Varuna - how to ?

Stratus Cloud really puts a damper on Kamau’s ARO. Reducing their burst to 1 makes them a lot less scary.

White noise (mirrorball) is extremely potent, if you activate multiple models at the same time, you can force the Kamau to ARO vs a model outside of white noise while your main gun shoots the Kamau unopposed. Trade away a symbiomate or a sacrificial piece in exchange for the Kamau.

The helots don’t have ML, they usually have Light Rocket Launcher or Marksman Rifle, try to get them outside of 24. If you can do it with a trooper with vis nods, they have pretty poor BS.

You also now have access to Jaan Star who can try to damage their troopers from up close, you could even give him him SymbioBomb to easily isolate fireteam members if you wanted.

 

I pretty much stopped shooting at Varuna about a year ago, when an opponent dunked me with 2/3 of his army, only revealing a cutter to move into b2b with the antenna at the end of the game.

Varuna is most likely the best shooting faction in the game.
With Tohaa being one of the worst factions when it comes to BS and mod stacking, shoot-outs are doomed to fail more often than not. Even using a linked Draal with Stratuscloud is risky.

You know what Varuna is bad at, though? Literally anything else.
My go-to strategy usually is to eclipse smoke the annoying pieces and either ignore them or get close enough to get in melee or template range.
Kamau have PH11 and Fusiliers are even worse with a whopping PH10. Get close and light them up pretty with burst2 HFTs.
Killing the whole Kamau Sniper core link usually comes with the benefit of putting the opponent into loss of lieutnant, too.

The only thing I find myself having trouble to deal with are Zulu-Cobras with Jammer, if they are positioned well. The Sukeul is your best bet there, as she can't be isolated.

 

I played only one game against Varuna, but on paper it seems that in order to deal with a link of Kamau you just need to do the same thing as when you are trying to deal with a Triad: aim for the weakest link. A link of Kamau usually consists of several Fusiliers, so if you can remove one from the link, Kamau are suddenly not that good at shooting you.

 

This is good advice. While not quite contingent on it, one of Varuna's greatest strengths is that the Kamau forces armies that would otherwise use regular smoke to play the game on PanO's terms, but Tohaa suffer no such restriction. Linked eclipse smoke should let you go where you need to do what you want to attack elements of the PanO force that don't enjoy the same high watermark BS as the kamau, or hit them as OrderMonkey does using template weapons that they don't like dodging.

 

Lots of good advice in here. I agree that anything that reduces Burst is going to give you a strong active turn advantage vs VIRD. But in a faction with such easy access to Eclipse Grenades, you can always focus on the mission and make VIRD come to you. VIRD's not good at advancing, not good at playing aggressively, and not good at muscling their way through a tough defense. If you put VIRD in a position where they have to come get you, rather than trying to smash your face through their defense, you're going to make them play the aspect of the game where they're weakest.

Other random thoughts:

• Both g:synch and veteran are nice tools versus Jammer, if you've been having issues with that. Tohaa also have some great Stealth units, high BTS units, etc. that give you a bit of an edge when maneuvering vs Jammers.
• Learn what's a Zulu Cobra and what's a Helot, and then learn the mechanics of each. Zulus have Forward Deployment L1, so if you see a Camo Token outside the DZ, you know it isn't a Helot (it's either a ZC or a Crocman Mine deployed via Minelayer.) Also, make sure your opponent isn't playing Helots wrong. Helots have Rockets... Not Missiles. They can take Limited Camo, but don't have full Camo or Mimetism. They have Neurocinetics, not Total Reaction. These are all important details. The best way to fight take down VIRD units one-on-one is to know where their units are mechanically weakest.
• Virtually everything is going to be one Wound, low PH, low ARM. Use those direct templates, blast with those shotguns, throw those grenades, lay those mines.

 

I played a few games vs VIRD and lost all of them.
Eclipse allows us at least some angle of attack, but how would you defend against a vird first turn? With the cutter they got a strong attacking piece that probably will kill any aro unit. My thought is using nikoul in stratus to hopefully take enough of orders to stop the cutter from killing anything really important?

 

Null deployment relying on close-in defences with makauls and chaksas seems most sensible to me.

 

Im glad that while ive been gone youve been pushing the makauls cqb tactics

 

Use impersonators or gao tarsos to quickly kill one or two of the squishyest members of the core.

Or use the awesome kriigel and its mirror all to move and ignore the core