Suicide Squad- Team discussion and my favourite choices

Hello again all! Going forward, I have decided to write up a few smaller posts regarding some of the various teams we were given in the revamped PDF. Team Arrow will no doubt follow this soon, as I am currently working on a few different things for them, but to kick things off I've decided to start with the "new" team, Suicide Squad. Largely unchanged from their original appearance in the 1st edition Flash and Arrow book, the Suicide Squad are a high risk, high reward crew, and are largely based around overwhelming damage and maximising VP gain.

Team Rules

The team rules are interesting in Suicide Mission is an active liability in terms of gameplay, and if they're not played to bad things will happen. Fortunately, simply playing the game will help stop this, as your own models won't explode should you gain a quite trivial amount of VP across the game. Simply by managing to score kills you should be able to keep up with the count, but a couple good turns of objective scoring will completely negate Suicide Mission. It is also important to make sure if a model that is important to your crew can be the boss in your list, it absolutely should be, if only to protect it from this rule, and the Volunteer rule also protects against this, despite it being very rare.
They do, however, have another special rule unique to the team in the form of We're Partners, For Now... which lets them make a once per round Let's Go type ability for the same cost, although they don't have to roll for it and this chain activating happens immediately. This is huge because it lets you set up big hits that can't be resisted, and like most of Squad you want to use these risk/reward rules to guarantee your VP gain and attempt to reduce counterplay. Anyone who can reliably KO followed up by Slipknot is very useful, as is simply doing 2 strong guns one after the other to kill as much as possible. The "downside" to this is that it's only usable by Free Agents, but the vast majority of the team are Free Agents so it's negligible.

Equipment

Squad only have 3 equipment pieces to choose from, and all are good in their niches. With the Squad getting more funding than normal (and most of the great gun pieces being able to lead) they'll almost always be able to take 1-2 of these, and in many situations all 3.
Aerial Locator System 0-1 $200
I've found the Aerial Locator to be more of a psychological choice than an actually useful one myself, but when it does work it goes off excellently. Lighting up a single model makes it very clear at the start of the turn who the main target is, and letting the opponent know this gives them another thing to think about, and forcing these levels of planning are important. When you so choose, it lets your guns shoot at a higher range as well, which is of obvious use. It's the first equipment I'll drop, as the other 2 I find far more useful, but it still has a very definite place in all my lists. It also has the benefit of being the cheapest Squad equipment, which is in itself something that can be very helpful in just finishing off lists.
Magazine- 0-1 $300
This is the one you'll probably always take. Keeps you shooting for longer and thus killing for longer, great on any Deadshot or Rick Flag for obvious reasons.
Airborne Deployment 0-2 $300
I always take this on big hitters without question. For $300 the ability to put a model on the board closer to where they need to operate is always useful, and putting it on someone like SS Deadshot who can come on and immediately Bullet Time is a huge boon to the crew. I play this as high risk/reward, and most of the time it pays off well. Use it for VP gain above all else, as you should be doing with most of Squad.

Strategies

Squad strategies range from very good to completely useless, they go the full spectrum. 

Suicidal Tendencies Value 1, Phase E

I'll start with this one, which makes them immune to the Run Away rule, because you should literally never take this strategy ever. It can be seen as "planning for failure" but I see it as "wasting strategy points in the event you're nearly tabled," and by the point it comes into play you've pretty much guaranteed lost the game. 

Direct Assault Value 2, Phase C

This one is good, if you're planning to take Fast Advance I'd consider this instead if only because it's a further distance forward, but it lets you move some guns into more favourable positions to control the board better. Depending on the crew, very valuable

ARGUS Telecommunications Relay Value 3, Phase ?

Squad's best strategy, but expensive (and rightly so). This strategy has the effect of Exhaustive Planner and Mastermind, but can optionally instead cancel the use of Exhaustive Planner (so you get an extra counter in the bag for 3 strategy points). I wouldn't take this if the opponent has Exhaustive Planner, just cause it's not worth keeping after that, but in a lot of cases it is a huge bonus to the crew. 

Objective- Beacon

The new objective given to them in their Batbox, it's the ultimate risk/reward objective. Only Squad can choose it, but anyone can control it and at 4VP it's already a big potential gain for an opponent if they just camp it. Then you add in the ability for controlling it, and you have an objective you absolutely need to reach ASAP. The ability to not only reallocate counters after allocating (in effect Scheming after Scheming comes into play) but also gain +1 counter on 2 models is a really great ability, although something you don't want your opponents to take. Luckily for Squad, you have the option of Airborne Deployment or Croc to take it by pure aggression early in the game, and you'll probably be dealing big hits at the same time to make it worth doing. This is definitely an objective worth using, as the potential gain from it is too good, but it plays into Squad's high risk/reward nature. 

 Overall, Suicide Squad Deadshot is one of the best options in this team. He's a Boss option, brings great shooting, Leadership for a little bit of crew support, he has it all. At willpower 8 he has a lot of counters to throw around (except for the golden turn of Bullet Time) and packs a lot of versatility.
Offensive
Bullet Time. Deadshot can put out a ridiculous amount of high damage shots once per game, most likely ignoring pings and being able to move as well. Put Airborne Deployment on him and turn 2 shove him into the opponent's crew to take out a couple of models (or 1 big hitter) and you'll be instantly at an advantage, even before the rest of your crew is factored in. If Deadshot can be somewhere he gets pings or extra ammo for his Custom MG, put him there with Bullet Time, because it increases his use exponentially. Outside of that one turn, he is still one of, if not the, best gun pieces in the game with Ranged Master and Shooter, and all his guns are either double blood or high rate of fire so he can easily at least KO most models in a single round.
Defensive
Kevlar Vest is about it, but defence 4 and endurance 7 are both very good. The loss of an endurance becoming standard was more than justified, as at 8 endurance he was obscenely good for his cost.
Overall
Deadshot is mostly just a gun piece, although Leadership helps a lot against Hypnotise or Charm abilities. Not much else to say, the reason you take him is for his huge output and just to kill things.

Offensive
Like most models in Squad, Croc's primary role is as a beatstick, working mostly as a large piece that rolls around and hits things. High strength, Claws, attack 5, all Croc is missing is a bonus to hit to make him a dominating combat monster, but what he does have is Power Strike and Charge. Power Strike is good to set up another big hitter, but with Croc's damage isn't the greatest, while Charge (coming from Huge) lets you get a few free automatic hits in on models for extra damage, and hopefully knock down some things for you to then claw into. Once per game the "golden turn" with Croc is starting his activation in base contact with a sewer, using it for 1MC and then useing Lord of the Sewers to charge out of it his basic movement, following up with 4 attacks. Ideally you will be doing a big hit with this activation, hopefully thinning out the enemy crew and getting Croc to a spot he's scoring or contesting.
Defensive
At Defence 3 and Huge Croc isn't hard to hit, and makes a big bullet magnet, but he has 13 Endurance and Tough Skin. He's taking a beating, with Sturdy not losing too many counters, and he can keep on rolling around relatively well until he's close to death. He has the advantage of auto passing any endurance roll (including to wake up from KO) and has rerolls on regular recovery rolls courtesy of Huge, can rarely be pushed or knocked down, and in general makes a great beefy threat. He'll die to a sustained effort, but in Squad you should be able to have your crew in general take out big threats where needed. However, he also has Runaway and Superior Sense of Smell, so he's immune to a good amount of abilities that would normally take him out of play (at least temporarily), and Runaway in particular makes him particularly tough to take out. Brave and the Bold hate it, as they can't rely on Arrest and instead have to make sure they do enough blood damage to kill him, all the while he can wake up without question and eat someone to regain some health through Cannibal. Superior Sense of Smell isn't the most useful, as he doesn't have anything that really makes him need line of sight, but it can potentially have its uses (against Sneak Attack for example)
Overall
Croc doesn't have much in the way of abilities that don't help him in combat, but he does bring a little bit to the crew. Lord of the Sewers lets you use sewers more than you normally would while adding another one to the table, and Coward's Reward can be a decent way of locking models into specific areas of the table. All in all not amazing bonuses, but when used right are great additions to his already great toolkit. One other thing to note here is Huge, as in Squad I've already mentioned you want to maximise VP gain, and Croc can be just the one to do that as he can come out of a sewer and already be claiming 2 objectives. If these are the Beacon and a 3VP objective, you've got a big potential scoring threat from turn 1, and even if he isn't attacking things he can still win games just by this high scoring.

Operating in a similar role to Deadshot above, Rick Flag is my regular Boss option, which may seem strange. Having Volunteer, you wouldn't want him as your boss, but being a Sidekick he has to be most of the time. I also find that to maximise the chain activating you wouldn't want him anywhere else, letting your Free Agents work better while he sits back as a static firebase.
Offensive
Rick Flag works not as a mobile piece like many others in Squad, he is instead used for immobile fire support, although for his cost he is good at it. With Multifire he can put out 5 shots a turn at double blood (or blood/stun into base contact with Light if someone chooses to attack him) and although he doesn't ignore pings or have any hit bonuses, by sheer rate of attack he can reliably munch through lower defence models with ease. He struggles somewhat against higher defence, or layered defences, but that's where the rest of the crew comes into play with debuffs to help each other out (Harley or Killer Frost are great here)
Defensive
Similar to Deadshot, defence 4 means he's not getting hit all the time, but Bulletproof Vest is a bit of a downgrade compared to Kevlar (which is reflected in his cost). He's usually more survivable against guns, but Deadshot is the more durable option overall. This isn't to say Flag is bad, just that he needs to be played a bit more cagey compared to the "balls out" Deadshot.
Overall
You guessed it, he's close to Deadshot in his abilities here too. Leadership is identical, but it's in the rest of it where the military feel of Flag comes into it and he really shines as a solo piece. Veteran lets him have some degree of versatility in any given turn (and can all but guarantee Multifire most of the time) while Order gives the rest of the crew a little bit of flexibility which is nice.

General- Other models

You may have already noticed, 2 of the 3 models I've discussed above are boss options. I do think having at least one in every list is invaluable, and I often take both for the reasons I've listed, but there are a great many other models worth taking in Squad depending on the type of list. SS Boomerang is another model almost always worth taking, as I've said in the past, as is King Shark for a similar job to Croc for a bit cheaper. Some more situational picks(but still very often great) are the Harleys, Killer Frost or Reverse Flash for a bit of a faster objective grabber and a bit of control, or Grodd or Ivy for a mix of damage, mind control and durability. Many of these models lose the Let's Go! ability though, so you have to plan carefully for them in your lists.