Tunguska - beyond the classics

It is possible. I’ll send lists when I get home from work. I normally like running 15 orders but trying to get 2 combat groups in a HM list is kinda clunky. I like running the puppet link with the HM core in limited insertion to be honest. Push the puppets up in a position for your opponent to have to deal with them. If they live then awesome, if not then hopefully they lasted long enough to soak up a lot of your opponents orders so you still have a ton to fuel the HM link turn 2 and 3.

As far as that link composition I’m surprised to not see the pitcher profile that much. It’s basically my go to for hacking support be it striking at easy hackers, throwing up clutch white noise or shutting down enemy HI.

It’s the same thing with the jammer/panda heckler. Everyone gets so fixated that the Camo token has a jammer that they forget it has a repeater that can walk up 8” and bad touch someone. It’s how I recently isolated and immobilized Achilles in a tournament. That could just be my meta but I seem to rely on that fast panda more than the jammer.

 

^1000 percent this regarding the heckler fast panda. Even if you get discovered on the first move, which you never will, that fast panda can drop 20" from the starting position (first order move 4", get discovered, move another 4". Second order move 4", get shot to hell, drop fast panda which moves 8". Guided Missile/isolate/possess/whatever to your heart's content).

As for the Hollow Men, as you can see people play them very differently and that they are effective for different play styles. Coming from the Wu Ming pain train I use them super aggressively, right in my opponent's face. I don't hide them between turns I want my opponent to be wasting orders smashing against their ARO's. The key is to make sure you're targeting the right stuff in your active turn and hitting super hard so that your opponent's choice of counter-strike options is limited. I have played Hollow Men in limited insertion tournaments and no surprise they do great. I'm not really good at limited insertion though so my "normal" go-to list in a non-limited insertion environment is:

TunguskaITS2
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GROUP 1 9 1
HOLLOW MEN Spitfire, Chain-colt / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (2 | 36)
HOLLOW MEN Missile Launcher, Chain-colt / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (2 | 35)
HOLLOW MEN (Fireteam: Haris) Combi Rifle, Chain-colt + 1 TinBot A (Deflector L1) / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 32)
HOLLOW MEN (Specialist Operative) Boarding Shotgun / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 30)
STEMPLER ZOND FTO (Super-Jump) Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 18)
CLOCKMAKER Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18)
ZONDBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
SALYUT (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
WARCOR (Sixth Sense L1) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3)
GROUP 2 5
PERSEUS FTO (Fireteam: Haris) Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades / 2 Pistols, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 33)
SECURITATE HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 21)
SECURITATE Hacker (Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 21)
SECURITATE Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 13)
SECURITATE Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 13)
6 SWC | 300 Points
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FWIW this is the HM list I like to run. I have no issues running it against higher order lists, and have used it to come back from devastating 1st turn Alpha Strikes to claim victory. It's LI, but it packs a lot of TJC goodness into one list. It's not really much of a break from @inane.imp's template, so I hadn't posted it but I'll share it with the HM questions coming up. I cannot take credit for writing the list originally, a friend of mine suggested it and man is it fun to play.


Allstars
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9 1
HOLLOW MEN Spitfire, Chain-colt / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (2 | 36)
HOLLOW MEN Missile Launcher, Chain-colt / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (2 | 35)
HOLLOW MEN MULTI Rifle + Pitcher, Chain-colt / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 35)
HOLLOW MEN (Specialist Operative) Boarding Shotgun / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 30)
STEMPLER ZOND FTO (Super-Jump) Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 18)
PERSEUS (Super-Jump) Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades / 2 Pistols, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 34)
SPECTOR (AD: Combat Jump) Boarding Shotgun, Nanopulser, Drop Bears / Pistol, E/M2 CC Weapon. (0 | 33)
MARY PROBLEMS Hacker (Forward Deployment L1) Submachine Gun + Zapper, Pitcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 30)
INTERVENTOR Hacker Lieutenant (Hacking Device Plus) Combi Rifle, 1 FastPanda / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 27)
CLOCKMAKER Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18)
ZONDBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)

5 SWC | 299 Points

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Again with the active Core as a centerpiece I'd actually use the Vertigo's SML more as a normal ML with the option of doing guided shots if needed. Here either Jelena's Fireteam or the Transductor will provide Sensor and Repeater zones to tackle nasty hard to reach midfield nuisances.

Active Core + Vertigo
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GROUP 1 10
CLOCKMAKER Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18)
GRENZER Spitfire / Pistol, Breaker Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 30)
JELENA KOVAČ Breaker Combi Rifle, Chain-colt / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 21)
PERSEUS FTO (Fireteam: Haris) Breaker Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades / 2 Pistols, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 33)
SECURITATE Feuerbach / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 22)
SECURITATE (Repeater) Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15)
HECKLER Red Fury / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 24)
INTERVENTOR Hacker Lieutenant (Hacking Device Plus) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 25)
SPEKTR (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 32)
TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)

GROUP 2 5
DAKTARI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)
PUPPET MASTERS Hacker (Hacking Device) Submachine Gun / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 20)
SALYUT (Minesweeper, Repeater) Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
VERTIGO ZOND Smart Missile Launcher / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 18)
ZONDBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)

6 SWC | 299 Points

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14 - 16 you can run LI into fine and a HM team will quickly even things out, going up against 17+ then you will begin to have issues.

He also packs a multi rifle (super underrated weapon) making him a great back up shooter for when the Spitfire HM takes a few too many rounds to the face plate.

The FP is the far more useful piece of kit and you will get more mileage out of, especially if you have OSS players lurking in your meta as you can and will get that repeater on target to their sniper dakini, brick it then blow it away.


One of my go to HM core lists;


iRobot
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10
HOLLOW MEN MULTI Rifle + Pitcher, Chain-colt / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 35)
HOLLOW MEN Missile Launcher, Chain-colt / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (2 | 35)
HOLLOW MEN Spitfire, Chain-colt / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (2 | 36)
HOLLOW MEN (Specialist Operative) Boarding Shotgun / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 30)
STEMPLER ZOND FTO (Super-Jump) Combi Rifle, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 18)
CLOCKMAKER Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18)
ZONDBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
INTERVENTOR Hacker Lieutenant (Hacking Device Plus) Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 25)
PUPPET MASTERS (Minelayer) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 14)
PUPPETBOT (Marksmanship L1) AP Marksman Rifle / Electric Pulse. (0 | 14)
PUPPETBOT (Forward Observer) Boarding Shotgun / Electric Pulse. (0 | 11)
PUPPETBOT (Forward Observer) Boarding Shotgun / Electric Pulse. (0 | 11)
REAKTION ZOND HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 26)
LUNOKHOD Heavy Shotgun, Akrylat-Kanone, D-Charges, CrazyKoalas (2) / Electric Pulse. (0 | 24)
6 SWC | 300 Points
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I was going to ask where that ELO box score came from, Joel's post explained it.

Nice work! This list is really interesting and nice to see it did well.

Which missions did you play it in?

 

Thanks, man, I appreciate it. It was a really fun time and my dice got super hot.

I used the hollow man against a vanilla Pan O cutter list in a loss on Acquisition. I went first and made the mistake of putting my opponent in retreat too soon :(. To be clear, since I went first I was trying to put him in retreat, but I should have held back one more turn. I also used it in a victory against Ikari on Frontline. In that game the Haris was super useful because starting with two links really helped against the Yuan Yuan and Desperado alpha strike. That Haris profile was an experiment and I ended up really liking it. I used all four command tokens, three of them reforming links throughout the game. I think the terrain helped me quite a bit on that game, too, there were a lot of the sort of platforms and catwalks that hollow men love. And to give an idea of how hot my dice were -- my Missile Hollow Man beat a Yuan Yuan in close combat; breaker pistol gun fu.

 

The other night I dropped the above 'Tate + HM list against a local JSA player on powerpack. Table was pretty much what you'd expect for a typical table, a few long firelanes at ground level but most are real short CQB engagements, godawful DZ's for power pack etc.

Won the roll, took turn initiative, huddled up around the pieces of cover in my DZ, with the Grenzer up on a roof top giving him a commanding view of two of the antennae and the main flanking route and the feuerbach on more or less the same line at ground level. I held the jammer in reserve to play road bump for which ever direction he chose to approach from. It was during this time I wished I had brought a Grenzer list so I wasn't forced to be so compressed into a such a tiny area hoping he didn't decide to infil roll an Oniwaban to just ruin my day. deployed the puppet master and their mine to provide point defence for the interventor. My opponent deployed fairly conservatively with everything keeping it's head down, with mines down covering the approach to his side of the table.

R1:
Threw up cyber mask on the interventor using LT order (Its TJC, I know who my LT is, you know who it is so why screw around hiding it). I then ran the transductor forward to behind a building between the antennas and dropped a sniffer as this was going to be the primary area in which I will focus the army and the last thing I needed was a Ninja or Oniwaban to introduce my Hollowmen or anything for that matter to a very pointy sword. After dropping the sniffer, sensored with Jelena to reveal a Ninja KHD and surprise redrumed it with a heckler. Following this I decided to move out with the hollow men, moving up to the building I just cleared out I swung around one side to catch a Ryuken out of cover to try and put her down so I could move on to the flash pulse bot and the Karakuri. I scrubbed out on shooting multiple times and achieved a whole lot of nothing, should have moved up a little bit more and hit her with a chain colt. Tried to engage the FP bot with the spitfire and got blinded for my troubles, so they jumped up on to the roof top and went prone.

My opponent took down the Transductor, and nailed the Grenzer with their Daiyokai, and had the Ryuken throw some more mines around and take up an overwatch position over the centre antennae, re positioned his Keisotsu team with the ML on a roof overlooking every roof top on the board but with limited LOF to the ground level. This really sucks as it will mean that one of the main benefit to the HM and Percy is now negated unless I can find a way to deal with that ML.

R2;
Jelena's team moved out to centre console to provide smoke cover to the HM now pinned on a roof top, as well as activate the antenna and sensor the are to try and reveal the Oniwaban I was incredibly paranoid about that ultimately didn't exist. They tried to take down the Ryuken to no avail then took up defensive positions in the area. The Hollowmen now hidden from the ML dropped off the roof back down to ground level, Tried to engage the Daiyokai, took a wound for their troubles, tried to engage the flash pulse bot and got blinded, so the spec op activated the other antenna and they took up defensive positions near the antenna then passed the turn.

My opponent activated the antenna on the other side with their Aragoto KHD reformed the Keisotsu team with one of the spares dropping the ML from the team leaving it to watch over the roof tops to keep me honest. The team moved up so the Kempetai could take on the Feuerbach 'Tate before taking on Percy, but lost and ate an EXP round to the face and went down. The Ryuken tried something similar and succeeded against the 'Tate and Percy successfully popped smoke in her face, leaving her with little to do. Next up the Daiyokai moved up the flank toward my DZ, went to engage the BSG HM through Low vis Holo ad failed took the wound, for the next few orders this continued of trading hits (or in his case crits) until the Daiyokai moved into jammer range got jammed but managed to put down the HM in the end.

R3;
Heckler KHD hunts down and assault pistols the Aragoto. Jelena's team finally puts down the Ryuken after the HM spitfire fails to do so, takes up defensive positions again with the repeater close to the flank antenna and failed repeatedly to hit the Daiyokai but at least I had a repeater in range to try and brick the Karakuri before it hits the antenna.

My opponent uses the last order on his Daiyokai to put down the 'Tate repeater, then ran Oda onto the antenna and press the button for the win.

Thoughts;
List played well enough, probably wasn't the best mission for it and could probably use the full haris for the burst bonus to deal with the sat zone. Jelena was a useful tool to have up my sleeve and having her hiding on a blind corner looking at the antenna caused my opponent a bunch of headaches. I will definitely try it again in more conventional missions and see where that gets me.

 

Duo, if I ran the haris things may have gone differently as having that extra burst may have help to swing some of the fire fights in my favour. The saturation zone made things incredibly difficult put down, but thats the point of it, and this thread isn't really the place to discuss why table wide effects are boring, awful and shotgun to the knees fix for stuff.

 

Pretty much, you'd want to lean on more soft AROs, but the DZ issues of that mission are also a pain to try and work around.

But like I said, i'd like to try it on a more conventional mission and see how things play.

 

can you explain the experiment? You go core, then when they start to die, you go haris and the sec core? is that? Isn't it better then to start with a HM haris (because you cannot put the stempler in a haris if the two dying are HM, and this way you can save tokens for other uses)

 

The Kriza + Hollow Men is probably the best Duo there is in the game and horribly underused.
Even more since it allows to run a Core Link and Puppets in the same list.

 

Jurisdictional Command of Tunguska
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2
KRIZA BORAC HMG / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (2 | 54)
HOLLOW MEN (Specialist Operative) Boarding Shotgun / Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 30)

2 SWC | 84 Points

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Usually this duo?

 

HMG+Specialist is a classic combo.
The KB HMG is a given, the Hollow Men are the interesting part. While getting the BSG and the Specialist is good for obvious reasons I'd value the Order efficency you get from moving the KB up the field and then lighting up rooftops with the HM.
Having a Chaincolt helps a lot with fighting off CC troops and clearing Camo, unfortunately the FO doesn't have that. My preference is either the Spitfire or the Multirifle Pitcher. Spitfire for obvious reasons Multirifle Pitcher to make sure you can clear Hacking threats or deliver a threat yourself.

Superjump lets you place those Pitchers in very annoying and hard to clear spots i.e. vs HI Fireteams or TAGs lacking support staff with C+ nearby.

 

Sounds like that’s what he did. Start with the HM Harris and the Securitate core formed at deployment.

 

I'd be inclined to run the Multi-rifle Pitcher HM with the Kriza HMG in a duo as well. In some scenarios I'd probably make it the AHD, if I needed to shave points then the BSG specialist.

 

Sure, the experiment was taking the Haris profile instead of the basic Combi rifle profile. It cost me roughly half an order because if I don't do that I can rejigger the list in such a way that I can replace the irregular warcor with a regular order so I'm 10/5. instead of 9/5.

So I generally expect to move my core link back and forth between the Perseus link and the Hollow Men link. But by having the Haris it gives me the option to start with both linked if I go second; sometimes I want to do that sometimes I don't. Against Ikari I was more scared of a Desperado/Yuan Yuan alpha strike than I was against a Rui Shi alpha strike (even though he had double rui shis) just based on how his combat groups were set up. I was pretty confident that if he smoked out my Haris Hollow Man missile launcher it would take him quite a few orders to set it up and then he probably wouldn't do all four wounds to me and I had an engineer nearby. So by Harising the Hollow Men I lost sixth sense 2, but I gained burst 2 ARO on everyone so all those short range alpha strikers are now having to spend a lot of orders throwing smoke. I was especially worried about him ignoring my hollow men and finding a way to gut my Perseus link with Yuan Yuan, so by giving them each burst 2 ARO really helped me secure my DZ.

After I survived his first turn, I spent my first five orders on my Perseus link killing his surviving Yuan Yuan and Desperado who I knew would impetuous into my DZ if I didn't deal with them immediately. Then I broke both links and spent a command token to core my hollow men (I had already spent a command token to reduce his order pool so that dropped me to 2). I moved out with the hollow men link doing their super jump thing and taking out high value targets. But as I did so the Stempler zond fell behind so I dropped to a four man link. Because I had that Haris profile I wasn't too bothered about the Stempler falling behind; if I didn't have the Haris I'd probably have spent more orders moving in such a way that the Stempler would keep up. But since I had the Haris when my turn ended I cancelled my core link again, re-linked Perseus (one command token) and Harised the shotgun, combi rifle and spitfire (last command token). The Missile launcher reminded out of the Haris this time, far enough away and with a good enough sight line that anything he had left to gunfight it would have to take a bad ARO anyway. So the ability to Haris gave me a lot of flexibility in that game.

Compare that to my game 1, where I went first and pretty much only broke the core hollow men when I wanted to move out with the Perseus core. In that game, I never once used the Haris.

So by "experiment" I'm really just referring to that Ikari game I really, really liked the flexibility the Haris offered me. I'm willing to bet I'll only use it maybe half my games at most, but the flexibility is probably worth losing that regular order it's basically costing me.

 

I'm currently running this, which I enjoy a lot. Typically I run Grenzers in a Securitate link, or Hollow Men, so it isn't a usual list for me. Feels cool though.

Jurisdictional Command of Tunguska──────────────────────────────────────────────────GROUP 1 10 SECURITATE Feuerbach / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 22) SECURITATE HMG / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 21) JELENA KOVAČ Breaker Combi Rifle, Chain-colt / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 21) SECURITATE (Repeater) Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 15) SECURITATE Lieutenant Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 13) KRIZA BORAC HMG / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (2 | 54) MARY PROBLEMS Hacker (Forward Deployment L1) Submachine Gun + Zapper, Pitcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 30) HECKLER Red Fury / Pistol, Knife. (1 | 24) HECKLER Combi Rifle, Jammer, 1 FastPanda / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23) HECKLER Combi Rifle, Jammer, 1 FastPanda / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23)GROUP 2 4 CLOCKMAKER Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18) DAKTARI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14) PUPPET MASTERS (Minelayer) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 14) TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8) 6 SWC | 300 PointsOpen in Infinity Army