When playing Alpha Strike I see some newer players surprised when they encounter units with TMM of 4, 5 or even 6. The culprits for this are generally lighter fast units, helicopters, WiGEs or stealth units. These can be daunting to deal with and in some cases the solution in an objective game can be to ignore them – this is a valid tactic when these units are deliberately in play as a distraction. But if you want to take them out what can you do about it? Following is some advice.
First, the tournament is using some specific rules that help in dealing with high TMM targets:
- We are using variable attack roles. More attack roles means more chances to score a higher roll and do some damage. For vehicles even a single point of damage causes them to roll on motive hits.
- We are using Battlefield Support (BSP), this allows for various air strikes, strafing runs or artillery attacks. This alone will deter some of the weaker high TMM targets from being deployed given heavy air strike can easily delivery 2 points of damage to a discrete target.
Next there are steps you can take to address high TMM targets, starting at the bottom and working my way up:
- Build a list with on board artillery. Here the basic arrow system (ARTAIS special) can give you artillery strikes every turn! But this is very specific and requires a lot of customisation in your force list to get right, but Point Of Impact (POI) attacks ignore TMM and work well against high TMM units. Example mechs – Catapult CPLT-C3 or UrbanMech UM-AIV.
- Bring units with the FLAK special to deal with airborne units like helicopters. Example mechs – Rifleman RFL-7G (use the MUL to search for flk1 or higher) Kodiak 3 (a beast vs helicopters and most units in general).
- Use the ammo type Deadfire Missile in LRM or SRM special units. They increase damage at close range therefore indirectly assist vs high speed targets by giving more attack chances against faster units.
- Use the ammo type Precision ammo for AC special units. It can be easier to find AC2 compared to FLK2 units so this may be easier. Also this ammo type is similar to FLK but is not limited to airborne targets (just TMM2+ targets).
- Use Battlefield Support strikes – we added them to the tournament so don’t forget to take advantage of them.
Don’t forget sometimes simply ignoring a faster unit is the solution, or you can bring your own! There are many to choose from, one of my favourites is the humble Flea FLE-21 (TMM 5 at medium range with stealth armour) what’s yours?