Let's say that you are starting in second...

ARO pieces.

You don't need ( and with expensive agema, likely don't want) a sniper. But you need pieces that can slow down the enemy form advancing. Every order he spends shooting at something you put over there is a order that he isnt using to flank and shoot your really important stuff.

ARO is not about killing the enemy during his turn - he has all the possible advantages at that time. ARO is about not letting him do too much damage on that first turn.

Even a few thorakites well positioned can delay a attack for 3-4 orders. Thats almost half of his order allotment.

 

Place models hidden so the enemy must maneuver a lot to engage them.

Thorakities are amazing semi-disposable corner guards thanks to 360 visors and chain rifles/nano pulsars. But remember nearly every* human looking aleph lhost has a nano pulsar, if need be you can trade hits with a rambo. Sometimes you just need to make the bleeding stop.

Use of camo and mine layers can also force wasted orders as your opponent crosses the battlefield.

Finally you can use hidden deployment to spring traps. A hd post human can deploy in a place ready to spring out AFTER the opponent uses a first movement to engage another piece. Double dipping aros like that can really mess up your opponents plans, but takes practice to set up.

 

This. Just setting up two Camo tokens near an objective and covered a rifle wielding order monkey can be enough to throw your opponents plans off.

 

Yeah SP has an abundance of Camp and infiltration.

In all seriousness though linked FO, DTWs and smoke from myrmidons should slow down your opponent. While I like long range aro pieces this comes as a big investment for SP. Id deploy to cover 24inch fire lanes and have myrmidons or thorakites around corners for any fools getting close. SS and dtws means you're making optimal choices if they close in.

 

Without real SK Phalanx can have trouble holding the enemy back, but they're DTW heavy units make DZ diving very difficult. I think a lot of people use a secondary Thorakitai link as an ARO. And some factions just rely on their Total Reaction HMG REM.

 

It is something noobs will use, but badly, and good players may use, but use it well :p
I don't think there are "noobs choices". There are tools, you may or may not use it. So if you think you need a murderbot, just take it. If positionned well, they can be a real pain for your opponent. Just don't forget they are weak to modifiers (camo, surprise attack ...) and you should never give them too many coverage, especially on the opponent's DZ, for that would allows your opponent to use his best available counter, instead of having to move around it.

 

Also think about using Drakios and Scylla, as their bots are perfect for delaying the enemy and don't give up Orders if they die.

 

Scylla is especially good in vanilla, since her bots have also repeaters and can be a huge threat to many opponents. She is still strong but less in SP, simply because SP has usually less hackers - and having repeaters means Scylla is exposed as well. I mean, if you only have Scylla, she can be easily redrummed through one of her bot by any KHD. If your opponent only see Scylla but fear a naga/mk2/dasyu, or see a danava, he will be far more careful.

Well, if you can cybermask her (impossible on first turn obviously), you can have a really big threat net.

 

You will lose some of the defenders. Remember, the active player has the initiative and will move the best tool for the task into position. If facing lightly armed troops he can roll out a TAG. If you have a heavy weapon trooper, he might use smoke and move closer with a warband, some else disposable trooper, or use AD. The list goes on. Outside few specific units reactive defence isn't about creating roadblock. It's about creating speed bumps, so your opponent won't do as much in his active turn as he likes, and has to finish the turn with overexposed units, which you can capitalize on.

As for the TR bot - it's simply one of the tools in your arsenal and should be treated as such. New players tend to treat it like a main or even only ARO piece, end part of the learning process is to realize its limitations and how to use other units in this role as well.

Some Phalanx defensive tactics:

- Zayin bot, duh. It's there for a reason.

- Multiple Thorakitai, especially FO and Marksmen. They're cheap, have good weapons and equipment, and can provide good cost-effective screen. Keep them in secondary group with some assault trooper, like an Ekdromos. This way their loss won't affect your main combat group and you can still use their orders on attack.

- Agema - generic or heroes - with nearby Myrmidon to provide smoke cover. First enemy order you shoot back with Agema, Myrmidon uses Smoke Dodge. Next order - your Agema's in smoke and unless enemy has MSV2 unit in position, he's in trouble. Work the same in active turn.

- Phoenix in fireteam. ODD, HRL, good BS, NWI. Keep a Doc or it's Yudbot nearby.

- A distraction. Place some heavy piece, like Achilles, Hector, Patroclus impersonating one of them, Ajax or Penthesilea in a good position to attack, but deployed so it'd require a lot of orders to deal with them. There's an art to deploying them in a way that they're hard to reach, but tempting enough for opponent to try it anyway. They'll lose a lot of orders to deal with your unit, not necessarily succeed, and even if - you're down one order for their 6-7. It's a very good trade.

 

@Stiopa speaks wisdom.

Active player has too many advantages to expect him to not accomplish anything. As reactive player your goal is to make accomplishing things too costly.

Say your opponent decides to rambo turn 1. You stripped 2 orders with a command token, and it costs at least another 3 to run across the board to engage you. That leaves your opponent only 5 orders left to get work done. Burst 2 linked smokes can stymie efforts to shoot things, as can sacrificial troops.

To come off "even" for the orders spent killing your guys turn one your opponent needs to kill 3 to 4 guys. (1 trooper = 3 orders over the course of the game).

Its unrealistic to expect not loose anyone, but if you can keep damage to only a a few thorakities, in effect you accomplished more during your opponents wasted turn than they did.

Powerful aro pieces like tr bots, pheonix, or maybe* agema should be placed to cover limited appoaches in their ideal range. If you place them in a sniper nest that sees the whole board they can easily be engaged by a high burst/mod stacking attack piece that counters them. It also may be advised to not leave any powerful pieces exposed depending upon board set up and enemy composition.

The goal is always to force your opponent to waste orders, don't deploy so the enemy can use templates to easily hit multiple guys. Guard corners with thorakities or chain rifle myrmidons. Use buildings and roofs with parapits to hide models in total cover and force your opponent to waste more orders engaging.

 

What I do is deploy in several layers:

You have your myrm link as heavy hitter, but you want to avoid pesky things reaching your lines and chain rifling, burning or isolating your troops, also infiltrating camos that lay mines in their route, whatever... For avoiding these nasty things, first I deploy my link (usually Phoenix, Machaon, Chain Rifle Guy and Spitfire/hacker) in total cover and quite behind my DZ; then I use 2 FO thorakites and usually 2 lamedh rems, setting them looking the safe places where an enemy would place itself to attack the myrm link. Hopefully they'll resist or at least they'll drain orders from the enemy, and in the worst case you still have 6 orders for the myrm link... these are a lot.

In the other flank I like to use a 4 man thorakites link: Thrasymedes, FO, Paramedic and LRL (if I have CAPS, a Feuerbach or a HMG). Both LRL are very deceiving weapons, with an S13 circular impact template +3 until 24"; just avoid longer LOF at all costs.

Hope it helps.

 

Another possibility is including strong long-range piece in a fireteam for defence purposes, only to restructure the link without it in your active phase. For example deploying Phoenix with three Myrmidons, and in your turn leaving him there, and linking Myrmidons with Eudoros, Myrm Officer, Ajax, etc. and pressing the assault. Same thing can be done with Thorakitai.

 

Not losing anyone on the first turn is dominating your opponent.

The point of long range AROs is to make your opponent split their orders between their ARO clearer and their fast attacker. TR bot further limits who can clear them because of their B, while MSV2 can't be smoked past. Snipers can't be out-ranged by enemy snipers, which may be very important depending on meta. Various equipment further limits which unit your opponent can use, possibly taking more orders as they reposition, throw smoke/white noise, etc.

Personally I almost always have an MSV2 and almost never TR bot because WB counter feels like the most important thing. But my faction has lots of other options. Phalanx may not. Until the Kanren, ISS had trouble and would usually take 1 or 2 TR bots in each list.

 

Ruishi? Hsien? Bao troops? You also have kuang shi, that are absolute ace guarding the DZ in the case of going second :)

 

Those are all things similar to what Phalanx has. What they didn't have was SK good for slowing down the opponent, they needed to protect DZ and pin at range like Phalanx does now.

 

Exactly. Aside from Thrasymedes and to some extent Andromeda SP has no options for midfield presence when the game begins, and no mines. What it does have is multiple great long range pieces, from expendable to elite ones. The key is to learn how to use them to set up proper ARO net.

 

Yeah!

For some time I was fielding infiltrating Thrasymedes, but then you have to pay 1,5 SWC to link thorakites, a big no.

Never have used Andromeda, but I fear that this S4 is a big liability to control midfield (and lack of mines to)

Good luck with your games

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