Good Morning, What @QueensGambit wrote above talking about him finding less ARO pieces it is something I observed a lot in my "local meta" since N4 came, and the situation hasn't changed too much, still, I crossed sometimes with rivals who uses heavy ARO presence, so I usually need something to do the job if required, I can say "nobody plays without active ARO pieces" but it is regular to find only "warcors + flash pulse rems" as the only ones left there. While maybe it is soon to have a whole picture of how the fireteams changes had truly affected the game, we have indeed now the experience of, at least, a few matches or even some tournaments. What I found after the changes is that the "solo specialized ARO pieces" I saw before the changes are now more frequents: LeMuet,Luna,Atalanta TR... while the "fireteams ARO" have less battlefield presence. While we need (apparently) less shooters to deal with ARO pieces, I feel like I still need to have them because are the way to have my enemies with her "heads" down. For example, if I deploy an Azrail I usually see how the other player keeps his heavy troups well hidden, so I can do more things with my "skirmishers", same happens if I put a Djambazan in table and I face SSA, of course if I'm the active player. If I'm the reactive the same situation occurs but in the manner of my rival triying to avoid the firefight against that pieces, or at least triying to catch extreme ranges in order to minimized the chances to be hit. This is why we still need some heavy shooters. Too because what @HeadChime said about the tables. About the "beast hunter", another profile for "everyone" which almost "everyone" has to align if can. Capable of a lot of harm with little loss if not achieve the goal... We can said almost a "win win profile".
This is interesting, and prompts some more numbers. Against Armand's MSV1 profile: Knauf is 49% to wound, 28% to get wounded. Azra'il is 38% to wound, 24% to get wounded. Shakush is 40% to wound, 19% to get wounded. So Knauf isn't an option (except as a hail mary). Azra'il and Shakush are both viable but will cost a bunch of orders and maybe some wounds. Of the two, I much prefer the Shakush here because it has an extra wound to spare. Against Atalanta: Knauf is 27% to wound, 54% to get wounded Shakush is 32% to wound, 31% to get wounded So even the Shakush is a tough fight here. Against these two AROs, we have to kill them with a skirmisher, play around them (not easy since they see through smoke), or bring a Shakush and spend a whole lot of orders. @Urobros , what's been your experience facing them? Send in a Beasthunter? :-)
To be honest against both of them there's the solution of using Fidays, similar guys in CC or direct templates . Ghazi / Zuleyka / Kum / Beasthunter... I remember killing Armand with Ghazi (after he lost symbiont in firefight against Djanbazan). I had one game against Atalanta in which my Nahab Red Fury shot her full burst in back and she survived. Killed big part of my army and finally a sneaky Farzan finished her. Playing against (and using) tough AROs is interesting - an IMO it's one of the best things in Infinity, as it shows one of the most important advantages of the game. PozdRawiam / Greetings
A little what @KedzioR_vo said I did some use of daylamis panzerfaust + coordinated order in this cases, but sometimes the daylamis are dead before they have the chance to do it, or even they have other interester targets, so, then I go for other options like some skirmish (farzan, fiday) which can get to template distance or, at least, geting into the "0 range" for the heavy ARO piece, then play to "shoot", surpresive shot plus no range bonus for them usually do the trick. But sometimes I only do use of brute force in hmg Azrail form, hmg djambazan or hmg zhayedan, burst usually manages to do the trick. I use to play djambazan if I have the feeling I will face mimetism -6 and smoke, if not, I do use of the zhayedan hmg. (this guy for example, against Atalanta RT, 2 shoots to 18s against 4 to 15s aren't bad odds). The Namur (before the changes) was a really good "roof hunter", because weaponed with spitfire + climbing plus have a good chance to climb to a building higher than the ones where Atalanta or Lemuet could be, an then shoot at them without covert. Probably it will be an order expensive approach, but if we keeped other pices, like the daylamis as ARO, probably the rival will have too a bad and expensive turn. We have a tendency while talking about "long shooters" to forget things with disposable long range weapons, but we have other options here in addition to the daylamis: a lot of profiles have panzerfaust.
I forgot about a funny thing! In that game against Atalanta, which I mentioned, I made a nice ARO set up for her - she was prone on the roof and I positioned Daylami Panzerfaust, Knauf, Shihab and Warcor to cover that spot. And when she got up it turned out, that it was a day of great BS and ARM rolls for her. She engaged in firefights against Knauf and Shihab, won both and put them down, took normal rolls from warcor and Daylami. Daylami hit the target, but she survived all 3 ARM rolls. Then she proceed to kill off everything that she saw. Nice game it was ;) Good I had a Farzanl, that could sneak up on her... PozdRawiam / Greetings
My meta is littered with bears and GMLs, so I rarely bring models that are more than 40pts because they will just get killed in my opponents first turn. With that, I heavily rely on fidays, camo-ed infiltrators, and mukhtar MSV2 redfurry to kill most of the AROs I see. I have once been pinned down by atalanta, but otherwise have been able to maneuver the board with those pieces (I also bring 3 smoke throwers typically, which helps). I guess my point is, I think the mukhtar and asawira probably the only real gun fighters I typically need.
Any new updates on this thread? The Bokhtar and forward deploying Sunduqbut seem to add new options. What about a linked Lasiq Marksman?
Good question. I started this thread soon after switching to Vanilla, to help think through my options. Having recently switched back to HB, it would be timely to look at the HB options. I think I'll start a new thread for that, after I've taken some time to run some HB-specific numbers. In the meantime, here are some final thoughts on Vanilla. My goal here was really to think through the options for a long-range secondary gun. I would already have a main gunner in group 1 - at the time, either an Asawira Spitfire or a Mukhtar Red Fury - who would potentially be spending a lot of orders moving around the midfield shooting things. My goal was to have a longer-range gun in group 2 that could remove some far-away targets for a minimum of orders (since a big chunk of group 2 would be irregulars) without having to advance. On that basis, I won't include the Bokhtar in the comparison since it's a unit that wants to move up (or start already up) and eat a whole order pool when it gets going. The Sunduqbut is interesting, though. Put it in group 2, forward deployed. Maybe spend one order moving it into position leveraging camo, and you can shoot at some targets with just a few orders. And save an order to throw it into suppression afterwards. It would be interesting to see how its numbers compare to Knauf or the Shakush shooting at the same target from the DZ. I don't have time to run the numbers right now, but I'd encourage others to and post them here. Over the course of a year of basically putting either Knauf or the Shakush in every list, I felt more and more that neither of them is primarily there to take out dedicated ARO pieces. They can both do it - and the Shakush does it better IMO due to its resilience - but neither is great at it. This thread is also very interesting: Haqqislam Competitive List Analysis [One Year of Online Events] | Corvus Belli Community Forum - it suggests that some of the strongest Haqq players are doing without a long-range gun. Conversations in some other threads here suggested that none of us is really seeing a lot of really strong ARO pieces anyway - and that was before the Raveneye update. Probably we'll see even fewer now. So I'm not sure that the numbers on how these pieces perform against top AROs are as important as they might have been a year ago. That said, I do still like to have a long-range gun in group 2. What they're best at is forcing the opponent to keep his head down. Anything other than a dedicated ARO that's left exposed, or that advances too aggressively, is going to get removed at a very low order cost. In that role, Knauf is still an excellent option, and is very cheap for what he does. When I can afford the points, though, I'm partial to the Shakush because it can also be an ARO piece, is hard to kill, soaks up a lot of opposing orders, has Tac Awareness, and the pilot can push buttons. It doesn't shoot as well as Knauf, but it's still plenty against most targets. Another interesting option, which I plan to experiment with more, is the humble Shihab. I hypothesize that even a BS11 HMG is enough to keep the opponent hiding, and if I go second, it's a great ARO (used cautiously). It's also very cheap - makes even Knauf look expensive.
Just started Haqq recently and had exactly this conundrum. No Knauf feels risky. But he rarely ever does anything. I've been feeling like no gun is the way to do it but that I'm just too crap with the faction to pull it off!
