Hassassin Escalation

Fellow travelers, we have reached the journey's end. Round 6 ended in a 7-3 victory for Bahram and our overall performance in the league earned us first place. As a reminder, our opponents was JSA and the mission was round 6 Escalation, which entailed 3 antennas on the midline that needed to be captured via specialist for 3 OP a piece as well as one classified.

Spoiler: My List

Whiz 6 D
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 10
GHULAM Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12)
GHULAM Missile Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 17)
GHULAM Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 16)
GHULAM Doctor Plus (MediKit) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16)
LEILA SHARIF Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Shock Marksman Rifle, D-Charges / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 20)
ASAWIRA (Fireteam: Haris) Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, Shock CCW. (2 | 44)
MUYIB (Minelayer) Rifle + Light Shotgun, D.E.P. Antipersonnel Mines, E/Mauler / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 24)
MUYIB Doctor Plus (MediKit) Rifle + Light Shotgun, D.E.P. / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27)
FIDAY Rifle + Light Shotgun, Antipersonnel Mines, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW, Knife. (0 | 31)
RAFIQ REMOTE Rifle + Light Shotgun, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16)

GROUP 2 2 5 4
BARID Hacker (Hacking Device) Lieutenant Rifle + Pitcher / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 21)
SHIHAB REMOTE HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 25)
MUTTAWI'AH Chain Rifle, E/Marat, Jammer, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5)
MUTTAWI'AH Chain Rifle, E/Marat, Jammer, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5)
MUTTAWI'AH Chain Rifle, E/Marat, Jammer, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5)
MUTTAWI'AH Chain Rifle, E/Marat, Jammer, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5)
DAYLAMI (CH: Limited Camouflage, Inferior Infiltration) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)

6 SWC | 299 Points

Open in Infinity Army

and my opponents as best as I can recreate:

Spoiler: JSA

Japanese Secessionist Army
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

GROUP 1 10
KEISOTSU Missile Launcher / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 14)
KEISOTSU HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 17)
KEISOTSU Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 9)
KEMPEI (Chain of Command) Combi Rifle / Pistol, CCW, Electric Pulse. (0 | 22)
DOMARU Chain Rifle, E/M Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 27)
RYŪKEN (CH: Limited Camouflage) Heavy Rocket Launcher, Antipersonnel Mines / Heavy Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 23)
RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistols, Knife. (0.5 | 24)
RYŪKEN (Forward Deployment L2, ODD) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines, D-Charges / 2 Breaker Pistols, Knife. (0.5 | 24)
SHIKAMI Contender, Nimbus Grenades / Assault Pistol, DA CCW, AP CCW, Knife. (0 | 45)
ONIWABAN Lieutenant Boarding Shotgun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Monofilament CCW. (1 | 41)

GROUP 2 1 1 2
KUROSHI RIDER Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Breaker Pistol, AP + Shock CCW. (0 | 33)
YOJIMBO Contender, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades, CrazyKoalas (2) / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 21)

6 SWC | 300 Points

Open in Infinity Army

My main strategy going in was to slow down my opponent's advance with things like the Fiday, the Mutts, the Shihab, etc and then swoop in towards the end of the game and score the objectives, and as with previous matches, that's basically what happened. My course was facilitated with an initiative win that allowed me to go second so I'd have the last shot at scoring.

Fiday: Didn't kill anyone this match, but did waste a few crucial first turn orders. I deployed him very aggressively to threaten a ryuken but not in the safest position. My thinking was I can waste at least 2 orders and maybe kill something. The Shikami rolled up the table and did the dirty work on this one and aced the first discover. On the second one, I figured that since neither smoke, shotgun, or engage would put me in an advantageous position, I elected to drop a mine threatening both the ryuken and the Shikami. My opponent walked into CC with the second half of his order. Despite being roughly matched in CC skill, the Shikami wins, but I still burned two more orders out of my opponent. One to kill the fiday and another to tank the mine (which was successfully dodged, unfortunately). All in all 4 orders out of a turn one when Alpha is important, coupled with the Strategic command token use, that's a lot of steam my opponent lost on turn one. The mine layer profile has easily proved to be my favorite.

Mutts: Another round of successful performance. One of the reason I brought them was to threaten potential HI and to remove TO/ODD threats and serve as speed bumps. However, in the event that I did get second turn, i also brought them to deploy defensively against ninja/oniwaban alphas at my links. They essentially succeeded at both. One died protecting my Ghulams from the Oniwaban. The other three cluttered up the midfield soaking up bullets and orders and eventually chain rifling a suppression Ryuken to death. A few jamming attempts were made, but all BTS rolls were passed.

Daylami: Knowing @oldGregg really likes these guys, I wanted to give them another shake. I could only fit one in, but it turned out to be the MVP of the match. This time he passed his infiltration roll and while I initially just deployed him to threaten one of the approaches to the midfield, at the bottom of one I realized that with the two orders left in his group (his own and the one remaining regular order) I had the potential to shot gun my opponent's link team. 3 move orders turned out to be enough to get him in proper position for a shotgun blast. While my opponent's response was both clever and optimal, the dice ended up favoring me on this one. My opponent opted to dodge with the link team, but break the Domaru out with an engage. This was smart because in the event that there were survivors the Daylami would be stuck in CC and it gives the Domaru a FtF roll to increase his chances of avoiding death. The Domaru and the special weapons ended up surviving, but the cheerleader and more importantly the Kempeitai died, which thanks to the death of the Oniwaban in turn 1 meant my opponent would spend round 2 in LoL. So clutch play, but it was entirely reliant on him making his crappy infiltration roll, so nothing i'd count on. Ultimately I think I'll need to experiment with them more to see if I'll end up liking them as much as oldGregg.

Ghulam: Defensive Ghulam are a really solid choice. I've leaned on them for all 6 games and they've never disappointed. In this match they locked down a lane, killed the Ryuken HRL and then because I deployed like a ding dong and didn't put any other specialists on their side of the table, they ran it down to the midfield on the bottom of 2 to grab me an antenna and serve as a threat. Leila in particular is phenomenal in Bahram because she not only lets us get that 5 man link bonus (which I imagine was a strike against Ghulam in the days before her profile came out) but she also serves as a specialist, and a hacker to boot so you don't need to worry about how you're getting remotes on the table, AND she brings a mid range gun so the link can fight out to 24 inches when the special weapons are in bad ranges .All in all I've been very impressed with them throughout the league and I think it'd be a very tough choice not to take them as your core in most lists.

Rafiq: Brought to be a mobile specialist and to sensor out Ninja that might be hiding around the antenna. My opponent brought no ninja, so there was nothing to find, but the Rafiq is fast, could get up the table quickly, and did score me my second antenna in round 3. Every faction but Ariadna has these delightful 16 pt remotes, everyone knows how good they are, I don't think I need to say much more.

Barid: I brought him as my Lt. because I figured the Ghulam would be more at risk and that worst case scenario he was a specialist with an extra order to try and claim objectives. It didn't come to that, though. He did fire a pitcher to try and slow down the Shikami, but his attack programs are pretty weak and the Shikami was able to make his BTS saves and move on. Still it was some extra threat and he's pretty cost effective. I can definitely see the appeal of the hacker profiles. Less so the FO profiles. Does anyone use those?

Asawira Haris: Another interesting option I wanted to take for a spin thanks to oldGregg's praise of the unit, and like he predicted they didn't do much in the way of heavy lifting, but were still quite useful to have around even though they didn't score any antenna. The Asiwara is a strong gunfighter with that B5 spitfire. Though he had some bad luck. He had an opportunity to shoot the Keisotsu ML in the back, but it was outside of 24. Five dice and a good BS still landed me 2 hits, but the Keisotsu impressively saved and turned around leaving me in good missile range, and bad gun range of a template that could hit both him and my Muyib doctor. Fortunately, when they did eat that missile, the Muyib dodged and the Asawira went unconscious which allowed the Muyib to doctor him up and get me Experimental Drug. The clutch member of this group, though, was the minelayer, who was able to use agressive mine deployment in turn 3 to put the Ryuken in Suppression into a bad ARO position of stay in suppression and eat a mine or dodge the mine and the Spitfire but lose suppression. When forced to make the choice my opponent chose to shoot at the Asawira and risk the mine and the mind killed him, clearing the way for the Rafiq. Had the mine failed, I think I still could have brute forced him down, but I'm glad it worked out.


So how do I feel about Bahram after all of this? It's a fun and effective faction. I like that you can play them aggressively or as area control. I enjoy the Haqq playstyle of asymmetric trading (though I still could use some practice here). If I had one complaint I think it's that Bahram doesn't feel like it has a lot of profiles compared to some other sectorials (I haven't counted so that might not actually be true) and so I feel like there's a limited number of core ways to list build for them compared to something like Qk which appears to be much more flexible in approach (though that could be a poor comparison since once of QKs strong points has always been its flexibility). End of the day I don't regret taking them instead of QK or Vanilla and I think I'll fun with them moving forward.

Thank you everyone for all of your feedback and advice. I doubt i would have been as successful without your counsel. And to everyone who is new to Haqq in general or Bahram in specific, I hope this topic can be a useful resource to you.