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I recently played a game with my ALEPH against Haqqislam and was absolutely taken apart by a Hassassin Fiday, who has both Basic Impersonation and Martial Arts Level 3.

He deployed the Fiday quite close to my deployment zone, though still far enough to be safely out of line of sight.
After my first turn he approached singular figures and proceded to slaughter them one by one, with practically no chance to discover (since you need to do that twice) or even striking back (due to MA3).

I'm completely stumped. Any ideas?

Impersonators are a b*tch to deal with, especially for elite factions that lack 5pt chain chaff, which are a fantastic solution to almost every problem (especially in N3)

As with everything in this game, the best defense is geography, and simply deploying correctly can make a world of difference.

Firstly, make sure all of your important models are covered by ARO from other models, then be willing to write off some troops if you go second, as its almost impossible to stop an Impersonator from getting at least one target - but after that its down to your deployment as to if he then dies in a hail of bullets.

Its often very difficult to cover everyone with ARO, so prioritize protecting the important models. As for the rest, deploy them very spread out, so the assassin must spend a lot of orders killing a dude, re-impersonating, and then moving. Large open spaces also allow for the double discovers needed to stop him. Make sure to keep his smoke grenades in mind at all times, deploying in a well defended cluster can just lead to a smoke grenade and unimpeded shanking.

Also, consider the depth of your deployment zone. If he deploys in your DZ, he must make a WIP roll or begin revealed - so starting near the front is a good way to get him easy, no risk deployments. Deploying towards the back means he needs to either burn orders on movement, or risk a WIP roll and de-impersonating. Next, try and limit places where he can make that DZ deployment safely, ie a corner near your vital troop, and make a failed WIP into a death sentance. Lastly, make sure the board, and the DZ, are not overly built up. This game requires a very delicate balance between open space and cover, and its very easy to screw that up - if Impersonators are really wrecking your gak, your DZ might be too cluttered.

Put your obvious Lt in a real easy place to get to, they'll deploy right next to it and kill it. Then you're just straight away in LoL and cant do anything and loose. But the game will be pretty lame and to keep it fun they wont take them anymore. Word

Suppressive fire is your friend. You cannot target impersonation marker, but if he walks into hail of bullets, he WILL get shot. Place suppression fire corridor in place that would make impersonator burn extra orders to go around, or just lock him between two if you have spare orders.

 Kubik wrote:
Suppressive fire is your friend. You cannot target impersonation marker, but if he walks into hail of bullets, he WILL get shot. Place suppression fire corridor in place that would make impersonator burn extra orders to go around, or just lock him between two if you have spare orders.

The problem with that is you're doing what the player with the Impersonator wants. People don't use Impersonators specifically to kill things dead, they're there to distract. If you burn orders specifically to stop it doing anything, and even lock out multiple of your models from reacting at all outside of suppressive fire, he's likely accomplished his goal and you've made an opening for him to do something else.

Countering an Impersonator doesn't always mean you've countered your opponents tactic, you've just specifically stopped one model from doing anything. In most cases, making you burn multiple orders and remove multiple models from your reactive turn is a win for having a single order locked down. In an ITS game where you only get 3 turns, he's sacrificed a single order to sap multiple of yours that could be accomplishing objectives.

The best thing to do is make sure that your models just have covering fire, preferably someone with an MSV in your backline too. When the Impersonator unveils itself, someone should be able to draw line of sight to it and get a reaction shot - again, preferably someone with an MSV to see through the inevitable smoke. Don't expect to counter it and remain productive and be unscathed - there's very little specialised units in this game you can counter easily and not sacrifice orders to do.

Whatever suits your tactic. More than half of my games was against my mates Bahram. I'm so used to imersonators that i'm suprised when there isn't one on the table. These guys are tough, but at the end of the day, it's just another guy with a gun. I've always preffered to lock one with my grunt sprayng bullets than to worry about smoke, and unreliable AROs. It's fairly subjective i think

 Kubik wrote:
Whatever suits your tactic. More than half of my games was against my mates Bahram. I'm so used to imersonators that i'm suprised when there isn't one on the table.

I thought it was because you played Yu Jing in the campaign and everyone and their dog took Impersonator Kempeitais?

 -Loki- wrote:

 Kubik wrote:
Suppressive fire is your friend. You cannot target impersonation marker, but if he walks into hail of bullets, he WILL get shot. Place suppression fire corridor in place that would make impersonator burn extra orders to go around, or just lock him between two if you have spare orders.

The problem with that is you're doing what the player with the Impersonator wants. People don't use Impersonators specifically to kill things dead, they're there to distract. If you burn orders specifically to stop it doing anything, and even lock out multiple of your models from reacting at all outside of suppressive fire, he's likely accomplished his goal and you've made an opening for him to do something else.

Countering an Impersonator doesn't always mean you've countered your opponents tactic, you've just specifically stopped one model from doing anything. In most cases, making you burn multiple orders and remove multiple models from your reactive turn is a win for having a single order locked down. In an ITS game where you only get 3 turns, he's sacrificed a single order to sap multiple of yours that could be accomplishing objectives.

The best thing to do is make sure that your models just have covering fire, preferably someone with an MSV in your backline too. When the Impersonator unveils itself, someone should be able to draw line of sight to it and get a reaction shot - again, preferably someone with an MSV to see through the inevitable smoke. Don't expect to counter it and remain productive and be unscathed - there's very little specialised units in this game you can counter easily and not sacrifice orders to do.

That said, usually in an ITS mission where you're required to take specialists, you won't take the Fiday because he costs too much and is too order-consuming. I know I only take him in Anihhilation, Frontilne and Quadrant Control ITS missions.

 Pierzak wrote:

 Kubik wrote:
Whatever suits your tactic. More than half of my games was against my mates Bahram. I'm so used to imersonators that i'm suprised when there isn't one on the table.

I thought it was because you played Yu Jing in the campaign and everyone and their dog took Impersonator Kempeitais?

Yeah. And that (grumble grumble grumble)

 Cryptonomicon wrote:

After my first turn he approached singular figures and proceded to slaughter them one by one, with practically no chance to discover (since you need to do that twice) or even striking back (due to MA3).

Something that nobody seems to have picked up on yet - each combat will drop the Fiday's Impersonation immediately. After that, either your opponent needs to spend an entire Order to recloak or your models don't need to Discover at all and can simply shoot the Fiday when the Fiday tries to get into combat - which will also negate MA3.

If recloaking each time to pick off isolated models you're typically looking at only three kills for your opponent's entire Order Reserve as it'll take about three Orders per combat - move-move, move-combat, recloak.

Depends how it was done. A popular tactic is to drop smoke at your feet first to mask your slaughter inside then reimpersonate and step back out.

That's what I assumed when I read it - he never gave the exact order sequences.

That's still three Orders.

I suppose the reason the impersonator worked so incredibly well in my game was bad positioning on my part.
There were a lot of narrow corridors and tight corners close to my deployment zone. My Models weren't physically far away from each other, yet almost all out of LoF of each other.
This made it possible for the impersonator to easily kill, recloak, repeat.

I had another game recently against another impersonator. This time I made an effort not to spread out too much so that the team could support each other. The Impersonator attacked once (not killing anything, but that was dumb luck) and was subsequently disposed of.

Guess I learned my lesson.
Thanks for the input everyone.

There's definitely bad ways to both play with and against Impersonators.

That first game sounds like a perfect example of how not to play against one and how to play with one. The second game sounds like a perfect example of how not to play with one and how to play against one.

If he used his smoke grenades, he could have still done some good damage. But he didn't and you deployed with models covering each other, which is the general counter to Impersonators.

Just hope he doesn't ever feel like playing the Fiday bomb against you. It's super high risk, but if it works, you can just end up watching your whole force dissolve in front of your eyes.

Take a deva with spitfire and msv, use cheap tact bots as bait basically a you advance , cover the bejeepers out of the targeted unit with AROs. Unit gets stabbed you aro, msv cancells the smoke and when it leaves to hide aro it again. Dont waste your orders if you can help it.

Either he uses his orders to kill, move recloak or else it cant do anything.

In short: firelanes and have an msv trumph card

 Soteks Prophet wrote:
Take a deva with spitfire and msv, use cheap tact bots as bait basically a you advance , cover the bejeepers out of the targeted unit with AROs. Unit gets stabbed you aro, msv cancells the smoke and when it leaves to hide aro it again. Dont waste your orders if you can help it.

Either he uses his orders to kill, move recloak or else it cant do anything.

In short: firelanes and have an msv trumph card

The problem there is, what if next game be brings nothing with smoke and no impersonators? Unless you personally bring smoke for shananigans, you've just paid for an MSV that's doing nothing.

The best way to deal with things like Impersonators is learn to do it without relying on an equipment crutch. That way, if you encounter it and don't have that equipment, you won't be on the back foot. If you encounter it and do have the equipment, then make use of it.

Always falling back to hard counters doesn't teach you much about the game other than how to play a game of rock, paper, scissors. And I'm pretty sure most people know how to play that. And after that, it still relies on both you taking the equipment and your opponent taking what it counters, which doesn't walways happen.