Mission 010 Update: Lines of Supply
Today we’ve got a short discussion of list building in the context of terrain from Obi (nehemiah) for Tunguska! Since he’s prepping for a tournament, he’s kept his lists secret but shared his thought process.
Although I began as a Tohaa Player, over the past year and a half I have begun collecting 3 other factions, TAK, JSA, and Tunguska, and with the upcoming Rose City Raid, I wanted to challenge myself, (and make use of the minis I had been collecting), by taking one of these factions instead of Tohaa. I settled on Tunguska and began building lists.
Along with a punishing line up of missions, (Highly Classified, Power Pack, Transmission Matrix, Unmasking, and Frostbyte), the Rose City Raid has been billing itself as a tournament which will have some sort of special terrain on every table, so I wanted to take this into some consideration as well, and Jon (WiseKensai), asked if I could do a brief write up on my decision making process.
As most special terrain includes the difficult terrain rules which restrict movement pretty heavily, so the first thing I wanted to consider is how special terrain would affect the mission. From the mission line up, I felt movement is the most important in Transmission Matrix for contesting or claiming zones, with Power Pack, Frostbyte, and Unmasking were in descending order of how critical Multiterrain would be.
Highly Classified is an odd one as it could require a lot of movement or very little depending on what is drawn. Unfortunately, when it comes to units with Multiterrain, Tunguska only has the Spektrs and Kriza Boracs and neither is cheap. The next thing problem I wanted to consider was that a lot of special terrain has a visibility modifier and usually a saturation zone as well. The visibility modifier reduces the effectiveness of any unit without a Multi Spectral Visor, and the saturation zone greatly reduces the effectiveness of a fireteam’s ARO. Tunguska also has very limited access to MSV, with MSV1 the only visor available, and only on the Grenzers. Highly Classified is the only mission with the potential to be directly affected by a saturation zone, but only for those objectives relating to Forward Observing.
Then there was the potential of coming across a table with some of the less commonly used special terrain which could create a White Noise zone.
On a table with jungle terrain, the Grenzers would be useful against units with camouflage, mimetism, and ODD trying to take advantage of the Low Visibility Zones despite being slightly hindered due to reduced burst.
However, the Grenzers would quickly become a liability if they need to move inside of the jungle terrain due to their 4-2 MOV, so I decided it would be best to keep them in an ARO role, and use other pieces to maneuver and attack. In the same regard, my opponent may want to take advantage of the low-vis zone, so I felt it would be beneficial to include an Interventor in order to set up White Noise to counter an opponent’s MSV. For missions and tables where mobility could be a big factor the Kriza and Spektrs would be useful, and they could use the low-vis against other enemy units without MSV.
However, while the Kriza Boracs would not be at much of a disadvantage from a Saturation Zone, I felt the Spektr would have a more difficult time in the active turn, so I felt that a profile with a deployable weapon would be best suited for these situations.
With these thoughts I created a few lists, and struggled a bit to find the perfect mix of terrain counters, and units useful for mission objectives, while also utilizing the advantages of playing the Tunguska sectorial over vanilla Nomads. What I have come up with are fairly general, and will require a lot of practice, but should be able to adapt to the mission and terrain.
I’ve thrown together a Tunguska lists to give a concrete example based on Obi’s reasoning. It’s loosely tailored to Highly Classified because that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.
Jurisdictional Command of Tunguska
GROUP 1 |9
1 KRIZA BORAC HMG / Heavy Pistol, CC Weapon. (2 | 54)
CLOCKMAKER Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18)
ZONDBOT Electric Pulse. (0 | 3)
DAKTARI Combi Rifle / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 14)
REAKTION ZOND HMG / Electric Pulse. (1 | 26)
SPEKTR Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Cybermines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 34)
PUPPET MASTERS (Minelayer) Submachine Gun, Antipersonnel Mines / PistolKnife. (0.5 | 14)
TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
WARCOR (360º Visor) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3)
GROUP 2 |
INTERVENTOR Hacker Lieutenant (Hacking Device Plus) Combi Rifle, 1 FastPanda / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 27)
GRENZER (Forward Observer, Sensor) Combi Rifle + Light Flamethrower / Pistol, Breaker Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27)
5.5 SWC | 300 Points | Open in Infinity Army
Let’s start by talking about terrain. We have three models with Multiterrain in the list: the two Spetkrs and the Kriza. It’s clear what the Kriza is for in this list, I don’t think that needs much more discussion.
The two Spekrs are the workhorses though, they’re there to push buttons, get classifieds, and even do a little killing. A TO Combi Rifle is a deadly tool. They have complete freedom in the midfield to wander around, and you can even get past mines by Cybermasking the Killer Hacker if you have to.
The Warcor, surprisingly enough, is there for Xenotech duties. I’ve found that to be a really good use of her irregular order, and you can develop her position over multiple turns if you want to be really efficient. This list also isn’t particularly command-token heavy, so you could convert her order too if you want.
Clockmaker and Daktari are there for classifieds and button pushing. For other missions they could easily be replaced with Hecklers or REMs. Speaking of which, the Transductors are there to be REMs and for nabbing Test Run. The PuppetMaster is there for Counter-Intelligence as well as covering your link with a mine.
The TR Bot is another good candidate for nabbing Test Run and it serves as a tertiary attack piece should you need it. You’ll also be pretty tight on orders, so having good ARO presence without having to spend orders will be helpful.
Finally, we can look at Group 2. You’re really not trying to do anything fancy here, just power the Interventor to do some bot buffing, white noise deploying, and other Nomad nonsense. You can also Triangulated Fire the Grenzer FO if you want, or missile something in good rangebands. Lots of options. Depending your playstyle you can swap things around between both groups.
Lately, I’ve been of the opinion that discussing lists in isolation, i.e. without the context of the mission as well as a semi-detailed usage case for all the units in the list, isn’t a particularly productive exercise. Even with mission and usage intention, playstyle, table density, and meta are also significant factors in how one might pilot a list.
I say this to make the point that the above list isn’t the best list to handle terrain. Instead, it is just an exercise to illustrate how I (and Obi) approach list building for the terrain we might expect.
Please reach out if you have any questions or comments, we’d love to start a discussion! Good Hunting, Bromads.
I built a Tunguska list for Rescue at Dogfinity before they changed the terrain rules for the event. It included two Krizas and three Spektrs for the exact reason of dealing with difficult terrain. Of course, they used a custom version of Rescue that removed the difficult terrain, and I ended up going with my other list because of it, but I’d thought about it.
In the end, both lists I brought were limited insertion lists. I used to play a lot of Avatar and got used to playing with 10 orders. To me, 10 orders doesn’t bother me if the pieces included are high enough quality. The biggest issue is that such lists can be very unforgiving if I’m not efficient in exercising my plan. I never consider my opponent to be responsible for what I do. If that is the case, I’ve already lost. The Chinese game, Go, taught me the importance of initiative.