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Tactics vs Puppets?

Discussion in 'Tohaa' started by n21lv, Sep 30, 2018.

  1. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    Played with this list against a 19-order Nomad list with those damned Puppets (Spitfire + 2 FO BSGs). Here's what I had (the mission is Tic-Tac-Toe):

    [​IMG] TTT
    ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
    GROUP 1[​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]6
    [​IMG] KAAURI Sentinel Submachine Gun, 2 Nanopulsers, Nullifier / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 12)
    [​IMG] KAAURI Sentinel Submachine Gun, 2 Nanopulsers, Nullifier / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 12)
    [​IMG] KAAURI Sentinel Submachine Gun, 2 Nanopulsers, Nullifier / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0 | 12)
    [​IMG] NIKOUL Viral Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 28)
    [​IMG] CHAKSA AUXILIAR Smart Heavy Rocket Launcher / Pistol, CCW. (1 | 15)
    [​IMG] IGAO Boarding Shotgun, Stun Grenades / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 25)

    GROUP 2[​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]10 [​IMG]2
    [​IMG] SUKEUL HMG, D-Charges / Pistol, Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 35)
    [​IMG] KAELTAR (Chain of Command) Light Shotgun, Flash Pulse + 2 SymbioMates / Pistol, Electric Pulse. (0.5 | 21)
    [​IMG] KAMAEL Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12)
    [​IMG] SUKEUL Lieutenant (Forward Observer) K1 Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 32)
    [​IMG] MAKAUL Heavy Flamethrower, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, Viral CCW. (0 | 13)
    [​IMG] MAKAUL Heavy Flamethrower, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, Viral CCW. (0 | 13)
    [​IMG] CHAKSA AUXILIAR (Baggage, Sensor) Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 10)
    [​IMG] CHAKSA AUXILIAR (Baggage, Sensor) Heavy Flamethrower / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 10)
    [​IMG] CLIPSOS (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25)
    [​IMG] CLIPSOS (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25)
    4.5 SWC | 300 Points
    Open in Infinity Army

    I guess I missed an Intruder when I deployed my Nikoul and he was quickly dispatched by Smoke+MSV2 trick. Then a couple more Smoke templates blocked some crucial openings and the Puppet link proceeded unopposed into my table half and reached my DZ. There it killed two Kaauris, Chaksa Aux w/SHRL, Chaksa Aux w/HFT and 2/3 of the K1 Sukeul Triad (Sukeul, Makaul, Kamael). Igao was killed through Smoke by a Morlock who rolled extra 4" on her 1st MOV. She also killed the last Kaauri. After that I concluded that with 7 remaining orders (2 invisible) against 19, my chances even for a Tie are too low and conceded the game.

    I understand that I made some big mistakes during the deployment, which created the opportunity for the Puppets link to reach my DZ, but I'd like to hear more. What would the Trinomial advise? How do you counter the Dolls of Hell?
     
  2. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    You've already identified the deployment errors (always watch for telegraphed angles intruders might reserve deploy into etc) and without knowing the table it's hard to speak further about countering them on the defensive apart from the usual staples: heavy flamethrowers watching all the close angles would probably be the best start and is far superior to nanopulsers on kauuri both because of the larger template and capacity to kill a puppet dead rather than just wound it.

    Do you have a copy of your opponent's list by any chance? Nineteen orders plus puppets and including an intruder sounds like it must be incredibly thin elsewhere (not that that matters if the alpha succeeded), so seeing exactly what you were up against would be interesting and might open up some further advice.
     
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  3. Thaddius

    Thaddius Well-Known Member

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    You have SWC to spare as well so you could trade out a Clipsos FO for a clipsos sniper/minelayers. Gao Rael sniper in a triad could've been useful but and intruder is going to be a tough nut to crack.

    What I'd be tempted to do with a nikoul isn't to deploy to cover your enemies deployment but cover key objectives. Force the intruder to move around to engage your nikoul wasting order. Setting up ARO's doesn't mean long fire lanes. I really like what you've done stacking DTW's from the Chaksa and Kaauri. These pieces aren't winning ftf rolls but trading. You should come out points positive taking out puppet bots if they try to alpha strike you and you can cover the corner of buildings as they're coming around.
     
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  4. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    He was playing Tic-Tac-Toe, so I assume the clipsos FOs needed to be specialists in order to do the final turn putsch.

    That said, I don't like basically everything about n21lv's list, but I assume he had reasons for playing what he did and that our playstyles and local conditions (terrain, opponents etc) are different. I could see myself trying out a few of the things he has individually (extensive FOs plus the guided HRL, or multiple Clipsos, or the Igao, or taking Kauuris when you still have AVA free for chaksa, or only a single Kaeltar in a list with an expensive lieutenant that you presumably need to get value out of) but everything at once kind of makes me assume we must be playing under fundamentally very different conditions.
     
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  5. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    To bring this back to tactics against puppets more generally;

    Plan to resist the alpha. Puppets are dangerous on the offence thanks mostly to their speed and resilience, which combines well with their passable medium-to-short range weaponry. Nomads have some excellent rampart sweepers against Tohaa in the form of the Intruder but more threateningly the Kriza Borac, which especially if backed up by white noise is probably the best model in the game for engaging typical Tohaa overwatch elements. Your deployment needs to account for this, limiting your overwatch to angles closer to the midfield (which the puppets will want to advance through, but which a kriza or intruder would need to spend multiple inefficient orders advacing toward to engage).

    You can still typically expect your overwatch models to be forced back (the usual good habits apply here; leave them in locations they can guts back to if needed after taking a wound, deploy Nikouls in positions super far back where HMGs might be outranged, etc), but the goal is just to diminish the enemy order pool as effectively as possible. Thereafter you rely on your close range defence, which against puppets basically should be 3-4 chaksa HFTs. These are basically dead even trades against a Puppet shotgun, but have a decent chance of killing them dead with the flame ARO and your goal once the puppets reach your DZ is to triage the damage as quickly as possible.

    Meanwhile, if you're going first, a clipsos will be a good piece for scalpeling out the puppetmaster if he isn't the minelayer profile and probably terrible if he is. A gao-tarsos makes a passable backup option but frankly he's a niche piece so you're better off just spending the gunfire to kill at least a single puppet to break the triad advantage and getting on with the rest of your gameplan. Any typical Tohaa shooting should handle these guys in active; their ARO capacity is an extremely effective speedbump but not lethal if you're careful.
     
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  6. Ben Kenobi

    Ben Kenobi Well-Known Member

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    Your Title is misleading. You had no problem against the puppets but the whole list.
    But I have a problem with your list too. Why should I use 3 Kaauri and an HRL Chaksa in one list.

    Back to the puppets: Gao Tarsos against the puppet master or Kotail with EM
     
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  7. colbrook

    colbrook Grenade Delivery Specialist

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    Statwise the puppets aren't that different to a Fireteam: Triad of Symbiont Armour troopers, as a Tohaa player you should be well aware of how to tackle a Triad!
     
  8. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    The key difference is that the puppets are disposable. But that doesn't really change the tactics, more the risks your opponent will be willing to run.
     
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  9. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    I will post the opponent's list as soon as he sends it to me.

    I must say I'm not really a competetive player (yet?), and didn't play as often as I wanted to. There are around 20 games I played in total, although I started with Infinity quite long ago. Maybe I just don't have enough strategical thinking, but anyway, I do understand that my listbuilding skills are probably abysmal. This was also the third time I played against Nomads and the first time I've encountered the puppets, and the second time I played this mission (last time was in 2016). So I hope this comes mostly from inexperience and from not knowing my own weaknesses and strengths of my opponent's faction.

    The reason why there is just a single Kaeltar is that I do not really like the idea of using 4 Mates in my list. IMO this is too cheesy and provides a ground for making more mistakes. So, as I'm still trying to understand my own faction, I'm also trying to avoid excessive handicaps such as using 2 CoC Kaeltars.

    Other choices in the list have the same root cause -- I'm trying to understand how each unit plays in a given situation. So far I've liked using double Clipsos FO as specialists, but as my opponent and told me later, every specialist that didn't earn you any objective points is basically a dead weight for your list. Three Kaauri SMG and Chaksas are there just because I saw a list on the forum that spammed both, and decided to try it out. After all, Tic-Tac-Toe seems to be the mission where you need a lot of orders. My plan was to use both as Passive protection against AD troops and then move Kaauris with a Coordinated Order to secure the objectives if I would go first.

    That said, here's my deployment. Yellow arrow denotes the path Puppets took to my DZ. Greyish ellipses are Smoke templates. Green circle halves are front arcs. Kaeltar CoC and Makaul are on the ground floor of the building hidden behind a 1" low wall. Kaauri & Chaksa on the left side of the DZ are both on the ground. I was going 2nd, so I tried to hide everything that could be picked from afar by Intruder, but as I mentioned earlier, totally forgot about that when I was positioning the Nikoul. Chaksa SHRL was deployed there to be in the +3 range of his weapon in case there will be a need to char someone and no FO is available. Probably the last time I did something that stupid, as he was one of the first units that died to Puppets.

    NB: Trees are LoF-blocking cylinders of infinite height and diameter of their base that provide no Cover. The white-blue stripe is a frozen river that counts as Aquatic terrain. All buildings are solid.
    [​IMG]
     
    #9 n21lv, Oct 1, 2018
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2018
  10. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    Dropping a Gao-Tarsos in the enemy DZ is too expensive and unreliable in a mission where EVO hackers are warmly welcomed. I need 46 points and two orders to drop him more or less safely, and with my dice luck (I lost CC with Neema vs Deva once and then with Neema+Makaul vs Sphinx. Neema had a Mate in both cases) that could be easily countered. No, thanks, I won't take those chances.

    Kotail E/M is good when you can deliver him to the enemy DZ, but against 19 orders, several Koalas, mines and 4 Jaguars and several other well-positioned passive ARO pieces this plan is really risky. Not to mention that I went second.
     
  11. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    I don't, unfortunately. I mean, theoretically I do, of course, but I've never met the Puppets in field before.

    In fact, I am the only Tohaa player in my meta and Triads/Haris teams are something that I rarely see. There are less than 10 active players, and I'm usually playing against MAF, SAA or Nomads. There are no big tournaments around us, except in Poland and Soviet Russia.
     
  12. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    My love for the Gao-Rael Sniper has faded, to be honest. I realised this:
    1) He is nearly useless alone, so I need a link to support thim with B2 or a Kerail to do the Smoke tricks, which I hate because reasons.
    2) Apart from MSV2 and his Symbiont Armour, he has nothing to raise his trade value in a firefight. He will easily die to an HMG and I will be left with a stupid duo, which means I need to take backfiller troops for the link that is guaranteed to become a Duo. So why take him in the first place?
    3) His Spitfire profile is much more useful to me, as he now has FD1 and can be used as active mid-field gunner and Camo sweeper thanks to his visor.
    4) Nikoul is just more reliable. Viral Sniper is a much deadlier weapon than regular Sniper, and his Foxhole makes him much more flexible in terms of deployment, in addition to making him a bit more durable than Gao-Rael against those pieces I expect him to trade to. And he can place a mine in the DZ, which is always a good thing to do.
    5) MSV1 can do just as well as MSV2 if you know what you will be using it against. I'm not expecting to win a firefight vs HMG+Smoke anyway, so I don't think MSV2 is that needed. In addition to that, there is not much TO in my meta, but even if there was, MSV1 still sees through TO, just not as good as MSV2.

    BTW, you're the second person to advise me to use Clipsos Minelayer and Sniper options. Perhaps I should really give those another try.
     
  13. Ben Kenobi

    Ben Kenobi Well-Known Member

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    No, the Kotail is against the Puppets self. If you hit them with speculative fire the are out of action. Dodge on -6 is bad enough fot them and you get the Kotail easy on a rooftop for this :smile:

    lonelyartichoke/ride-the-kotails
     
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  14. Zsolt

    Zsolt Well-Known Member

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    This is like saying "I rolled a 1 once".
     
  15. Ben Kenobi

    Ben Kenobi Well-Known Member

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    1) Ahm... Yes! You play Tohaa.
    2) B2 + Symbiomate can kill an unlucky HMG. Otherwise fail willingly your guts roll and take cover.
    3) Never used him, never needed him. Chamo burned from the Makaul
    4) And he lacks MSV2. But that's a faith-setting, therefore nevermind.
    5) If it isn't needed in your meta then don't use it. I wouldn't go out without a Gao Rael Sniper :wink:
     
  16. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    B5 HMG vs unlinked MSV2 Sniper through White Noise. I'm on 12s my opponent is on 5s. I roll a 3, 2, 2 and 2 fails. My opponent rolls a 4. :'(

    Add a second burst and mate and the odds of that sort of outcome go way up.

    Spec-firing unwounded Puppets is 9s vs 7s (4s vs the Suprise Shot) so less than 25% odds of success. Which is fine if you can hit multiplie, but vs 1 you'll be better off BSGing.

    Either way, you're sinking orders into something that's fundamentally disposable.
     
  17. n21lv

    n21lv SymbioHate

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    The only problem is that SpecFire only works in Active turn, which was not the case in my game. I doubt that he will be as much as efficient with those grenades in ARO, however I never tried.
     
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  18. nehemiah

    nehemiah Well-Known Member

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    A Kerial Preceptor with 2 Surda, and a 'mate and 'bomb would be a good start. you can smoke up the puppets and have the Surda rip them apart, or if you have a good run on puppetmaster the Surda would make short work of it, and tucked away on a surface 8" or less from the ground the 'bomb can be used to take it out.
    Even the single Surda profile gives you a pretty decent chance and pulling off these same tactics.
     
  19. RobertShepherd

    RobertShepherd Antipodean midwit

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    A symbiobomb on a highly mobile model specifically for engaging puppetmasters is the most niche thing ever. I think I love it.
     
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