Infinity Unit Review: Marauders, 5307th Ranger Unit (N4)

Next up on my USARF unit reviews are the Marauders. They're an important part of the USAriadna Ranger Force and present in most people’s lists in one form or another. Marauders provide a solid mid-field unit, carrying a variety of weapons to punish anyone that gets too close.

Profile

First off, Marauders essentially work like an upgraded Grunt, with the same Arm 3, but an upgraded 4-4 movement, and they have an extra point of BS and WIP. It's their special skills that differentiate them significantly from Grunts, able to deploy an extra 4" up the board with Forward Deployment, and extremely obnoxious to kill with Dogged. Terrain (Jungle) and Stealth are situationally useful, the later is likely to come up more often in your games and is helpful for avoiding being hit with Spotlight.

The "standard" profile carries an interesting combination of equipment, with a heavy flamethrower, rifle, and heavy pistol. Obviously geared for close ranged fighting, a dogged heavy flamethrower can cause a major headache if it gets into the right spot. The rifle helps close the gap, and if your enemy is within range of both the rifle and the flamethrower, they'll have to make the choice between shooting you and taking the flamethrower hit, or dodging and letting you shoot at no risk with the rifle or heavy pistol. I would also consider the boarding shotgun with AP mines version as a fairly standard profile, and one I've been successful even running as a mid-field solo piece. The extra deployment range helps to get them in a defensive position and you can really hold an objective well with a shotgun in cover surrounded by AP mines (which will even threaten TAGs), on an ARM 6 (in cover) dogged model.

The only specialist available is the Paramedic. This is a bit awkward as the Marauders have dogged, so you are unlikely to get much use out of it, but it is helpful to add to a fireteam when you're playing ITS missions, or for picking up units like Devil Dogs in the midfield. In a larger fireteam you may even opt to go unconscious instead of Dogged and rely on a B2 MediKit to come back.

As a Lieutenant option, they are one of two sources of a WIP 13 Lieutenant. This is relevant because it can easily expose who your Lieutenant is. Due to the Foxtrot carrying a whopping 2 SWC cost, if you use WIP 13 during the Lieutenant roll, it is extremely easy to figure out if it’s a Foxtrot or Marauder.

Special Weapons

The SWC cost of Marauder weapons comes in on the high side in USARF, with two of the three being 1.5 SWC, but it’s that 0.5 SWC sniper that probably deserves the most attention! It may be the most expensive marauder option, but it’s for good reason, in a fireteam this sniper rifle can potentially be rolling 4 dice at BS15 with MSV1. With the sixth sense link bonus, if the enemy fires back through smoke you won’t even be suffering that -6 to shoot, but even with that penalty you can be rolling 4 dice on 12’s through smoke in optimal range with full bonus, and that’s nothing to be mad about.

The AP Spitfire is another solid option, but often loses out to other AP Spitfire choices (like the Unknown Ranger), and it is only 1 point away from that incredible sniper option. I feel like the HRL gets a bad rap, but for how cheap it is, if you have the spare SWC it’s probably worth looking into.

Marauders are able to form fireteams with Ohio Minutemen and the Unknown Ranger while maintaining the full composition bonuses, or may add a 112 FTO or Rosie, and lose the additional benefit. The 112 is nice for lowering cost, but I’m not sure its presence is worth losing on the additional discover and BS benefits. When you’re using them with Ohio, you need to consider the benefits of the Ohio profile you’re interested in, and if that benefit is worth potentially holding the fireteam back since not everything will have Forward Deployment. The Unknown Ranger also lacks Forward Deployment, so perhaps it’s not an issue, but it will take a bit of planning during deployment either way. Personally, I find them to be quite expensive to run in a full 5-man fireteam, but I really love the potential of a Haris of Marauders, with or without the Unknown Ranger.

Overall, Marauders are one of the staple units in USARF and if you’re just starting out, make for a great unit to get early in collecting the force. They’re a bit more of a short-to-mid range fighting unit, but the sniper does a lot of dirty work at the long range bands as well.