Defend with the steel phalanx

Use thorakites link and thorakites smg/chain rifle to block the lines of approach to your myrmidons.

Also Scylla/Drakios with devabots serve as blockers.


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Steel Phalanx has nothing as far as deployables (mines, emaulers), no perimeter weapons, and very few cheap low quality units. Which can make defense very difficult, because you will always be fighting on the opponent’s terms.

What ASS does have is elite units in fireteams with sixth sense and templates. If you can put two or three four person fireteams on the table and force your opponent to engage in close range your in a good place. If you can tuck behind a corner and make it so that your opponent can’t get to you outside of 8 inches, you’re in a magical place. If you have the tight quarters you have the options with sixth sense to delay and wait to see what your opponent does before declaring. Forcing the active turn model to contend with burst two chainrifles or Nanopulsers on a 16 point Myrmidon or a cheaper Thorakitae is glorious. You’re likely to lose your model, but it’s a fantastic exchange for you because your opponent is likely to lose the attacker and has spent orders getting into position.

If you opponent doesn’t want to face you in close quarters, they may decide to try speculative firing grenades, which is fine if you positioned your army carefully. One on one, your guys have something like a 70% chance to survive a speculative grenade. Let your opponent waste orders.

If your opponent is going to use pitchers and the exile program (Combined Army), Jammers, or some other sort of cowardly info war, you’ll need to set up some kind of sacrificial lambs to shoot. I usually use the Enomotarchos team that I put into my second combat group to take shots at approaching attackers. I don’t let them get a clear view across the table though, but try to keep my line of fire limited to about the midline of the table. That way my opponent has to spend orders before gaining the privilege of facing my warriors in glorious combat.

Scylla and Drakios, while obscenely expensive, do provide an excellent deterrent in their deva bots. The cheap flamethrower bots are a threat to any attacker. Your opponent will need to use a token state or some kind of smoke to get past them, and this costs your opponent orders. If you do take Scylla or Drakios, I recommend always finding the points to take two deva bots.

 

Castle up! Put all your troopers in total cover. That means your opponent will have to spend a lot of orders walking upfields. Consider every MOV-MOV order your opponent takes as a gain for he is not doing the mission or killing your troopers.
As already mentioned, SP has a lot of relatively cheap and in turn relatively tough cheerleaders in the CR Myrmidons and the SMG Thorakitai. Both these guys are pretty lethal up close. Being in a fireteam they get B2. Myrms get ODD, Thoras get ARM3 (6 in cover). If you manage to position the fireteam in a way your opponent will have to deal with these guys before they get to shoot your expensive troopers you already put your opponent in a pretty bad position.
Use the rooftops with your snipers! (Atalanta, Teucer, Agemas) Your opponent can evade them when moving upfields but then they get a few shots in return during your active phase from a rather unpleasant angle. Or your opponent will waste orders climbing up and dealing with them. Again your opponent's loss is your gain.
We are here to help.

 

First I'd like to point out that I am very amateur with Phalanx but have years of Corregidor. So be suspicious of how I play them.

The idea with a defense is to first make them run out of orders without dealing too much damage, and second make the troops they displaced to attack you vulnerable so you can either deal more damage than they did, or quickly get past them to do objectives.

Their long ranged power is used to force you to hide so their close quarters units can chain kills. You can waste their orders by covering their cqb guys with your long ranged power, but positioning so they need to move their long ranged power to remove it. I like to use MSV2 so they can't smoke past it but it takes good positioning or they just get killed by any HMG (unless it's Atalanta). Linked Thorakitai can be good too but they take a lot of room in your list, mostly due to their enomotarchos requirement.

Then you want their cqb guys to hit your cheapest, preferably DTW guys first. I like to have at least 2 Thorakitai chain rifles. With FD1 and 360 visors they can be hard to sneak past. The guys that get Devabots help as a second line of defense but they can't be as spread out.

Finally you need your counter attack. Of course you have Myrms but I like AD because you can drop, backshot the troops they advanced, then focus on objectives. Of course if you can use linked Myrms to advance specialists to the objective and kill, that works well.

Really it's all about good deployment, Phalanx has no defense crutch. It's also about what you're likely to see played against you.

 

Best defence is hitting them before they hit you.

Though more seriously, the Thorakitai team normally with LRL from thras and a Feuerbach with a pair of FO's can castle up pretty well (all of whome currently have FD1). Solo Thorakitai FO's are also a useful road bump, along with the usual Warcor, Lamedh and Zayin package.
MK12 Agema's are good at covering flanks when in cover and suppression, especially with the current ITS FD1 rule.
The Deva bots are alright point defence but you have point defence by the truckload.
Phoenix team or MSR/ ML Agema/ Agema Heroes if you want to go the more expensive route (don't recommend at all).


You really need to pulling things in tight and not contesting long firelanes (below 24" for the most part), and focus on area denial. this way they waste orders coming to you, only to end up facing your army in brawling range bands where their HMG assault platform is worth sod all, and so they can't pick you off at range with a sniper.

Also actively headhunt enemy warbands, they ignore a lot of the defensive kit you pay for trivially so you really want to get rid of them as quickly as possible.