Liu Xing: batreps, lists and general thoughts

I've tried that. Had a hard time seeing them at first, and honestly still have a hard time with them, considering how easy it is to cover the entire DZ in hacking area.

And been shat on too many times to want to continue that.

 

Are people really covering their entire DZ in hacking area in a tournament where low tech armies can also appear? I mean, NCA and OSS get good use out of the Garuda and I don't hear them complaining that much about the hacking vulnerability.

I suppose if you only want to play with whats optimal then skip IA entirely and stick with ISS and focus on order spam lists. As you know, the only way to play Yu Jing is Kuang Shi spam. Anything else winning is just a fluke. *rollseyes

 

It’s fine to weigh the pros and cons and conclude that you think it’s not worth its points.
Telling people that it sucks and they should never use it is what rubs people the wrong way because you’re basically telling people what to do and people don’t like that. Specially strangers on the internet.

But having your valid arguments be shot down when you know they are relevant isn’t much fun either.

Ultimately each person should be aware of their own goals for entering this discussion. Do you want to inform people before they make a decision about which models to buy? Do you just want to convince people you are right? Or do you like the *idea* of a AD HI that explodes upon impact and want to know how to beat use it?

 

Funny thing about the Guijia, it will perform as well as the rest of the basic TAGs in the game. Sure, TAGs like the Riacho and Squalo have improvements over the Guijia but at the end of the day they will all preform similarly. Using a TAG well takes experience but I find its often unnecessary to use more expensive TAGs.

I feel like people fixate too much on the Guijia not having any small perks like the mine dispenser or zapper but in the end those don't really make that big a difference in regards to what a TAG wants to accomplish.

Still, it would have been nice of CB to give the Guijia something since every other basic TAG has some advantage over it.

 

A thought for those employing multiple Liu Xing like @Joametz, when facing opponents with strong Hackers that can threaten them, or against people canny enough to spread out their links or support, Liu Xing can Coordinate their Combat Jumps to threaten a Drop Zone with several attacks or double the effective size of the template.

 

For a lot of high tech armies, the hacking coverage happens naturally. Remotes are always highly cost-efficient, so it's not unusual to face lists with 2 to 4 repeaters drones, + at least one hacker to buff the attack remotes. It doesn't make their list so hacking heavy that it would be useless against ariadna, but it's still enough to annoy the Liu-xing. Ofc you can still opt to keep the liu-xing for later use in the midfield, it's just that you won't be able to alpha strike turn 1 with it as effectively.

As for the garuda, he is a bit more flexible than our liu xing. He has good speed, good guns, mimetism, BS12 and can be buffed with MML2, so even if you can't barge in your opponent's DZ you can still have it come on your side and use it as a very powerful attack piece. Sure the Liu-xing spitfire and multi rifle can be used in the same way, but it won't be as good as a garuda because you'll often have better units to use your orders on if you have to run and gun (bs13 heavy weapons are all over the place in IA).

 

But the garuda is just as hackable as the liu xing which is the supposed issue. I agree the garuda is a good attack piece but just because its hackable doesn't mean it's not good.

 

I think what Sedral is saying is that the Garauda is better suited to operate as an attack REM, being faster it is less reliant on the AD aspect and can better flank the hackers/repeaters.

 

Do me a favor: Go make your standard Infinity table, then deploy a single hacker in the exact center of your DZ. 23.5" in from both sides, 5.5" from the back edge. Then put an 8pt repeaterbot on each side, 6" from the edge and 5.25" from the back edge. (Both bots and the hacker would be centered on a line 6" from the back edge of the DZ, and the repeaterbots are just far enough from the table edge that their hacking area covers the width of that side of the DZ.)

Now measure that single hacker's Hacking Area, and see where you can drop either Liu Xing or Garuda without drawing a hacking ARO.

One regular hacker and two REMs with repeaters is about 34pts in most armies. It's negligible as a 'tax', because most people are already taking that anyway, for the orders and supportware.

Exactly. Even if there isn't a good place for the Garuda to drop in, it is still a 6-4 MOV with MML2. Better, it's S2, not S3, so is more maneuverable than your typical REM. Plus, Garudas are 21-30pts, while Liu Xing are 32-39pts.

 

Thanks for writing. It was a good read and a good outcome for a more or less fun-list. The four Luis had a big impact in the last game. I like AD Troops and will give the Lui Xing definitv a try. From theory I am not so much impressed from him. Explode sounds like fun and all, but a 5 man link member will dodge without negativ mods. Most of them have not the best PH, but still a 50/50 chance and DAM is only 12. For Firefight it seem like the ideal jump trooper :-D

PS: If you take a photo of a well painted army next time, please take care there is no hairy belly in the background - thank you ;-)

As for the deployment-zone coverage: I think Section9 is right. A good portion of lists in tournaments have one or two 8 pts. flashpuls rems and a hacker (not always a normal HD, but still). This will cover a good part of the DZ. Garudas do not suffer much from this, because the often enter the board on the sideline due to low PH. But if I am confronted with that, I can still find a place for the Liu Xing or you wait until turn 2. It makes it diffecult, but you have do deal with it. We have to wait and see, how often IA will show up on turnaments and if people will response with more repeaters only for Liu Xing surprises - they have to take care of Varuna and TAK too.

 

Let nothing distract the eye from all that sexiness...

 

I'm assuming this is aimed at me. Let's at least try to keep this accurate because not only can I point to Argentina on a map I even know a little of what it's famous for, such as handballs and picking fights over islands and losing.

I'm not sure why you have this fixation over battle reports. Simply writing a battle report doesn't mean you're providing quality analysis over anything at all. Simply attending or winning a local event doesn't mean anything at all either. I go to local events and win them but you don't see me writing about them because in the grand scheme of things they don't mean anything at all, I could tell you how the Guijia went that day, but it wouldn't mean anything at all. The Guijia achieved nothing and a pair of Shaolin Monks were MVPs of the match I used the Guijia in, but this isn't what I base my analysis of the Guijia around at all.

In a similar vein I TO'd a tournament at the start of this month and one player showed up with IA, but you don't see me writing up his games and telling you how bad the Liu Xing is because he brought one and didn't win a single game all day because again, the quality of those games were not worth it. The army lsit was a hot mess and the player didn't have any idea of what he was doing with it. Much like the battle reports in this thread, they don't provide good feedback so they're not worth mentioning for the purposes of discussion over the unit.

Garuda also has Mimetism which further improves its value at gunfighting.

You're misapplying that saying badly. Just because you can outskill people with a bad list doesn't nullify the fact that you are playing with a bad list and handicapping yourself.

Why is the list bad? Well... probably has some bad units in there that don't really pull their weight now doesn't it.

The whole "it's not your list it's you" implies that the list is actually quite good, it's the player's lack of skill that's the problem in the equation. So when as you put it the list is bad, then the saying doesn't apply.

The reality is the south american continent doesn't exactly have a well renowned table top gaming scene and their metas are likely way less competitive than others. That's not an insult it's just the truth, it's not like they regularly attend high profile events like WTC. Or am I wrong here and south americans do in fact regularly attend high profile international events for Infinity or any wargaming system? I admit I could indeed be wrong, I don't think I am, but I could be there.

 

If you're winning with a bad list that probably means your skill is pulling you through. You're not relying on the list to save you. Not everyone is a min maxer in this game and its honestly able to be played well without min maxing. Most people play with the models they enjoy the look of. The great thing about infinity is that for the most part those models can do good work. Like the guija for example, is it the most optimized tag in the game? No and especially not in IA. Can you still use a bs14 mhmg+flamethrower to kill a bunch of dudes on the table? Yes of course you can. Why would you ever take such a high point high risk model? Maybe people like tags or like the looks of it so they'll use it.

Almost all of your complaint have been about how bad x and y units are. Not every profile released is going to be some crazy extremely optimized killer. Is the liu xing the greatest profile in the game? No and it's not even the best ad troop in the game but it's a new option for vanilla and the only choice for IA and it offers something other ad options have.

Really none of this matters though. You don't like IA and you don't like the vast majority of the units in the sectorial. It doesnt matter what happens, IA could win interplanetario and you would still say oh it's bad, or the opponents were bad and didn't know how to deploy, or any number of excuses to keep moving the goal posts so you can stay firmly entrenched in your opinion.

 

I do not require models to be as you put it "crazy optimised killers" to be good. What I require of them is to be able to function properly. Building a close assault unit that is expensive and wants to attack enemy deployment zones, yet is functionally weak to hacking which frequently defends the target areas and exists in a faction that can't overcome that weakness effectively to enable it makes a bad unit.

My expectations for said unit to not be an abject failure are increased significantly when they are replacing units that more or less previously defined the faction.

I don't think you actually read or process much of what is written. Please explain to me exactly which units comprise this "vast majority" that I apparently don't like, then point to where I have made these statements.

I'll give you a hint you're not going to be able to do it because the number of units that I find an actual failure from 3rd Offensive fit on one hand. That would be the Liu Xing, Guijia, and despite having a specific fireteam gimmick, the Shang Ji is clearly a poorly designed mess when forced to compete with Zuyongs and really deserved a better effort from CB.

 

You're completely over blowing the weakness to hacking. You can even give these guys fairy dust to help. Also theres nothing stopping people from walking him on the sides which is always a good option. When they first started revealing stuff you were constantly shitting all over the sectorial. This has just been the continuation of that.

You argue saying that you need a unit function properly. The LiuXing functions properly and will even win face to face rolls. The unit is allowed to have a built in weakness (hacking) and that doesn't mean it's now a failure. IA doesn't get tigers, it's just what it is. People knew that heavy infantry AD was gonna have some drawbacks or be crazy expensive. If this was a 50-60 point model no one would ever use it. For me maybe I use a less specific or intense metric on how to measure if a unit is a failure. Each faction has tier A gun fighters like the hac tao, swiss guard, kleiza. Etc. There is also tier B and C gun fighters also and even lower tiers. They probably don't as many negative mods but they have good bs and a decent weapon. They're usually cheaper as well but if not it means they probably make up for it another way like being a specialist or infiltrator. For each role in the game (that depends on the player for what they think constitutes a role) they are gonna fall in some subjective tier list. I don't play all the factions nor claim to know everything about every profile out there but I can't think of many units that are both bad gunfighters and bad specialists because usually it's one or the other. The one off the top of my head is the tech bee. Terrible gun fighter and a terrible specialist. I don't think any IA units fall into the realm of that bad.

On a lighter note have you ever done the outrage missions? The last scenario in the pdf has a pretty cool asymmetrical mission where either the dolly dagger crew or druze are trying to go from 1 table edge to the other with Yu Jing tryijg to stop them. Cool thing about that mission is the yu jing player gets a free guija with AD combat jump. With assisted jump he lands on a 20 anywhere on the table. My buddy was playing YJ for the scenario and brought that bad boy down hard and fast! Definitely tough dealing with that guy in my DZ rampaging around. It didn't feel too oppressive except maybe once it got into flame thrower range. Anyway we talking afterwards and we both agree the guija is boring and would like to see something cool for it because it's an absolutely gorgeous model and I honestly think giving it combat jump would be fine. Granted I only played once against it but maybe they make a version that can AD but it loses the flame thrower for balance? Maybe an option to give it a multi rifle which I dont think we've seen on a tag yet so that way it can play up closer than the HMG allows. I guess you could also trade out the flame thrower for something like a nano pulser or chain colt so its not as devastating turn 1. This imo would be a great way to give the guija some personality and kinda gives a new angle to YJ by being the unique AD options faction. I believe outrage took place on svalarheima so I assume that would be white banner forces so maybe like how their are varuna division stuff there could be white banner division guijas. Anyway just some thoughts I'd been meaning to type since I played that scenario the other day and despite other disagreements you're pretty spot on with the guija and share in wanting to justify its amazing model.

 

There is no overblowing the weakness to hacking. The stark reality is this model operates far outside the reaches of its available KHD support, and is unable to reliably complete its primary function which is as a shock attack troop because it can't bypass repeaters. You do not want to gamble a 30-40pt model getting immobilised on a 1/5 chance simply attempting to approach targets, it costs far too much to get caught out like that.

This still doesn't help it penetrate repeater coverage which is the model's main issue. If you try to hang back with it instead of attacking the DZ as a gunfighter you're paying for a Zuyong that's overly expensive and doesn't link for bonuses or get extra orders, which is the main draw to IA is the really good link and points are at a premium in IA their toys aren't cheap. It is really hard to say the Liu Xing is worth his cost walking in and trying to gunfight at a distance when the Zuyongs pack a TacAw HMG for less points and SWC and can give it all the link bonuses you can poke a stick at.

If you try to run it in Vanilla the Tiger just takes steaming dumps all over it for cost effectiveness and has more flexibility because it's actually capable of dropping in under repeater networks to attack things.

It's a failure when it's in an army that can't provide hacking support to help it penetrate the repeater network. If this belonged to Nomads or Haqqislam, they could well make it work. Yu Jing on the other hand, can't. Context is important here. The problem isn't that it has a weakness, the problem is you can't expect to be able to support it to circumvent that weakness. The required support is a KHD deleting an offending hacker to allow the Liu Xing to go to work unmolested. Neither IA or Vanilla can provide that reliably, which in turn contributes to the Liu Xing being an unreliable mess.

The only models I have consistently dumped on have been the ones deserving of it. While not a fan of the Zencha's fake HI status and CB's poor communication on what we were expecting, I have been satisfied they have 1 strong and consistently useful profile from the moment the model was spoiled.

My other main concerns with Zhanshi's ability to link and the total lack of spoiled information about KHDs were addressed when we got the news about the extensive wild card options and the linkable KHDs.

 

Great post @Joametz! Looking forward to taking IA for a spin eventually.