Varuna deforms the meta pretty intensely

Why does this post have so many upvotes? That shot only happens in Narnia, with the option forcing you to bring a terrible link to boot, lmao.

I mean, I actually agree with the coordinated shots part, but the idea of bringing 4 snipers, all deployed to perform a long order skill... yeah... no... xD

 

Id hope the bait ARO got removed if white noise became more widespread.

In fact, I hope N4 completely removes total LOF blocking zones except maybe eclipse (which blocks everyone) and just made any reactions through them at severe penalties, gradually reduced by visors.

Then stop sixth sense randomly cancelling the those penalties.

Visors would immediately be worth their price again. Reactive link teams drop in universal effectiveness and smoke throwing warbands are no longer invincible.

 

I mean, it's deliberately limited to whoever has access to advanced hacking in the first place. Which is why we are taking about, ugh, these limitations.

 

I think it's because people more or less tend to support arguments that come to the conclusion they already want, regardless of their quality. It works the other way too though, for example people with the opposite view will more likely see that particular argument as further evidence of the need to specifically tailor against the Kamau, which is the original complaint.

Perhaps neither is actually true, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. We shouldn't support arguments like we support football teams if our aim is to actually come closer to the truth.

 

Well, I'm getting shit from people on this forum, especially Ian, because apparantly I'm super hyperbolic, and then I watch this post that can only happen in some clown world dimension and apparantly that post is just applause all around!

Anyway, I think you did a good job explaining your point and I can see the point you're making.

 

This thread has drawn me out from merely lurking to put forward my own thoughts.

Ive been playing USARF for almost two years straight with a brief and disappointing foray into Druze.

Firstly I must disappoint Hecaton in that there is no direct means to outshoot a fully linked Kamau in USARF (or really in almost any faction). What we do have the tools to violently murder its little friends, stripping him of those all so important link bonus and arriving at a more favourable statistical position

Varuna fields three interlocking elements that make attack difficult:
1. The kamau msr itself
2. The three helots
3. The jammer zulu cobras.
Two of these elements lurk under camo markers. Fortunately due to the deployment skill and weapons loadouts on each it is normally relatively simple to determine which is which:

• The helots are bound to the deployment zone. They will normally be positioned aggressivelt to watch important firelanes and defend pieces.
• Jammer ZC will be forward positioned normally prone on a roof somewhere. ZC jammer lts will be similarly positioned but often more conservatively often in DZ.

I will now here concur with @Zewrath here. Varuna hates active turn camo markers as they are forced to come out of their own camo states to discover us. This alone can draw out lurking helots or ZC but in USASF we can do one better. We possess in the Inferior Infiltration(II) Grunt, the threat of will force the player to commit their defensive units lest it BBQ something important.

These little buggers are best deployed to place maximum pressure on our opponents, as close as possible their DZ where a single move action will get them somewhere painful. It is normally pretty easy to work out where the best kamau perch is and park close to that.

If we are going first we should be able to draw out any nearby ZC or helots as we advance. If they shoot us we burn them/shoot them as the tactical situation dictates. Importantly for the cost of normally one order we will have forced the deployment of a number defensive assets. Some of these may die in this order expenditure and any survivors can be moped up with our long range firepower (Blackjack, linked Minutemen).

Now we must attack the fireteam. For this purpose there is my all time favourite unit and slayer of my friends hopes and dreams, the murder hobo himself, the Hardcase. With three Hardcases I have found we are able to spread them wide enough cross the table to enable us to press the opening made by the grunts and dissect the fireteam. The 12 inches of unstoppable movement makes this relatively simple to close on them. Further assistance in this can be provided by smoke from our bikers if required to hamstring helots and other elements

the Hardcase and grunt Shotguns are single best weapon at dealing with link teams in my experience. There is no harder decision for an opponent to be confronted with then even two members of a fireteam being hit by the template. The conical nature of the templates normally means we are capable to hitting a member without LOF even if the pointman is prone. A single non LOF team member all but guarantees (stupid dice) the loss of five-man link bonuses. If the Hardcase survives press the attack further kill more of the kamaus friends. As an added bonus if elements split from the link team our surprise shot turns back on further improve our odds of murder.


Once the link bonuses are removed our regular options become more palatable


Now much of this assumes we are going first but it is my experience that Varuna prefers to pick deployment over initiative when given the choice.

P.S. Hecaton mentions a Exclusion Zones which I consider to be one of the worst elements of current ITS mission design as it punishes factions that desire defense in depth, deploy aggressively like USARF and shafts our regular AD options something shocking making them barely worth bringing. In this situation the advise above holds but it is may necessary to make infiltration rolls on the Hardcases. This is a strategy that I have been meaning to try for some time any way so I will be interested in seeing how it works out.

 

I've bolded some parts, usually it does the trick.

Joke aside, the shots will probably never go off, but as @RobertShepherd said it's more about forcing the kamau to not deploy on a particular spot than actually killing it.
Also, if the mission heavily favors going second, the threat of it might be enough to make the varuna player think twice before going straight-up for second turn and counting on his kamaus/zulus/helots to keep him safe despite the deployment disadvantage (though I guess the infiltrated flamethrower grunt already does that).

Now I don't play USARF so I don't know exactly how negatively having to spend 2swc and 72pts on those 4 grunts could impact list building for the faction. I've seen some lists with that many grunts to build some kind of sniper tower, so it seems they're not a total liability (at least for some players), and they might have other uses than just fighting kamaus, which is crucial because not everyone is playing varuna.

 

You don't actually need all 4 grunts, nor do you need to deploy them to make the skill - all you need to do is take this link team:

USAriadna Ranger Force
──────────────────────────────────────────────────

5
MINUTEMAN AP HMG / Pistol, CCW. (1.5 | 34)
GRUNT (Marksmanship LX) Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 18)
GRUNT (Marksmanship LX) Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 18)
GRUNT (Marksmanship LX) Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 18)
GRUNT (Forward Observer) Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 11)

3 SWC | 99 Points

Open in Infinity Army

Move the minuteman and snipers out such that all of them can see the kamau, with the minuteman as link leader. The Kamau is going to shoot the Minuteman here, because anything else would be suicide. Once the Minuteman has taken his turn, you declare a coordinated order with the grunts as they are now in position. The stats for a single grunt against a dodging Kamau are as such:

Active Player
48.33% USAriadna Grunts inflicts 1 or more wounds on Kamau Amphibious Intervention Teams (MSV 2) (Unconscious)
Failures
28.18% Neither player succeeds
Reactive Player
23.50% Kamau Amphibious Intervention Teams (MSV 2) Dodges USAriadna Grunts

Each individual grunt has a 51.67% chance of not knocking the Kamau unconscious, meaning three grunt at the same time have a 100 - (51.67^3 / 100^2) = 86.21% chance of knocking the Kamau down, at no risk to themselves. If you really want to ensure that the Kamau is dead, doing that twice over has a 98.1% chance of at least knocking it to unconscious.

It's command token intensive, sure, but you're killing the lynchpin on your opponent's army from your deployment zone so I'd say it's worth it. It's not like it's an ineffective team to take, either. You're getting very strong attacking capability, and the snipers can lock down long firelanes in the reactive turn. I really like the idea of taking this team alongside a more mobile marauder haris that can deploy upfield to do the midline fighting.

 

Wherein some or all take a Helot b2 LRL template to the face. Or if not the Minuteman potentially loses to the Kamau, and then the Kamau takes out one of the Grunts instead of dodging. And then you've sacrificed more pts and swc than the Kamau, two orders a command token and your core link team to take it out. I mean come on, this is a real table we're talking about, not just an abstract thought experiment.

EDIT: Really, in that situation you're probably practically just better off shooting it in the face with the Minuteman (if you're in 32") until one of you goes down, maybe with a doctor nearby, and hoping for the best (and you dont even need the Snipers for that). Not that that is probably the best plan either.

 

While this is an excellent suggestion on how to achieve the MMSX shot. My only concern would be that we are committing more resources and points to countering the kamau then the Varuna player is by using it. I personal have moved away from sniper link teams as a list building core. This was for a number of reasons:
1. The game has become increasingly more lethal as the active/aro arms race has racheted up with B5 bs16 hmgs often with vis mods have become extremely common along with the classic threat of TO/Camo hmgs. This has made our ARO tower of doom seem comparatively shabby.
2. I simply have better things to spend my SWC and points. As I have progressed in my USARF I have begun to favour the lighter, faster elements for use as a defense screen over hard ARO units. When I was looking for the points to bulk out this section the sniper grunts where the natural area to shave points. Further as I came to appreciate the sheer terror II grunt cause, the sniper swc was eaten up by them
3. Honestly with amount of camo inflitrators, II grunts and just ITS Bravery goodness the ability to engage the Kamau from across the table is not really an issue for USARF. We can engage the bastard in his zero range band quite easily. The recent addition of exclusion zones to ITS pack is a set back but I have a six II grunt list or that situation.

 

@Callum: your teardrop isn't positioned as it should. The rules for teardrop impact templates state that you have to put the blast focus on the closest edge to the shooter, which is not the case in your drawing. In short, it must be put along the line going from the center of the shooter's circle to the center of the target's circle. So, in order to have the teardrop placed as you showed, your trooper should have moved forward a bit more.

 

The diagram is correct.

The narrow end of the template is on the closest side of the target. The template is then placed along the LoF from the firer, in this case from the 'top' edge of their base, as LoF can be drawn from anywhere in the trooper's Silhouette.

There is no requirement to draw the line from the middle of the firer's base, and no requirement for it to go through the middle of the target's base. The template could even have been placed along the red line.

 

There is a bold part in the second bullet that states you have to take the closest edge. But as there is only one edge on a circle, I assumed it was the closest point because it would mean nothing otherwise. So, if this means the closest semi circle, then it should be written as this. Otherwise, there is room to interpretation.

 

It doesn't say 'closest point' anywhere in the rule, so yes this is an assumption by you. This assumption would stop the rule working in a lot of situations, because if you can't see the closest point on the target but still have to place the template along the LoF it would be impossible to place the template!

All it means is that you're not allowed to put the narrow end on the far side of the target to extend the range of the template.

 

With all due respect mate, don't represent an argument as if I am the person claiming you need 4 snipers. I'm mocking the idea. xD

Fair enough, I was also just pulling your leg because as I said, I agree with your premise of the coordinated attack. x)

 

So, up to which point is it still considered to be the closest edge? Because you said that there was two valid locations for the template to be legal and as such, it isn't anymore THE but A and it's no more "closest" too. So, I still think that the words used to describe how to place the template are not 100% accurate.

 

'Edge' cannot be a point. So it's anywhere on the side that's facing the firer, that is in LoF.