Open vs Hidden
Personally I tend to always place the HVT behind a building or some other piece of terrain so my opponent can't spot them easily with Forward Observers. In many games my opponent placed their HVT right in the open, which I thought wasn't a good choice as it meant my own FO can see them but most of the time it didn't end in my favour for other objectives. The other HVT objectives are about getting a hacker within their ZoC, and Engineer or Doctor/Paramedic base to base.
After trying it out myself I think having a HVT in open makes it easier to protect it. Especially if you have lots of elevated positions around your deployment zone, you can cover most, if not all, approaches to the HVT. This might not stop your opponent getting base-to-base but it might make them spend more orders avoiding and/or dealing with your AROs. The more Orders they spend on HVT, the less they have for attacking else where, which is always good. You just gotta make sure to maintain your defense because if your unit leave, the HVT is just right there in the open.
If you happen to have a really good hiding spot in your half of the board, I'd say that might be the best time to hide the HVT. Otherwise, more times than not I end up blocking my own Line of Fires to the HVT or at least limiting them a lot. One game I played recently, my opponent had bunch of containers in his half which were touching edge of the board and arranged in such a way that I would have to go around the whole thing to get close to the HVT and that was a problem since the Classified were getting base to base. Even climbing over the containers would have taken lots of Orders. It put the game in his favour from the start. That said, I wouldn't expect these kind of hiding spots happen often but its good to keep an eye for them.
Overall I am getting more in favour of putting HVT close to my own deployment zone and in the open where I can protect it with defensive troops, or even just cheerleaders that won't be leaving the deployment zone.
"HVT Shield"
I still haven't figured out how to make this a viable tactic but it is good to remember nobody can place templates on the HVT intentionally. Or even if you can, if you kill it you lose the game so nobody in their right mind will do it. This can be used to your advantage.If you are near the HVT it is unlikely people will be able to target you with things like missile launchers and even flamers/chain rifles can be hard to deploy near the HVT.
The HVT also has Silhouette 2, like a regular trooper, and block Line of Fire. Therefore if you see some small line across the board that you want block, you can use HVT to do it.
Going off on that, do be careful with placing mines around HVT. Your opponent could avoid it by hiding behind the HVT, or just in a direction where the mine would have to go over it as mine templates cannot be placed over Friendly or Neutral models. The mine would neither not trigger or some people said it would be lost. (Rules citation to be added but to me it sounds more like it wouldn't trigger.) Either case, it is a way to avoid mine templates.
Best place for HVT
This was on my mind for a while, is there a best place for HVT? By that I mean being able to place the HVT outside of ZoC of any potential enemy trooper so they can't hack the HVT from the start of the game. I made this handy graph to find out, no there really isn't.
This of course is assuming there is no terrain preventing enemy Infiltrators deploying right on the edge of 24", or an Exclusion Zone. Since you have to deploy the HVT withing 8" of the middle line, they can almost always be in ZoC from the get go.
Looking at the graph though I think it might be a good idea to deploy the HVT close to the middle if you know your opponent has access to Airborne Specialist. That way you can force them to spend extra Orders getting to the HVT from the side. At the same time though, you can lure the AD Specialists and set some traps for them if you have TO troops.
My miniature
I wasn't sure how to paint my HVT but in the end decided to go with red and black because it helps make the HVT stand out in my Caledonia and I really like red armour, I just try to avoid it in Infinity because I done too many of those in my wargaming years. I also took inspiration from the studio Alguaciles for the blue hair.
Overall I am happy with it but I wish I was more careful priming the face as it came out bit too rough for my liking, though its only a problem when you look really close.
If you are interested in how I paint faces, I wrote about it in this article.
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