Popularity in choice =/= good mission. Each time new missions become available, they tend to be spammed as a means of coming to grips with them. Similarly, it is a mission like Highly Classified, where it forces you to mix up your troop selection in order to be viable. Ergo, it would be a pick of choice for TOs who want to force their players to be more flexible in their list building - note, mission selection is the TOs choice, not the players. Also, it was a forced selection in the Uprising mission set. You couldn't do Uprising ITS event without playing it. We played it locally, and the reason we played it was in order to play Armoury again - because Armoury is a hugely popular mission in my locale, but was removed from Official ITS for a good long while.
@Alphz Isn't Highly Classified up there too? That mission is the worst one in ITS, but people play it a lot for some reason.
I guess we have a difference of opinion. Hunting Party is unbalanced and has two central flaws imo (suiciding lieutenants and the benefit to having the last turn), but can be fun. HC is a dumpster fire most of the time, and I can't see the new Classified deck changing that.
I'm going to assume you've never played with a 4 or 5 man link team in your life. It's either that or you don't get why being able to trivially delete defensive link teams off the table might just be a little bit broken.
If anything the new deck makes it worse because of how random it is. Decent classifieds coverage was always hard but now it's crazy. My opinion: pick the open classifieds based on a draft system. Each player picks 2, if both players pick the same one then replace it with the extreme version and it becomes worth 2 OP. Remaining classified cards are shuffled and 1 is drawn at random as the 'secret' classified. IE I choose Experimental Drug and Data Scan and my opponent chooses Experimental Drug and Sabotage. We need to complete Data Scan, Sabotage, Experimental Drug - Extreme.
Popularity is pretty important in deciding whether to keep a mission or scratch it. Which was the basis of hecatin concluding CB aren't good/don't care about competitive gaming. Your speculation might be right, but it's really just speculation. I hypothesise there might be more variables to what makes a good set of missions beyond what you think makes a good mission. And your point is? I don't like highly classified in its native format. But I'm not arrogant enough to decide that means it's a shitty mission. There are things people really like about including highly classified, so maybe I just need to think about it from a different angle as it's been popular for a few seasons in a row now
The problem with that is that it's a patch that contradicts current rules. CB not having issued any kind of word regarding this obvious exploit of the rules means people can, legally and with all reason, claim your patch to not be legal and thus has to be ignored, which creates a bigger issue between players. Mind you, I think Civilians should not generate any ARO at all. "Central Room" missions were scrapped from ITS9 because TOs transmitted a very valid concern regarding how hard is to field huge numbers of Central Rooms, not because of popularity. Also, deciding something is popular or not because only "how many times does show up in the Tournament Manager" is not a real view, as mentioned before with the very valid concern of "thematic campaigns" like Uprising.
I used to think that HC was annoying to build lists for, I was then informed that you get to choose your list after seeing the classifieds. Seems less problematic that way.
Super common gamer debate error #457: If you disagree with me it's because you don't understand! Because it's impossible to actually disagree with me! I've been playing the game since the N2 release of Human Sphere, and I've always found that anything left out 'defensively' has been trivial for a dedicated player to kill. Killing things in the active turn isn't particularly challenging. I stand by my comment that I don't buy into the hoopla. I'll grant you that players don't really like it, but things people don't like on the internet are pretty common. The point I was making was not that I don't understand why it's beneficial for a player to do it, but rather that I don't think the practical outcome will be significant, since killing things in your own active turn is pretty easy anyway. But lucky for you, I ain't nobody, and convincing me isn't very important. I commented because these threads become echo chambers very quickly where only people who agree that The Sky Is Falling are welcome, and I don't much mind being unwelcome if I feel like there's a viewpoint that's not being considered.
Ok, so we're back to you don't actually understand the game. Take a Unidron link, or hell one of the new flavours of the month the Dakinis. You shoot at that with a Hsien without forcing the smoke nonsense, it's actually a dead heat statistically on which model inflicts a wound on each other. Now if you force them to dodge it goes from being a dead heat on which model wins the roll off from a 1/3 to inflict a wound either way, to the Hsien gaining a 75% difference in advantage and eliminating the possibility of taking a hit from a bad roll in return. I regularly see the full MO Knight pain train running around. Engaging those is similarly statistically difficult without using the Xenotech, but using the Xenotech breaks the encounter entirely. I'm sorry but you can't with a straight face say that's a trivial change statistically, or even attacking the link in the first place is a trivial option.
Summoning @psychoticstorm to the thread, please people keep the discussion without discarding other people or chest-humping :S
It says only, that the TO's like this mission due to the problem player have with them and have to spent one of their two Army Lists for this mission. Thats all.
My opinion of the xenotech is that I overall like it. I am under the belief that the msv2 trick is clearly accidental and will be removed. Which leaves a template shield for one model. I like this idea. I never got around to doing this with my hvt, but the action is effective. Templates/mines as a defensive are quite powerful and so an active shield is a really cool idea. It's less powerful in the reactive turn due to changing the tear drop angles or not using the circular mode.
Also has to be acknowledged that the previous formatting of Tourney types - Direct action, etc - funnelled mission selection for a TO. On top of the "new mission" spamming, and forced selection for Uprising campaign... There were a lot of things in place to artificially prop up the "popularity" of the mission.
First of all, lets take it easy and keep the calm. This thread can be very useful and interesting about the xenoterch rules, its problems and its solutions. Dont let me close this thread ;) Well, in some threads and to the warcors I said that we are woorking on the next ITS update to fix some problems. For now, we are thinking on Xenotechs never provoke AROs even when in the Civevac state.