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IA: Hulang shocktroopers

Discussion in 'Yu Jing' started by Cannon Fodder, Apr 5, 2019.

  1. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    The ITS ranking means practically nothing. It's a measure of how many events you play in not how good you are. Last season I racked up a tonne of elo just playing 8-16 player events. The simple fact we were playing at least one reported event per month was enough to inflate my elo to stupid levels.

    I've played and beaten the guy ranked 18. It doesn't mean he's the 18th best player in the world not even close. I wouldn't even call him the 18th best player in the country. The ITS elo isn't properly curated to provide an actual effective ranking system, this isn't like say tennis where being ranked number 1 actually means something.

    If your opponent is letting you explode a bunch of remotes in his backline you guys either need more terrain, or he needs a crash course in deployment. You also should think twice before giving your opponent a 42% chance to stun your attack piece on drop, and you also need to do some math on how tough you think the Liu Xing is. A BS11 combi rifle toting line infantry shitkicker decides to go around a corner and sweep your liu xing that got stunned the turn before out of their backline they're 56% to knock a wound in him per order.

    God forbid something actually combat capable decides to murder your nearly 40pt investment.

    It doesn't have to be a hacker heavy army. As I have already pointed out, the presence of a single hacker would've been enough to completely stymie a Liu Xing's attempt at aggression.
     
    #61 Triumph, Apr 22, 2019
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2019
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  2. fatherboxx

    fatherboxx Mission control, I'm coming home.

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    Why would I think twice - I drop and kill a single unit on a rooftop/in the back and even if I take the stun hit, I just fall prone and become a nuisance and it takes several orders to remove me; if I am not stunned, cool, I get to killing immediately.
    If you make your opponent use orders for something silly like trying to carve a stray HI out of his deployment instead of doing objectives you win.

    and re terrain and placement - if you are a hard competetive player, you play spammy 15+ orders and have a lot of remotes and unlinked dorks - you cant spread them out in a 12" on a fairly dense table without some grouping. Any drop troopers and skirmishers with mines punish it with ease.
     
  3. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    Spending 2 or 3 orders to delete a 40pt attack piece is not a waste of orders, nor is it a crippling over extension of orders. You know how many orders I spent on turn 1 pressing buttons in powerpack? 1 order. I spent way more orders actively murdering the shit out threats and crippling my opponent's offensive capabilities.



    Plenty of hard competitive players run limited insertion lists. Adepticon was just won with 2 limited insertion lists for crying out loud.

    And I regularly play 3 combat group lists. You can definitely spread out your crap out to not get jumped like that. When you play spam lists you have enough models that some literally become expendable enough like 5pt warbands to stand in largely unprotected areas, they don't have a need to cluster up.

    Wanna shoot my panguulings? They're in group 2 with a bunch of monks I don't give a shit about. Feel free. Please wasting orders shooting at something that is literally no threat to you. If you construct your lists correctly you don't run into issues here.
     
  4. fatherboxx

    fatherboxx Mission control, I'm coming home.

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    If people manage to win with extremely silly triple hacker single group lists in a garbage sectorial I think people would find plenty of use for 2 wound infiltrators and drop troops.
     
  5. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    @Cannon Fodder and @fatherboxx you missed what I wrote. Having the Haidao KHD in the fireteam excludes Haidao MSV2. Since Shang-Ji doesn't have any MSV2 profiles nor KHD profiles, Rui Shi is not a Wildcard and the sectorial lacks Smoke to properly support solo Rui Shi, the Haidao MSV2 not only provides very good long range solutions to enemy HMGs, but also to various ODD, Camo, TO Camo, etc threats that a Zuyong HMG will struggle to brute force.
    This means sticking the Haidao KHD in a separate Fireteam which means the lack of repeaters makes it struggle a lot or juggling Fireteams, which limits movement and forces troops to be deployed closer together.

    It's very much like rolling a snowball down a slope. If the slope isn't very long, the snowball doesn't get very big, but there's lots of stuff lacking in IA that your opponent can build a list that makes the IA snowball of drawbacks very big.

    Taken as a whole, you need to pick several weaknesses when you play IA and having a Light Grenade Launcher (edit on a competent HI) would provide a clutch solution to most problems. Not an efficient solution, but a sufficiently universal solution (if I were to point at a specific miniature where I'd like to see this; Mowang Multi Rifle and Spitfire, Zhencha BSG instead of the D-charges, Hulang instead of, or addition to, the second SMG, Krit Kokram, or Shang-Ji Multi Rifle - most preferable Zhencha BSG or Mowang).
     
    #65 Mahtamori, Apr 23, 2019
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2019
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  6. ObviousGray

    ObviousGray Frenzied Mushroom

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    Which make me envy Ghulam LGL NCO. IA NCOs are great no doubt; still their flexible aspects are very cool to look at, and it does some fruitful results upon fielding.

    I'm getting Zhanshi LGL everytime able, frankly - he does what Zuyongs can't. If Shang Ji held a LGL.. No doubt I'll pick him very often.
     
  7. Tibooper

    Tibooper Well-Known Member

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    I like the idea of having more Light Grenade Launcher profiles on our troops. IA being a brutal army, it will suits its playstyle. Exploding the enemy while not even seeing it is the proper definition of "Subtlety is for the others".

    It could help with the Muttas problem too, but that's another topic.
     
    #67 Tibooper, Apr 23, 2019
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2019
  8. fatherboxx

    fatherboxx Mission control, I'm coming home.

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    I have built lists using both - sniper on the reactive and KHD on 14-order strolls to the objectives. You cant reform fireteam too many times but chances are MSV sniper is going to die on ARO duty - and if he survives, he can be useful on third turn even as a solo piece.

    LGL on a core-linkable HI is dirrrrty and unique to Wu Mings; the closest would be Emilyin a Riot Girl link (not HI but BS13) and Apsara-supported Dakini. Wouldn't say no to such profile in IA of course :D
     
  9. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Like I wrote, it comes at a cost beyond just purchasing the unit. Damned how annoying the IA Wildcard is...

    While realistically only Krit Kokram is the last chance to get an LGL into IA (which would naturally situate it into a Zuyong Fireteam and unless there's a Haidao character coming in a Dire Foes (Haidao is the closest fit to a reasonable Spec Ops HI)), I'd rather see it on certain other key profiles that could use the boost in utility - so more like a Knight of Holy Sepulchre or Al'Fasid
     
  10. Maksimas

    Maksimas Heavy Infantry Addict Maxim

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    Dire Foe Yan Huo when?

    Actually, this reminds me... still no news about what Krit may or may not have...?
     
  11. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    We know he has Heavy Pistols and a Chaincolt. That's it so far.

    I do not know what you're referencing here.
     
  12. Maksimas

    Maksimas Heavy Infantry Addict Maxim

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    I'm going to assume that's not in reference to Tunguska... 'cause last time I checked, Tunguska is far from trash.

    Well, it's a start, I guess.
     
  13. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    It might be Tunguska. That sectorial was greeted rather luke warm as well. From my games against them I don't find them weak, in fact Tunguska is excessively annoying to face as Yu Jing, but I can also imagine that people find it trash in comparison to vanilla Nomads, 'cause Tunguska has some great solos that complement Nomads already decent list of solos.
     
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  14. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    I mean if you wanna run a bunch of camo solos sure, Vanilla will do it better. If you want to run a bunch of solos with link team backup then Tunguska is obviously gonna do that better than Vanilla.
     
  15. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Unless some of those solos are Bakunin or Corregidor models.

    I think the argument I've seen is that quite simply most of the powerhouse models in Tunguska aren't Fireteam models. Hollowmen are nice, but not Zuyong we-are-the-backbone-of-this-army nice. More like "what's the difference between a Puppetactica in vanilla vs Tunguska? None. Mary? None. Kriza? None. Zondnautica? Hey look! Vanilla has MSV2! Hecklers? AVA 2 is mostly good enough."
     
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  16. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    The adepticon winner was running limited insertion Hollowmen pain trains, so I would entirely disagree with that argument. One list was Hollowmen pain train backed up by super solos Mary and Raol, that latter of which is a reason to play Tunguska because you can't have him in Vanilla.

    MOV6 HI core link that can super jump can definitely be the backbone of your army.

    Also anybody that complains about having a clearly hand adjusted points discount on a BS12 defensive link that gets a 0.5 SWC tax break on their guns and declares they can't build good lists around that needs to be smacked over the head and sent to the same remedial classes for MO players who think they don't have access to visibility MODs.
     
    #76 Triumph, Apr 24, 2019
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2019
  17. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    If you want to make the point how you with an outsider's perspective can judge that a few good ways to build a list makes the sectorial fantastic, then the Nomad forums are the correct place to make those on. I'm sure they'll love being talked down at just as much as we love it when people tell us the Hulang is fantastic or how IA is the best sectorial ever made.
    Always remember that a sectorial being good doesn't mean it'll have a high win rate in the hands of the incompetent and being bad doesn't mean it'll never have a high win rate in the hands of the competent. The good-bad axis has a lot more to do with internal variation and access to a large tool set so that it is unpredictable and adaptive. And also remember that bad vs good is a comparison so if vanilla Nomads by comparison have more tools and variation, it's not unfair to call Tunguska "bad" in comparison.
     
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  18. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Agree with @Mahtamori on this. Tunguska doesn't inspire me to want to play it the way Varuna (or NuMO) does. Varuna got a lot of new-to-PanO cool ideas, while Tunguska really seems to be a lot more of the same Nomad tricks (at least to me, I'm sure someone who plays Nomads a lot has a different idea).

    Unfortunately, I'm still not really seeing how to use some of the tools in IA, either. Hulang is definitely one of them. Zhencha is another, Liu Xing is a third.

    The Mowang is just a beatstick, so it's competing for space against Yan Huo in IA, and against Daofei and Su Jian in vanilla. Obvious how to use it, but it has some strong competition from other units in the list.

    IA makes me feel like you're being pushed into the Zuyong Pain Train build. It's very beatsticky, but has major weaknesses that are very hard to cover in IA.
     
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  19. Triumph

    Triumph Well-Known Member

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    Trust me I go over to the other forums and tell them they're being idiots when they are.


    Vanilla is always going to have more variation than sectorials, so toss that metric aside completely. That's the entire point of Vanilla, you lose link team order efficiency and raw stat bonuses and trade it for the flexibility to fine tune a huge variance of lists.

    Things I use to judge the value of a sectorial:
    1. Is it viable enough to compete against the other factions in the game?
    2. Do the units gel together effectively and support each other in different roles?
    3. Are several dudd profiles that are either out competed, flat out not worth their points, or are missing complementary units/gear in the sectorial?

    If the answer is no to 1 and 2, the sectorial is a failure and needs immediate fixing, and would be a great example of a bad sectorial. If the answer to 3 is yes as well then it's still a failure but given its more or less competitive I would not call it bad in that sense.

    So in the case of Tunguska when I examine it
    1. It just won a major tournament. It's clearly viable enough to compete against other factions.
    2. Yes, the units work effectively enough together. You can build a variety of options. Defensive Link supporting solos, Light attack links, Heavy attack links that project for backline support, plenty of ARO options, TO and Camo skirmishers. There's no stand out problems like a Liu Xing going where's my KHD support or the Hulang asking who lost the crate of smoke grenades.
    3. No not really. There's only 2 debateably problematic unit entries and ones a Merc so she doesn't count. The other is the Szalamandra but on the other hand it's their only access to BS14 and an HRMC so it does at least inhabit some niche within the roster.
    So after examining I can pretty safely come to the conclusion that Tunguska isn't a bad sectorial. Are there some things you could tune up? Sure, but that's true of just about every army in the game there's changes somebody would ask for but on the whole it's a good sectorial.

    Now @Section9 's complaint is it doesn't excite him because it doesn't do any new tricks. That's fair not to be excited by it, but on the other hand that's subjective. If you don't like it you don't like it, but it's not fair to call it a bad sectorial just because you don't like the flavour of it. I wasn't initially excited by the Mowang because it's kinda more of the same for us, but at the same time I didn't wanna turn around and call it shit because a BS13 Mimetic gunner isn't actually shit.

    Mechanically it functions well and it differentiates itself enough from Vanilla by virtue of being link capable. Getting order efficiency out of links is an advantage in itself in many missions and makes the army play differently to Vanilla, the quadrant style missions for example a big benefit of playing with a pain train is you can run into the center of the table and threaten every quadrant with 180 points whilst laying down superior firepower, that is something Vanilla can't do.


    The Mowang's biggest selling point is SWC cheap beatstick. Really opens up list building options, it's actually why I like it alot now as it grants alot of flexibility elsewhere to combine different stuff into a list.
     
    #79 Triumph, Apr 24, 2019
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2019
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  20. Maksimas

    Maksimas Heavy Infantry Addict Maxim

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    That's more or less why I already liked the Mowang from the get go:
    It's nothing exceedingly new, perhaps, since in Yu Jing, an ''HI beatstick'' is about a good 6th or 7th of our entire faction.
    But it's just enough of stand out beatstick to not immediately chuck out every single other HI beatstick we have in viability, but it occupies a pleasant niche of ''It's your beatstick when you're on an SWC budget. And considering you're now taking the Daoying Hacker a lot... you are basically list-building with only 5.5SWC, so it helps.''
     
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