After playing a few games with any flavor of ALEPH, what are a couple things that you’ve really enjoyed or found useful in N4? Is it an old staple or something new? If you haven’t gotten any games in because of...you know...then what are you looking forward to getting on the table?
Danavas. She has ended up being such a oppressive model. Her +1 burst to a burst of 3 oblivion at wip 15 makes her declaring oblivion against hackable targets (HI or rems specifically) is so brutal. My opponent runs a bunch of hackable troopers with pieces like beta troopers and omegas and carbonite + oblivion makes the model effectively dead unless an engineer nearby. And if you can couple it with a naga khd, then the pitcher can be used effectively to kill enemy hackers at range as well. This just compounds the oppressiveness of that hacker.
Hector in SP. I have used him in group two with a bunch of thorasks, which still gives me enough points to have a beefy link in group 1. I split the orders to be 9 in group one and 8 in group two (including hectors 2 LTs orders). The link in group one has typically run deep into my enemy's area while I move Hector into the midfield. The link in group one is usually mostly dead after my opponents turn, but having hector in the midfield at the start of my turn really allows him to do work. Gives a lot of flexibility and is generally fun to play. Good to know! I was disappointed with her changes on paper. I will try her out.
Yea, she is no where near the all purpose power hacker that she was before. She is now just a strong ahd hacker where khds are much weaker at fighting back.
I think I’m starting to piece together how to manage effective hacking in n4. In my mind the burst three that the Danavas brings us great. The pitcher is even better. Especially because killer hackers can’t ignore it firewalls. With that in mind, I’m actually excited to put Scylla and Thamyris into a steel phalanx list. Normally I prefer hackers to be in a camo state, but I think those two actually have the potential to defend themselves relatively well. Scylla through amazing modifiers and Thamyris with burst two in ARO. The combination of a solid repeater network in the bots and a pitcher to target specific models or groupings to hack the crap out of out of your opponent seems like it has a lot of potential, especially in steel phalanx. This edition just pushes it to be even better than it would have been before because I haven’t seen a list without a tag or a core team featuring heavy infantry. So the hackable targets are certainly ripe.
I've been enjoying the new hacking scene, now that you can spotlight everyone and the hacking is a bit more streamlined. Danavas are great, and I guess so will be Scylla and Thamyris when I get the chance to play with them. A well placed pitcher can solve (or create) an ARO puzzle and white noise is great. I'm also looking for more excuses to play Dasyus, but between the MK2 and the Nagas I don't really get much chance to use them. And I look forward to playing more missions without saturation zones, confused deployment, exclusion zones and that kind of nonsense that discourages me to field quirky stuff like the 4 ekdromoi SP list I've been thinking about.
I have been trying to build out a list that uses Arjuna but I have failed miserably. Trying to use the things that I did not in N3 and keep finding my self back to my old lists. Picking between the usual options. The lack of any real changes to the units I did not bring will more than likely mean they will stay unprimed, unpainted, unplayed, and unused.
The Arjuna is an interesting one for me. I used it a couple of times in N3, but it’s was usually the marksman rifle profile. The boys are great now, but with so many things getting cheaper, the Arjuna feels expensive. Especially without any AP on the longer range weapons. I wish I liked the profile a little bit because having large e/m templates to slow down and alpha strike is solid.
I have only used them once, they were in a random list event my wife ran. I was underwhelmed as the only thing they did was to trick my opponent into throwing smoke "for" my Asura. They could really use some help and I don't think it is as easy as making them cheaper. I believe that the both need a buff and a point decrease. Something like marksman, maybe bump the -3 to -6, or swap out the cyber mines for shock ones. It is a shame they are so universally panned as they are a cool looking unit and a neat idea, but other factions do the guy plus bots thing better, the Sirus, and Garda de assaulto come to mind. Edit: Mulling it over for a bit more, giving the bots a smoke launcher or repeater would be a welcome change as well as a -4 point cost to all profiles, while dropping the ones lacking a bot. So the BSG with one bot would be 26 points, the double bot profile would be 30 ect.
Sorry for the necro, but the D-Charges on them combined with the Kiranbot's ability to IMM stuff isn't a bad option. You can even do a gang up CC attack if you want to go that route for more chances of it landing.
