spooky_squirrel

She's commanding the Mechanized Infantry Squad, whose player selects a Fireteam to perform the action. Valid Fireteams--barring an FAQ/errata entry that partially unwinds the core rules assertion that the Combined Arms Fireteam is a Fireteam within that Squad for all intents and purposes other than its own stats and abilities, and as clarified in a FAQ already: look out, sir/ma'am "saves" for Champions --include the Combined Arms Fireteam.

Hence my asking why not. The Squad Fireteam clarification seems to be for the purpose of making it so that a Champion cannot get a "look out sir/ma'am" save from a Combined Arms Titan, which makes sense as having a Titan leap in the way of an incoming shot isn't nearly as feasible as a normal Squad member. It's also the only area that uses that specific phrase. Interpreting it to mean that a Combined Arms Titan cannot take an Action for the Squad as the result of something that says "Squad takes an Action" or "a Fireteam in Squad takes an Action" feels like a stretch, especially since the core rules outright state that the Combined Arms Titan is a Fireteam in the Squad. Perhaps a clarification on the difference between Squad Fireteam and Fireteam (with)in a Squad should come up, with Squad Fireteam being the base Fireteam(s) for a Squad, as well as an explanation as to why these two are different. The current implications raise more questions than they resolve.

Ahh.. that seems more like an errata thing than an FAQ.. since the rules state that it functions as a normal Fireteam in the unit it came with. Under the Champion Rule it directly references the term "Squad Fireteam", where Thrace's ability does not, though there is implication on range checking that might fall under it.

The Combined Arms Fireteam from Mechanized Infantry? Why not? She commands the squad, with the only limitation that it be a Squad with at least one Fireteam in that 8" range, and that Squad takes a action. Mechanized Infantry is a Squad (keywords on its card), and per the rules the Combined Arms (Walker) is a Fireteam in that Squad for all intents and purposes other than using the stats on its own card and not the base Squad stats. Page 11 of the PDF:

Marauders definitely take a lot to kill and can do a lot. My opponents would always focus fire on the Marauders or move to deliberately tie them up with something that would take a long time to fully die. It caused me to start reshaping my own play to bring in more Tactics Tokens (break away with one of those instead of spending activations). Their adaptation to my single Marauder happened to sync with my own adaptation to their single Rhino. We learned that a single Rhino is quite fragile against elite elements that can set their hands, just like we learned that a single Marauder will get stuck in combat for a long time if you don't allocate resources to work around it. It's colored our impression of those two models/units. We have not run multiples, let alone spam-level multiples of them against each other. Nor are we likely to, because we like to play the game and not the gimmicks. I can see why people are concerned about Rhino spam and action/activation attrition when Rhinos are on the table because they immediately become less frail when you have to kill more than one. It's still not hard to erase one early, but it does take resources to do. Two of them take more resources, especially since the Cult player will likely have enough time to put the second one in Glory after you kill the first one.

There's a few things we can do: Make use of card draw mechanics to get a Tome to hand to cheat on damage. Make use of Margin triggers to improve the Strength of the attack to Strength 5 (5 + 0 versus Armor 5 cracks Armor, does a wound). Magic Dampeners will make the action harder to succeed with in the first place, especially if it's not yet in Glory. It can also mess with other Cult shenanigans, so might not be a bad take in place of an extra Mounted Gunner. Area attacks spill damage onto them, it's not a Penetration Flip, so Cinnamon's usual protection doesn't kick in. The Lord of Steel can quickly cover the distance and outright Wound the Rhino (Strength 5 base) without needing a Tome in hand to guarantee it. My favorite: Nuke it from orbit before it has a chance to go to Glory or do anything, especially Advance or Rush. Mechanized Infantry's Combined Arms Fireteam is brilliant for doing stuff. That Battle Cannon has a built in trigger for knocking Shaken Tokens off of the Rhino even if you cannot use the tokens, which dramatically reduces its toughness when it's in Glory. You get this just for hitting the Rhino, before you worry about hurting it. It's also Strength 3 piercing (base), so you need one of the two cards flipped to be a 2 or higher or to have enough of a Margin to go to Strength 4 (or take the action again with the Versatile Tactics trigger). You can do this from 36 inches away. If you happen to have a Flare Gun on the Squad, you can be taking the Battle Cannon shot at an AV of 7 instead of 6, giving you an improved chance against the Rhino. If it's not in Glory, you can use a Shaken token to get an improved Margin to give you an even greater chance of getting those Margins. Rail Gunner, especially if it's already in Glory, is stupendously good for this. AV 12 vs Df 5 with a Margin 3 trigger for bumping your strength means that you have a very strong chance of being able to kill the Rhino even without a Tome. Getting it into Glory while still having the ability to shoot is potentially tricky, but we've got tricks for that. Like Unathi having them use a Prototype (and they only need a Tome on success to go to Glory). If you get desperate, Detonate Soulstone does a Strength 5 hit, which is enough to crack Armor and inflict a single Wound. Trading a hurt Fireteam to kill a Rhino isn't a bad trade.

I say the thing like that's the only issue.. 😂 Electrocutioners would get an absurd number of attacks pre-errata/clarification.

Fortunately Thrace, Unathi, and Overclocked are separate cards and have separate costs. Thrace and Unathi cost precious actions during limited activations, and Overclocked costs a few Tactics Tokens. The thing that makes Electrocutioners bonkers when attaching multiple Prototypes is that Unathi would get two cards relatively easily on his draw without having to discard to use the Prototype attack. Since they can only be used once per activation, it calms down a little bit.

Which is where token management and manipulation comes into play. There's stuff for handing out or removing tokens beyond just spending them. If you can hand out any token of your choice on an attack, handing an inspired token removes one of the shaken instead. Then, a later attack that knocks the Rhino from glory lets you use the last remaining token to increase your margin so that you can bump the Strength of your attack. Then, as a Cult player already mentioned: cheat in the lowest workable Tome you have that'll let you do enough damage to remove the Rhino from play.

You have 44 Scrip in models listed, leaving you with 6 for upgrades between 2 Commanders, a Champion, and a Titan. So if you drop one unit of Portals it leaves you 9 Scrip for 9 total Upgrade/Asset slots. Retnab has a good start from what I've seen. I'd put at least one Snapping Head on Gory, generally two. If you don't go with two of them, the tail upgrade that lets you move after using a Portal to place will guarantee that she can get into the thick of things, and once it finally is broken you can replace it with a Snapping Head. Uncanny Instincts is another good one to bring, which would spend all 3 of those Scrip handily if you're replacing a 1 Scrip Asset..

With your Titan's Df 3 and Ar 6, no. Fast Regen is nice, but it's even better when you're doing the flip on Snapping Heads. That way if it doesn't work, you didn't lose anything important (and can get back during the course of the game). Basically if you're up against Aby, we're either getting enough of a margin to bump our shots' Strength up (AV 5-6+ vs Df 3; if you are cheating, it's to avoid Margin triggers) or getting a suit trigger of some kind. Either case is potentially bad news for her if she doesn't have additional Assets.

As @MuMantai mentioned, against Aby you might consider dropping the second Stalking Portals unit. In my local group the Cult players worry (rightly so) about giving us an easy target to do things to. Not just on margins, but on a wider range of Tomes on our Prototypes (Flare Guns especially) that are likely to succeed.

Ooh, good catch. Will amend post. I mainly focused on the in-faction. I definitely see more use for stuff with pulling in some Cult shenanigans.. and yeah, on borrowed attacks (even in faction, borrow the Karkinoi's) the piercing becomes much more valuable.

What @Thisendup said is a good approach. It's the same approach I use on the other side of the table as an Aby player. As an Aby player though, I have abilities on effectively almost every unit that require discarding cards (Prototype Assets), so an aggressive card draw engine is the sort of thing we build in. Cards are also the resource that Aby gets an advantage on, where GH gets bodies (all the bodies). You also might consider bringing in the Court of Two Envoy just to have another source of Tactics Tokens. For the abilities that require discard a card to use, what do those abilities do for the scenario? I see discarding a card to keep Thunderstorm in your hand, instead of discarding it. Speckled Crawlers may discard a card to gain Piercing on a S2/3 attack. Barbed Crawlers may discard a card to gain Piercing on a S1/2 attack. Non-GH specific card discarding: Binh Nguyen (Court Envoy) may discard a Crow to reduce damage to 0. Icon of Ancient Power grants the Ability to discard a card to shed tokens. Unchecked Magic allows you to discard a card to have an additional different Squad take an action. You have some in faction card draw if card cycling is something you consider important enough to work into your company: Swarm of Bottom Feeders (Asset, Champion only, has Frenzy written all over it) allows card draw on killing a Fireteam, two if it was a Titan. Barbed Crawlers in Glory have a trigger to draw cards on their Launch Barbs Ability. Out of faction, but available: Binh Nguyen (Court Envoy) has a trigger to draw cards on killing models. That trigger is built in on being in Glory. Uncanny Instincts allows you to draw a card when the Commander activates, in addition to the always Cheating Fate second. Resource Management in general is figuring out what you need as well as how to get it. If you don't need a full Control Hand (or a Control Hand at all), then there's no reason to worry about buying cards. If you're using Abilities that allow you to flip two cards during duels, having the ability to Cheat Fate doesn't matter as much. If you think you need to use one of those six things that require discarding a card in order to score on Objectives for the Operation, then yeah.. buy those cards because they will help you run the scenario and potentially win the game. Or construct your Company so that it has some card draw built into it. Otherwise, the resource management focus might steer you towards using those Tactics Tokens for other things that will help complete the Operation.

Good. They needed to do something like that in order to protect game balance. With all the cards at our disposal, it makes Electrocutioners absurd.