Suggestions for an MCT Team, Black on black... Options

[Gyro the Greek S...]

So! I'm running one of the story nuggets from Emergence (Dead Man Hacking), and the runners will inevitably run up against an MCT black-ops team.

I was thinking a four-person opposition, and I was going to use the Red Samurai stats in the 4th book to represent the MCT kids, but I wanted to run it by you folks first. Are the Samurai a good equivalent? More powerful? Less? What seems to make the most sense?

[Backgammon]

MCT is more subtle than Red Samurai, IMO. They have those unit 13 (or whatever its called) magic group cats that get you while your sleeping and shit. With Red Samurai, you see it coming - all those explosions down the street are for you, chummer. With MCT, you just kinda... disapear and no one ever hears what happened. But they know. Silenced pistols to the head from what little old granny you turned your back on. Never see it coming, chummer.

[Sir_Psycho]

Give them combat abilities slightly lower than the Red Sam, but MCT has very impressive magical resources, so make their mage a bit scarier than usual. Also, a well equipped hacker running overwatch, they are Mitsuhama Computer Technologies. Also, consider that this is Emergence, in the height of the "Technomancer threat', so that hacker is probably running a pretty decent commlink, probably with a focus on Armour, Firewall and Biofeedback Filters. Consider giving him a focus on stealth, with a commlink optimized for either Stealth or Exploit, and he'll be trying to get into your team's networks well before the groundpounders open fire.

Although what is most important here is tailoring them to suit your team's power level. The Red Samurai stats in the core book underperform compared to some previous edition's Red Samurai archetypes, and especially their fluff as intimidatingly proficient and well-equipped. Although, that considered, what is the most scary about going toe to toe with a mega should rarely be how powerful their individuals are, but what they can do as a collective. If your characters wipe out the team, or brainfry their hacker, then MCT can just allocate more personnel, and give them better vehicles and weapons, and if they have teams on standby and air support, they can grab some nasty weapons from their armoury and be on top of you in ten to twenty minutes. And given the telepresence of Hackers, they can easily retask more hackers to throw at you if they deem necessary.

To consider Backgammon's point, I'd suggest slightly less combat proficiency than the Red Sams, with a bit more stealth, but with solid Matrix and Magical support.

[sunnyside]

First of all note that the Red Samurai level grunts aren't black ops level guys. Samurai are like Marines. Full on soldiers but not the best of the best. If your team is supposed to be like Delta Force you should bust out the prime runner rules.

However for MCTs Samurai like troops I would swap out the swordsmanship for something else maybe drop a stat here or there but then add in something flavorful. MCT likes to use paranormal critters so I'd add one of those to the mix. Plenty of them can be trained.

[TeOdio]

In my campaign, MCT is the main antagonist (plus I'm doing Emergence as well). As far as black Ops teams, I've basically used the Red Samurai as a base line for stats and skills, but generally the Red Samurai are considered the cream of the crop, so I tone them down a bit, going for a bit more quiet. They have access to good resources, so I would hook em up with Form Fitting armor on top of whatever else you give them. They more than likely will have Tactical AR software which could make them pretty challenging and it could give your hacker something of theirs to mess up, gotta give the hacker something to do (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) . Even if they don't have a mage they could have a spirit with services given to the squad leader. Also, an MCT "black ops team" could actually be a group of Yakuza Street Sams given how much certain Yakuza syndicates and MCT are linked together.
Just a few ideas.
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[Ryu]

Mitsuhama is going for larger groups of heavily armed guards, supported by a load of technology, sensors, drones, you name it. Magic is actually one of their weaker areas ("weak" as in "not as strong").

A small strike team could look like this:
- Overwatch mage
- two drone spiders (two aerial overwatch blimps, half a dozen rotordrones, half a dozen walker drones, all sensor 4 ->tacnet 2)
- two stealthOps guys

(Some runner teams can pull better setups off, but the concept scales pretty well. Drones as mooks and the stealth guys as main threat.)

[Magus]

I ran my group through that scenario already. I had a triple initiated Shinto Mage with 4 spirit backup.
5 man strike group with minimal drone support.
5 man team with 5 and 6's in skills ranging from piloting to Unarmed Combat(Wushu) to Automatics specialized in SMG's.
Full Swat Armor with chameleon coating and FFBA stacked.

it made my runners sweat for a bit.

[Sir_Psycho]

Mitsuhama is going for larger groups of heavily armed guards, supported by a load of technology, sensors, drones, you name it. Magic is actually one of their weaker areas ("weak" as in "not as strong").

Corporate shadowfiles states that Mitsuhama's important magical subsidiaries are:
-Mitsuhama Magical Services
-Pentacle Distributing, inc.
-Pentacle Press
-Ambrosius Publications,
-Mitsuhama Thaumaturgical Research
-Hermetech Associates

That's 6, compared to 5 in computers.

It also states they are the second largest provider of Magical Goods and Services after Aztechnology.

Ambrosius and Pentacle are the two largest magical publishing houses in north america.

Petrovski, Parashield and Hermetech provide (and I quote) "Top-of-the line magical security"

"Mitsuhama provides some of the world's best magical security... a close second behind Aztechnology"

In Game Information. MCT has a magic rating of 9, which is a tie with the Azzies.

Renraku, Yamatetsu and Ares are on 7. Wuxing is 8. Trailing behind on 6 and 5 are Novatech, CATco and Shiawase.

To support your claim, though, it does state that MCT guards it's magical assets very closely. They can afford to lose execs and VIP's before losing talented magicians. But I still think this means that a proper team would have a well trained and well equipped mage. If they distribute as much magical goods in the bulk they do, I'm pretty sure he'll be running decent foci, too.

[Ryu]

Hmm, you are right. I have always stereotyped them as "automated-defense-corp" in our game - which is not the full story.

[Gyro the Greek S...]

Wow, thanks for all the input! It has been extremely helpful.

Based on comments made, I've modified my concept of the team a little.
I'm thinking they're straight MCT black ops, and not Yakuza, as the response to clean up Bowman's hack is really quick. I'm going to say Bowman was making the hack from Redmond, and the MCT team came in on a heli that shot down the Docwagon ambulance, burying it in an old office building. MCT lands, grabs Bowman, finishes off any other survivors and jets. Docwagon HRT arrives, retrieves the bodies of their employees and exits the area, leaving the crashed ambulance and the Valkyrie unit for the runners to find as it would be too difficult to try to salvage it.

The MCT team then relocates to a single ruined mansion that the corporation uses as a clandestine Redmond safehouse. Security is handled by a few supposedly feral paracritters to keep the gangs away whilst not making the mansion an obvious facility.

The MCT team would be one that's supposed to work cleanup, so they're not a hard strike team. That likely means a rigger for vehicles and drones, a mage specializing in astral cleanup and overwatch, a stealth-combat decker and a ninja type. They're not super-stacked out, as MCT probably has a lot of these teams and the price of making them all delta-grade cyberwarriors is ridiculously prohibitive, but they are relatively well-equipped. Mostly, they're supposed to be sneaky, and if there is major combat involved in their mission, somebody else really dropped the ball.