Brawlers in DBS

I was asked recently, why I use Brawlers not that often, since they are seen as a faction-advantage and quite cheap and strong units in DBS.

There are some reasons why I take them not very often, but first: I like them a lot and many profiles are really great and useful in Druze.

• Brawler MSV 2: Well, nothing to say about this, since he is a really great ARO-piece and the only MSV 2 we have.
• Brawler Lt: Cheap and has a shotgun to defend himself. Whenever I can't field a normal Druze Lt, he is the Lt to go with.
• Brawler AHD: I was never disappointed with him and it is cheap enough to wait somewhere until turn two or three to clear things with his SMG.
• Brawler HRL: Great back-up weapon and if you could use him linked actively, he becomes a real thread. Fire ammonition is a nice thing here, too.

The other profiles are...expensive for what they add. I discussed the pros and cons of the Doc in Druze somewhere in the first third of this thread, so 20 points for WIP 12 is a bad ratio in my eyses for this sectorial. The engineer has the same problem.

But besides the simple profiles, it depends on the following reasons why they are not played that much in the last games:

• Linkteam options: Only two of them can join a core-link (most often the Lt and the MSV2 as described above, sometimes the HRL). If I want to use them aggressively, I need to take the haris-guy, need one Brawler to fill the link and have the HRL as attack piece. That consumes a lot of SWC and isn't that cheap in the end. Plus I can only choose one additional Brawler in the core-team. The next thing here is, that I tend to reduce my core-team to three guys, which means I am only allowed to take one Brawler, since I have to include two Druze.
• List composition: This works together with the linkteam composition, since Brawlers shine best in linkteams and there they have to deal with the restriction of core-links and the haris-option you sometimes want to field. Of course, the haris is much cheaper here, but you can only have the HRL as attackpiece and if I want to invest into a haris-team, I want B4. Since I can only wildacrd Gromoz into them, there is no option for this. With no great defensive stats, it is too risky for me, to push three regular orders that much forward and rely on the HRL alone. In addition to this. most events had TW or LI 'restrictions' recently, what limits your slots. You can easily put together a list with high order counts if you take Brawlers and Pathfinders, what may be great, but I need some expensive stuff for TW and especially for LI. So I want to spend some more points for the extra benefits of my Druze in most cases, just to spend all the points I have.
  
• Competition to other units: This may be the most important point besides the arguments of linkteam composition. I get a Pathfinder for the same costs as a standard Brawler, but get a better movement and a bigger interaction with the rest of my units. And he is a specialist. Pathfinders are so important for Druze and highly flexible, that they simply outperform most Brawler-profiles out of my links.

If you look at the last reports before corona started for us , I used Brawlers more often and with okay results. But then I started cutting down my links and pushing the Peacemaker more, what simply consumed the SWC and slots I needed for them. I went all-in with my REMs most of the time then, what got an extra boost for the Pathfinders. Other list-types may change this and other players make them work better, of course. But for my situation, the Pathfinder is way better in Druze then a Brawler, besides the situations and profiles discussed above.