IraShaine1972
Mongoose
So anybody have any good tactical tips for putting the screws to Al Malik using Hazat? I seem to be having a problem dealing with their shield ignoring rocket/missile wall.
Hazat vs Al Malik
- Thread starter IraShaine1972
- Start date
All Power to Engines is your first port of call - no need to worry about Shields with al Malik 
Keep your fast and agile stuff to the far flanks - I have been able to approach al Malik (and Li Halan, for that matter) while avoiding the entire weight of their boradsides.
Don't be afraid to load up on Marauders. You _will_ lose ships going in, but you only need one Galliot to make it in order to start taking over even cruisers. Once that starts happening, the batgtle will turn your way.
Use every scrap of terrain there is, and time your attacks so things do not go in piecemeal (I have made that mistake!).
What scenarios are you oplaying?
Keep your fast and agile stuff to the far flanks - I have been able to approach al Malik (and Li Halan, for that matter) while avoiding the entire weight of their boradsides.
Don't be afraid to load up on Marauders. You _will_ lose ships going in, but you only need one Galliot to make it in order to start taking over even cruisers. Once that starts happening, the batgtle will turn your way.
Use every scrap of terrain there is, and time your attacks so things do not go in piecemeal (I have made that mistake!).
What scenarios are you oplaying?
IraShaine1972
Mongoose
msprange said:All Power to Engines is your first port of call - no need to worry about Shields with al Malik
Keep your fast and agile stuff to the far flanks - I have been able to approach al Malik (and Li Halan, for that matter) while avoiding the entire weight of their boradsides.
Don't be afraid to load up on Marauders. You _will_ lose ships going in, but you only need one Galliot to make it in order to start taking over even cruisers. Once that starts happening, the batgtle will turn your way.
Use every scrap of terrain there is, and time your attacks so things do not go in piecemeal (I have made that mistake!).
What scenarios are you oplaying?
Well so far we have just been doing a straight up CtA scenerio but I imagine other scenerios could change things up a bit. I learned right away to go in full throttle + against these guys but given that this is a new match up and did get a little turned around in timing here and there planning boosted moves AND grapple actions at the same time then realizing to late that I cant do that. That mistake was costly. Yeah I pretty much load my galliots with marauders and my destroyers with elites and aim for the al malik Efreets or any other capitol ships. Still I am having a hard time getting there. One drawback is that the troop upgrades cost points that al malik can spend on frigates and bombers.
starbreaker
Mongoose
What are you fielding against them? Going heavy on boarding (eg galliots & frigates) is probably a mistake - Al Malik likes Hull 4 targets, and kills them with ease. Your destroyers and cruisers have Hull 5 (much harder for rockets to deal with) but a lot of their firepower is tied up in light blasters with that awful 16" range. Your scouts are vital for shooting accuracy, just like they are for Al Malik - and your have two lasers apiece to contribute to crit-fishing, which is well worth the extra 10 points. Leave the bigger ships home unless you're playing Assassination, Towering Inferno, or maybe Carrier Clash.
Obvious tactics: Assuming a gunline rush fleet composed of destroyers and (maybe) a cruiser backed up by scouts, use the scouts for initiative sinks and to light up whatever you want to kill first. The Hull 5 stuff uses All Power To Engines every turn till their light blasters are in range (should be between turn 2 and 4 depending on scenario, terrain, and how hard the Al Malik is playing keep-away), then kill the scouted targets one after another.
General target priority ought to be enemy scouts first if you can get a realistic chance at killing all of them quickly (good luck on that), followed by any Hull 4 stuff, then moving on to the inevitable destroyers. Try not to shoot at things you don't have at least one scout lock on, although enemy scouts are an exception - they're always worth stomping if you can. Don't spread your fire, shoot till the target is dead or wrecked by criticals before going on to the next enemy. Blaster ships shoot first to drop shields, with the scouts pumping lasers in later to crit-fish. Try to keep your scouts out of range of enemy rockets as much as possible - the Al Malik player wants them dead, but without the rockets' contribution it will take him ages to nickel-and-dime them to death with missiles.
If the Al Malik fields carriers, you'll have to play keep-away yourself while your turrets and scout lasers slowly kill his (fragile, slow) bombers. Do not let even a few bombers reach you, they hit ridiculously hard - but they also die like flies, and once they're mopped up sufficiently you should be able to milk some bonus VPs out of boarding the carriers. Even a Hazat "shooty" fleet can manage to board-and-storm an Al Malik carrier swarm with ease.
Obvious tactics: Assuming a gunline rush fleet composed of destroyers and (maybe) a cruiser backed up by scouts, use the scouts for initiative sinks and to light up whatever you want to kill first. The Hull 5 stuff uses All Power To Engines every turn till their light blasters are in range (should be between turn 2 and 4 depending on scenario, terrain, and how hard the Al Malik is playing keep-away), then kill the scouted targets one after another.
General target priority ought to be enemy scouts first if you can get a realistic chance at killing all of them quickly (good luck on that), followed by any Hull 4 stuff, then moving on to the inevitable destroyers. Try not to shoot at things you don't have at least one scout lock on, although enemy scouts are an exception - they're always worth stomping if you can. Don't spread your fire, shoot till the target is dead or wrecked by criticals before going on to the next enemy. Blaster ships shoot first to drop shields, with the scouts pumping lasers in later to crit-fish. Try to keep your scouts out of range of enemy rockets as much as possible - the Al Malik player wants them dead, but without the rockets' contribution it will take him ages to nickel-and-dime them to death with missiles.
If the Al Malik fields carriers, you'll have to play keep-away yourself while your turrets and scout lasers slowly kill his (fragile, slow) bombers. Do not let even a few bombers reach you, they hit ridiculously hard - but they also die like flies, and once they're mopped up sufficiently you should be able to milk some bonus VPs out of boarding the carriers. Even a Hazat "shooty" fleet can manage to board-and-storm an Al Malik carrier swarm with ease.
starbreaker said:
Good point - while Hazat are not the most shooty fleet around, there is absolutely nothing wrong with their guns. They may surprise you when you go on the offense!
starbreaker
Mongoose
msprange said:
It's probably also worth mentioning that the OP's problems aren't coming from the Slow weapons. Those are resulting in maybe 4-6 more damaging hits on his fleet per turn in a thousand point game. That's not insignificant, but what's killing him is flying a bunch of hull 4 ships into one of the two enemy fleets that reliably outshoots him. If you must try to board, load the marauders onto Hull 5 destroyers and watch all those rocket batteries halve their damage output. Just don't rely on your grapples working - you don't have as many of them, and you should position to shoot as well as possible if you do fail, preferably with both broadsides.
The other approach is to go for quantity over quality - leave the galliots and destroyers home and take as many frigates as you can afford after buying a few scouts. With that force you're playing the range game against Al Malik, staying at 21-24" where all your guns fire and he can only respond with turrets. If you can keep that up for a couple of turns you'll wear down his firepower enough that you can then move in and try for boarding with a significant numerical advantage. You'll need it - even with reduced firepower, the Al Malik will reap an ugly harvest on those small Hull 4 ships. This won't work well against most fleets, but Al Malik ties up a lot of its firepower on rockets that your frigates can actually outrange. As an added bonus, your frigates are much more efficient at popping bombers than your destroyers are, so you're stronger against that threat as well.
One other thing to watch out for - remember that Al Malik can use APE too. Stopping a boarding or light blaster rush at 21" range to avoid rockets can seem like a great idea, but if your enemy responds by rushing with his unmoved ships that turn, you can find yourself facing almost all his firepower unexpectedly, or he may slip away to 25-28" range and missile you with little danger of return fire. Alternately, he may be able to APE an extra 4" the next turn to avoid light blaster range, or to position to dodge grappling attempts. You'll get an extra 2-4 damage out of chewing on his weakened shields whenever he does this, but that's a price he'll happily pay if it messes up your plans on a key turn.
IraShaine1972
Mongoose
Well I shut him down with boarding actions in our second go around tonight. I dumped the Galliots and indeed stuck with the destroyers full of Marauders and took a couple of scouts of my own. However I still took a pounding and if I had to try and survive another round of maneuvering I would have been pounded to dust by the hail of missiles. Still it seems that Hazat is a one trick pony when facing al malik. Just dont have the firepower. It will be interesting to try some other scenerios against them.
starbreaker
Mongoose
IraShaine1972 said:
If you're spending an extra 50 points per destroyer to load up on marauders, you're reducing the number of points available to buy guns in the fleet. Fragile as they are, even an extra frigate provides a worthwhile firepower boost (especially when shooting shield-burned targets so the lasers can crit-fish) - and if you're loading 4 destroyers, you could have had a fifth, or more scouts to make sure the existing destroyers were getting rerolls on more of their weapon systems. Given the relatively cruddy quality of Al Malik troops, you could run with cheaper options (elites, or just a few marauders) and still be a serious boarding threat.
Of course, terrain means a lot too. If you can cover yourself with LoS blocking terrain on one of your sprint turns you'll be in much better shape when you do reach 16" and start the party going for real.
At that point you do have the firepower edge. An Al Malik destroyer with broadside rerolls can expect 6 or 7 damage rolls against Hull 5. A Hazat destroyer shooting back with the same level of scout support can expect 8 or 10 hits - more if you have multiple scout locks on the target and can reroll your turrets as well. The first 4 hits in a turn are spent burning out shields, but every ship that hits the same target after that is outperforming their Al Malik opposites by at least a couple of points per volley, and that's before adding in the lasers from your scouts, which are actually a menace unlike the ones the Al Malik carry. You're certainly behind in a one-on-one duel because of the slow weapons bypassing shields, but this is a fleet game - concentration of fire is vital, and by the time your third destroyer has salvoed into the same enemy, you should be pulling ahead on the amount of raw damage caused. The gap just gets wider as more ships fire at one - although on average a destroyer will be wrecked by about four same-class enemies shooting it in one turn, so there's a limit to how much you can exploit that.
Keeping the range close against an agile enemy can be tricky, but it's no worse than trying to line up for grapples or rams IME.
IraShaine1972
Mongoose
Well given the option of spending 100 points to load 2 destroyers with marauders and spending 100 points on another frigate I will take the marauders at this point. If I target my opponents destroyers Hazat destroyers even without agile still seem to not have to much trouble getting into position.
Plus I just think 10 marauders are a hoot.
Plus I just think 10 marauders are a hoot.
starbreaker
Mongoose
katadder said:
OTOH, if he's committed to boarding as his route to victory, a max load of marauders will let him take over the target more rapidly even in the face of enemy troop upgrades. Al Malik often runs cyber troops, which slow down even marauders quite a bit. Against ships without troop upgrades, 3-4 marauders and 6-7 troops should sweep anything smaller than a cruiser within 2 turns, but cybers could easily push that to 3-4 turns instead, which is a bit long. Nothing worse than starting a boarding action and having the game end before you win the darn thing.
Myself, I don't trust boarding as a primary route, but then I mostly play Al Malik, where it's not a realistic approach anyway. Different kicks for different fleets. Been bitten by botched grapple rolls once too often, I guess.
IraShaine1972
Mongoose
Our group probably wont be delving into to much in the way of options that arent in the book for now except for fleet lists like Kurgan and the reinforcements at least not until FotFS comes out.
starbreaker
Mongoose
That makes Al Malik a bit weaker. Without the S&P articles they're the only fleet in the game with no available troop upgrades, which not only makes them vulnerable to boarding fleets, it often causes them to play below the scenarios point value since they can't spend leftover points on, well, anything.
