How necessary is a doctor or medic in a list?

It really depends on faction.

I don't take a doc in most of my Invincible Army lists, but I do take a doc in almost all my JSA lists.

 

I doctor the most in PanO. Lack of tools like smoke means that any time you're making an aggressive play, you're probably putting a unit in harm's way. There's no smoke, white noise, abundant camo, etc to help facilitate it. As a result, if my combat units have bad dice or eat a crit, it's usually easy and useful to spend 1-2 orders to have a nearby doctor pick them up and get them back in the fight. I think that philosophy extends to any army/sectorial with higher pricepoints per model and fewer "non-aggressive" methods for maneuvering.

For something like Ariadna, with no Cube rerolls and no palbots, plus a number of ways to maneuver and get up the field without need to engage in direct combat, I don't bother. Something like JSA can go either way... Keisotsu not having a cube is rough, but there are often enough cube-equipped units around to go for it.

I tend to avoid medikits entirely. Spending an order for such a low-probability outcome is tricky. It's the insurance of that reroll that really cements doctoring into a reliable strategy. Just make sure Doc and Palbot are deployed where they can be relevant.

 

As stated above, it depends. I personally play vanilla CA and dabbled in ALEPH a bit, and rarely if ever used doctors or paramedics, in case of CA it is because most of the models I take that would be worth to be heald in terms of order expenditure are either have STR or NWI/Dogged, however that changed recently with some additions of interresting 1/2W profiles so I consider bringing Dr.Worm in my lists at some point. For ALEPH specifically I played mostly OSS, and again there are a lot of STR and NWI/Dogged models, and not a lot of regular 1/2W models, and posthuman engineer was a better choice for my lists. On the toher hand some lists like MO which has a lot of HI the Hospitalier doctor is often picked to be a part of a fireteam, and in Haqqislam there is a lot of 1W models and top Doctors in the game, so those often are used. Also if a mission gives bonuses to Doctors as specialists they might be worth bringing since currently specialist bonuses are quite significant.

 

In PanO I'll often rock either the Trauma-Doc for pure doctoring duties, or the Hospitaller Doc with multi rifle as an all-round healing, shooting, fighting button pushing machine, with one servant in the DZ for healing and another following him for minesweeping and that sweet burst 2 in CC.

For Ariadna I'm rather fond of the 112, whilst arguably the worst doctor in the game (mainly due to lack of rerolls) he's also one of the cheapest and having a shotgun makes him surprisingly capable at fighting. He regularly overperforms his 12 point cost, even if he does fail to pick up the Spetsnaz he often deploys near.

 

This!!!

One thing I do when I am taking both doc and engineer is to put the Doc and the Engineer's helperbot on one side while the Eng and Doc's helperbot are on the other side. Means you have both doctoring and engineering available on each flank.

 

I'll often take a medic in a fireteam as a cheap specialist and if I have a pare order I'll fire off the medkit and either it'll get back up (sweet) or it'll die and free up space in the CG (also sweet).

As for doctors, I will generally only bother if I can embed them in the assault fireteam (Daktari, Machoan, Rev. Healer, etc.) as they are already going to be with the big gun that needs to doctored. Or a doctor that can get there with out me needing to spend a bunch of orders getting it up the table (Tomcat, and Delta).

 

As Haqqislam, it's an auto include.

 

It's points and orders and my doctors all graduate from the Kevorkian Medical Institute, so I almost never run them. Primarily vanilla Yu Jing, although I occasionally dabble in ISS and JSA.

 

It's not essential, but it situationally can be a good way to make things more reliable, which can be important in a game as swingy as infinity. You can do it other ways though, like adding more redundancy instead.

 

I think in general, armies that benefit from doctors have 3 things in common:

1) Order economies that support doctoring. A 10 order list spending several orders and potentially multiple command tokens takes a much larger hit than a 16-18 order list doing the same.

2) Weapon loadouts/deployment that supports doctoring. A midfield camo spam list isn't going to doctor unless the doctor also has Forward Deployment or infiltration. I'm much more likely to doctor an HMG who can still be in my DZ when he shoots and only need to commit 1-2 orders to reach vs. a Spitfire who is halfway up the table and takes 3-4 orders to reach.

3) Unit costs that support doctoring. I know this is kind of a no-brainer, but a list with a couple heavy hitters who will do most of the shooting is going to benefit more from doctoring than a more redundant list

Following these principles:

I don't doctor at all in JSA. Everything worth doctoring starts too far away for spending orders on my doctor to be efficient, and my order economy is already stressed in most games by the short range loadouts on everything.

In Acon, I'm relying on pricey 1-wound MI to do most of my shooting and they have weapons that let them engage from closer to my side of the table, so a doctor is a way of protecting my investment. I play Acon with 15+ orders and am relying on 25-35 point shooting pieces.

In Spiral, I haven't found a reason to yet. The Kumotail is incredibly good in general (22 point doc/engineer is great) but Symbiont Armor means that if I am doctoring, I'm only healing to a worse version of what was there originally.

In ISS, Sophie is basically an auto-include. There's no reason not to take her. ISS easily hits 18 orders, relies on a few strong solo pieces (Hsien, Su Jian, Rui Shi), and Sophie's fast movement helps improve her coverage (even when combined with a palbot) to the point to make up for the closer-range loadouts on some pieces that may want to be doctored or engineered.

 

As an example, if I run my shas as sneaky bois with lots of forward deploying camo and drop troops, I’ll only include a seed soldier paramedic to do classifieds.

If I run a Sphinx/Sheskiin/Gwailo list, I’m always taking Dr Worm.

 

In Invinvible army, there is a special problem with the doctor. If you run the LI Paintrain, you often don't have enough room in your list although I'd like to doctor the expansive HI models.

 

When I still played tohaa I generally considered taking a sakiel, kameal or Gao-Tarsos paramedic, given there is no disadvantage on using a medkit on Symbiont wearing troopers it’s a nobrainer to upgrade FO’s to medics and take a chance on reviving.

Given in tohaa most of your troops get downgraded and quite fragile once they hit their last wound it ain’t a huge loss if the healing serum ends up lethal.

Now I play Corregidor the Daktari is a nice specialist to drag around and tomcats ain’t shabby either, but I don’t feel like they are as much of a auto include just for healing.

 

I always try to include a doctor, and sometimes an engineer too, regardless of the faction. In CA, the doctor is also the engineer (dr worm), in Aleph I like the Posthuman doctor over the engineer because of autoheal, and as backup for the Sophotect if needed; Nomads is just 4 points more than an Alguacil, Haqquislam is +2pts over the Ghulam (and heals at 17 to boot), and they are all good specialists.
Tohaa I play without, but the Simbiont armor gives them +3 to the Medikit/Regeneration rolls, so you only lose the Cube rerroll.

 

I really agree with this. I so wanted a linkable HI doctor in IA...

 

It also depends on how skewed your list is. The more points you have invested into one or two units the more value you are likely to get out a doctor. Playing nca with some swiss I like a doctor, in Tohaa who tend to have flatter lists I dont bother.

 

My gecko’s kinda disagree and rather argue with the clockmaker division why they don’t follow them in battle, instead they have to listen to the hispanic swearing of the daktari as she claims she can’t repair those damn suits.

I kinda gave up on her in that role as the gecko’s kinda lost their temper at me, though it’s only a matter of time before my intruders think the same.

 

You mean swearing in Swahili.

 

No Hispanic, given she was kinda cheap for her services, guess I should have checked her legitamacy as a Daktari.