I am very interested in a possible Elysian list, and without having read previous development threads (just downloading army lists), wonder whether the following has been thought of:

How about a pre-plotted Teleport? Call it Air Drop or something catchy.

This would probably be (from what I gather) a quite good way of representing an airborne operation. It would have to be minutely planned, and the situation on the ground would be unknown (but estimated) at the moment of the planning. It also uses existing game mechanics (drop pods).

If Flak should be an additional hazard, why not say that every AA attack that reaches the "drop pod" unit adds a die before testing for blast markers.

My main objection to Teleport is that it seems a little too opportunistic - like always ending up where you are needed instead of where you intended to go.

/Fredmans

This is a good point. The only thing I can say in response to it is that "it's not just an airborne operation, it's a scifi airborne operation," i.e. better command and control, better reaction time, etc. allows the Elysians to be much more flexible than anything we know from history. The metaphor isn't perfect...

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

It's hard for me to argue game effectiveness without having played the army. I'd suggest you give zombo a shot to convince you, if he still feels like it.

I would also like to add that while you're discussing how safe it is to teleport to a destination, there are couple of things that you also need to keep in mind:

1. Teleport isn't free. You have to roll for BMs. One die for every unit in the formation. I know, it's a one. Try it sometime and find out how often that one black dot pops up.

This mechanism does represent fairly well, the chaos that ensues when you drop a bunch of guys/gals and stuff from a great height and then try to get it to do something.

Do a little research on drops. Operation Market Garden (by Toland I believe) is a great read and gives some very interesting insights into how these went. Then read about the Germans dropping into Crete.

2. After you drop, you're supposed to do something. Usually it's an assault. If you've done enough Epic gaming, jumping into an assault with a blast marker or few makes things pretty interesting...which is why there are some compensating factors on the other side of the assault, mainly Iron Discipline.

I'm not trying to infer that I've got the whole deal dialed in perfect, but there has been a fair amount of playtesting and thought put into the mechanisms that drive the list.

It does not play like other armies.

@Ulrik: No worries mate, you're just thinking out loud and postulating.

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Remember Taros? We do.

- 23rd Elysian Drop Regiment

Just popping my thoughts in here.

Does the army really have to be all teleport? I mean even Market Garden and Crete meant paras had to foot slog their way to an assault. OK they were often dropping into the fight directly but does the Elysian list have to do this? Sure, it's dramatic, but forces often drop at a distance to their intended target to reduce the losses and then assault from the ground.

From a novice's point of view the Iron Discipline just seems to break to game covenant with the ignore -1 for enemy rule when no other Elite forces get that. I see why it's necessary but if teleport wasn't all-encompassing it wouldn't be required. If you want to replicate accurate drop zones why not use perhaps a variant of planetfall instead? Maybe cause it to drift a little more or scatter troops who then have to regroup back into formation cohesion etc. or whatever? The teleport-all design just seems to add the necessity of the Iron Discipline.

Anyway that's my first impression regarding the list. It's not an in-depth analysis but it's what sticks out immediately to me.

Cheers

I know about BM:s, and Teleport, and agree with you. It is a good compromise. I just had one objection, the possibility to change your plans according to the enemy's movements, always showing up exactly when and where you want. However, I understand the necessity for this. In a game, you do not have that many turns to footslog it to where you need to be.

If people grumble about their AA not protecting them from an air drop, AA attacks that reach teleporting units could add dice to the test for BM:s?

/Fredmans

personally I think Teleport is way harder to use than Air Assaults, especially with a low SR init 2+ army with no long range artillery. You have to put all your chips on the table at the beginning of the turn (instead of choosing when and where with air assault), you're almost guaranteed to get BMs with the larger Elysian fms (whereas you can avoid it with air assault if you're careful) and then you have to risk loosing strategy (very likely), having your opponent smack you over the head with 2 activations and [i[then[/i] try and activate your now init 3+ activations, even before you think of trying to retain.

If anything, I think that Teleport, and it's added cost, is one of the main reasons that Elysians are underpowered.

Two points:
1. The army isn't "all" teleport. Only the Infantry Only/Sentinel Only/Sentinel-Infantry mixed formations are. Valkyries and Vultures and Vendettas and Skytalons and Tauros and Venators all have to come to the board in the classic fashion. That may not seem like a lot of formations, but that is all the Elysians have left! Everything else is aircraft. There isn't a huge amount of diversity to the list. That isn't a complaint (it's a specialized ist after all), just a fact.

2. BMs. Elysian drop troopers also have the problem with ranged attacks. So those BMs that you accumulate severely chew away at your ability to act/respond on Turn 1. Drop Troops don't have autos every other stand, so the range and firepower you would normally have with a classic IG infantry company is not achievable with Elysians. If you have two support weapon units as an upgrade to your infantry formation, then collect two BMs on teleport (not hard to do with 10-12 units), your formation is suppressed beyond 15cm and it is doing very little besides maneuvering.

I kind of chuckled when Fredmans called them 'opportunistic'. Rarely when I play Elysians do I say, "Ah, now I gotcha" as I teleport. It's more like, "Oh crap, where can I go where I won't have my BTS vaporized on turn 1."

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Yeah, I wouldn't say just increase the formation size across the board or anything, just that the problem I've found with the Elysians is just how quickly your activations degrade. Decreasing the points cost helps you get more activations on the table, but it starts to run into the risk of having an army composed entirely of 150-point formations, where you're dropping 20 activations on the board at the beginning of turn 1, and they're all dead by the bottom of turn 3 Merely a suggestion that dropping point cost per model might be benefited by adding a higher number of models to a formation, just to give some durability to someone on the board.

Admittedly, Tauros formations probably aren't the best choice for that

Hmm,
With a Low SR, and poor initiative, people are going to have to accept they will suffer pre-emptive strikes (irrespective of the way that the formations arrive) and plan accordingly. This is achieved both by having larger formation numbers to provide some redundancy, and making good use of terrain. But it is also achieved by having a little more flexibility in arrival options, and keeping off-table until needed. While I can understand why Honda wants to rule out Air-transport (as opposed to skimmers), like others I wonder if there is room for further acceptable mechanics other than teleport and skimmer upgrades. For example, could we include "planetfalling" which, with its pre-plotted zones, closely resembles the "Market Garden" style operation. This would be achieved by providing the Elysians with a "Space Cruiser" (transport 20) and drop pods.

I also agree that "Vietnam style" helecopter operations are well represented by skimmers, but I would prefer the option of allowing transports to be separate rather than dedicated to a particular formation (even though this would require a special rule to allow a fomation of multiple Valks to transport the drop company

Finally, as a 'wacky' idea, is there any merit in giving each Drop company a free 'captain', so that he can command combined formation assaults.

IG Commander units (found in all companies) have Commander?

So not so wacky after all
(My excuse is that it is late over here and memory is not perfect at this point)

Yes, they all have commander already.
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Planetfalling... Never tried it with the list - never felt the need. It would change things dramatically however. First you would need to establish how many units/formations could drop at a time. Depending on how small that number is, you could end up with an activation lag which would be counterproductive to what Ginger just brought up (preparing against a preemptive strike). If it is a large amount, you end up dropping all your Elysians at once withOUT blast markers which gives them a boon, but the scatter could take them out in the open which might as well kill them. Elysians need cover (no armor, or 6+ armor).

This makes your game more dependent on dice instead of skill, once again. And then of course you end up with invisible planes anyway.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Having done skydiving before, it isn't that difficult to land in the place you want as long as you aren't screwing around. Modern chutes allow for very good maneuverability. Grav chutes - from the looks of them - would put modern chutes to shame and probably allow for detailed precision landings, even between trees (since getting chutes caught on branches isn't a concern).

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

The thinking behind the Planetfalling suggestion was both to provide a 'reserve' that could come in mid-turn, and also one that did not suffer from BMs though the down side is that planetfalling troops may not end up quite where you want them . It would also provide a Barrage or Pin-point attack to beef up that side of the list.

I was thinking of using the SM Space Cruiser as a guide - so 20x units deployed by Drop pod. This would give combinations of 2x Drop companies up to 5x Sentinel squadrons, though the optimum would probably be an upgraded company and two sentinel squadrons.

Planetfalling would be very analogous with the Market Garden situation because of the need to plot the drop zones, but is not quite as randon as people think, the 15cm move by the player means the zone can theoretically arrive up to 27cm on either side of the target area, though the average is 22cm, and the canny player will assume an average move of 7cm and play accordingly.

So, you would be paying 200pts to avoid BMs and get a spaceship attack, hoping to predict where the battle is likely to be in order to get a reasonable assault. Practical - yes-ish, but more importantly it would give an added dimension to the army that seems to be lacking.

SR3 is merited IMHO, and potentially give the Elysians the ability to chose to play corners, which makes the army more practical as it keeps the vulnerable on-table supports out of the way of many pre-emptive strikes.