So, I have always had a bit of trouble in some button pushin missions. Especially ones where there is plenty of button pushing (cough, tic-tac-toe) Part of it is, I admit, bloodlust from myself. But also a big part of it is that anything ALEPH has that starts midfield is.... expensive. The mk2 is the exception, but she is the only one there. Nagas are expensive - almost as much as a TO camo from other factions, while Dayus are on the upper end of THAT scale. So I am usually facing the problem of having specialists that need to move up field - with our traditional not very order happy faction, or having specialists that are fairly expensive for button pushing, even though they are the better specialist fighters out there. Suggestions? Strategies? Ideas for lists? How do you guys handle that kind of thing?
Errr... While Nagas and Dasyus are both expensive, they match that price with excellent stats (aldo I do wish for some better loadouts). Following that, you have 6-4 Dakinis with Mimetism to do the running, and everything else is quite resilient as well. So, button pushing is not as big a problem for me.
Ekdromos hackers and Thrasymides are solid midfield options. 'Mides also carries a fantastic gun letting him clear people off buttons before he presses them, if you go second he does need support from something like a Naga Minelayer due to his lack of a marker state (like you need any more excuses to take a Naga Minelayer!) As mentioned above the Dakini Paramedic is a solid, fast specialist at a bargain price, it's no slouch in a shootout either due to mimetism and the potential of Marksmanship 2.
In addition to Dakini Paramedics you can try fielding Thoras (FO/Paramedic): they are relatively cheap and make excellent DZ guardians, but if you can stack four guys in one group, you can move all four of them upfields with a coordinated move. I hope that helps.
Mk5 is also good at this as well. Myrm officer CoC is great as well when ur main LT died so you do last minute rambo run with a specialist LT.
Any meager cost disadvantage you might have in paying for Nagas or even Dasyu is basically completely refunded by Posthumans and Netrods. Vanilla ALEPH is a god of objective-heavy ITS play. You just need to make sure you also buy those Netrods, 8 point bots, Dakini, etc. and balance them with your more elite troops so that you have well structured Combat Groups. Most of the Vanilla ALEPH lists I see are 16+ Orders all with superior troops. If you start every list with Achilles, and the cheapest unit you buy is a Myrmidon, then yeah, you're going to run into point problems.
For one, it's more than a meager cost disadvantage. In fact, most of the good skills we are paying for have widely available hard counters (like Shock against Dogged/NWI). And while our stats are good, they do not make for a super efficient unit. And yeah, vanilla Aleph is good in objective-heavy ITS, but hardly god. I wouldn't even put us in top tier since vanilla Ariadna and Nomads are so far above us it's hilarious. And many other factions are close to our abilities. Who plays 16+ Orders with Aleph? Do they take anything more expensive than a Dakini I mean, yeah, we get our 5 cheap orders via Netrods and 8 point Flash pulsers but try playing that and see just how naked you feel, with nothing decent defending your flanks and deployment zone... My suggestion is to aim for around 13-14 Orders.
Coordinated orders is the secret to success in pushing buttons in low order lists, daikini moving 10” will get you to objectives in no time, once you clear the way.
I play most button pushing mission with a pair of naga + mk2 hacker + mk5 FO and it's enough for most button pushing mission. All are quite order efficient as they start near the objectives. Coordinated order is key to move them from objectives to objectives in mission with a lot of objectives like comm center. I have also seen Scylla used by one of my opponent qui a lot of success when faced with well defended objectives
You can field 3 Netrods, 2 FO Thoras and 2 Dakini Paramedics clocking in at 68 points. That means you have 232 points to spend on 10 toopers to get a 17 order list. That is an average of 23 points per head. (You can even stuff in 4 rebots boosting the average to a whopping 33 points per head for 6 troopers.) Don't feel bad, vanilla Ariadna is far above evry single factions in every aspect. In the lexicon you can find one single word at the entry 'overpowered': Ariadna.
Or something like this - 6 specialists, 13 orders and all for 134 points - leaving 166 points for the remaining 7 models - or something like 24 points per model average for a 20 order list Order Spam ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 10 NETROD . (0 | 4) NETROD . (0 | 4) NETROD . (0 | 4) DAKINI Tacbot Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 15) DAKINI Tacbot Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 15) DAKINI Tacbot Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 15) DAKINI Tacbot Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 15) DAKINI Tacbot Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 15) DAKINI Tacbot Paramedic (MediKit) Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 15) PROBOT (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) GROUP 2 3 LAMEDH Rebot Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) LAMEDH Rebot Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) PROBOT (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) 0 SWC | 134 Points Open in Infinity Army
I play both Ariadna and Aleph and don't feel the overpowered side, even in specialist heavy mission Plus in Aleph we have a big advantage : higher WIP. How often do we see our opponent fail WIP mission roll and fail while our proxy roll a 15 and laugh
Have you tried using Chasseurs and Spetnaz? And specifically in objective-heavy missions spam Infiltrating camo'd specialists? Once every 7 games. Then they simply try again because they have Orders. Whereas when Proxy rolls a 16 we rarely have another Order to try. If the Proxy is even alive due to Shock being one of the most available ammo types.
The proxys advantage isn’t his measly 10% extra chance of success, but that he can try, take a bullet to the head and try again - with the 10% advantage. If he was ariadnan, he’d get his brains blown out, and you’d need to spend a lot of orders getting into position in order to try again.
I play vanilla ALEPH without SP troopers and button pushing is where I shine. Coordinated orders to move up though. Dakini and daleth are very moblie specialists and infiltrating a naga hacker or FO easily starts where it can grab a button with one order. Then there is the asura hacker (I assume Nemo No Name has a rant on this one? Have fun) she's a very tough specialist. Cybermask gets you past one or 2 AROs (just moving) and you can just take a wound, but arm 5 means you can probably take one or two hits and not care. That is just for move-move orders, her BS 14 can protect her too. So have that button on the other side of the board. Also good a keeping your opponent away from buttons, dakini in SF mode and mines from naga (the one who grabbed an objective already) can make an area very difficult to move through.