Sure. If you had to field an entire Kamau fireteam to get access to a Kamau MSR with full fireteam bonuses, I think the game would be better off for it. Ok, but my point is that it's not the Sixth Sense alone that's the problem, it's a number of things interacting with each other, and I think just ditching Sixth Sense from fireteams would make things worse. Fireteams *could* stand to be made vulnerable to Surprise Attack, though.
a lot of you should try playing marker state units offensively sometimes Just limiting to snipers is not rational because any msv aro is capable of locking the game on a low-terrain table Every Nomad sectorial can field a good msv1 aro piece (Corregidor needs a wonky wildcat + 4 wildcards team leaving jaguars unlinked but its not difficult to build) Bolt is not very pricey because of good wildcards (Quinn, Bulleteer, Machinist in NCA) MO has Friar in most lists, the only real competition is Teuton ML (when Teuton lists) Even Morats have Suryat who is quite good Spiral has Taagma under tricore buff
I can't quite wrap my head around why people are hoping for +3 BS bonus to be removed from mixed links. Were that to be done surely the scales would be tipped heavily towards Vanilla factions? I also don't quite believe that Kamau and alike are such of a heinous problem as some are suggesting, and if low terrain is the reason why they are dominating in some tables surely the problem is with table setup instead. Personally I'm just a bit worried that sectorials will be over corrected but we'll see when the rules come out.
My experience with the apex ARO pieces isn't that terrain amount is the problem, but terrain layout - which is a lot harder to specify. In the most generalised, non-committal, terms possible hard ARO pieces benefit from 4-dimensional terrain a lot more than low amounts of terrain (4th dimension in this context is "inside"). And just to reiterate: apex ARO pieces are not always wildcards.
Just bloody lay them out without several huge ass cross table sniper lanes blocking off swaths of the table with the apex ARO pieces. It's not THAT hard, but somehow people fail to do that, even on tournament tables.
Just pitching in on this as a SAA player. On paper there is no reason whatsoever to not upgrade to a Bagh. Free Mine, MSV, bump in defenses that matters. Great deal. But. Sapper lets you bring your own terrain and MSV1 can be counterproductive or "no value" in some matchups. While the latter is overall a net gain for the MSV the bring your own terrain part of positioning your ARO piece wherever you want in your own DZ with full 360° Cover is neat. So is situationally useful access to Courage (Sapper is still a nested N3 Skill that grants other stuff via Foxhole State). For a Sniper Foxhole is an invalueable opportunity to expand your limited DZ ARO positions and the other Link members around it and more importantly, significantly increases the opportunities to deploy deeper in your DZ to outrange HMGs and leverage Rangeband (something most DZs are going to try to prevent). A Sapper Sniper Reserve piece can be a real menace. That said both of them struggle a bit in N4. If MSRs still had Stun Ammo that would be a different story, but at the moment I would probably not take either and reach for the Orc FB to shrug off a hit and more threat potential (and then a Bagh HMG for Active Turn FTF where the FB Orc would struggle). Notable exception are SAA TAG lists, where shaving off a couple points here and there can be vital to fit some more midfield, toolboxes or Specialists on top of a Dragao/Tik. People also tend to flat out underestimate the Sapper's capabilities.
Exactly all this. If I had the points, I'd be taking the Orc Feuerbach every time. But I'm running TAG lists, so I don't. Between the Sapper and the Bagh, I've run plenty of both, and neither does as much as I'd like it to. Your opponent will have something in their list that can deal with either of them. The Bagh is nice against smoky warbands, but otherwise has little recommend it over the Sapper. Both perform the same function of shutting down a firelane until your opponent spends the orders to remove them. The Sapper's positioning ability is very nice. The Bagh's mine is not much of a consideration since there are already at least two Regular minelayers in the list. All in all I'd probably rate the Bagh as the stronger piece overall thanks to the MSV1, but in my experience it isn't 8 points stronger. 8 points is a lot.
If you're using flat terrain with no interiors. If you don't... Most groups evolve away from the starter terrain when someone realises how fun terrain making actually is.
Let's also keep in mind that CB pointedly nerfed Flash Pulses going in to N4 in favor of what other people in this thread are calling "Apex ARO pieces." The paradigm now for defensive play is, trade with a template weapon, have an unbeatable ftf roll, use a non-LoF ARO, or don't bother, and it's seemingly by design.
Unlinked yes-ish (it's more powerful ammunition now but can be removed by doctors or engineers). But a warcor or picket fugazi are probably more powerful in absolute terms. Linked definitely not as it's a technical weapon.
Previously you had Overclock and Fireteam bonuses. The weapon is stronger, the ability of it to be used as a coherent defensive strategy is diminished, especially considering that units that have Immunity (Total) are immune to non-lethal ammo, which was true for the last part of N3 as well but is still a problem IMO.
Do you find that that bonus is the only thing keeping sectorials competitive at all? Over time, I've found that always having to deal with some sort of long range BS 15+ Burst 2 ARO before I can actually get to the interesting part of the game (navigating the table and completing the mission) to be really tiresome. Knowing that I can't safely leave my deployment zone until I win a contest of brute force doesn't make for a fun and dynamic game, and really hampers factions that don't have really strong long range fireteam pieces of their own.
^ this. And sometimes your game just ends in losing that "sniper duel" because your best tool in an already not overtly shooty army gets removed and you're stuck, physically and tactically.
meta will always impose gearchecks (or rather listchecks) that you need to be aware of before you bring your army to the table and linked aro is not always best removed by brute force (but it helps which is why the game leads you to pick optimal attack pieces)
400 points solves the gear check and redundancy issue of n4 at 300 pretty well (providing you have the options available in the army roster), as well has helping a lot of armies, and bringing others up to par with the rest of the field. but the most oppressive ones (Bolt, Dakini, Grenzer, etc.) are still a significant issue and often insurmountable issue to overcome for some armies, BS19 equivalent, MSV, burst 2 and sixth sense (primarily that last one as it removes options) is not something that should exist as it tips the scales too far towards the ARO side and away from active, which just means we are going to even more active pieces come out to combat them down the road. The +3 BS isn't that much of an issue by itself and while good isn't what pushes it too far, it's that it is functionally unmodifiable thanks to sixth sense, you can't knock it down with surprise to even the playing field or other tactics, you need to pay points to bypass or counter it and even then you aren't doing anything except spend resources to counter something that is essentially free.
how is Dakini opressive, it cant see through smoke and is BS16 until after first active Grenzer and Bolt are single wound and dont have mimetism of their own
You need to run some numbers, I see. The first one is easy; there's still factions without (worthwhile) smoke access and for those factions bringing a Dakini sniper down is so risky that your only option is camouflage unit (which, really, is the solution to everything in this game). Second one is a bit harder, but Grenzer and Bolt MSV snipers in full cores are the two most dangerous ARO pieces in the game thanks to Sixth Sense. There's some situations where the cored Kamau sniper is better (such as when shooting through smoke on a dodging target, or when the target isn't getting Cover). That they don't have mimetism alters the numbers a bit in the direction of being dangerous to both shooter and target, but they stack up very surprisingly well against a cored Kamau.
if you dont have smoke you usually have efficient bruteforce options including mimetism -6 units or yes, markers if you dont have either, whine, maybe CB will buff something in N5 everyone is equal in the face of god and two damage 13 templates or a mine/perimeter weapon fork
