Penny is by far my favorite ALEPH model. Yet while i had succes using her when me and my friends first started out, these days i just keep losing her way early or simply doesn't get the value from her i believe i could. I mostly play vanilla ALEPH and against PanO and Nomads, and never do my opponents refrain from flamethrowers and Nisses/Intruders and minelayers. I've tried using Eudoros' impetuous eclipse grenades to get her forward fast and early. I've tried Drakios to assassinate MSV reactive units in the frist turn. I've tried keeping her back until i have an opportunity or simply fielding a lot of long range weaponry in her lane of approach, but my success is still very limited. If people could write a bit about their successful uses of Penny that would be very appreciated.
She is one of the reasons why I started Aleph, but I have a lot of trouble to use her too. I understand your problem. I normally use her together with a primary attack group, such as myrmidons. They can clean the path from mines and flamethrowers and let her run upfield during the second and third turn. The problem is that she is not a specialist, therefore, half of the time she just runs upfield but does not has a real impact on the game. Another problem for me is the silhouette. Indeed, in my local meta there is the tendency to use very crowded tables which simply do not allow her to move. This is a general problem of the bikes. There are plenty of narrow passages which strongly limits the possible ways to approach the enemy. Something that I recently discovered is the possibility to vault over scenarios which are lower than her, but nevertheless, her movements are strongly limited.
She isn't an alpha strike, is more a punch in the back; she is like an ad troop reaching a flank and gunning down cheerleaders. I think it's very difficult to balance her profile. Perhaps with her cost a multi rifle would be more reasonably Enviado desde mi SM-J330FN mediante Tapatalk
Penny is a cool model, but she is just lacking focus and a role to play. If she had a specialist trait, she’d be viable. Just being fast and packing a punch isn’t unique in Aleph - for that, I’d much prefer Patroclus/Eudoros at her cost.
I know Pennt isn't the optimal model. To kill cheerleaders i could get a Garuda or two instead. They would not have to move through an entire map of reactive fire to get to where she needs. As a straight up fighting piece, someone who can get cover or at least have a stronger BS weapon than a Combi Rifle would be better. Still, i love her model and i want to use her. To find new and interesting ways to build around her and MAKE her work. I don't really do tournament play and my friends don't play optimally either so it should be possible. She's easier to make work than Andromeda anyways.
I'll disagree with that. Andromeda to me is a great option for dealing with midfield skirmishers and such and works well in a position where she is taking away their scoring or activation pieces. Her silhouette is really the only downside to her.
I'd say that the whole Guardian concept is a down both for her and Boronin. And that being the most forward troop, without ODD but Mimetism, in an army with tons of ODD means she is hard to use (Zerat users know what this means, but at least she is no hacker)... and that she has an awkward skillset (MA but without MA to have Guardian, FO but without FO to prevent her from marking, etc...). But we are talking about Penny. Pros: Nice miniature, even better in the boxed Boottleg which you can use ingame (but the base is too barren unless you use a scenic one), good melee skillset and weapons, good ranged options and defensive capabilities thanks to NWI and ODD and Ikhol. Cons: She is naturally geared to take down TAGs, but those are inmunne to her Ikhol... So she has to stay hunting for HI at most (and that's excluding the Su Jian and the Karakuris...). She has a BIG base that means you have to be really careful with deployment, since you can find yourself trying to go through places she won't fit unless she dismounts (and there is a chance there won't be wide enough avenues for her to cross the battlefield), so the enemy can use chokepoints to keep her from being useful at all. She also has been a little overpriced because of having both a Combi and a Contender. "Optimization" would mean, for me, dropping the Contender (seriously, she is too fast to really need a long-long range weapon) and one level of Kinematica (in both mounted and unmounted profiles), while upgrading her PHIS to 15 while mounted, 13-14 while unmounted (so she can, you know, carry Achilles, the way she is supposed to. It's either that or giving her Baggage, which would be really broken in a troop that has the mobility to reach any quadrant/band on the table and would score for 61pts, like an elite HI or a light TAG...), and changing the Ikhol to MA3 so she can engage TAGs...
She's a very good flanker, cheerleader hunter and distraction, to a much bigger degree than Garudas or Ekdromoi. She can advance up the flank very fast, and AD isn't saving much orders. ODD combined with good BS can be hard for enemy units to overcome, and once in a good position you can put her in Suppressive Fire and watch opponent losinga lot of orders to take out a single model, instead of focusing on objectives or rest of your army. This is one of those cases where unit's value lies not in counting points to kills ratio, but in how it messes up with enemy battle plan. As for her CC - against TAGs it's a gamble, but against elite HIs without MA she's very good.
