N3 tactical guide to Qapu Khalqi, The Men of the Gate

Hopefully someone here can help me with the following issue:
How to go second with QK? While There are many tools in vanilla, we are very limited in infiltration/minelayers/defensive stuff. What worked for me was a Jannissair-Core with all good stuff, but that is an expensive brick and not always usefull. In lists with Yuan Yuans, Ghulams and so on, I have no idea, how to set up effectively against an aggressive turn 1...

 

Set up cheap AROs to slow things down and hide the rest with models covering each other.

 

QK still has Warcor and AVA 3 flashbots, for one. Since you are considering YY on top of that, let me suggest this stupid idea I've posted a while ago:

Qapu Khalqi utility combat group
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6 4 3
FANOUS REMOTE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
FANOUS REMOTE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
FANOUS REMOTE Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
RAFIQ REMOTE Rifle + Light Shotgun, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 16)
KAMEEL (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
KAMEEL Hacker (EVO Hacking Device) Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 25)
YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 8)
YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 8)
YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CCW. (0 | 8)
WARCOR (360º Visor) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3)

0.5 SWC | 100 Points

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Now, this is going all-out on the idea which means consuming 1/3 of your points, but you can cut whatever you think you won't need or move 1-2 models to your main Combat Group if it needs more orders.

What this gives you:

- 3 Fanous to serve as ARO (can be Overclocked for B2 by EVO with a command token if you go second);
- 3 YY that can be deployed, AD2'd or AD3'd on 14 thanks to EVO passive bonus;
- 6-4 MOV Forward Observer;
- Ability to run top-tier Sensor sweeps with Coordinated Orders;
- Ability to Sat-Lock (w/o -6 penalty thanks to EVO) something overconfident for your NCO LGL through this sensor network;
- Regular orders to do anything Active from the list above;
- Already has hacker (EVO) that enables Remotes this group mostly consists of in case you don't want Leila, Hawwa AHD or whatever.

Pretty sure you can make a semi-decent primary Combat Group out of the rest 200 / 5.5. Ghulam Core (since you've mentioned that) and something like maybe Djanbazan Haris, for example.

Now, I have no idea if this is any good at actually winning anything considering it's just a huge and sorta expensive toolbox which does a lot of situational or one-time stuff and will not last for long. Also, depending on what you have in another Combat Group, you may end up being very light on specialists. But to me this looks like a fun finicky toolbox.

Maaaybe it's okay to run this in Firefight where having many specialists has a downside and your YYs can drop anywhere on 17 thanks to DLZ (I think it stacks with everything, right?) and start taking down stuff that matter. Or, alternatively, deploy as your DZ guards looking after your assets and DataTracker if you go second and are really worried about alpha strike - if anything, they can still be your smokers.

 

Well, if you want something expensive, then yeah. But it's flexible. You may decide that you won't need all those orders for YYs who already have 2 each, enough for them to land and trade. You can move your Fanous to CG1 since you probably won't need to coordinate them with Rafiq for sweeps, only among themselves - and that still leaves 2-3 extra orders for YYs to maneuver a bit, depending on whether you also move another Kameel. You can cut something out, add some points to replace something with a Hawwa or whatever etc.

Finally you can go full lightweight and do something like that:

QK lightweight concept
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9
HAFZA Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16)
GHULAM Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 16)
GHULAM (Forward Observer) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 13)
LEILA SHARIF Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Shock Marksman Rifle, D-Charges / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 20)
GHULAM (NCO) Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher (Normal and Smoke Ammo.) / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 16)
DJANBAZAN (Fireteam: Haris) Shock Marksman Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 30)
DJANBAZAN HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 35)
HAFZA Heavy Rocket Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 18)
GHULAM Doctor Plus (MediKit) Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16)
NASMAT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)

5 SWC | 183 Points

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You can move Hafzas between links and juggle some loadouts to make your Core more active/reactive (2 snipers, 2 FOs + Spitfire Hafza, 2 FOs + HMG or something) and include 10th member to taste - some sort of Bashi, up to and including e/mauler one, maybe an extra body for any of your links etc.

Granted, the result is not resilient, tanks alpha strikes with its own operational body and isn't very punchy, but hey, I warned it's a bit finicky.

In fact, any ideas on what to complement this REM/YY heresy with are highly appreciated. Although if you start moving cheap rems around, you can do almost anything, perhaps up to and including Janissary links.

You can definitely run a Core with a pair of Djans, Kaplan Haris and Kameels in CG1 with the rest in CG2. No spare bodies though, but tweaking is still possible for an extra member, standalone Ghulam NCO or something along these lines.

 

This is off-topic here, but I had a Show of Force game recently for 200 pts vs vanilla CA and this list proved to be quite useful.

Spitfire Hotty
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GROUP 1 9 1 1
SCARFACE & CORDELIA TURNER . (1.5 | 72)
SCARFACE 2 Mk12, Panzerfaust / AP CCW. (1.5 | 55)
SCARFACE Light Shotgun / Pistol, CCW. ()
CORDELIA TURNER Combi Rifle, Chain-colt, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 17)
NASMAT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
LEILA SHARIF Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Shock Marksman Rifle, D-Charges / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 20)
GHULAM (Deployable Repeater) Rifle + Light Shotgun, E/Mauler / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)
HAFZA Heavy Rocket Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 18)
HAFZA Lieutenant Rifle + Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 16)
ODALISQUE Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 30)
KAMEEL (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
KAMEEL (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
YUAN YUAN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW. (0 | 8)

GROUP 2 1
WARCOR (Sixth Sense L1) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3)

4 SWC | 200 Points

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Probably the most useful guy was the E/mauler Ghulam in a link team. I opted to go first and placed some mines in the midfield, then looted a panzerfaust from the panoply and even managed to kill one order monkey with Leila and then retreated to the DZ. The opponent, who was using Sheskin and Overdrone as the rambo pieces, had to spend a lot more orders in order to not get caught in the EM blast. This was doubly effective when I found that Sheskin was a Lieutenant.

As always, linked Hafzas are brutal in ARO, and, surprisingly, Scarface also did pretty well. He actually managed to knock Sheskin's Protheion wounds with his panzerfaust in reactive (at that point she had already lost her nanoscreen to the HRL) and then shredded her with twin Mk.12s into the embryo state. Unfortunately, he then lost his marbles and got caught in the Overdrone's ARO and burned to death. Still, at the end of the day it was a 3-0 victory in my favor.

 

200 pts Show of Force really does belong to some collection of curiosities, heh.

 

Why the Warcor? Tossing it in at the cost of a second group seems like it would hurt more than help.

 

True, the opponent could have spent his command token on slicing my order pool at the first turn, but I figured that since it's Show of Force, and my opponent would use some cheap TAGs with G: Remote Presence (that can be engineered back with command token re-rolls), the CA player wouldn't spend them on my order pool. And he didn't. I actually managed to shut down the Overdrone with my Hafza HRL in the active Second turn, so the opponent had to bring it back with his doctor worm from the 2nd level of Unconscious and he burned like 2 or 3 command tokens on re-rolls.

The warcor also ended up being a decent roadblock for Sheskiin. He didn't blind her or anything, but he had some lucky armor rolls, although at the end of the day she devoured him with her Protheion. It was either going for the warcor or going through 2 e/maulers and eating linked AROs from light shotguns up close, and cutting her movement down from 10" per order to 6" also helped.

Although at the end of the day, I do agree with you – a 1-irregular combat group is kinda dumb and I was rather lucky to win that one.

 

Interesting! If it were me and I were trying to disrupt your list as little as possible, I would have brought a second nasmat. It could have played the same roll your warcor did in a pinch, albeit not quite as well.

 

I have never thought of a nasmat as a roadblock piece, although it would be hilarious if she had decided to go Protheion and rolled less than 7. I think I'll try using them in that role sometime in the future, thanks!

 

I have a doubt
Hafza rule said that up to 2 hafza can join a ft.
It means that I can have 2 hafza in a ft alcore and another in a ft Haris or I can have only two hafza, in which ways I will, join 1 or 2 ft?

 

I’ve always played it this way ...

 

I played hafza in ft like you guys but yesterday night I had the tremondous doubt that was an assolute...
But otherwise their ava would have been 2, not 4

 

Noob question : is it possible to mix an azrail with a wildcard (duo fireteam) ?

 

-bug-

 

Azrail is the one with the skill, so he must be present. Wildcard can replace FTO remote.

So yes.

See below.