Well then, nevermind. That's pretty peachy. Still, as nice as that is, I still would not consider him a strong contender for any role in IA.
I think he will work good in a link with a Mowang in the list. If we just had one more wildcard character we could do a 5 man Named core.
If I'm rocking a Mowang though, why would I worry about spending points and orders on Qiang? The Daoying already offers the orders and better utility for considerably less.
Yup. That's how I work my Samurai 7 lists, the TAG/Daiyokai on one side and the Pain Train on the other.
The issue with Qiang Gao for me is that he's a brute force face-smasher in a sectorial with an abundance of brute force face-smashers. IMO IA has a desperate shortage of utility & tech pieces for problems that can't be easily solved by chucking lots of dice in a ftf roll, which is why Lei Gong is such a welcome addition. If I want a long range solo attacker I will reach for the Hac Tao HMG, Yan Huo HRMC, or even the Guijia before him, as BS13 4-burst with no mods just won't cut it against any sort of competent ARO threat. If I want a point-man in a Zuyong link, Qiang Gao is competing with the Zuyong tac-aware HMG, and the link is already so damned expensive (even as a Haris) that the pts cost savings is going to win out most of the time. Jammer immunity is interesting, but there's no reason to ever push him that far up the table out of his good range bands. So yeah, don't see much use for him honestly.
