The red veil dossier for the Tiger lists their faction as being the Invincible Army. The Daofei's fluff blurb notes them as belonging to the tactical section of the Invincible Army, as of the N3 core book. ...you can guess peoples' disappointment when they stocked up on these guys for the release of IA...
And when IA was utterly deficient in real heavy infantry, and that the Daofei was taken out to flog a die-to-a-mine fake heavy infantry Zhencha.
Hey, I love my Zhencha. Really cool and versatile trooper, even if it only has one profile. Man, the Zhencha makes for such a great support unit for the Daofei, I'd love to see them in a sectorial toge-- ...yeah... At least the Zhencha was different enough from the Daofei that I can happily live that dream in vanilla, and I can even have them chill with some Guilangs for good measure. With how boring IA can be, I'm not missing much. But the bait and switch with the Tiger and the Liu Xing was just an insult. There was so much wasted potential there.
Zhencha could have been a Daofei specialist profile with a SMG rort. Keep it simple. As for Liu Xing, I'll like it when it has two wounds propper and a model for the MULTI rifle. Explode Lolvel X should also be replaced with Albedo to make it interesting and sensible instead of niche and gimmicky.
While I agree that Explode is thoroughly underwhelming, I've actually found NWI & straight to dead a real benefit on the Liu Xing. Lots of games I've run him as a durable backfield objective grabber and this prevents him from being Coup de Grace, In Extremis Recovery, and the slightly cheesy stunning an unconscious specialist during Hunting Party. Now that's not saying I'm completely content with the reliance on pseudo 2W HI in the rest of the sectorial but in this instance I think it's a benefit.
I actually like the Liu Xing with the 1.9W and Bioimmunity. It gets V:Courage as an added bonus, and doesn't have to worry about viral ammunition, niche as it may be. The other benefit is not leaving a body, which is fine considering that he'll rarely ever deploy in a position to make use of a doctor anyway and it denies some objectives to an opponent. It's nothing but perks at a discount in that regard. The problem is everywhere else. He should have been a much more elite profile. Put the Tiger back in IA, and give Liuie the skills and statline to be in the 55-65 point neighbourhood. But explosion is painfully limp, and for a unit that is supposed to be drawn from Tiger alumni, he should at least have a statline on par with them (and more due to the benefits of heavy armour).
Yu Jing-ese Heavy Armor doesn't give you a stats boost to anymore; If anything, it gives you PENALTIES. Makes perfect sense for the faction specializing in HI.
Haha Cheap and Chinese amirite should have brought Mototronican made not Lead Paint Knockoffs when will they learn support our troops amren Pope bless siri post comment
I always saw the Zhencha as being a heavier Guilang, personally. My biggest problem with the Liu Xing is how vulnerable it is to hacking, for a unit designed to drop into the middle of the fight. Really needs some help, like a native Tinbot B. Then we can start talking about how to make the Tiger Soldiers work in the list, which really means bumping the LX up to about Daofei or Hac Tao levels of badassery.
Downgrade CCW to Knife, add Martial Arts, increase CC to Shang-Ji level. This should make it maybe a point more expensive (unless higher level of MA), but does mean you get Stealth and you'd be able to Silent-kill Repeaters to clear them and avoid getting hacked. Unfortunately MA1-3 doesn't work against Repeaters on REMs due to Electric Pulse. This isn't an automatic solution to make the Louie perfect, but will help address most of the bullshit problems that Liu Xing has that all other AD doesn't have to bother with.
Haidao, Zencha, Liu Xing and Hulang beg to differ, all 1 W troopers. Last time we checked only Ariadnan HI were 1W but also non-hackable.
Is there a Doctor in the house? I really hate having all of these expensive troops and only having 1 very squishy doctor and a few questionable medics. Please give Haidao a doctor profile!
Needing a one wound, zero BTS """heavy infantry""" to plug every hole in a list is a separate design problem.
But it basically always does now. Unless you're a Zhencha. But Dart gets bioimmunity because she's someone's OC.
Zhencha were what I really had in mind when I was thinking of ARM2 W2 as a thing for the lighter IA heavy infantry. Keep the feeling of being heavy infantry rather than this goofy, gamey, non-intuitive points rort they are running now.
