Mission 013 Report: Sufficient Intensity
Well, a little late on getting this out thanks to attending the Humboldt Irregular tournament, but here it is! A big thank you to all of our respondents this month, many of whom were new!
We’ve got some good examples of when suppression fire was useful, as well as when not to use it (limited insertion, for example). Long story short, it’s all about timing and opportunity!
Speaking of which, it’s time to announce our winner this month! random.org chose Chriss, The Gentleman Ghost! Congratulations Chriss, you’ve won a blister of your choice!
Chriss (The Gentleman Ghost)
Hey all,
As a new player who is pretty terrible at this game (so far?), I read Mission 013: Going Loud with the hopes of gleaning some strategy to do the Nomad Nation proud.
Half of that intent was achieved, and I added a Taskmaster with HMG to the list to lock down / destroy some fools. Sadly, the Taskmaster was unable to go into a Suppression Fire state mainly due to lack of orders.
200 points, Supremacy – I took a few suggestions from a player who destroyed me the prior week. 8 models: Taskmaster, Wildcat, Hollow Man, Algualcil Paramedic, Custodier, Jaguar, Securitate Sniper, Zero Hacker.
I went second and so I was down 3 orders (Custodier, Securitate, and Zero were out) before I took my first action. That sucked.
To be more efficient with my remaining 5 orders, I used 1 as a coordinated order and moved. My Paramedic killed the Securitate to burn another order. And then there was 3. I needed to get her off the roof so the Jaguar had to throw smoke. Now I’ve got 2 left. I needed to move up the Taskmaster who didn’t have the best firing lanes so I burned another order leaving me with 1 left.
Suppression or have the Medic spray and pray some Combined Army close-combat beast engaged with my Lt (he had killed the Custodier already).
The Medic was able to get off the stairs and blasted that jerk to smithereens, hitting all 3 of her shots (1, 1, 3) into it’s back.
After turn 2, only my Wildcat remained conscious. IF I had put the Taskmaster into suppression, he had plenty of targets as wave after wave of link teams came barreling through the center. He did get 1 with just standard ARO’s so maybe he’d have hung in there and do some major damage.
Oh well, back to the drawing board.
Due to your information, I sucked a little less this week, so thanks!
Chriss aka, the Gentleman_Ghost
Chriss and I exchanged some emails about an upcoming game of Acquisition with Corregidor, to which he took the following list. Let’s see how he did!
WiseKensai
Week 4 event
GROUP 1 |10
LUPE BALBOA Combi Rifle, Nanopulser, Panzerfaust, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, CCW. (0 | 23)
ALGUACIL Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 10)
GROUP 2 |
MOBILE BRIGADA Combi Rifle + 1 TinBot B (Deflector L2) / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 37)
INTRUDER (X-Visor) MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, CCW. (1.5 | 43)
WILDCAT Heavy Rocket Launcher / Assault Pistol, Knife. (2 | 20)
HELLCAT Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 21)
SEÑOR MASSACRE (Fireteam: Haris) Breaker Combi Rifle, E/M Grenades, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW, E/M CCW. (0.5 | 30)
JAGUAR Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 10)
5.5 SWC | 298 Points | Open in Infinity Army
There were 16 players that night and so it stretched the table design to the maximum and unfortunately for my team, we got a really, really bad one.
The center had 3 enormous pieces of terrain and the coffin was centered inside the middle piece – which had a wall missing on the right and left side with a doorway in the middle (my side) to enter.
Huge lanes of Lines of Fire were present through the center of the map.
A) I win the roll-off and opt to go second for the final turn.
B) I then have to set-up first and lose side choice so I’m thinking this wasn’t a good idea…
C) I deploy with my sniper and Wildcat missile launcher on the one side to shut down any advancement and concentrate the bulk of my team in the center and the other side.
D) I am facing an Aleph Sectorial with 3 hardcore visors that will make my smoke plan pointless.
E) First turn he runs his Lieutenant up the board with the Xenotech and flips one of the towers. I have Lupe double Panzerfaust him but he takes no damage (I miss and 1 armor save). Lupe’s armor saves her and she retreats back 2 in.
The Lt advances and I get a double ARO with the Sniper and a Wildcat with combi. They shoot (in hindsight this was stupid but it seemed okay at the time). Sniper misses and is hit twice, killing her. Wildcat misses and is hit once, making him go unconscious. Due to proxing, I stupidly realize that was my dang LT (who was the unit the Xenotech was attached to), so you can see where this is going…
Massacre has a shot on the LT and goes for it – and he dies, too, thanks to shock bullets.
FYI, Massacre is shock immune thanks to Regeneration.
WiseKensai
He moves a pair of pieces to where my Wildcat Missile piece is and I am able to wound one of the action generator towers thanks to the blast effect.
My turn begins under Loss of Leader and I burn my Command Tokens moving up my Alguacile Fireteam towards the coffin.
I decide the remaining Wildcat with Boarding Shotgun and the 3 Jaguars plus the Mobile Brigada’s mission is to get my Xenotech back – but first I need to drive off that Aleph Lt.
Wildcat goes for it, getting a wound on Lt. who backs up 2 inches. I move up a Jaguar adjacent to the Xenotech. My opponent mentions that if the Jaguar kills something he will become impetuse and not be able to hold onto her.
I guess it doesn’t matter since as long as that Aleph Lt is over there, I’m losing 1 victory point. The Mobile Brigada trades shots – no wound on the Lt but my guy takes one.
Wildcat Missile uses her order to blast the two Aleph’s covering that side and both are unconscious. Huzzah!
At this point I have 3 orders left and only 2 command tokens and everyone else has acted. I pass my turn and decide my Missile Wildcat will be my new Lt.
My opponent moves his Datatracker and Andromeda(?) plus a hacker and someone else into the building and take the coffin.
The Hacker goes after the Mobile Brigada but fails to take him down thanks to the Tin-Bot. Lt uses an order to shoot 3 rounds at the Mobile Brigada and 2 at my Wildcat w/ Shotgun. My guys return fire and both get dropped dealing nothing to the Lt.
An Aleph exits the center building and lays down fire on my 2 Jaguars. Smoke dodge won’t matter thanks to it’s visor so they just dodge. Success! They both shuffle towards the rest of my force.
The Aleph eats 2 more orders trying and succeeding in putting them down.
All the pieces inside the center (4 of them) go into Suppression.
My turn – well, I decide my only plan is to knockout the datatracker.
I bring up my Alguacile fireteam, Lupe pops up with her Nanopulsar and blasts the heck out of Andromeda and the Datatracker, getting them to their Unconscious clicks (except they both have No Wound Incap).
Lupe is shot at by 4 people but manages to only go Unconscious. I move the medic and attempt to revive. Lupe fails and dies.
Lupe can go dogged, if you want her to get some work done before dying.
WiseKensai
Next, Missile Wildcat fires at the Datatracker. Fail. Wildcat dies.
The Medic takes her shot on the Datatracker. Fails. She is Unconscious.
The other Alguacil becomes leader and takes a shot. Fails but manages to not get hit.
In drops the Hellcat! Surprise! Landing behind them all – except he rolls a 13 vs his needed 12 and lands 16 inches away. Jerk.
I’m out of actions and the store is about to close. I lose 0-6 since there are no negative numbers, I guess. I end up having 3 Alguaciles and 1 Jaguar still on the board but another round would have ended them.
Lessons:
1) Hide the dang Lt. Starting my first turn in Loss of Lt crippled my already poor chances.
2) Dodge more vs fireteams. They keep shredding me.
3) Find the balance on deployment – my first game I hid everyone so I had no ARO’s and got punished by template weapons. Second game, my ARO’s went down due to Fireteams. This game, I presumed the 5-man fireteam would be target so I set up ARO’s to cover them but my edge guys all got picked off instead. This is an area I gotta still work on.
Richard
Capture and protect, top of turn 3. I had run my data tracker with the beacon back into my deployment zone protected by a lunokhod and his koalas. My opponent had a karakuri in the midfield at full wounds and just enough orders to push into my DZ, using my last order to put my heckler into suppression meant he had to fight his way through ultimately losing the karakuri to other AROs rather than just blitzing up the centre.
Definitely one of the more common uses for suppression but I think the key here is knowing when something is just a speed bump and that’s all you need to win.
Great job with the blog as always, all the best,
Richard
WiseKensai
Timing is super important in this game. Glad it worked out for you!
So what happened exactly? He decided to not contest your Heckler in suppression, chose a different lane to advance in, and got punked by another ARO?
Richard
He chose to advance through the suppressing fire. The heckler couldn’t claim cover and we were in the 8 to 16 band, the dice calculator says that’s in the Heckler’s favour and I won the face to face I think inflicting one wound.
| 40.50 | 30.52 | 28.98 |
The karakuri kept advancing and the Heckler won the face to face again. On the third order my one remaining puppet bot could also get an ARO in good range for its boarding shotgun and the karakuri went down. His only other option for dealing with the the Heckler would have been a keisotsu needing to spend at least 3 orders to get into position and then hitting the Heckler on 4s which I would probably have just not responded to to remain in suppression. It was certainly a situation of not having enough orders to avoid the suppression or to deal with it safely and complete the objective.
WiseKensai
Suppression sometimes is absolutely the right thing to do, and it sounds like this was one of those cases. 70% chance to not die to a Karakuri sounds pretty good! 🙂
Richard
He chose to advance through the suppressing fire. The heckler couldn’t claim cover and we were in the 8 to 16 band, the dice calculator says that’s in the Heckler’s favour and I won the face to face I think inflicting one wound. The karakuri kept advancing and the Heckler won the face to face again. On the third order my one remaining puppet bot could also get an ARO in good range for its boarding shotgun and the karakuri went down. His only other option for dealing with the the Heckler would have been a keisotsu needing to spend at least 3 orders to get into position and then hitting the Heckler on 4s which I would probably have just not responded to to remain in suppression. It was certainly a situation of not having enough orders to avoid the suppression or to deal with it safely and complete the objective.
WiseKensai
Suppression sometimes is absolutely the right thing to do, and it sounds like this was one of those cases. 🙂
Richard
Having just read your update it reminded me that in the same game I had a Spektr covering that same fire lane at the end of my first turn but it was far more important that he stay alive so he recamoed instead of going into suppression. I didn’t give it much thought at the time but it’s exactly the point you were trying to make, very context dependent.
WiseKensai
Yeah, going back into camo is pretty important, just in general. A lot of times people just straight up forget or don’t allocate orders to do it.
Andrew (Drewski)
Bromad Academy,
This is my first mission with you guys.
I spent the first part of this month trying to figuring out what my second ISS list would be for a two-day event. Your mission made me consider the Authorized Bounty Hunter SMG/Akrylat-Kanone profile as an order filler.
During my last practice game, I rolled ODD on the booty chart. We were playing Unmasking and the ABH was deployed on my left flank. My opponent was playing Spiral Corps.
I was able to eliminate the Taagma MSV2 Viral Sniper on turn 1, and I had the right side of the board locked down for the most part. My opponent’s only attack piece left was Neema Saatar with a Spitfire in a Tri-Core. I knew I needed to slow down the team. I spent two orders running the ABH up on the flank, and my last order putting him in Suppressing Fire.
We ended up being 17” apart, so I was hitting on 6s while Neema was hitting on 7s. I won the first face-to-face, and then crit on the second exchange. His next order was to swap Kessan with Neema. I decided to put the shots into Kessan to force him to dodge. My opponent was trying to set up a Triangulated Fire Attack with Kessan to get around the -12 modifier I was inflicting. Fortunately he failed his dodge and I scored hit, and knocked Kessan unconscious.
My opponent gave up on that flank, because I was able to stack the negative mods so high.
However, in round three in round three my opponent moved a Kaeltar Specialist across the rooftop and walkways and light shotgunned the ABH from above. The Kaeltar then climbed down the building and tried to hack the console, but a Kuang Shi in a core Team nailed it with a pistol shot.
I feel that the goal of Suppressing Fire is to force your opponent to burn Orders to deal with it. The Authorized Bounty Hunter has a lucky roll on the booty chart for this game, but he was able to tie down a 99 point 2.5swc team in place with his own 12 point profile.
This is a great example of everything going really well with suppression fire. A 12-point ODD SMG model is pretty fantastic. Great job forcing the dodge due to the crazy mods!
WiseKensai
My goal with Suppressing Fire for this game was to slow down my opponent’s advance, and it ended up knocking out a model, and putting Neema into the symbio-inactive state.
Thank you for reading and putting this on,
Andrew “Drewski” Haar
John
I recently played in a local ITS in Florida and suppression was used in all three of my games. However, not once was it by me. I personally don’t find it worth the order expenditure due to consistently playing limited insertion lists. However, in higher order lists, I can see it being useful to leverage AROs from more expendable units.
In my first game against Spiral, a Draal activated its stratuscloud and then went into suppression. That was one of the strongest uses of suppression I’ve seen, and forced me into a really bad situation with some of the more integral parts of my army.
In my second game, I was playing Acquisition against vanilla Yu Jing. I was going second, and my opponent used suppression quite a bit to try to keep me from pushing up the board. In this case, the suppression was a bit easier to deal with. However, my opponent failed to use one of his suppression models to ARO against Hannibal as he pushed the button on the left side… twice! It ended up costing him the game.
Finally, in my last game, I was playing Supplies against NCA. A Swiss Guard in suppression in the middle of the board can seem really intimidating. However, there isn’t much that Swiss Guard can do when you sneak up on it from a flank and shoot it in the back.
Ultimately, suppression can be leveraged to make weaker units more useful. It can also be leveraged by units who have modifiers that can stack with suppression to be very intimidating. However, those units are stationary targets and their range bands can be exploited. Trying to deal with suppression head on is a bad idea, but that isn’t the only way to confront suppression. Conversely, these kinds of hazards are important to keep in mind when using suppression, and good placement with the right units can make suppression a very powerful play.
Slight tangent to follow. I asked John for his thoughts on ForCo, and here they are. Thanks again, John, for taking the time!
WiseKensai
I’m not gonna lie. They’ve felt like hard mode to me. I found really strong combinations for Combined Army and Tunguska in limited insertion. With ForCo, I’ve yet to really find that. My main observation with ForCo has been that they can snowball towards hot mess really fast.
Where I tend to have pieces that can fix problems I’ve created for myself with my Tunguska and Combined Army lists, no such thing really seems to exist for me with my ForCo lists. For example, Spektrs are great at surgical strikes when my Hollow Men or Kriza get into trouble. With Combined, there are lots of options if Avatar gets into trouble (switching to a Legate, Ko Dali, Speculo, etc.).
In my list building with Tunguska, the Hollow Men fireteam just seems to have more mobility/flexibility than the A-Team (Hannibal, Massacre, Valkyrie, Laxmee, and Bolt/Orc). Otherwise, Combined and Tunguska can both do work without any fireteams period. That said, I’ve still got a couple more lists I’m looking at trying before I give up on them. I haven’t tried running, a KTS haris with Laxmee or Avicenna. I’m thinking the A-Team fireteam is kind of a trap. I may start the game with them in a fireteam, but I think I need to be more prepared to break the link to do what needs to be done. All the members of that team have uses, and are pieces I don’t mind having in my list. It’s just making them work together that seems to be difficult.
Here’s three lists I’m still planning to try before I retire them until Wild Bill comes out. I’m pretty excited to give him a try. I love the idea of having an entire team of mercs with more than half of them being characters (Hannibal, Massacre, Valkyrie, Laxmee, Avicenna, and Wild Bill). Needless to say, I’m in love with their idea. The execution leaves much to be desired… Also, I would have loved to have seen Knauf make it onto the team too.
Test List
KRIZA BORAC Lieutenant HMG / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (2 | 54)
HANNIBAL (Chain of Command) Boarding Shotgun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 32)
AVICENNA Combi Rifle, Flash Pulse / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27)
KAPLAN Engineer Combi Rifle, Adhesive Launcher, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27)
LAXMEE Hacker (UPGRADE: Maestro) Submachine Gun + Pitcher, Cybermines, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 34)
AKAL COMMANDO Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Combi Rifle / Pistol, E/M CCW. (0.5 | 28)
ZERO (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 19)
CSU (Specialist Operative) Rifle + Light Shotgun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 12)
CROC MAN MULTI Sniper Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 38)
BOLT Missile Launcher, Light Shotgun / Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 26)
VALKYRIE Heavy Shotgun, Grenades / Heavy Pistol, EXP CC Weapon. (0 | 35)
SEÑOR MASSACRE Boarding Shotgun, E/M Grenades, Eclipse Grenades / Pistol, AP CCW, E/M CCW. (0 | 26)
DAKTARI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)
Nathan (Jhokalups)
Hey Bromads,
Here is a mission in which I used suppressive fire, and my opponent immediately solved the puzzle.
I think the same order that I spent putting the Kriza into Suppressive fire, would have been better spent gunning down the Thorakite and Warcor.
https://frontline-reports.home.blog/2019/08/20/jhokalups-field-operation-action-report-32/
Piotr (Tcional)
Hey,
It’s me again.
I’ve completed my this month’s report for the Academy and it’s available here:
Hope you are doing well and managed to get some rest during soon ending summer.
As always,Best wishes from Poland,
Piotr