The Cyberpsycho Cavalry

by Mack Martin

From the dirty streets to the gleaming towers, there is one omnipresent danger: Cyberpsychosis. This terrible affliction isn’t fully understood, but it becomes vastly more common the more cyberware a person installs. When a person goes over the edge and begins killing indiscriminately, Max-Tac responds.

In the 2040s, Max-Tac wasn’t exactly part of the NCPD proper, but they still supported the Lawmen Faction; they just didn’t make a lot of arrests. Typically, Max-Tac is a combat response to a combat situation, so we didn’t design them to “play nice.”

As we move forward with the upcoming Kickstarter campaign, we’ll dive more into the specifics of each model, but for now, we’d like to touch on their concepts, gear, and strategies.

So, let’s start with the basic design philosophy for a crew like Max-Tac. First was the cost. Featured alongside the Herakles, a fully loaded Max-Tac team in their aerodyne transport will run a player approximately 300 Eddies. That’s a lot, especially considering that our competitive skirmish environment tops out at 150 Eddies. But that’s on purpose. Deploying Max-Tac isn’t cheap and represents one of the most violent combat scenarios you’ll find outside of open war. This also gives the design team space to make each model fairly powerful. If you’re playing pure Max-Tac at a tournament, expect to be fielding an over-geared crew of about 4 or 5 characters. Don’t worry; we’ll have plenty of scenarios that get your fully loaded crew onto the battlefield.

With their high per-character price comes some elite gear. Max-Tac is undoubtedly one of, if not the best-equipped force in Night City. They’re rivaled only by the highest echelons of corporate armed forces, and their weapons need to match. Their armor value is 3 by default, and their primary weapon is the Militech Assault Rifle. This highly flexible weapon functions like the Assault Rifles you’ve seen before, except they can be used at RED range as well (without Rapid 2, however).

So, how are they intended to play? Aggressively. Very aggressively. Playing Max-Tac is about target priority and elimination. The team has flexibility options to achieve that goal, like swapping out Rapid 2 on an attack for Accurate and Deadly Crits. In addition, some characters gain bonuses against Cybercharacters. This makes them excellent at tackling powerful models who have lots of gear. When used properly, even one or two Max-Tac models can punish your rival for putting too many eggs in one basket.

We’re very excited to see what you, the players, do with this team, as we’re sure they’ll shake up your local campaign meta as well as our growing tournament scene!

Sign up today for notifications about the Night City Vehicles Kickstarter!