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For you Gears players out there,

I am trying to figure out what I want to follow up my Black Talon box with. Since the box did not come with any core units I am trying to figure out what I want to go with, either primary insertion teams or infantry. What do you guys think? Are infantry worth a pick in a gear world?

Play at PL3/4 where Black Talon works best, the boxed units become a fighting force on their own. The Dark Naga in particular is a scary command unit that can hide out behind a rock and spam rockets with the sensor boom.

Infantry do work provided they're being airdropped or APC'd around, but with the BT points for infantry/apc's are points not being used for claw/dark gears, and those points are a premium resourse.

The old Black Talon sourcebook states that there is never any infantry unit in the force. Some players may consider using an infantry w air drop to grab objectives or to increase the number of units in ther army. Overall, ther are not too effective. It is better to go w gears. You are putting yourself at a disadvantage at lower than PL3 especially w the changes in GU5/6.

Old vs. new canon, consider that the older material had the Black Talons acting mostly as 'Green Beret' types that would train and reinforce anti-CEF units on other worlds. Now they're (currently) more focused on defending Terra Nova.

 Balance wrote:
Old vs. new canon, consider that the older material had the Black Talons acting mostly as 'Green Beret' types that would train and reinforce anti-CEF units on other worlds. Now they're (currently) more focused on defending Terra Nova.

Mostly in space, unfortunately.

There's a lot of hints in the old colony books about them training forces on the colonies that implies long term missions to train locals and give them Terra Novan tech... I think there's a neat segment in the Atlantis stuff where an Atlantis native (a water-world, of course, with deep cities thousands of feet underwater. Keep in mind Terra Nova is an arid world...) is looking at plans for an underwater-modified Gear and picking it apart because it's obviously not designed by a culture that takes living underwater seriously.

I know I suggested, a couple times, that BTs should have some sort of wacky rule to make them the stereotypical cavalry where they come in on a random turn, but from a random board-edge, so you might get them behind your own force, might get them behind the enemy. But there's probably reasons I don't write rules...