Ok, putting it all together, here's my try at a solution: Option A - Quick and Dirty You don't mind taking risks, and you'll be damned if you spend more than a handful of orders on this. You're certainly not willing to use a command token. 1. Activate the link with the Asawira leading. Move the Asawira along cover to the right until out of LoF from Andromeda. Move the hacker and NCO as far right as possible without being seen, and the KHD and Lt as far left as possible (to get them all within ZoC of the NCO and hacker for later). Check ZoC to confirm that everyone is in ZoC of the NCO, and check whether there is a spot that the Asawira saw Andromeda from outside 8". Now Andromeda declares her ARO: A(i) - Andromeda breaks suppression If Andromeda uses Guard, you CC. If she uses the Zapper, you Dodge. This is the risky part of the play, as you have a 29% chance of an unconscious Asawira or a 19% chance of a bricked Asawira. But if you survive, the rest is easy. Move the Asawira to see Andromeda from outside 8" and start shooting. If there isn't a spot to do it from cover, just move back and then left, staying outside 8". It should take an average of a little under two orders (let's say 1.8) to remove Andromeda. Total cost: ~2.8 average orders, 0 command tokens, 29% risk of catastrophic failure. A(ii) - Andromeda keeps suppression If Andromeda shoots back in suppression, you shoot back. If there's a spot outside 8", you're 49% to wound her and 12% to get wounded. If there's isn't, it's 33%-21%. Either way, the problem is that she's still in suppression. You can keep fighting her by repeatedly peeking left and ending back in total cover. Even if luck is on your side and you don't take any wounds, it's an average of either 4 or 6 orders to kill her this way. Mimetic suppression is a tough nut to crack! You can try to get her out of suppression by using your NCO order to spec fire a grenade on an 8. Either she Dodges and breaks suppression, or you have a 22% chance to wound her and a 14% chance to break her suppression via a failed Guts roll. Not great odds, but it's a free order so you might as well try. If that fails, your best odds are now to Spotlight, forcing her to reset. If it sticks (47%), you start dropping missiles (average ~1.5 orders to kill her). If it doesn't, she's still out of suppression so the Asawira can start shooting (~1.8 orders). Total cost: ~3.5 average orders (1 to reposition, 1 to spotlight, 1.5ish to kill), 0 command tokens, minor risk of 1 wound to the Asawira. Option B - Slow and Cautious You don't want to risk losing the Asawira, and you're willing to spend a command token and maybe some extra orders to play it safe. 1. Cancel the link. Spend the NCO order to attempt to put smoke on the Asawira (leaving a gap to the left of the Asawira) (55%). At the same time, move the Ghulam down out of Andromeda's ZoC so that she can't Dodge if you need to keep throwing smoke later. Check ZoC to confirm that the hacker will be able to hack Andromeda. 2. Use the Barid to attempt Spotlight (47%). If it works, drop missiles. If it doesn't, Andromeda is still out of suppression. If the smoke landed in step 1, you can now reform the link and start shooting with the Asawira from outside 8" (the smoke lets you get the Asawira to the right spot without facing any hits from Guard). There are 76% odds that either the smoke or the spotlight succeeded. If neither succeeded, keep trying to land smoke (it's slightly better odds than spotlight), and once it lands, reform the link and start shooting. (If you can get the NCO into coherence with the Lt, you also have the option of spending an extra command token to form a temporary 3-troop team to get +1B on the smoke). It works out to an average of 1.5 orders to land either spotlight or smoke, then 1.5ish to kill Andromeda with either missiles or the Asawira. Total cost: ~3 average orders, 1 command token, no risk. Conclusion The fastest way to eliminate Andromeda is Option A(i), but that relies on your opponent choosing to take a shot at your Asawira with Guard. They might if they like to gamble too, but their safer play is to maintain suppression to drain your orders. If they do, option A(ii) is actually the slowest option. Basically you're spending an extra half order or so to reposition your link team to keep them in coherency, to avoid spending a command token later. That being said, all three options are pretty close in terms of order cost. 2.8 vs. 3 vs. 3.5 is not that big a difference. So mostly, your decision is whether to take a 29% risk to the Asawira in order to save a command token. Thank you to everyone who participated! It was very interesting, and the results were somewhat surprising. Lots of great ideas that I hadn't thought of. Some of them (like spec firing a grenade) made it into the final answer. Others (like cybermasking the Barid) turned out to cost too many orders, but were still well worth considering. I hope it was a fun exercise, and would like to see more of them in the future. Stay tuned for an addendum in which we replace the Asawira with Yara Haddad and see what happens :-)
Alright, so if we replace the Asawira with Yara. First off, Option A is off the table. Yara doesn't have the Asawira's CC, so if she exposes herself to a Guard ARO, all she can do is shoot with her heavy pistol, and is 57% likely to be unconscious or dead. So we go with Option B. If we land the initial smoke, we don't have to bother knocking Andromeda out of suppression. She can just fight her suppressive fire through the smoke using the +1B Heavy Pistol, ignoring Andromeda's mimetism and imposing a -6 for the smoke. 65% to wound, 7% to get wounded. If we don't land the smoke, we proceed with the spotlight to knock her out of suppression, but if that fails, we still have to get smoke down to avoid Guard. In short, Option A is off the table, and Option B is slightly improved in that we have a 55% chance of saving an order if we land smoke on our first try.
