Armoured Digital Players International

Tactics Tuesday: Raiders (part 1)

Today’s article will explore the fundamentals of raiding. Raiding is putting your attacking tanks in the middle of the enemy formation, particularly amongst the production unit, command unit and transports.
As a highly aggressive player, this is one of my go-to strategies, especially for early in the game. There are a couple of ways to approach this: fast raiding, designed to get in close and fast and before the enemy can react. The second one, which I will cover next week, is using specialist raiders to get in past the enemy defences before wreaking havoc.
So, to the unsubtle approach. The two main contenders you will be looking to for your raiding work are the Wolf and the Cheetah. Both pack speed 4 and rather high firepower stats, so they’re perfect to run past the enemy’s guns before opening up with their own. Neither vehicle has anything special in the comms or sensors department, and the Cheetah has the downside of only protection 2 as well.
It’s best to start your raid with two drones if possible, but one can still work. The risk you run is that the enemy can bring your raid crashing to a halt (pun intended) with a well-placed System Crash card or similar. You will also need to make sure that you support your raid by placing units where they can keep up communications with your raiding drone/s, and putting the rest of your units into position where they can’t just be ignored, either. You want your opponent to have to choose between threats. 
A typical raid will spend one turn moving to a point to start the attack, another breaking in, and a third (if still functional) causing as much havoc as humanly (dronely?) possible. That means that on turn 1, you’re using a Redline/Move card or two to move your raider/s up to a position where you have cover (or even better, the enemy has no LOS to you at all). You’re relying on your speed, the cover, and the fact that the enemy will likely have more movement and fewer shooting cards on turn 1. Once you’ve finished your move, your opponent will have to react to that next turn, and they may be ready for you.
Turn 2 is where this hots up. You want to focus your turn on this raid, so either put all your cards into it or wait in your covered position for a better turn to strike. If you’re poised to strike, that can sometimes be just as effective a psychological tool as using the raid itself. Use a Move or similar card to ensure that you move the full 8” for cover, and get yourself within your sensor lock range of 8”. After that, switch to a combination of Shoot and Rapid Fire. It’s handy to keep an Assault order handy here too, as if you need to readjust position or take cover after destroying enemy units, it gives you that flexibility. At this point, know that your drone is going to be lost, but pump out as much damage as possible while you’re there. Be bold in your positioning, and pack more shooting orders than you think you will need.
When raiding, know what targets you want to pick in advance. If you’re using a Wolf, your primary target should be the Wombat to get the most effect out of your weapons. If you’ve got the Cheetah, Armadillos and command units are your primary targets. There are a few other orders that can work well here, including using Plasma Blast on harder targets to get more ADEs (ie a shielded Vampire is not a good target for a Wolf, but a Plasma Blast can fix that). Barrage is a perfect one to use if the enemy is packed into a small space, but the restriction on not moving before shooting means that you’ll want to be in position to use it at the start of your turn 2. Don’t underestimate packing one or more System Crash cards either, as your raiders will be in comms range of those juicy targets and you can really mess up their turn by playing them on enemy production and command units. You will also more than likely be in place to spot for your artillery, so a cheeky Indirect Fire directed at an enemy who counterattacks one of your raiders won’t go astray.
The vulnerabilities of this sort of attack are mostly around command and communications. Beware an enemy with a Jamming order already in play, as this will undoubtedly cover your raiders. Don’t expose your link drones to enemy fire, as they will be prime targets. If you can swing it, put a Hard Reboot card down as your command unit order to prevent your raid grinding to a halt from enemy System Crash cards.