Friday, November 9, 2007

To Cheese or Not To Cheese

Holo-fields are pretty expensive, and I worry that putting them on Vypers is like putting lipstick on a pig. Fritz at Way of Saim Hann uses them on his 3 squadrons to what sounds like good effect, and quickly put them back on for good after he played a few games without them. Still, if I take them off, I can just about afford to fit a third Fire Prism in my 1500 list! What's not to like about that?

Well, there's the one thing: cries of cheese. The main 3-falcon player in town is constantly under attack for using 3 gravtanks, and though I've experienced the frustration of losing to that list myself, I don't really begrudge him for what is technically a legal (and probably fun) list. My question is this: does the fact that they're Fire Prisms and not Falcons make the list less cheesy, ie, will people keep their pouty little mouths shut? Somehow I doubt it. I love Fire Prisms and I've never seen anyone using three before, and only rarely have I seen two in the same list (around the Austin community anyways). I'm drooling just thinking about bank-shooting three Prism cannons together to get that S7 AP2 large blast! Also I want to see if the triple focus(sed) beam creates an actual black hole on the table. I mean, it's AP0! What does that even mean?

Kingsley emailed me with a few ideas, including dropping those holo-fields, but probably the most interesting notion was changing the 3 squads of 6 jetbikes to 6 squads of 3. I'll probably give this a whirl starting out. Not only will this give me more scoring units (very important for alpha missions), but it will make them easier to hide and thus make their little pop-up attacks easier to manage.

5 comments:

Capt Tyranus said...

Four thoughts:

1) The main fear in terms of Falcons is not their firepower, it's the cargo they carry. I believe Prism can't carry troops. If that is the case, then some people will not classify Prisms as cheese. At least not as readily as they do the Falcons.

2) Most people who do cry cheese will cry it no matter what. And no matter what army they are playing. I get a kick out of people running multiple Monoliths, or Falcons, or Carnies/Screaming Zoanthropes who complain about my las/plas squads.

3) What environment are you going to be playing in? What may be acceptable in BattleForge - which is ultra-competitive - may not be are acceptable in Ninja Pirate with all of the younger players. There also the fact that Ninja has comp rules and BattleForge doesn't.

4) Pretty much every Pansy player uses Falcons. Few use Prisms. If you can get a good use out of them, then how cool is that?

Aventine said...

I think you should definately go for the three prisms. In fact, I think you probably need that many to be effective considering how often holo vehicles are shaken. I have to say, putting them on Vypers is a complete waste, it almost doubles the cost of the vehicle and the fact that they're open topped almost negates any advantage(an opponent would only need to roll one 4+ on 2d6 to destroy one)

As for the main list I would consider retooling the Seer a bit. First off Runes of Witnessing are pretty un-useful. They make it more likely for you to suffer perils and I personally have never failed enough psychic checks for it to be an issue. Also I would switch out your guide for doom, just preference though really.

-Chris

Anonymous said...

All he has to shoot with is Cannons and Scatter Lasers so Doom doesnt seem like the best power.

~kings

bullymike said...

I'm going to swap out the bright lance vypers for starvannons now that I have 3 prisms... So guide will help either of the two squadrons. Doom is 5 points more and not efficient with all my S6 guns...

Vincent Fong said...

Hi,

First of all, great site you've got, I'm checking out all the blogs out there for a reference to develop my Saim Hann army as well.

Ok, I am guilty of 3 falcons. I am so prepared to get my cheese face slapped all round, but in the environment which i will be playing, these guys are ruthless! and if that is not enough, I am packing 3 squads of Dragons in them for extra measures. Someone need to teach that Chaos Revenant Titan or that Baneblade owner a lesson!

http://sidestreaker.multiply.com/photos/album/28/Cloudstrike_Squadron_Part_2

But having that 3 prism again, is extra cool, but from a hobby point of view, you may wanna make the turrent interchangable with the Pulse laser, just in case you wanna try a different strategy. I'm suggesting this because there enough sprues in that box to do so. One of my falcon can do that actually.

Can't wait to see your warhost complete. I'm working on mine as well at the moment.

Vincent