Ever since I saw the RotS Loki and pilot, I've been trying to come up with an effective RotS/Liao army to gain 2 Awe effects every turn. When my second booster I opened contained the RotS Nova Cat & its heavy class Command gear, that just made the RotS Loki army that much more inviting. Obviously, the goal is to gain a severe advantage in orders through the gaining of orders through Command and denying orders through Awe & the Loki's pilot ability (something that can't be counted upon, but your odds of getting at least one Awe effect in a given turn is 11 chances in 36, so it's not horrible).

Here's the best I could come up with (at least with my selection of non-mech Elite House Liao units)
Loki - "Esperanza" (216pts)
-w/Consuela Dagmar (52pts)
-w/Command (4pts)
Green RotS Centuar Battle Armor (19pts)
2 x Elite Liao Long Tom (74pts each)
Elite Liao Danai Support Vehicle (46pts)
3 x Elite Liao TrackBike (18pts each)
Elite Liao Regulator II Hovertank (60pts)
Total: 599pts (308pts of Elite House Liao Units)

Again, let me say that this is definitely a work in progress. The Danai can use its Point Defense to boost the Long Tom's low defense (and create a movement formation for the artillary, if needed) but it's definitely a subpar piece, as is the Regulator II, probably. Too many of my decisions were forced by what units I owned, so I know there's some downright marginal units here.

All in all, it needs a lot of work. Does anyone have any suggestions to make this concept playable (not a top-tier army, by any stretch, but I'm just struggling to make the concept passable) or is the Loki just too expensive to make it work in this point total range?

P.S. I'm trying this army in this month's storyline, so I can mention how things go this weekend. Also, in case you're curious, I tried out the Situational Alliance in my original draft of the army, but it just wasn't worth the points for what I was trying to do, so I stuck with the extra artillary.

Why bother putting command gear on the Loki? It already has command to begin with.

Esperanza + Pilot + SA Laio/ROTS = 308.

Half of the force(300) would need to be Elite Laio to get the double awe that you are attempting to get.

Esperanza/Pilot 268
PDS x 2 164
MHI AA 64
TrackBike x 4 72
ROTS Inf. B.A.x 2 32

600 Points

@Atlasboy
You do raise a good point. In general, I probably won't need more than the 4 orders I get for a 600pt build (the only real exception I can think of would be if I wanted to fire all my artillary at once, presumably while pushing some, or if I wanted my TrackBikes to make separate attacks rather than a formation one). In all honestly, this might not be enough to merit command, but I'm not sure if I have a better use for those 4pts. Essentially, for 4 extra points, my odds of gaining command (while on my first click of life for the Loki) improve by 25%, so that certainly isn't a bad trade off.

@HHGambit14
I actually didn't include the Situational Alliance in my build, so I do have over 300pts of Elite Liao units to gain Awe. I didn't think the SA had enough bang for the buck to merit 40pts of my army.

On a side note, if I'm not mistaken, situational alliances, faction pride cards, and mercenary recruitment cards wouldn't count against your build total for something like Awe or a storyline 50% army point restriction. For example, if I had a 600pt army with a 40 point situational alliance, my effective army total would be 560pts, so only 280pts would need to be Elite Liao units to give me Awe. As the RotS Loki + pilot + Command is only 272pts, it's still mathematically possible, albeit difficult to achieve. Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken...

I may be mistaken, but I believe that it is at least 1/2 of the build total. The SA only reduces your VC2, not the build total.

@HHGambit14
I'm not positive about the SA question, so maybe I'll search the rules forum and/or post a question about it.

I do like your army a quite a bit better than the one I started with. Your most questionable units are the RotS Infiltrator Mk II's and that's significantly fewer points than my questionable units :)

Now if I only had any Liao Paladin Defense Systems...

I still don't see why you would put Command on Esperanza. It is four points wasted on a useless card.

@ Pumakiller
I can't read, apparently. Good catch...

@ pumakilla

You expect her to stay alive too long.
Units will take damage. People always go for the big ones.
When she looses her original command, she has something to fall back on to keep that special ability.

The Command Card states it only works while the Green starting Click marker is showing...

Mid :)

Well, I played the following army in the 600-point storyline to test my awe+RotS Loki army. Here's my final build that I used:

Loki - "Esperanza" (216pts)
-w/Consuela Dagmar (52pts)
Elite Liao Targe (159pts)
2 x Elite Liao Long Toms (74pts each)
Veteran Liao Salamander BA (25pts)
Total: 600pts (307pts of Elite Liao units)

Overall, I did quite well, but this was due almost entirely to the strength of two-artillary armies rather than to my, admittedly gimicky, two awe-effect army (the fact that my opponents all played equally gimicky 23/24 defense slow assault mech + camo or 23/24 defense slow heavy mech + decoy armies, with no answers to artillary, also helped me quite a bit...). In fact, in only one turn in the entire event did the denial of my opponent's orders really help me out.

While my gimick seems to have failed and I'll have to be the first to admit that this army will not win you a game at Nationals or anything, I did have a very enjoyable afternoon.

Ah well, in case anyone cares, I figured I'd mention how the idea fared...

It certainly looks like a pretty impressive 600pt force, though a little light on infantry or fast basers. Just one thing though, how were anyone at your venue playing with FI units/cards for the storyline, when none of it is legal until the 8th?

Yeah, I probably would have been better off with two fast infantry over the Salamander, but such is life...

The rules for the storyline said that the Firepower rules were in effect, so I took that to mean that Firepower units were legal (is this true?). I had built another army without any Firepower units just in case, but at the event, every single other player had at least one Firepower unit in their army so we decided to just go with it. I'm not 100% sure it was legal, but everyone agreed to it...

I was pretty confused about both rulesets being active for the SL event too. If everyone at the venue for your storyline were cool with it, and the BM ok'd it, I don't think it'd matter much anyhow.

We had pretty much assumed that the '2 week rule' was still in effect, so went with that.

Come to think of it, if both rule sets were in effect, that makes SW+SC+HK formations. Yummy. :)