Hazard Warning: The Medusa(s)

I have now had the privilege misfortune of playing against the Medusa, or should I say Medusas or is it Medusai, actually that sounds like Me-juicy - I digress. 

DON'T look in her eyes..........the EYES!!!!!!!

I had a game against Ed (TechBoy2000) and although he was wasteful of the Triton X's and the Medusa's abilities I can see massive potential for the unit - especially working in tandem..........shudder

We played Surging Strike, 5 Focal Points, the 2 in your opponents half are worth more. I was also testing out the Hazard Suits - 2 squads, Ravens, awesome! 
Normally in a game like this I would leave the infantry off the board until turn 5 then go for a Focal Point as really the infantry are useless if not searching for objectives/intel and you don't want them dying early for nothing. 
How refreshing to have squads that can do something else! 

Anyway back to the Medusa. These girls are pretty f***ing terrifying! 10 E7 focus2 shots with Strafe per Medusa will ruin anyone's day. Had Ed played more aggressively with them I would have been ruined. As I said earlier I took advantage of Ed's poor Triton X placement and removed both by turn 3. Rapiers and Archangels will do this. 
I think Ed was a little wary of my Rapiers with their wide fire, effectively giving them 10 E4 shots each, but really he should have strutted up right in front of them and annihilated them one at a time, or 2 at a time. 
Had they done that, they would have been right in my backfield and scoring my Focal Points. 
Not only are the Medusa rather powerful they are extremely hard to hit too, having E+3 countermeasures means its 5's and 6's to hit. Most low energy guns it will be 6's. This isn't too much of a problem for the UCM. There is an abundance of machine guns in the army, all Ravens, Condors, Legionnaires, Rapiers, Sabres...... you know what, just loads of secondary weapons! But I worry for other armies, namely PHR and Scourge. 

PHR due to their low model count, yes they have loads of secondary weapons, but once you start losing a few it will become really difficult to deal with 1 let alone 2 Medusa. PHR don't have much utility with flame or blast weapons either. All these fears are completely secondary to the Scourge. Poor poor Scourge. The Scourge do not have secondary weapons systems (as such), or a longer range when shooting at units with no active countermeasures. The one thing that they do have is the Raider heavy dropship. This is seriously probably the only thing that can stop a Medusa. A clever PHR player will do everything they can to remove that threat too. 

There are two things that help balance the Medusa out, firstly A1; means that pretty much anything that does hit her will more often than not wound her. Secondly the short range of her attack. Only 9" means she needs to get into position  which can take a couple of turns. This time MUST be used wisely to try and knock a few dp off her. 
The Medusa actually goes against my normal rule of finishing off models. If there are 2 of them I'd rather knock a few dp off each than try to finish one off (obviously this can change based on individual situations). Once the cyber-bitch starts losing dp it becomes a lot harder for her to dish out significant damage, especially with strafe.  


I do have a couple of issues with the Medusa at the moment, hopefully these can get sorted out for the final rules when they are printed in Reconquest phase 2. My main gripe is that the bonus to CQB should be aligned with her remaining dp. Having a Medusa with 1 or 2 dp left still granting 5 bonus for CQB is a bit much in my opinion. If it was 0.5 of the remaining dp (rounding up) working just like reduced weapons (RW) it would be a bit more realistic and not be so harsh on the opponent. My other very minor gripe is she might be a little too cheap at 90 points. I know you can't compare like for like accross factions but 3 bases of Freeriders (9 dp) would be 105 points. The Medusa is far better than 3 bases of Freeriders.

What do you lovely people in reader world think? Have you had any dealings with the Medusa yet? Are you having problems with her, or have you found a way of reliably killing her off? Let me know in the comments