with the new faq, makauls have received prolly the biggest buff they will ever see. i highly suggest trying out a swarm melee list with the new stuff/rules to see if you enjoy smoky stabbing nonsense as much as me. for those that haven't read it, a triad of makauls can throw smoke onto a guy, prolly from an angle around a corner where they can see where the smoke goes, but not the guy. next they close in. ask which is higher, bts or armor. have the double action or viral guy be team leader, depending on stats. two go into cc. the third walks up, but chooses not to use stealth. the enemy can only declare reset or change facing. prolly best to do change facing. now your only real choice here depends on how much of a debuff you want to put on your enemy: either -6 to dodge and damage 18, or -9 to dodge and damage 15. you of course will be getting a +2 bonus on your two attack rolls, which means they will most likely need to crit dodge to not just get exploded. from there you can spec fire more smoke, or step out of the smoke and throw down another smoke to a place covering your advance to the next guy, depending on circumstances. this is super viable with 19 orders (assuming they strip orders and you have a taagma schemer). one group can advance up, placing smoke for the second. if they have mines blocking the path, have the smoke group send a guy into the mine. they might lose him, but they would still be a duo, meaning you could still potentially use this nonsense to kill more guys.
Makauls don't need b.s. like this to murder things in close combat. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
Why can't the model declare CC against the two dudes who are in B2B? It can see them, and as far as I know all the FAQ did was allow stealth hacker bullshit but I see nothing about stealth within line of sight. Edit: Saw the thread. Eclipse grenades "prevent LoS" within their area while close combat "gives LoS". Its an argument about which rule supersedes the other. I imagine a lot of TOs wouldn't give the thumbs up to this sort of thing, but if they did, I second the above post - Makauls don't really need the buff to get CC work done.
That's part of the Stealth rules: A trooper with Stealth that declares a Short Movement Skill or Cautious Movement within the Zone of Control of one or more enemies but outside their LoF does not grant AROs to those enemies, even if he reaches base contact with them.
Now that I've had a night's sleep to think about this, I think that while it's a buff for our melee experts we should probably remember that if you were getting Makauls into melee you were probably doing pretty ok anyway. But it's a nice way to take those last few percentage points of risk from a knife crit out of the equation for one roll at least. Will be interesting to see if the change perseveres. For hacking-heavy factions it might pose some interesting challenges against certain armies.
@ijw if i'm reading this correctly, this would also mean that if you move the entire triad into cc, and declare cc attack with a makaul, the target can only declare to cc/dodge vs the active makaul, and not someone else in the triad, as the others would not have broken stealth assuming the target is in smoke and all
Borings yep that's my read too. Essentially for that order you should have total control over the AROs the enemy can declare, unless they have sixth sense.
Intresting case although in most situation I would prefer the burst bonus of having all 3 makauls in melee, but it could be cool on other triads there one unit doesn't have stealth anyway Sukeul, Sakiel, Makaul. Sukeul and makaul have stealth, sakiel doesn't. And of course against powerful melee killer this is also helpful. Gonna try to melee some in my next game
ummm: However, if the second Short Skill of the Order is any non-Movement Skill, then those enemies can react normally in ARO. If the Movement of the trooper with Stealth ends in base to base contact with an enemy and declares any non-Movement Short Skill, then the enemy can only declare CC Attack, Dodge, Reset, or those Skills that can be used in Engaged state. So why cant I wack you again? the only way im not getting an ARO on your guys is if they idle once they get there
We're assuming some of the Active models don't have/use Stealth whilst the others move into engaged. For example, Sakiel and 2 Makauls are in a Zero-vis zone with Fusilier Angus. The Makauls move into b2b with Angus using Stealth whilst the Sakiel dithers about in his ZoC but does not enter b2b. Angus now gets an opportunity to ARO against the Fireteam but the only valid target is the Sakiel, even if he chooses not to ARO then his ARO is forfeit for the entire order.
