Well with
Gencon now behind us and having a moment to breathe as a result, I figured it
was high time I got started in the first part of my article series, talking
about my journey with Qapu Khalqi (QK) and all the juicy discoveries, tactical
thoughts, and progress I’ll be making as I delve into the sectorial.
Now some of
you may have gotten a hint of things to come when I mentioned my charity
project for QK, and efforts on that front have been seriously productive.
Thanks to a healthy amount of donations (and more welcome by the way),
winnings, store credit and profits from a decent online trade, I’ve managed to
secure myself a decent-sized QK army… all without spending a penny. Once we’ve
hit about $250 worth (and we’re very close to that goal), I can make a
decent-sized check out for the same amount to Spread the Word here in Nevada
and support a local charity so we can all feel good about having done something
for a good cause!
But that’s enough about the project itself, let’s talk about QK itself.
Overview
But that’s enough about the project itself, let’s talk about QK itself.
Overview
QK is an interesting beast. I’ve noticed that ever since the drop of Human Sphere N3 (HSN3), much of the chatter on them has really died down into the background. This is quite surprising for an army that once won Interplanetary (2014) and still make a decent showing in many tournaments.
In fact, in many ways this is definitely a testament to the “new shiny syndrome” that many gamers suffer from, because there is absolutely nothing wrong with the sectorial in any competitive sense, and yet perhaps due to the relative sparseness of recent releases for them, discussion is at an all-time low. A cursory glance at the Haqqislam forum shows most posts relating to QK dated back to 2014-2015, with a few sprinkled through last year and even fewer this. What’s going on?
Well it’s funny because I chatted to a few of the more prominent members of the community, where many of them (perhaps rightly or wrongly) believed that QK was nerfed with the changes in HSN3, and haven’t had cause to look back since.
It’s perhaps easy to see what they mean – Azra’ils lost linkability (which saddened many), Druze and KTS can’t take Hafza (which is annoying) and perhaps more fundamentally, Hafzas were limited to 2x per core link, preventing you from going overboard on cheap filler bodies. Combined with Haris becoming more widespread in other sectorials, some might be tempted to say that QK got a bit of a beating in HSN3.
Personally, I think the reality is that this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, once you drill down beneath the surface, I think QK actually gained from HSN3, which is quite an accomplishment considering it was considered a top-tier sectorial before. Take a look at all of these buffs:
- Sekban overhaul
- Druze overhaul (and scheduled to get ANOTHER overhaul in the fall)
- Odalisques
got cheaper Haris
- Janissary
Missile launcher cheaper
- Yuan Yuans
bumped to PH 14 (important for grenades and combat jump if desired)
- Better Feuerbach on the Azra’il
- Better SMGs all round
- Better holo1/2 changes
- Better Feuerbach on the Azra’il
- Better SMGs all round
- Better holo1/2 changes
- Better i-Kohl
changes
- Spec
Fire/Hacking won’t kick you from a link (good for a link heavy sect!)
- KHD exists
- Druze/Sekban Duo exists
- KHD exists
- Druze/Sekban Duo exists
- Leila
exists
- Brigada Hacker
- Djanbazan Shock Marksman Rifle
- HRL Hafza
- Assault on Scarface (with a pts bump mind)
- Brigada Hacker
- Djanbazan Shock Marksman Rifle
- HRL Hafza
- Assault on Scarface (with a pts bump mind)
Oh, and the
BIG one…
- Hafzas can
join a Haris now… a definite gain over losing the ability to take more than 2
in a core, I say.
It’s quite
an impressive list (of just the things I’ve noticed – add more in the comments
if you find them!). **
**In many ways, I’d say the gains FAR
outweigh the losses, particularly in the case of Azra’il/Druze/KTS which I’ll
cover in their sections, but I don’t think those were much of a loss at all. We’ll
get to that.
And yet, QK
isn’t really getting nearly the love that it deserves. Well it’s time to put an
end to that I think, and both this project and the article series I think will
be a solid step in the right direction. Let’s start with one of my favorite
pieces in QK, the outstanding Odalisques!
Profile
Odalisques
are, IMO, some of the nicest older sculpts out there on the market, and as soon
as I had a chance to look at some, I knew QK would be a faction I’d be playing
one day. But aside from being gorgeous “models” (heh), they’re also an
interesting and surprisingly nuanced profile that I think a lot of people fall
flat on, and yet it’s one that I just can’t get enough of.
On the face of it, none of the stats on the Odalisques particularly jump out at you, and yet it’s the combination of skills and equipment that really makes them an outstanding choice once they hit the table. They’re tough (NWI + ARM 2 +SSL2 to cancel bad mods), cheap (<25 ppm for most of them, +Hafza), and quite frankly, up close Odalisques represent nothing less than close range obliteration thanks to their deadly guns and i-Kohl. The most apt analogy I’ve come to consider Odalisques under is that they are a “pocket battleship”, providing something with close to the killing power and durability of a HI on a cheap and unassuming LI frame. Nasty stuff.
But let’s
break things down more specifically:
Skills
i-Kohl
Level 3 – The main unique feature of the Odalisques, i-Kohl slaps your
target with a fat -9 modifier so long as you meet two conditions – you have to
reach them in B2B, and you have to be declaring Engage, Dodge or a CC Attack
(with the former 2 cases being pretty nice bumps in HSN3). It’s a pretty fluffy
rule and yet nobody really gets excited by it, largely because I’ve seen games
where people are trying to do something silly like tie down Achilles or a Ninja
and finding that the ladies get cut down all the same.
The uses for
this skill are actually twofold. First, you can grab things like your usual
line troops who tend to range from CC 11-15, and largely turn them into mewling
kittens. This is a great tar pit situation, and being in melee means that folks
are -6 to hit you (note, always choose SSL2 IMO, we’ll get to that) and might
even kill their friends.
The second is to force difficult choices. If I move up to engage somebody and he chooses anything but dodge, I can blast him with the nanopulser and odds are decent that he’ll die (and hey, I might live with NWI assuming a normal single shot ARO/melee swing).
The second is to force difficult choices. If I move up to engage somebody and he chooses anything but dodge, I can blast him with the nanopulser and odds are decent that he’ll die (and hey, I might live with NWI assuming a normal single shot ARO/melee swing).
If he knows
that and chooses to dodge instead, I can swing in melee combat and he’s now
dodging on a -9 and probably looking for a 4-5 at best vs. your 15. In short,
so long as you aren’t trying to melee superheroes, Odalisques rock at killing
stuff in combat. Just remember in doesn't work on robots (anything with structure)...
NWI –
Aside from ammunition like shock, DA, linked ARO’s and so forth, Odalisques take
a pair of hits to kill just like HI, which usually means that even if you flub
a critical roll, the little lady can keep on going and kicking ass. This is an
absolutely stellar ability on a 5-man link where “crits happen”, and if you’re
feeling racy you can even move up one of those great Haqqislam doctors (17s mmm)
and stitch them back together – without having to wait till the link breaks
because they won’t be unconscious! Lovely. All in all, NWI keeps each lady
going longer and thus keeps the link bonuses going longer, which only helps to
up their offensive and defensive capabilities.
Where this
really comes into its own is when you consider most AROs. Chain Rifles and
nanopulsers that would be lethal to just about any other LI link can be
shrugged off by the Odalisque, and most single shot AROs can’t kill you, so you
can cross gaps if you don’t mind taking a hit and get to a valuable objective. Even
in melee, with the odds in your favor, you’re annoyingly difficult to get rid
of thanks to the combination with i-Kohl. I’ll give you an amusing example –
when engaged with an Odalisque, an Asura will only deal a wound 10% of the time,
which statistically means spending up to 20 (!!!) orders to deal two wounds and
shrug one off. Have fun with that.
360
Visor/SSL2 – Yes you only get one, and yes, it’s a difficult choice. Each
player has their preference, and conventional advice seems to dictate taking
360 visor in a core link (because they’d be getting SSL2 anyway from being a 4
man+ link) and otherwise take SSL2. Personally, I always take SSL2 which might surprise some of you, but here’s my
reasoning:
·
Shit happens, links break or lose members. It’s
not just enemy activity though – the amount of times where a dangerous enemy
has come around the corner on their turn (particularly w a template) and I’ve
broken one Odalisque out to dodge to engage while the rest dodge/shoot comes up
a LOT.
·
If somebody tries to shoot you while melee, you
still get to shoot! It gets me every time when I see the thought process of
dealing with an Odalisque tying up something valuable – first they try and
swing away, then the math syncs in and they switch to shooting the poor lady
with something else. With SSL2 though, you can still dodge, which puts the odds
back in your favor again vs. them dealing with the -6 to avoid hitting their
buddy.
·
You can delay your ARO. A lot of people forget
about this, but assuming the enemy moves into your ZOC (SSL1) or attack you
(SSL2), you can delay your ARO until their second skill is declared. This is
immensely valuable for something with a template weapon, because if dodge is
not one of the skills declared, you can hose them down unopposed with the
nanopulser, and if they do dodge then they aren’t shooting you, letting you
shoot them with better odds on a F2F roll or even dodge yourself out of LOS.
For those of you who are fans of Chasseurs, you know how great this is.
·
No surprise attack, no surprise shot (all good
tools on your reactive turn, you’ll sense a theme here), and if you do get
attacked from behind, you’re getting 360 essentially anyway.
Now there
are some downsides – you can’t suppress with 360 vision, models can technically
slip past you by moving into your back arc, and of course if the whole team is
attacked from behind, only the person being attacked can react. Still, those
gains above are pretty huge, and good placement can usually overcome the
drawbacks associated with lacking 360 most of the time anyway.
Weapons

The Spitfire is usually a given for any Odalisque setup (single, Haris, or Core) as the high burst and longest ranged weapon, so I think you’re always taking at least one no matter what you do.
But by far the most interesting loadout for me is the SMG + Contender. Call it a “poor man’s linked multi-rifle” (back to our pocket battleship analogy again here), and the SMG part gives you warband wrecking (shock), armor cracking (AP) bursts of death (up to B4, BS 15 in a 5-girl link) while the Contender gives you a lethal rifle-range ARO (B1 DA, + link bonuses).
It’s also the cheapest of the loadouts, so once you start talking bigger teams, those savings are important. Most of the time, your spitfire and Hafza have your long-longer range bands covered, so the SMG + Contender is bumping up capabilities here.
Finally, if you are running alone or drop out of the link, this loadout is also an absolutely crazy suppressing fire platform. It can’t be surprised or simply shot in the back, it has NWI, it’s cheap, it’s ARM 5 in cover, it has a template weapon, it’s basically a multi-rifle in suppressing with both shock and AP ammo, it’s got a DA non-suppressing shot if need be, and it’s not a good idea to melee one. Not bad for 22 points!
The Rifle + LSG
is mandatory in a Haris (duh) as the provider of that bonus, but otherwise I
don’t much rate it. While it is flexible in terms of range bands, your cheaper
Hafza offer similar capabilities for far less, and it’s not usually doing much
the rest of the link doesn’t do already as a result. The Boarding Shotgun is a
little better – nobody is saying no to Shotgun weapons up close, and you can
certainly bring down Armored foes (AP) or clustered enemies (impact template)
with it, but again, I feel like the SMG + Contender + Nanopulser combinations
are giving me plenty there already. But to each their own of course – if you
like the weapon, it’s perfectly serviceable, and I can see a solid case being
made for weapon flexibility here.
We’ll talk
about that here when we come to…
The Link
Basically,
most people naturally gravitate towards the Haris option here – normally a
Spitfire, Haris, and Hafza FO, and call it a day. I don’t think it’s a bad
approach per se, but I do feel like
it misses out on the best loadout the Odalisques have to offer (the SMG + Contender)
and might go some way towards explaining why people aren’t as crazy about the
ladies as I am. You also lose out on that second Hafza (usually an HRL, again I’ll
get there), which means giving up an important range band and a deadly ARO piece.
Finally, that incredible 3-man link bonus is threatened with just a single
casualty, drastically reducing your offensive and defensive capabilities.
Now the Haris is a given if you’re trying to run a core of something else (e.g. KTS or Djanbazans) and I don’t blame people for running it this way, but I’d urge more folks to give the Core a second look. This is how I build mine
Odalisque
Spitfire
Odalisque SMG/Contender
Odalisque SMG/Contender
Hafza FO
Hafza HRL
Odalisque SMG/Contender
Odalisque SMG/Contender
Hafza FO
Hafza HRL
Suddenly
that’s a rather terrifying package of close range firepower, I’ve got a solid
ranged weapon to march up the board with as team leader, and I still get to
keep my valuable specialist and spitfire while arguably shedding the much less
important rifle + LSG. Not bad. Where I do
consider the Haris model actually is IN a core like this, running a combat
group with something like:
Odalisque
Spitfire
Odalisque SMG/Contender
Odalisque Haris
Hafza FO
Hafza FO
Hafza HRL
Odalisque SMG/Contender
Odalisque Haris
Hafza FO
Hafza FO
Hafza HRL
Sekban HRL
Sekban Doctor
Sekban Haris
Sekban Doctor
Sekban Haris
It’s a
pretty cool list template actually, because you can mix-and-match which list is
the Haris or Core upon deployment according to your needs, and the spare Hafza
FO lets you shore up one of the links if it breaks to help maintain full
strength, or replace a member of the Haris if you want to leave a man behind and
escort a specialist up the table. That’s the kind of flexibility you get with
QK and is one of the main strengths of the sectorial – use it, love it!
Side note – that lone model Sekban/Odalisque looks very conspicuous standing by their lonesome and most people will think it’s a Hafza, so it’s pretty funny when it turns around to spray them with a real template!
Side note – that lone model Sekban/Odalisque looks very conspicuous standing by their lonesome and most people will think it’s a Hafza, so it’s pretty funny when it turns around to spray them with a real template!
Hafza
Really these
belong in their own article, but what I will do is discuss the use of Hafza
here within the context of the link. Really these guys are serving three main
purposes here – keeping the cost of the link down because they’re cheaper than
the ladies, masking which model has the real Spitfire (which is good, because
people want that gone!) and bringing capabilities to the link that they
otherwise can’t get.
With the latter, what we’re mainly concerned with are two primary profiles. The FO loadout let’s Odalisques escort a scoring model up the table, which is essential to most scenarios, and more important on Odalisques vs. any other link because they otherwise can’t score! Amusingly enough, you also gain a valuable flash pulse ARO, which is nice to have. Finally, the HRL loadout simply rocks in any 5-man team, but again Odalisques benefit more than most in QK because they otherwise simply lack long range weapons, so both Hafza I consider really important choices to have.
We’ll touch more upon Hafza in their own article, but given the importance of both types of models, I think you can see why I naturally gravitate towards having 2 of them…
Conclusion
As the first
article in my series on QK, it’s not hard to see why I picked Odalisques to
focus on. Most people tend to only run them as a Haris or pick other core links
to focus on, and while the models are just stunning visually, they don’t get
enough love. But with a crazy level of both flexibility and power, they’re a
really interesting choice to drop on the table, and can leave even a great
opponent in fits once they get close enough to really unleash hell and break
some hearts.
That’s all for me this time folks, but I’ll be back with more QK thoughts soon!
That’s all for me this time folks, but I’ll be back with more QK thoughts soon!
As always, great insight! Well done, again, Lazarus0909!
ReplyDeleteHey thanks man! Stay tuned for all the QK love this Fall :)
DeleteWell done. I have a QK force that I will be painting up soon, so it is nice to get other players thoughts on them!
ReplyDeleteHey I'm glad to hear it! We need more QK players out there to represent before the new Druze box drops and they become the cool kids again... haha
DeleteI've started playing recently and QK has been my army of choice. The lack of more recent forum posts about them is downer, but this is an awesome article, thanks!!
ReplyDeleteNice article. Play QK from time to time but I have to admit that the ladies tend to be glossed over (could be because of a high amount of shock damage in my local meta)
ReplyDeletenote about sixth sense lvl 2. Your article implies that you can withhold aro declaration when attacked if you have SSL2 while SSL2 doesn't allow for anything extra compared to SSL1.
Also, when you are engaged, the engaged state prevent you from shooting (you have a sentance that says you are still allowed to shoot).
Really nice article! I played QK in an ITS two weeks ago, and I have to say that I think you hit he point with your analysis.
ReplyDeleteI'm the kind of player who always thought that the 360º visor was better than SSL2, but the second option allows you to defend your Haris and let your Odalisques to defend themselves if they run alone.
Hafza is the kind of unit I love, you can play mindtricks with your oponent or show him/her an "inocent Odalisque" with the rifle and LSH who shoots with one Spitfire (it's even funnier when you make them look like a civilian, everyone knows it's a Hafza, but I laughed a lot with friends and the "ordinary citizen" xD).
Hi, thanks for writing this article. Nowadays there are not too many people playing QK, i think there is the false believe that they are not competitive anymore and I do not agree at all.
ReplyDeleteOdalisque are great, but I do not see them as full link of 5. Too dificult to advance them and not good layout to stay behind. And yes, always ss2.
I look forward to read your next article.