Agents are more... permanent, they do not need to be high profile like Aida and Victor or "replacements" like Aida who replaced the real Aida and now is in her place quite literally (I loved her fluff in 3rd offensive were she drifts so much in the personality of real Aida that been called for duty by the EI sounds like a rude and unwelcome waking from a dream). They can be and are quite background non combatants, like clerks (who lost that equipment requisition paper yesterday but found it today, but as luck would have it was really needed yesterday), maintenance personnel (who happen to somehow botch that critical wiring somehow) ectr, civilians and so on, agents are mostly not as glamorous and shocking as Killers, but they are as effective in their obscurity and permanence if not more.
I’m very intrigued by the new impersonators in Spiral; they definitely have some interesting new ideas about what to do with this rule. Fidays and Speculo Killers are both roughly the same concept.
I was thinking about the gwailos and their new AVA 1. If they are really that limited in Shas ( and not just in vanilla ), I would like this: BS 13, 2W, ARM 3/4, BTS 6 with nanoscreen. And fill one of these two niches: Either bring a plasma rifle + mimetism - or even better, camo. Make it have a Shas feeling while being the one shocktroop the army has access to Or albedo + HMG. Give the army a good answer to MSV units. I would much rather have access to the plasma. What I actually expect is to get just a standard HI with automedkit and access to Spitfire/MULTI Rifle/Boarding shotgun. Frankly, that would be quite useless on a army where everything has a better chance to win a ftf. It if is linkable it might be ok(ish), but will still be very meh. In short - I would want to have a completely new unit, but I just expect to get 2w gwailos, and that would be very uninteresting.
I thought something in Shas was already revealed to have Albedo? Or was that just a fever dream conjured by a brain desperate to put its frog-men back on the table
What id like from Shas 1. Some form of cheap regular orders: right now the best we can hope for is 2 ikadrons and an R drone. It is very difficult to take the order intensive units with such limited cheap orders. 2. Speculo swc drop: I know we wont get it but 1swc is pretty prohibitive to take more than one. I highly doubt this will happen. 3. Total rework of seed rules. I am excited for Shas, but I'm struggling to see where their strength is going to be. Nox in particular seem to pale in comparison to other line troops with a tonne of bloat on them. in saying that Victor messer seems incredible value. I am keen to see the faction as a whole to see where it fits. Taigha i think may make or break the army, very curious what they do.
Possibly. I'm talking about what is required from my perspective to make them good. In the new world of ramah, os, varuna, dashat if shas is going to compete they either need to be resilient or they need orders so they can spend more avoiding firefights to get the job done. Shas right now aren't resilient at all. And I don't think that's the way they'd take the faction. They can design the army anway they want. But they need less niche rules that bloat and more mechanics that improve their results consistently. As their flagship release this year if they want to see shas played it's something CB have to seriously look at.
This isn't just about posthumans. There's Varuna which is easily as strong as OS right now. Tak isnt far behind it. Ramah and dashat will likely be on the same level as os/vird. Sure posthumans are strong, but there's alot of other reasons os is powerful. My point is if shas is going to be competitive, they need more efficient releases. Bloating models with automedkits, bio immunity, stealth. This will not make a good army. Infinity is a game where consistency is king and the niche rules on shas models haven't worked all of third edition so far, they need a design shift if they want them to be effective. Malignos v dasyus even Naga v shrouded, it's pretty apparent that there is functional issues in Shas. Victor messer gave me hope as he is a very efficient profile. I'm excited to see more of that.
Care to expand on this a little? Victor is interesting to me as I love HD+, but he's kind of doing my head in on how he'd fit into a list. Which of his profiles do you prefer (if either), and why?
29pts for hacking device plus with nwi, nanoscreen and double nanopulsars and dcharges is just such a package. fitting him in will be challenging, but this guy is four points more than a danavas and the danavas is excellent. The question isn't is he worth his points to me. It's are his skills necessary for shas? That will literally be a playtesting thing for me. White noise is always valuable particularly as you have alot of mods in this army so should try and remove those threats shooting through white noise. I will admit the Nox hacker being 17 means Victor won't be an always take.
That Nox hacker is a good point, though. From the few units we’ve seen, they’re definitely building more optimized loadouts. They could have been like Vanguards and gotten a Combi+HD for 22 points.
Possible profile changes to the infiltrators have me excited. We'll see how it goes. If they are left unchanged... that's not a good thing.
I can stomach the shrouded cost, though I still think he is overcosted and hope for a reduction, the malignos however I think is horrendously overcosted. Honestly right now the only shas models I feel are fine are the speculo and noctifer.
Shrouded is fine for its cost. Malignos is overcosted, it's true. But the Shasvastii (and Morat) rules are pricey for questionable benefit. CB seems content to make the sectorials with new minis quite powerful, however; I have a sneaking suspicion we'll see a cost drop across the board for Shasvastii.
