The problem when taking AHD/KHD/HI in Steel Phalanx is that you bring a liability the army usually does not have. I mean, your enomotarkos team can be weakened by killing the myrm hacker or using oblivion on Hector (same for Ajax). Plus, your myrmidon hacker does not bring anything for you, he is a bad hacker as well as a weakness. I suggest you take a myrmidon chain of command officer instead. He is a specialist too, but unhackable and with eclipses grenades. For Scylla, she is very good, but not really as a hacker. She is usually used to bring disposable impersonnated flamethrowers, and a big repeater bubble when in vanilla - but not in SP, the quality of hackers is too different.
Yes it works like that. However, if you broing neither hacker nor hector, the fireteam has no hackable troopers, so you can walk by enemy hackers and make move-move or move-shoot to another quite safely. Consider also that Scylla is the only KHD, while other factions have those in spades, and AHD are unable to truly damage enemy units, aside from TAGs (which you can slag in melee easily anyway). If you want to hack, go Vedic or generic Nomads, I'm afraid. They are hackers for certain purposes, but have no way to kill enemy hackers (they can spotlight, though). Scylla simply is too squishy, and the same can be said for the myrm hacker without hector... and those are 1/3 of your army in 2 models!
I agree for the myrm but not for Scylla. Scylla KHD bring her own repeater network, will often be cybermasked and has access to one of the best program to hunt other hackers (in active) or event to ARO them : Maestro With all this, she is good at eliminating ennemy hacker
I was mostly speaking about the AHD myrmidon in fact. WIP 13 is rather low, but for a KHD it is OK, even if it may cause problems to activate cybermask. The myrmidon AHD has 2 problems as a hacker. The first is, he does not have a marker state (he has stealth through), so you have no way of preventing an unwanted hacking ARO, nor surprise shot. The second is, you don't have any way of easily delivering him, he has no infiltration and you have very few repeaters (Scylla can help, obviously). If you want an AHD, the ekdromos is better because 1. the opponent can't see him coming and 2. you can deliver him where you need him. Standard HD are rather poor, they are mostly used to buff remotes, and from times to times to buff AD4. You usually don't need them in Steel Phalanx, even if it can be fun to bring Tamyris and a Zayin to cover your fireteams. Versus HI and TAGs, you don't really need tricks like AHD. Your main attackers (Hector, Phoenix ...) are already strong enough. Especially Hector, who has one of the greatest damage potential of the whole game (max 4 ARM and 4 BTS damage rolls ignoring cover per order, even a TAG is not safe from that)
Just to toss in my 2 eurocents: I strongly recommend finding the points to get the secound devabot for Scylla. Sending them flamethrower wielding disposable wobots upfields in marker state is just hilarious. Since you have close to nothing to repair I would downgrade the engineer to a normal Thorakite or a FO/Paramedic Thora if you want more specialists. You can replace the AHD Myrmidon with a Myrmidon Officer with Chain of Command. Keep in mind that CoC makes the trooper a specialist! This way Hector is the only hackable target in the fireteam. (And CoC is pretty useful if your opponent kills Hector...) Nowadays players tend to field KHDs. KHDs are very effective against enemy hackers but useless against HIs. (For the record: when playing SP, I personally always field troopers that are not hackable in order to simply ignore enemy hackers.) The main problem you will face delving into infowar is that your list almost completely lacks the repeater network that is necessary to effectively hack your targets. (Yup, Scylla has two wobots, but their primary goodness are their flamethrowers...) I hope this helps.
To add a bit more, there are several ITS missions which at first sight seems to emphasis hackers. For example transmission matrix seems to be a hacker heaven. And it is in a way. So the best strategy, and probably the most common too, is to build unhackable armies and just kill the opponent's hackers with the good old ways of shooting bullets at them. I don't know if you play the Kurage Crisis event, but the J5-Kommstat was a transmission matrix variant, and a good amount of battle reports feature unhackable lists. In fact, the main problem you'll have if you're facing a hacking oriented army is that they will bring several hackers with marker state and a big repeater network, meaning that when one of your hacker will try anything, he will have to deal with several lethal ARO at once and will most likely die. EDIT: It is different in vanilla since you have access to many hackers: the danava HD+ with Maestro and WIP 15 at 25 pts, the naga KHD with infiltration, camo, mines and WIP 14, the dasyus ... You have more tools to use the repeaters (Scylla or others), the danava has also her own pitcher and, as a HD+, brings some other tools - and you have better remotes to buff (read: dakinis)
Sure thing. The enemy loses a Spekter KHD (best case scenario. Worst? A Zero KHD)... who chose to FtF Scylla, with a shotgun, close, and the points balance is the same for both of you. The problem is that the enemy knows you have ONE Scylla, and neutering her removes the Devabots from the threat list, while he has more camo specialists. I would risk losing my Spekter to negat Scylla even in Generic, since hacking has 2 dimensions: the fist is active turn (1 Vs whatevs), and the second is Reactive... and in the second, having more hackers and repeater coverage IS important (it's not the same thing moving and having to FtF 3-5 hackers than just one or even two). 1/3 of your army is a Fireteam with Hector + Myrmidon AHD (100pts, 0.5 SWC), not Scylla.
She lacks more hackers to support her, sadly. Nomads have that, the repeater network, and tinbots in spades!
