New MO on the field

First of all, thank you to have taken the time to read me and @daboarder for your encouragements.

I know, that's exactly what I said two or three times already. I was more posting this in a matter of showing that maybe if we bury the old MO gameplay once for all and try to search what is the way to play them now, we could go far and find ways to be a strong sectorial instead of just a sectorial with strong identity and nice models.

Well, I partially agree with you. I think you can still play Hospitaller Core for the aggression but then, you need to think how you'll play your reactive turns.
To me, there are several way to start a list in MO :
- You focus on defense and then the OS link with FK ML is the way to go and you need to find out how you'll play your active turns
- You focus on a strong early offensive and then Hospitallers are premium here. You just need some roadblocks to give you time if you're not the first player.
- You focus more on all in strategy and then, Teutonic Core is what you need. Panzerfausts might be enough against unlinked ARO pieces and you need to focus more on taking the SWC options to make sure your Knights will quickely quit your DZ as you have still half your SWC and points to take care of this.
- You focus on flexibility and then, again the OS link is good but you have to plan to play a 7 members Core or so in order to make sure you'll always have the right tool at the right moment for the right job and you need to use Santiagos. The few points and SWC left are for support and flanking.

You can even take advantage on playing only solo pieces and a Haris. I didn't explore this way yet. Maybe it is a dead end though. I don't know yet.
I agree with you, you need to be good to make MO shine. They don't forget mistakes that much but they now give you a lot of swiss army knife units that can both fight good and take objectives/make classified (Santiagos, Montesa, TAGs, FK FO, De Fersen, Konstantinos, Pathfinder, TOFOOS, Hospitaller Doctor, Haris Teutonic, KotHS CoC) so you always have someone that can kill and take care of the objectives in the same time. When you compare to IA, their great problem is if they loose Tai Sheng, they are running with only one leg good. You don't need to kill the Daoying, killing/isolating her will suffice to put down the list for the entire game, not only one turn (as you take from the link one member, two Lt orders, one regular order, a specialist and tinbot/midrange 0 SWC heavy weapon). IA gives orders to forgive mistakes and bring the specialist in the back of the link on the objective, but don't provide redundancy for specialists and solo pieces to succeed if things go bad as their solo pieces are quite bad compared to MO ones (except Liu Xing but players seem to not see how this guy can be powerful if used well). That's exactly what shows the second game. Trauma Doc, Machinist and even Pathfinder put apart, I had Konstantinos, Seraph and Santiago Lt to take care of the objectves and all of them are good at killing too. I don't have to spend one order to bring the specialist from the back to capture a console : the killer is already on site and is doing it now the area is clear. I think that's why we don't have that much extra orders. We were given other ways to succeed, PanO ways I'd like to say as we are one of the few factions that focus on efficiency rather than tons of orders to make one work done.

So I think this answers pretty much to what you said. Above all, I agree that the new MO has more than everything changed in their way to be played. And I can understand this can be irritating if the previous ones were the one fitting for a lot of you. I have to admit that I'm on the opposite side. The old gameplay wasn't fitting me that much and I have to admit that I was irritated to have to field again the same lists as I was preparing the last satellite in comparison of the new MO where I'm constantly changing what I'm doing with the same list. The irritating part was the listbuilding but once I had the good lists, I really enjoyed playing them so I still can make good decision and I'm not grumbling against the sectorial and focus more on what options have I now.

 

The fact is, between hacking, Koalas, Pi-Well, Intruder sniper and Lunokhod, I should have had some problems to move. But the scenario has an exclusion zone, which is pulling back Nomads more in the same shape as MO. There was a spotlight/FO + guided missiles prepared for me if I wasn't cautious enough about what I was doing too. The list is in fact pretty dangerous to fight if it is played as it should. But it wasn't and that's why it seemed easy but I was extra cautious as he had an edge about taking objectives from me until last turn. Better deployment and better decision making and I wouldn't have had such easy game while still being able to leave my DZ. Going in the other half of the table would have been another story though.
He is not the first Nomad (or any Smoke tosser faction) player I play with that prefers to leave me kill his entire list while putting me such a difference in button pushing that I wouldn't have been able to come back if I wasn't careful. This is an awful gameplay as your opponent plays with you only when he really has no other way during his turn and you have to play with him all your own turn. That's where Drop Bears are premium because if your opponent wants to troll you with a smoke tosser, you can decide to not play with him too and toss some DB and say him "deal with it now! You want to play like this? I can do it too."

 

He could have done this against my BF just once after he made his Datascan. Otherwise, Pi-Well could have done this against my Seraph and between its ODD and an eventual Assisted fire programm, my Seraph had good odds to be targeted. Would this had change everything? I don't know but I know how to play with a TAG down (when your regular opponents tend to one shot Cutters with Morat Vanguard, you learn how to play when odds are really against you).