The Book of Omnicron Repulsors

[Sujoah]

Originally Posted by Windy_City_Hawk

Tealord 160
Raelin 80
Snipers x2 200
Repulsors x2 80

This army adds up to 540 points. Taelord is 180, not 160.

I would probably get rid of Taelord and add x1 Snipers and Zetacron for 500.

[Rich10]

Originally Posted by Windy_City_Hawk

With the release of wave 9 and the re-release of wave 1 I was thinking of some armies to utilize the Repulsors and the Snipers that I will be getting soon. The main issue is that many people think the Repulsors are only good against other Soulborg amries. What about this 520 army:

Tealord 160
Raelin 80
Snipers x2 200
Repulsors x2 80

My thought is that with Raelin the repulsors have a pretty good defense and will last long enough to engage the enemy. Also, with the assitance of Taelord they would have an attack of 2 so that they can have a decent attack on their way to engagement.

Once I have the Repulsors engaged then I would begin attacking with the Snipers who would be boosted by Taelord to have a 2 attack with Deadly Strike.

My concerns are:

- Is this enough units to be decent against armies like 4x 4th Mass?
- Would I be better off replacing Raelin with 2x Repulsors?

I think the 4th Mass will WTF the Repulsors away. I think that the Repulsors will make a good counter to a Glad/Blast army, create problems for Q9 (if that army doesn't have a non-soulborg to take out the Repulsors), and bother the Deathreavers. They should hurt the DW's and Zettians too, but they aren't really competitive. Outside of soulborg armies, I don't see that they will be successful.

[Aldin]

So you want to shoot a Repulsor?

Given the Repulsors defense of three, the first question is “how likely am I to miss and become subject to an EMP roll?” Soulborg attacks range from the Rats measly one to eight or more with a Glad/Blast army. But wait, there’s more – the Repulsors can certainly have defensive boosts as much as doubling their defense to six or even higher. I want to list four thresholds: 1/2; 1/3; 1/4; 1/10. In other words, when will they block about half, one in three, one in four or one in ten. I’ll list it as “3D:3A” meaning “to achieve this ratio when the Repulsors are throwing three defense dice, you must have three attack dice.”

Half
3D:3A, 4D:4A, 5D:5A, 6D:5A

One in Three
3D:4A, 4D:5A, 5D:6A, 6D:7A

One in Four
3D:5A, 4D:6A, 5D:7A, 6D:8A

One in Ten
3D:7A, 4D:8A

Now let’s combine that with the EMP rate. Simplistically, the EMP rate says that you can expect EMP to hit once for every three misses with a better than 50% chance of it hitting you on one of the first two. Because it removes ALL OMs from the card, if you are likely to trigger EMP on a give OM, then you should only make the attack when there are no remaining unrevealed OMs on the card. Let’s talk about some typical units:

1-2: Rats, Glads, Q10’s Machine Pistol:
Don’t bother. Even unenhanced Repulsors are likely to block you and EMP is probable in two, much less four attacks. On a final OM with no one else to attack? Go for it. Otherwise take a pass.

3: Deathstalkers, 8k, 9k Explosion, Q9 Queeglix, Blast w/2xGlad adjacent:
Against unenhanced Repulsors you might risk this with a single unrevealed OM. Out of roughly six attacks, one is going to EMP you, so it’s a gut check. If the Repulsors are enhanced in any way you’ll likely want to skip these attacks.

4: Q10 Wrist Rocket, Blast w/height+2xGlad:
There are other Soulborgs that can get four attack dice and it’s probably the mimimum you want to be throwing if you’re planning on using Soulborgs to hunt Repulsors. Against unenhanced Repulsors you’re only going to EMP about one time in ten – happening more often than not within the first six attacks. So on any unit with only two OMs this is pretty decent. If they have all three, you may want to use the first on something else. Against Repulsors with height or some other +1 boost, it’s still a gut check like 3:3, but not quite as risky.

5+: Blast w/Lots of Glads:
At what point do you comfortably start blasting away on the first OM with another potential eleven attacks that could be cancelled by EMP? I’d say you need probability firmly in your court for that one. For my tastes that point is somewhere around One in Four at a bare minimum. With One in Four you’ll lose that final OM more often than not, but you will be blasting more than a squad of Repulsors each round. Since the Overloading herd desperately needs to be thinned, this seems to be roughly the tipping point at which the chance needs to be taken. To make it happen, you need to be throwing two more dice than the Repulsors are. If you’re throwing 3+ extra you might even survive…

It isn’t hopeless for Soulborgs, but they really need to be sensitive to anything that boosts the Repulsors defense. The small hop from three to four really makes them poison for most of the borgs. Q10 is surprisingly good against them with his wrist rocket, too bad it is only two attacks. In any case, if you have as many attack dice as the Repulsors have defense dice and no unrevealed OMs it’s always worth it to try to crush some mini-mecha.

~Aldin, analytically

[Omaga]

Clarification
To get others opinions
Does the Targeting Beacon add +1 attack dice, or is it +1 per Repulser

[Aldin]

+1 total no matter how many Repulsors are adjacent.

~Aldin, in the recticle

[kpotassiumk19]

Originally Posted by Sujoah

This army adds up to 540 points. Taelord is 180, not 160.

I would probably get rid of Taelord and add x1 Snipers and Zetacron for 500.

That doesn't add up to 500 either. It's 520. X3 snipers=300+x2 repulsors=380+zeta=440+Raelin=520. I think you meant 520 anyway.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Just_a_Bill

No, this doesn't work. After you finish moving your first squad of Repulsors, you must roll for ALL of your non-Repulsor soulborgs that are adjacent to ANY of your Repulsors. (Wow, I wonder how many more times we're going to have to correct this misinterpretation. It's right there on the card.)

Brownsfan82 is correct; that does work, the overwhelming majority of the time. The only case where you can't avoid the first-turn overload roll is if you have 12 repulsors and 12 hexes of non-repulsor soulborgs, filling your entire start zone.

Name any tournament map and any reasonable 24-hex army, and I will show you a start zone arrangement where I can get clear of any possible overload roll even if I place OM 1 on repulsors, given a single non-soulborg figure (*cough* Raelin *cough*). Let me demonstrate. Take the following army, which I will call "worst case":

80 Raelin RotV
400 Omnicron Snipers x4
160 Omnicron Repulsors x4
640, 25 hexes (drop an Omnicron... either one)

That's an even 12/12 split, all soulborg. If you leave out Raelin, it's positively the worst case. More repulsors means fewer repulsor "targets", so the 12/12 split is the worst.

Now, take the standard 24-hex, single-tile start zone. There are LOTS of ways to draw a line down the middle of it to put 12 hexes on one side, and 12 on the other, where the length of the border between these two zones, on one of the two sides, is only 4 hexes.

So,

1. Place Raelin (or whatever your non-soulborg figure is) on one of those four border hexes.
2. Place three repulsors on the other three border hexes.
3. If you place OM 1 on repulsors, move the three repulsors sitting on the border hexes.

QED.

Marr Highway is the only similarly compact BoV startzone that isn't based on a 24-hexer, but it's very obvious that it, too, can be split into two with a hex border of 4.

So, it's only if you come with an army that has 12 hexes of repulsors and 12 hexes of non-repulsor soulborgs that move fewer than 4 hexes per activation (i.e. other than 'trons, rats, or deathstalkers) that you would have to place OM 1 on something other than repulsors. Barring that extreme edge case, proper start zone arrangement removes the risk. And in that edge case, the only hardship is a forced OM 1 placement.

[ollie]

Originally Posted by dok

<snip>

More repulsors means fewer repulsor "targets", so the 12/12 split is the worst.

<snip>

I buy it apart from that sentence. 24 figures is certainly worst, and at that point is becomes a task of showing that every way to split the 24 figures into repulsors and non-repulsors allows a border of length at most 4. It's not clear to me why finding a border of length 4 that divides the region into 10 hexes and 14 hexes, say, is guaranteed to be possible if you can do the 12/12 case.

But I might well be missing something and if not then it's likely to be possible for the other cases too. I certainly agree that it's not something to worry about.

[dok]

Originally Posted by ollie

I buy it apart from that sentence. 24 figures is certainly worst, and at that point is becomes a task of showing that every way to split the 24 figures into repulsors and non-repulsors allows a border of length at most 4. It's not clear to me why finding a border of length 4 that divides the region into 10 hexes and 14 hexes, say, is guaranteed to be possible if you can do the 12/12 case.

But I might well be missing something and if not then it's likely to be possible for the other cases too. I certainly agree that it's not something to worry about.

Ollie,

From a pure mathematician's perspective, you're right - it's not automatic that a 12/12 split is the worst possible. And, in fact, if there were maps where the startzone looked like a filled-in figure 8, then a 12/12 split would be very easy to deal with.

However:

• As a practical matter, no startzones have "choke points" in their middle, so 12/12 is, given the current map set, the worst.
• Even given such bizarre start zone layouts, the maximum border for a 10/14 split or somesuch would be four or fewer hexes, so the overall conclusion is unchanged.

Given a maximally compact start zone (think a big hexagon that's stretched on one axis, so 4 sides are 3 hexes wide and 2 sides are 4 hexes wide) the minimum border for a 12/12 split is actually 5 hexes. But again, nobody's made a map with a start zone like that.

[ollie]

Originally Posted by dok

So, it's only if you come with an army that has 12 hexes of repulsors and 12 hexes of non-repulsor soulborgs that move fewer than 4 hexes per activation (i.e. other than 'trons, rats, or deathstalkers) that you would have to place OM 1 on something other than repulsors.

Another gap in the argument! You've implicitly assumed that all of the relevant repulsors can get clear of the start zone. Did you consider maps like Highways and Dieways and Overlord where there is height and/or water potentially causing a problem?

A completely unrelated fact: There's a whole pedagogical method in math that involves the teacher sitting at the back and pointing out potential flaws in proofs and generally asking snarky questions.

[grandpoobahdave]

For those individuals who are making disparaging remarks - keep in mind that they are only 40 pts. With three defense dice, they are as good as any 40 pointer.

[Bonecrusher]

.....Except the rats. They are very solid against soulborgs, but I will have to see how they do against non-soulborg armies.