Well, PanO had a profile with the Feuerbach around the same time the weapon itself was released, but it did take a little while for a mini using it to be released for PanO.
What really worries me is: if Zencha is the model Bostria was so hyped about, what kind of dissapointments wait for us with the other models? Does Bostria even know anything about their own game?
He's marketing, his job can involve literally getting paid to lie through his teeth to you to try and get you to buy the company's shit. If you believe any opinion Bostria ever has at face value you're making a mistake, you should never trust anybody who's marketing a product for anything, they're completely biased and have an agenda to push. Maybe IA are going to be good, maybe they're going to be shit. That's irrelevant. Bostria will always tell you they're good regardless of what they actually are because that's what he's paid to do. Don't listen to him, ever.
Benkei, pray for the latter, he's bound to have something utterly insane in store for the Mowangs or Hulangs given the weird love for midfield-destroying weaponry of late. My guess is the CB office meta is a bit peculiar. Given the fact that in mine, Shang Ji are good, most units can probably find a niche outside professional tournaments. Zhencha probably wreck Ariadna.
Zencha will get goddamn destroyed by Ariadna. They have cheap mine profiles, shock, T2, and fire weapons falling out of their ass all over the place. On top of that most of them carrying that equipment are so goddamn cheap it's easy to trade up.
With the Son-Bae and Pangulling both being in fireteams, I'm pretty curious about how effective an infiltrating, mobile FO platform will be, especially as both remotes will likely be attractive fillers in any event.
Not very, because they're not cheap. Using FO on burst 2 has a bad habit of getting you killed on the occassion because you just don't have enough dice to reliably score the hits in F2F roll offs, so you want to be cheap and expendable, like 20pts or less. The Zencha isn't particularly cheap or expendable. Guilangs have MSV1 and better WIP, they're more likely to get this shit off and you still don't see people using them to do this on a regular basis and I speak from experience having tried very hard to make this setup work efficiently. Zencha aren't an improvement here.
Zhencha is much more likely to survive a failed ftf however, and can more manoeuvrably deny the enemy cover.
It may be more likely to survive if it goes wrong but that is small comfort when it means you failed the face to face roll and will have to try again. Not to mention that it's more likely to fail against a bunch of targets due to worse Wip and no MSV1. The guilang can sometimes stack odds even more in its favour if there's a low-vis zone to attack through.
I'm thinking specifically of targets that you cant draw LoF to (backline specialists, or utility pieces). Although the Shooting Star also targets those, I wonder if previewing the reach pieces is a considered strategy of CB's.
This is the gaming equivalent of starting dinner with an appetizer. It might be pretty interesting, and it makes you curious about what's coming next, but it's not the main course. The fact that Yan Huo Special Haris was just teased definitely indicates to me that CB's ramping up the announcements for IA.
Those pieces are likely going to take quite a few orders for a zencha to draw LoF to even assuming it can get into position to do so. (Clogged mid-field or the foes are just well hidden.) If it requires getting very close then mines or a boarding shotgun to the face is likely a simpler solution. As you also mentioned, the Liu xing also seems designed to be able to target those kind of backfield pieces. Guided missiles are horribly order intensive to deliver and usually it's quicker and easier to just go with other options. I don't think the zencha is going to change this.
Yeah, I think their media strategy is working pretty well - regardless of the tone of the debate, we are all talking about IA... I'm not just using this as an example of how great the Zhencha is, though I know where I've nailed my colours to. It's also more evidence why there needs to be some weakness in the chassis, to complement all the utility. It's the one side of the debate that hasn't been acknowledged by those clamouring for 2W or even shock-immunity, to my reading - apologies if I've missed any analysis!
Guided missile bots have been showing up a ton as a linkable option, so they're more relevant now than they've ever been before. Having a guided missile that can ARO with link bonuses as its primary function, but can also guided missile if the opportunity arises, is pretty sweet overall.
In OS, only the new Missile Launcher version is linkable. And pays about 4-5 points for that privilege.
Guided doesn't gain the link bonus but it's a strait +6 ignoring all other modifiers. So it's hitting on a 18. It also doesn't gain a burst bonus. Always burst 1.
Saying the units aren't different is completely disregarding the skills they have, which for most people, still be skills they've never used on the table. I don't understand... I just don't understand what's so disappointing. We got teased two units with completely unique skills, and multiple wounds, high movement (compared to bring MI) and arm (for what it's worth which isn't much, but sometimes it's nice.) Like, section 9 wanted a zuyong with Camo... im sure That would have been dissapointing - too expensive. No frills. Boring. All it has is infiltration. No way to win face to faces. It's easy to criticise a profile. Most profiles have weaknesses, that's the point of good game design. Maybe there's a bit of a rush to self validate our preconceived notion that cb hates yu Jing and they will only release suck?
Very good, though I never claimed the link bonuses were useful to guided. I mentioned that using it as an ARO piece that can also launch guided gives it two roles. @Nemo No Name in DBS, both versions are linkable. So the precedent exists, despite the determination of some to focus on the worst possible case, no matter what
