OK, I got my pistol Fencer model recently and play my first game with them. Now I'm interested in everyones oppinion (and I want vioce my own thoughts as well).

I'll begin with a word of praise: The Pistol Fencer is an awsome mini. It realy is something to be thrilled about. Dynamic pose, great detail and superb style make this one of the finest Aberrant Games minis yet.

Now for how it plays: With almost 80 points the Fencer isn't cheap to include in your crew but it's woth every point imho. The Pistol Fencer combines what it takes to be a star in REZ: he's the best shooter in the game so far (highest RCA ever), great speed and high mobility (run&gun) make it very versatile. The Bending Bullet and Slap Shot skills (yes thats slap shot, not snap shot, he has that two) give it two nice options against high armor targets and tagets behind hard cover.

This awsome killing power is then rounded off with high SAG and BDY values and a damage gauge whitch is one box larger than usual for independant humans. Als Evade and Quick draw give the Pistol Fencer a good staying abilty as well.

Now a word of critisism: IMHO (and I must say this is just me) I think that our games designers went a little over the top with the Pistol Fencer. The only real weekness is the single point of armor. Besides that all skills are top of the line which is a little too good for me. It's not that the PF is unbeatable or would seriously unbalances any thing... to the contrary, he dies just as fast as every one else when confronted by some serious firepower. BUT I beleive that one point less in BDY and RCA would have gone a long way in makeing the Pistol Fencer more in line with what we are used to for other human class minis.

IMHO a RCA value that is better than that of a shootist is just a little too good. Also a BDY that is as high as that of an Iron Man or an Enforcer Heavy is too high for a model that I imagine to be quick and agile (same SAG as a Senshi!).

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to complain - I play Vatacina and do not want to turn down this nice treat - but I'm just a little afraid of a slight power creep with some of the new models. New and exciting abilities are nice and we love REZ for this. When those abilities are balanced by the models point values everything is well and OK. I just beleive that the pistol Fencer is too good not to be used in any Vatacina crew despite the large point cost.

Then again, the number of Pistol Fencers you can include in your crew is limited. So everything is well I guess. As far as I'm concerned I have three Pistol Fencers (the maximum allowed in any crew) and will use them often in my Vatacina line up.

Great model guys... Me loves it

cheers
Nedorus

Well, to make things a bit shorter I say that I totally agree with all Nedorus wrote.

We played a 500 Points 3 player assignment. CSO, APAC (me) and Vatacina (Nedorus). It was our first use of the Pistol Fencer and Nedorus came up with the following line-up:

1 Brother of the Mind
1 Shootist
2 Purifier
3 Pistol Fencer

How scary! And he controlled about 3/4 of the gaming table almoast the whole game.

The Pistol Fencers are really tough for all reasons Nedorus wrote above. And we really started looking for their week spots, but we couldn´t find any.
(The Brawler is also a monster but his obvious week spot is the low NRV. And opponents can take advantage of that.)
Advancing the pistol fencer is almoast impossible. He´ll just kill you on the way. And if you hide behind cover he´ll use his Bending Bullet. And if you eventually reach him in close combat he´ll have at least the same (if not a higher) CCA than your attacker. Hmm...

Long ranged attacks won´t harm him if he rolls a 5+ on a d6.

So what to do agains these guys?

I thought of maybe digging out good old Sister Carmine, try to possess the Fencers as often as possible and make them shoot down their own buddies. But first you have to bring her in a good place without beeing shot before. And with CRFT 3 it´s only a 34% chance for a successful attack...
Maybe in general Telepathic Powers would do the trick.

I thought of using lots of smoke grenades to block the Fencers LOS. But with run ´n´gun they might be fast enough to find a spot to still target some of my models.

I´m seriously thinking of a Ronin Crew of 1 Maven and 9 Shootists! Might be a slightly boring line-up but gives a good chance of overrunning the guys.

That´s my thoughts for now. There might be more.

I´ll report as soon as I payed some more games against Nedorus´ Pistol Fencer line-up.

Cheers,

Nico

One thinng I did with the Fencer was the following:

I ran him right around the CSO players flank and back shot his Marshal (the marshal was busy to the other flank so he couldn't very well turn towards my Fencer). This left him almost face to face with three CSO Peace keepers. They tried to kill the Fencer on their turn but due to quick draw he shot one of them first, evaded the second and the last one missed due to the Fencers high SAG. A Shootist, Maven or the Ferryman could have pulled the same back shot on the Marshal but it would have been a suicide commando... a one trick pony if you will... The Fencer lived to tell the tale and eventually whiped out half a Peace Keeper team, an Engineer and a Medic before finally buying the farm

This brings up a two questions about Evade and Quickdraw. I'll post them in the rules section in order to have every discussion where it belongs

cheers
Nedorus


P.S.: Nico: The Sister gets a bonus on her Craft skill so its effectivly 4 ... doesn't help much but I guess it helps at least a little.

Shifts her chances to 44%.

(Edit: err... it´s 42%, cause she also has to reach her TN. )