BS 16 on Pano TAGS?

Idk... TAGs are still pretty awesome as they are now.

The main benefit of TAGs (especially our Remote Presence ones) is durability. 3 structure, and two levels of unconsciousness is unmatched by any other model in the game.

They take a bit of care with positioning due to hackers, but that's the same problem you'd have with one of our Heavy Infantry units.

I use TAGs all the time, and I never really feel like I'm wasting the points.

All that being said, I think a TAG boost has already been done through Fatality. It's great for fluff and in-game reasons!

 

The BS isn't what's wrong with the TAG.
A link with Vet Kazak AP HMG + 4 goons will not only bring nearly the same amount of a standard MBT, equipped with a Multi HMG, but is cheaper, un-hackable, easier to hide, suffer no penalty to dodge AND brings 5 orders compared to the TAG who brings 1. The TAG will also by default need a disturbing amount of support, in the form of a Engineer and one/multiple Hackers. TAG's have way too much ARM in a game where ARM means almost nothing, which also grotesquely inflates their cost.

 

I agree with Zewrath. The "problem" for TAGs is that they pay way too much for their high arm and BTS. With that said a TAG properly supported is a force not to be ignored. Great firepower coupled with resiliance can go along way. The trick is in recognizing when to pull the TAG back as to not leave it open to attacks like hacking and melee.

 

TAGs should be getting Tactical Sense. PanO TAGs should anyway, basically G: Rem Presence TAGs should come with it, represent superior control interface.

 

Well durability, and that they are really efficient with the orders they spend. 6-4 move gets you where you need to go quickly, plus being large so they can step over most cover and get angles on things to kill faster. Also they have scary guns, multi hmg rounds on damage 16 make things dissapear quickly, so when you actually have to shoot at something it dies in minimal orders.

So to just say 5 man link of spods vs 1 tag, 5 man spods are better efficiency because you get 5 orders. However every 5 move-moves with a 4-4 link is the same as 4 move-moves with a TAG, plus the individual movements per order means you end up with fewer wasted moves where you end up just shy of where you need to be to shoot. Also as I said before, not having to walk round walls also helps you out here whereas link teams have to manouvre the rat maze the hardway.

Plus your investment of move-moving your HMG in a 5 man link across the table to be put down by a single crit or hidden deployed trooper doesn't happen with a TAG. They can't be easily chumped by a TO threat, except maybe a swiss missile launcher.. A TO sniper can sacrifice themselves to shoot the Doctor out of a link and then suddenly your link doesn't look so hot.

Plus links get slowed down by mines and direct templates in a way that tags can laugh at.

Also, if the OP wants a BS15+ TAG, they should just play with the Cutter/Ulhans/Tikbalang whose visual mods and surprise shot tip the mod stacking so far ahead of what a +1BS will ever do.

Not that i'm trying to say that TAGs are better than 5 man links objectively, or that 5 man links are better than TAGs because they both have different strengths and vulnerabilities.

The main thing to play around with TAGs is that they usually come in lists with fewer orders, and as such they are less forgiving. You can't spend an order doing something that doesn't directly contribute to winning in a way that a 20 order list can, because you just can't waste those resources. As I relearned the hard way last saturday at the northern open in Leeds.

 

Link teams are differently vulnerable. A single Chain Rifle or Mine can wreck a link, a TAG literally walks through it.

 

A 5 man link is also stiffled by it's own members and space for them on the table and is generally slowed more by terrain, even the difference between an S6 and S7 when it come to vaulting objects etc is noticable. A five man team is better defensively (prone, burst mods, 6th sense, deployment in depth) but I always find a TAG to be a better directly offensive piece especially with fatality and a bonus specialist and for defense they can enter suppression which a team can't.

 

It's also worth noting that the way stats are costed in Infinity means the move from BS15 to BS16 would not come cheap.

 

+1 BS won't solve much, because visual mods come in batches of 3, which worth a lot more for less points. The point system is a bit messed up.

 

The most unintuitive thing about this is to a new player camoflage should make you harder to hit and it kind of does, but the way it maths out in practice it makes you shoot more reliably.

 

Imo Ariadna's all camo everywhere should be just Limited camo without mimetism.

For a high tech TO camo it makes sense, that you are hard to hit in the middle of a fight, but it doesn't make much sense because you bring your own bush with you. It's fine for ambushes, but after that it's gone.

 

Have you played recently with a TAG against a TAK ?

 

It's still unmatched, but can go down to a single AP HMG burst of a linked Vet Kazak (been there, done that).

I never understood what's the rage with the 2 unconscious states.

 

Friend showed me his TAK list for deadly dance. 5 units which could really quite easily kill a marker-less TAG (and be quite reliable in killing a marker one). This is seriously scary ;/

 

I'm not sure about the overpriced armor. Having often a stong opponent with a pano TAG based list, a TAG in cover is quite hard to bring down, no matter the weapon you use. I have faced all the Pano TAG range and they are the reason I always bring some E/M in my list

Jotum goes ARM 13 agains standard weapon and 8 against AP. With that, even HMG AP got an hard time bring it down (and that's supposing you left your TAG without some protection°

The use of 2 level of unconsciousness ? It mean one more wound necessary to kill it and make it unrepairable. When you've got 10+ ARM in cover, that can easyly cost you one or 2 orders.

While I agree that TAK is likely the most anti-TAG army in a shooting match right now (my nomads prefer morlock and e/marat heckler), even a Vet Kazak in cover and with FT support won't like what happen if he move to shoot a TAG and end up facing the TAG and a ML swiss guard that outrange him (or a sniper).

 

That's the problem, there's enough tools so that "shooting TAG in cover" is almost never used bar the act of desparation (or if you play PanO yourself).

 

Wildcarding Vet Kazak was a bad design decision imo.

ARM6 and above is where armor starts to do something.

Fun fact: while Jotum in cover ignores rifle fire, even HMG has a really hard time damaging it. It has 90% to make the ARM roll against DAM15.

For TAG hunting usually AP or template (which is AP+) helps a lot. A Borading shotgun Strelok is 20 pts, while fragile as hell, it definitely can hurt a TAG.

I think on the active turn a 5man linked AP HMG Vet Kazak can deal with anything (except for dice). BS16 B5 AP HMG brings everything down. Reliably wins the firefight, and has enough dice to chew through any armor (Jotum's ARM(10/2+3) still has 35% chance to fail. And if it makes the ARM rolls, you can safely throw more orders at it until it goes down, because BS16, B5 just trumps everything.

That definitely can ruin anyone's day, though that's a shitton of points (172 for Jotum + Swiss) and at least 4 SWC. It's a bit of a one trick pony, though TAK has issues with handling visual mods at range.

It can still split a lot of burst though and TAK can have redundancy here, 3 AP HMGs can fit in a list, and even the AP rifle vet kazaks can be dangerous, especially in a link.

 

2 levels of Unconsciousness is best in the active turn, especially when your TAG's taken initial damage and is running low on Structure Points. It means you can still tackle a dangerous threat, knowing that even if your TAG suffers damage, it will remain in a repairable state. An Unconscious PanO TAG is probably going to get back in the fight.

TAGs with Pilots are much less resilient. Losing all their Structure is a much more disastrous event than for a Remote Presence TAG.

 

Whether you leave your TAG out for ARO or try hiding it depends on what your facing. A link team AP HMG Kazak, I'd probably hide the TAG and try to break the link in the active turn. Of course, TO snipers can be useful here for the surprise ARO.