Or just squash one of the repeater REMs which, let’s be honest, aren’t going to be Dodging very successfully very often.
Paint one as Luigi then strap a jump pack to an old short Invincible for Mario. Bonus round: Duplicates of the above as Wario and Waluigi!
Dropping on a Repeater is probably the one thing I wouldn't. Sounds a bit like walking a Speculo or Shinobu into btb with a Lu Duan from front arch. Sure it can work, but you're fairly likely to lose an expensive and tactically useful unit just to get a free shot at killing something cheap. While Shinobu is asking for the flamethrower to do its work, the Louie would be asking for any AHD to reveal themselves. Not a great deal for a slightly lower than 50-50 at killing the Repeater and the level of stuck you are if you fail. I'd work around the problem or land directly on the problem (aka hacker) instead The one exception is in the fairly popular LI format where you can keep a headcount on hostile hackers.
Ideally your opponent would be aware that leaving a hacker in an easy to drop on spot is a bad idea, and would place them so any attempt to explode on the hacker is met with some kind of appropriate response. Like earlier suggestions of what should've been done in those battle reports, placing likely targets such as hackers under the umbrella of a Jammer or something along those lines.
There's a lot of discussion about difficulties with Nomads and ALEPH here, but I'm still yet to see a player mention how they operate against Ariadna or Tohaa, its good matchups. No chance of running into repeaters, two HDs max, and a pronounced vulnerability to anything which can get around the line of Camo markers for Ariadna, zero access to HTA or Claw programs and Bioimmunity being good from Tohaa. Seems like a potential open season on artichokes and slightly racist stereotypes, anyone got in some Liu Xing games against them yet? A tactic that I have found useful (by accident, lucky deviation) is to take a sniper tower on the enemy's side of the board using Combat Jump. Those things usually come with great sightlines across the DZ and threaten objectives, so turtling in one for the reactive turn will force the opponent to head up there and remove it, wasting a very large quantity of orders, or allow it to stay and threaten AROs against button pushers or an active-turn backline massacre. Hackers won't be able to accomplish anything lasting if you're using the Liu Xing as a reactive piece, so finding a way to make that work could really hurt the infowar-heavy lists.
Ehhh, trying to muscle in on low cost troops that fire Flamethrowers back at you isn't exactly what I'd deem a good match up for a 30+ point model. Makauls have a 57% chance to send a Liu Xing straight to dead. Close range firefights are Tohaa's wheelhouse, there's a reason they spam the shit out of Makaul. Ariadna's kind of a mixed bag. If they're spamming 18+ orders with a tonne of cheap camo you're probably going to struggle to find a decent set of targets to attack against cost and order wise. If they're a very low model count TAK army on the other hand you might be able to scalpel out a decent target or two.
Given that there is plenty of order overhead in IA, is it so important to alpha strike with the Liu Xing in the first turn? If you can neutralise the hacking threat before landing, and can afford a turn to do so, then they can still have a place.
To neutralise the hacking threat you've kinda gotta run over to the other side of the table to dig out the hidden repeaters, or run over there with the KHD Haidao in the link and zap the offending hacker. At which point you're already over there with some kind of beatstick unit/Zuyong link already... soooo what was the Liu Xing's job again? Like I said a different faction that could just pitcher+delete enemy hacker as necessary could make this work reliably. The Liu Xing just doesn't synergise with what he's paired with because he wants support YJ can't provide.
Yeah, in Vanilla they get a bit more support from guilang, for instance. And, with Oniwaban they'd be an interesting combo (and possibly overpowered). There's more to AD than wham-bam tho. Tiger snipers are awesome as a reserve troop, even walking into your own deployment zone. I'm thinking of the Liu Xing as a midfield bully, once your opponent is stretching out.
I don't like it for the cost in an already expensive army. Minimum 38pts plus possible SWC is alot. If you go back to Vanilla, well you're fighting over Tigers who shoot better and are cheaper in points and SWC and again can be more aggressive if you need them because of the no hacking problem.
Well, I tried him out a few days ago. The thing I didn't like was the ridiculous PH12, I shouldn't have to use Jump Assist on this guy. Which I didn't, but I got a 17 anyway. So no matter what he deviated. Luckily into an okay place. Not optimal. I was trying to land behind a Lunokhod after I put in work to have my Liberto jump around his Crazy Koalas. It's just seems stupid considering my Ikari Yuan Yuans have PH14 and No Armor! After landing all he did was kill a Zero and then shot in the back by a Doctari out in the open. A bit humiliating lol. I'll try it again at some point. I really can't judge based on one time with bad luck.
Yuan Yuan's PH is such an obvious construct to optimize for the Inferior Combat Jump penalty and to make them good grenade throwers. I call min/maxing! (Don't take this post too seriously, I'm just reminding about the -3 MOD on AD3)
I have been very interested in if the jump troops are just a gimmick or not. I got in three games myself. 2vs Haq and 1 vs MO. I do not like jumping in... even with my LTlv2 giving me assisted landing I am still looking at a 25% chance to scatter, and that is before any hacking aro's make it a face to face. I like walking my jump troops on so I was already out of my comfort zone lol. Mutts make it really hard to find a safe jump. My first jump took out a mutt, a line trooper, and put me in a great position to do a classified but did get me isolated. my second jump was targeting a lone hacker but he tanked the armor roll. vs Mo I did not try to bop anyone on landing but got ok mileage out of it. 2nd game vs Haq I did drop on a annoying ML and take it out, breaking the link team and sending all his mutts running the wrong way. He took out my drop troop with a mutt using EM, doctored up his ML and reformed his link. Points for points it looked like an awful trade but it did get that ML out of the way for my important turn 1, letting me move out into better positions So after 3 games and 4 drops I am still undecided if I like them vs the replacement Zhencha.
Almost insultingly, the Liu Xing fluff spends time discussing their new, advanced jump gear and armour as well. But apparently the armour they give these former Tiger Soldiers not only makes them dumber (-1 WIP), but provides no additional physical augmentation (same PH). They couldn’t even be bothered to give the thing superior combat jump to represent how “advanced” its new jump gear supposedly is. I tried stress testing the bloody things this weekend, tried using them every way I could think of from overwhelming 4x drops to small surgical deployments, but they’re too unreliable to use their shtick, and as button pushers/mid-fielders they’re too expensive to justify those bargain-bin stats compared to what we have available. The problem was they were obviously gunning for making another cheap-ass unit in IA, but then they gave it AD (one of the most expensive skills in the game). Making a cheap AD HI was a losing proposition (because AD is one of those skills that doesn’t mesh well with mediocre profiles), they should have aimed for Daofei or Mowang costs with it and made it do something reliably. 32 points for an unreliable suicide trooper is a bad deal and walking it in is just leaving points on the table for a mediocre mid-fielder (and the thing competes poorly with our other mid-fielders anyways). I think the Liu Xing will be getting left in the toolbox until IA get a second pass, my time using it just underlined how pointless it was in and out of IA. Oh well, at least it means we only got one new fully junk profile (the Zhencha is saved by SMGs and actually pretty okay on the field, even if mine died laying a suicide mine that the enemy link just ended up face-tanking with good armour rolls, not its fault that my opponent kept rolling 19’s and 20’s for ARM checks).
So if we just forgo the combat jump to then walk in, how would they be used best? Just forget the gimmick of the landing and explode. He seems like he would still be pretty good to come in from the side.
You'd still have to pay great attention to the hacking threat. Any camo marker within 6" of the table edge becomes a no-go, as it could be a camo'd repeater or DepRep.
There are camo repeaters? DepReps as far as I know don`t have camo state, so the worst thing you may encounter is the hacker itself.
Lots of models with camo and FO+DepRep (so fairly cheap specialists): Guilang FO/DepRep, Croc Man FO/DepRep, Hunzakut (both DepRep and FO+DepRep profiles), Bandits/Spektr/Zeroes. Bigger threat in Haqq and Nomads than anyone else, now that I've looked at the options.
