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 godswildcard wrote:
Played my first three games tonight against Tohaa (sp?). Running through the scenarios in ice storm. First game was 3 rangers, second game added a marauder as my LT and the third I dropped in Van Zant. Got tabled all three games. Not sure how badly my decisions were. It seemed that he had a great counter to my force (bio ammo makes my good armor useless). Not sure exactly what I could've done differently, but it was a good intro to the basic mechanics. Suppressive fire seems like a good way for me to run, at least with what I've got so far. I'm trying to think of a good way to incorporate forward observer tomorrow night. What would be the better option, the maverick or the foxtrot?

Im not a huge fan of the idea of the maverick FO, It is very cheap, but has a large size. The foxtrot is still 1 pt cheaper, and has Infiltrate and camo, so you can overcome the maverick being faster by being infiltrated, and camo can let you setup a good spot if you are targetting, or move into position to score objectives as a specialist.

Hard to say how to help your game, fire good- tohaa bad

 godswildcard wrote:
Played my first three games tonight against Tohaa (sp?). Running through the scenarios in ice storm. First game was 3 rangers, second game added a marauder as my LT and the third I dropped in Van Zant. Got tabled all three games. Not sure how badly my decisions were. It seemed that he had a great counter to my force (bio ammo makes my good armor useless). Not sure exactly what I could've done differently, but it was a good intro to the basic mechanics. Suppressive fire seems like a good way for me to run, at least with what I've got so far. I'm trying to think of a good way to incorporate forward observer tomorrow night. What would be the better option, the maverick or the foxtrot?

Were you playing the scenarios on a 2x2 table? IMO that really changes the character of the game and makes factions equipped with combi-rifles and DTWs much more brutal than they are on a full-sized table.

Yeah, I don't know if that was such a good match up for learning games.
One of the main strengths of USAR is completely countered by Viral weapons.

You might be better off just proxying the minis as the profiles presented in the O:IS book to just learn the game as intended there.

You can then move on to sectorials and armies with their own idiosyncrasies after you get the basics down.

and yes, play those scenarios on the provided mat and terrain. It makes it much easier on range bands, etc.

Played a 300 point game tonight vs. Haqqislam. I borrowed another group of regular Ariadna and it's amazing what a difference it made. I'm learning that USAriadna is definitely a combined arms force more than a beat stick. Van Zant is a great disruption tool. Foxtrot infiltrating and camouflaged up then surprise shooting a forward observer shot is just beautiful. Then the Mule was incredible, often with a +9 to hit before negative modifiers, it was just beautiful. All in all, I learned a TON tonight and it's going to be a fun way forward. Next game I'll incorporate the maverick to see what she's all about. I'll probably keep running the Devil Dog + K9 combo just because people will go crazy trying to bring them down when they should be more worried about the synergy models. Sensor on the K9 is pretty cool too.

So next on the purchase list is an engineer, a 112 and a Mule. I've also got to figure out how to add in a hacker as right now the only merc hacker I see won't work with USAriadna. Oh, and the rangers with heavy weapons.

All in all I'm having a lot of fun with this game. It's got a pretty cool community here in Colorado Springs and I look forward to getting some more games in next week.

As of now, USARF has no hackers. They cannot use the WarDrivers available to vanilla Ariadna, nor can they use mercs in ITS missions, as there are currently no mercs listed available to them.

Your only option would be in an ITS tourney with Spec-Ops, and run it as a hacker.

Now, friendly games to learn what a hacker is and does? That's entirely up to your opponents, and if they want to let you run a WarDriver from the vanilla list.

Well I've just ordered this box set, am totally new to the game but really like the look of the models only trouble is my wife is gonna kill me as bought halo fleet battles the other day. Ouch

Yeah, releasing USAriadna and H:FB at the same time was mean.

Could you not just ... buy one of them one month and the other later on?

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Could you not just ... buy one of them one month and the other later on?

Yep, but came across this set for a good price online and they only had 2 or 3 sets in stock so thought what the hell.