Dealing with 'Castle' ARO Fireteams

Using a Spetsnaz with HMG is one of your best choices except against Mimetism or ODD troops for Ariadna, especially against the large range bands of snipers. Due to Marksmanship 2 you'll be rolling 4 dice on 15s to your opponents two 11-13BS shots. You also have the camo state to sneak into a 24 inch range band against Missile Launchers. If they try to discover just unload HMG rounds into them. In the vanilla army you also can use the mercenary Armand. The MSV1 profile is great against the troops the Spetznaz is weaker against. His range band and forward deployment can get Armand into the bad range bands of non snipers during deployment which makes him an extremely efficient counter.

If playing a sectorial a linked HMG or Molotok in it's good range band is your best option. Burst 5 and BS 14-16 should deal with most ARO links.

 

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not a particularly competitive player and don't play very often, so if someone who has more experience has something more effective to offer than what I do to deal with this type of fireteam, then I would like to hear it.

What I would do first before trying to go up against a defensive fireteam is first decide if I actually need to engage it in the first place. Depending on the mission, and what they are packing, you may want to outright avoid the fireteam if at all possible and instead focus on doing something else, like fulfilling the objectives. A good way to do this is to use smoke to block their line of sight so you can safely go about your business fulfilling the objectives. However, if you get counter-deployed or the fireteam is overlooking the objective, or you don't have smoke handy, then avoidance is probably off the table, and you will have to figure out how to take them out of the fight.

Whenever I am in a situation where I need to fight a defensive linkteam, I try to isolate one or two of the members and pick them off one by one. Again, smoke is an effective tool for doing this by using it to maneuver your attacking troop into a position where only one or two of the members of the linkteam can see him; just beware that Ariadna has no MSV2 and fireteams with at least four members automatically get Sixth Sense II, so doing the smoke+MSV trick won't work. I tried this tactic on a defensive Order Sergeant team using my Scots Guards and smoke, and it worked well enough to down one of its members and strip the team of its BS+3 bonus. After you take out the first member of a five-man fireteam, breaking the rest of the link gets progressively easier.

In some notably rare situations, you might be able to outrange the linkteam with a sniper or a missile launcher. I was able to do this once using a linked missile launcher Scot and HMG Mormaer to take apart a Wu Ming team, but they only had HMGs and HRLs, which have a shorter effective range when compared to a ML, and I wouldn't count on this tactic except as a last resort, or unless you are feeling lucky.

 

In the past I've had success with either a sacrificial Chasseur, placing a mine and then walking around a corner to flamer or from a combined order Forward observe from camo followed by guided missiles or spec fire LGLs.

 

1) Murderbots: As already mentioned a HMG Spetsnaz has a very, very good chance killing more or less anything your opponent has. You roll four dice, your opponent rolls two. You do the maths.
2) Smoke: Unless your opponent fielded MSV2 fireteam (morats...) you can simply ignore his nice little fireteam by laying down smoke with your cheap-as-chips Galwegians, Irmies and Desperados.
3) AD: Field a BSG or SMG wielding AD trooper close to the DZ and have him move close (stealth or cautious movement) and kill the fireteam members one by one.
4) Troubelmaker: Have an II Grunt with flamethrower take care of the whole fireteam at once.

 

You only need 1 kill against a 5 men fireteam to make its effectiveness drop significantly.

- Spetnaz is ridiculously good at doing that.

- You want to be really nasty about it? Move a cheap mine carrying camo marker and drop a mine in range of the member you want to shoot at first.

- Smoke is also a very good option. Just smoke the firelane and ignore the team.

- Out / underrange whatever troop you are shooting at.

- Get a sacrificial template weapon in range. Irmadinhos / Desperadoes / Any of your wolf guys... all of them carry their own smoke for the approach.

If you have a single fireteam that is dominating the whole table, then you simply have been playing with way too little terrain.

 

I´m a Druze player myself and I´m really scared by Ariadnas big dogs.
That is the main reason I mostly put a MSV2 Sniper in my link :-D

 

SSL2 ignore the -6 to hit, but it still requires an attack to trigger. You're attacking one member of the fireteam, not the fireteam, meaning only the attacked one will be able to shoot back. If you have in sight for example 2 troops with ML and one with rifle, you can kill the one with rifle first, thus weakening the fireteam.

A good general trick is to slice the pie. It's very unlikely the defensive fireteam members have all the same view. You can try to shoot at only one of them, and if you can, you can try to shoot at a less dangerous member (ex. an outranged one). Of course, you will likely have no cover while slicing the pie, but it's still a very powerful tool. It can be very potent if you use an infiltrator: you can find various angle of fire, you can navigate easily with the marker state. You can also use an AD if your opponent didn't cover some angles.
Another trick is to use some template, ex. speculative fire grenades or LGL, or even better since you are ariadna, a chasseur with flamethrower. Fireteam don't like template. Of course, with SSL2 they may ignore the -3 to dodge, but if you can hit several members, one of them may still fail - and each member down weaken the fireteam. And if they choose not to dodge vs your chasseur ... they are even more likely to have some casualties.