Save Maggie

Amongst even semi-competitive Haqq players, I think it's generally agreeable that the Maghariba Guard is a rather underwhelming unit in her current state - both in the internal context of Haqqislam and in the wider pantheon of TAGs. I thought it might be a decent idea to collate my thoughts and opinions on Maggie's shortcomings, how they might be addressed, and see what you guys think about Maggie, and how she might be improved mechanically.

Maggie in Haqqislam

In Vanilla Haqq, Maggie is one of your few options for gunfighting stuff over 32", competing with Knauf, the Azra'il, the Shakush HMG and some more niche picks like the Djanbazan HMG and Zhayedan HMG. This alone does give her some value, but even in this niche and necessary category for vHaqq, she is not a good choice.

The base issue is that for gunfighting, the Azra'il offers TAG killing firepower for cheaper, while being somewhat less durable, and around almost half the price of Maggie. She is more mobile than an Azra'il, but for that kind of long range gunfighting, you rarely need to move out a DZ anyway. Knauf can offer better face to face rolls with a similar level of lethality against common ARO pieces like Warcors and Total Reaction Bots - more order efficient and significantly cheaper. The Shakush HMG can serve the roll of being an armored bully for a decently cheaper price, while being easier to hide (S6 vs S8), and being more or less just as good as gunfighting lightly armed targets. I might even posit that a 6-2 S6 might be more mobile and easier to move around than a 6-4 S8.

In essence, when it comes to gunfighting, the only advantages that Maggie can consistently offer is durability and mobility - features that are either marginal and more than offset by Maggie's increased cost, or are simply not that important for the kind of purpose Maggie is serving.

Maggie does offer some utility outside of just being a bag of wounds and an MHMG - her mine dispenser can make for some neat plays, but not enough, imho, to justify her as more of a toolbox. Proper toolbox units like the Ayyar and the Namurr are units that offer multiple threat vectors and can serve multiple roles by themselves. The Ayyar can serve as a defensive unit with it's E/M Template, and then turn that around and try and hunt TAGs and HI thanks to stealth and surprise attack (-6) on it's E/M Template. Holoprojector also allows it to clear mines for free and move through the midfield with impunity, making it decently effective at hunting skirmishers and warbands - especially with either a B4 rifle or breaker rifle.

Maggie can launch two non-camo mines and maybe launch some more if you have the orders handy - these can maybe be useful on the offensive for forking people, but that feels somewhat niche. These also could be useful defensively, but again, they feel niche given Haqq's already excellent zone control ability, thanks to cheap and readily available units like the Muttawi'ah and Daylami.

In RTF, I personally think Maggie's situation is even more dire. The way, way cheaper Ghulam-Zhayedan core team can offer similar firepower with core linked Missile Launchers and HMGs with better shooting stats. The Shakush is still there and decent as ever, and there are some other options as well, like haris linked Al Fasid HRLs.

Maggie in comparison to other TAGs

Maggie is straight up inferior to all TAGs in her price range, and all TAGs that share her capabilities. Keep in mind throughout all of this discussion, Maggie also holds the unique distinction of being the game's only S8 model - making her harder to move around corners and harder to hide. There are some scenarios where S8 might be a benefit, but given how hard it can be already to hide TAGs on some tables, I feel pretty confident in stating that S8 is malus, not a boon.

To compare Maggie to other TAGs in her price range of the 80s and low 90s, things are pretty dire. Almost every single TAG at this point has Remote Presence (the odd one out being the Guijia), and some kind of strong secondary feature that makes those TAGs more than just a standard MBT. For example, the aforementioned Guijia has a mobility skill in Super Jump, and CC abilities, making it easier to move around the map and more resilient against units like Uxia and Al-Djabel. The Uhlan has a marker state and mimetism, making it significantly better at shooting, and tougher to actually dig out and deal with. The Sphinx is straight up one of the best TAGs in the game - rempres, mimetism, marker state, and climbing plus. The only super comparable TAGs to Maggie in terms of capabilities in this price range is the Bultrak and Jotum which while being pretty bad as well in my opinion, is still a better TAG for the price than Maggie thanks to it's marginally better shooting stats, smaller S, and rempres. The Bultrak is also very similar to Maggie, but is cheaper than all but the most stripped down Maggie profile, and has Veteran making active turn hacking attacks against it pretty unreliable at best.

Against cheaper TAGs with similar capabilities to Maggie, the situation is similarly dire. The first TAG that springs to my mind is the Gator - which despite being around 10 points cheaper, gains NCO and defensive CC stats. The Gator would straight up be a better TAG than Maggie even if they were identically costed. The Bultrak has already been mentioned, but another comparable TAG, imho, is the O-Yoroi - both having deployables they can fork units with. While the O-Yoroi is worse in ARO thanks to only having an AP HMG vs an MHMG, it is otherwise better in almost every regard, thanks to the very cool gimmick of stealth letting it more easily deal with hacking and hacker nets, minelayer, which gives it a better defensive set up and it's CC stats. All while being around 10 points cheaper than Maggie.

Conclusion

Maggie needs a serious touch up. She is probably not the worst TAG in the game - the Iguana or Anaconda probably still take that crown, but out of all the 'standard' MBTs, she is handily the worst. She is a fairly standard TAG over costed by a good 10+ points, mostly thanks to a ton of really bad bloat. Baggage+Mine Dispenser is cute, but niche. Her pilot being a paramedic is utterly superfluous. The +B Heavy Pistols and AP Heavy Pistols are unnecessary. 360 Visor is easily one of the worst pieces of equipment in the game in terms of it's cost to benefit. She is the largest thing in the game, without any mobility skills to make moving her easier.

I do think there are two ways you could approach making Maggie viable - the first would be cutting down her bloat, and trying to bring her into the mid to low 70s price wise. At around say, 73 or 74 points, I think Maggie would be a compelling option both in RTF and vHaqq. The other approach would be remixing her skills and giving something to her that justifies her price point. This is probably harder to do while staying within Haqq's theme, but I think it would be more interesting as Haqq doesn't have a lot of high cost, high end options. Something like Immunity (AP), or maybe MSV1, or maybe even something weirder like Triangulated Fire (+3), or +B Pitchers or Smoke GLs could fit the bill here - I'm just spitballing, really, and would love to hear how you guys would change Maggie in a way that justifies her current price point.

 

I agree with everything you say here, I think I just have a more glass-half-empty view of the value of it all - something that perhaps reflects on how much we feel Maggie is over costed by, respectively. I'd say that the difference between ~85 points and ~105 points in a zone control mission is most likely to not matter at that much? In order to contest either, your opponent is basically gonna have to kill Maggie unless they have around a third of their list sitting near the relevant zone, or something very pricy like a Cutter, Avatar or Sphinx, but in those cases I'd wager that Maggie probably already in for a bad time anyway (although I guess the Sphinx might struggle due to the lack of AP). Similarly for the Paramedic stuff, it's cool in isolation but Haqq already has some fantastic button pushers and classified machines that you are probably taking anyway, some of which even duo with Maggie in Vanilla - units like the Hunzakut, Farzan, Rafiq, Mukhtar Hacker/Doctor, and so on. It's all stuff that if it was a gimmick attached to an otherwise regular MBT, it'd be neat, but imho when added together just ends up being bloat. I've already mentioned the Ayyar and Namurr, but I think there are other examples of more interesting toolboxes in Haqq, like the new Burtuk in QK, the NCO Parachutist Bokhtar Paramedic (B3 BSG huuuuurts), and maybe even units like the Ragik Hacker and Mukhtar Hacker.

I also agree that Haqq, especially Vanilla Haqq, has fantastic tools to support and protect a TAG - my issue is that for the price you pay, I'd rather take one of our cheaper options for armored long range gunfighting - like the Azra'il or Shakush, and maybe take a dedicated ARO piece like Armand or a Nadhir with my leftover points. I think the Azra'il offers a more interesting gunfighting platform and even ARO platform, and the Shakush can provide a similar degree of bulk to Maggie while not dominating nearly a 3rd of my list. I think the lack of rempres really hurts Maggie here, as I'm ok not really wanting to repair my 58 point Shakush, but I'd really rather want to be feel comfortable repairing my ~85 point Maggie.

 

My issue with Maggie's utility stuff mostly stems from my experience with her on the table. I've had games where she's done great, games where she's done badly, but in all of those games her utility stuff has been pretty unimpactful. The Mine Dispenser has done some cool stuff, but even when putting them all together, I can only think of one or two moments where her pilot being a paramedic, baggage, 360 visor or her (AP) Heavy Pistols have been useful.

In the games I've played where Maggie has done her best work, it's been because she is a sack of wounds and armor with a big gun. My ultimate conclusion was that she simply warped my lists too much for the value she could bring.

 

Because I think she is almost at the point of being a compelling unit. She would be a perfectly fine, somewhat standard MBT if she was costed as such, but imho she is in the price range where TAGs start to offer things like mimetism and marker states. vHaqq has the ability to support a TAG pretty well, but Maggie warps your list too much around her for the value she brings.

And mostly because I think it's a shame that one of the better looking models in the game is tied to a pretty thoroughly mediocre unit.

 

Mine Dispensers are great, I'm not gonna contest that. It's def the coolest part of Maggie's kit and something I'd like her to keep. But Baggage is just so... niche? Like sure, it sounds great on paper, but how often are you going to have the spare two orders to reload the mine dispenser and then shoot it again? How often do Daylami/Nadhir live long enough to actually use both of their Panzers/Flammens and survive to have the chance to reload them? The best use case I can think of for baggage in Haqq in general is maybe reloading linked Pitchers on Barids in HB.

360 Visor with suppressive is another thing that sounds cool on paper but how often is that actually going to be useful? Maggie is mostly DZ bound, too big and with the wrong range bands to want to move up the board most of the time, and the stuff that actually kills DZ bound TAGs is either long range gunfighters or smoke equipped warbands.

S8 does let you vault a bunch of stuff nothing else can vault - but by the same token, if you aren't cutting corners when moving, it makes her harder to move around the stuff she can't vault. It means she is harder to hide well, especially from other TAGs. It's not just about height, it's about angles and how easy it is to get a bead on her. S8 vs S7 imho is at best a sidegrade.

Again, compare Maggie to any other TAG with a similar toolset, and to other TAGs are her price point. The Raicho is perhaps the most similar in both regards, and is five points cheaper than Maggie while having the stronger gimmick of essentially being immune to hacking during it's opponent's turn (ECM Guided makes GML a non-starter, BTS 6 and ECM Hacker makes Carbonite a not particularly great idea, it's got the monkey standard veteran and who actually tries to TC a TAG in their active turn lol). The Gator is more or less a straight upgrade on Maggie and is around 10 points cheaper. TAGs like the Zeta, Ulhan and Guijia all also have expensive gimmicks that land them in the 80 point range, but they are just straight up more useful - they have things like mobility skills (which are especially massive for TAGs), marker states, and NCO/LT options. Where you have to actively go out of your way to get value out of Maggie's gimmicks, the aforementioned TAGs gimmicks are gonna be used every round, maybe even during every order you spend on them. The only other TAG in her price range that you can really compare Maggie to on somewhat even terms is the equally underwhelming and over-costed Jotum.

I legit think you could just take her as she is, make her around 73 points, and she'd be pretty decently balanced. But I'd rather CB change her in a way that actually justifies her current cost.