzerfaust. Knauf is good in the face to face and the metros have a decent chance hitting at least once for the kill. Knauf is generally good, and the metros are basically cheerleaders at 12 points, and together they give you a good option to trade with any ARO your opponent leaves out
• A core linked x-visored grenade launcher. This is a rare tool but is very useful. If you have to go first and your opponent is really dug in, sometimes it's better to fish for lieutenant kills or other high value targets (such as a puppetmaster). Getting to keep your link safe and not having to spend orders to get line of fire can make spec fire surprisingly efficient if you compare it to running over to the other side of the board.
• A burst 4 weapon deployed in the midfield. The Zouaves HMG is ok if you can protect it with Chasseurs, but Jacques is excellent and is also a specialist.

Before the recent update FRRM also had one of the safest lieutenants with Jacques in camo. I think this was a huge loss, and frankly I would have preferred to have Jacques not be a wildcard over losing a camo lieutenant. I guess it'll make me take the infiltrating version more, but it was a very good option to have.

FRRM definitely struggles in certain scenarios and could definitely use more improvements, but for a OOP faction I think they perform fine. Don't expect to super competitive, but you can have some good fun with them.