Yeah that was pretty weird. That said these previews are often straight up wrong with typos or outdated like Dahshat when release happens so who knows what's going on. He's in shit basically because the Kamau sniper was a fucking mistake and as it turns out factions that don't have eclipse or White Noise really needed some kind of retarded hyper optimised profile to handle it. Wild guesses is that the Kaldstrom conflict on Sval and Dire Foes all lead into the new manga which is set around the events leading into Defiance.
Hassassin Bahram ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 2 HASSASSIN HUSAM YASBIR (Holoprojector L1) Rifle + Light Shotgun, Nanopulser / Pistol, Viral CCW, Knife. (0 | 27) HASSASSIN HUSAM YASBIR (Infiltration, Holoprojector L2) Rifle + Light Shotgun, Nanopulser, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Viral CCW, Knife. (0 | 34) 0 SWC | 61 Points Open in Infinity Army Eh, you know... could be something similar to this. Hoping what they are is a Impersonator in one profile and Holo1 in the other, but that's admittedly far too much to hope for. Looks like a Tian Guo character if you go by shapes instead of colours.
With the wrong guns, made of plastic and with low enough detail that they didn't even try to put the texture on his skirt. You know it's not the same, why start shit?
Especially the kvetching about the sectorial feeling undercooked, when Bostria specifically said these are made for N4, so they’re not optimized for N3... but, hey, if it wasn’t this, it’d be something else.
I'm here in the don't really care category when it comes to the Zhanshi. Yeah, it's called a banner army but who knows if they've retconned the idea that YJ uses outdated military practices, slowly modernizing with the likes of IA, or the banners aren't cookie cutter forces and they have some variety to them. OR never expect the lore to line up 1 to 1 with what we get on a mechanical level in the game.
Fluff side, Zhanshis are troops of banner yet they're mentioned as auxiliary light infantry unit supporting Invincibles (which they say the mainstay of StateEmpire military force - 3rd Offensive IA fluff, 'The Forge of Invincible' part), in that case Zhanshis are not quite the assets for undercover mission unlike Fusiliers (Which IS the mainstay army for PanO). Crunch side, WBA got cheap fodders/smokers like Shaolin which will generate regular if they form the fireteam (I am assuming this IF fireteam rule stays as it is) and giving AVA total to Zhanshis could result in bummer level order pumping which is kinda available for now because we got access to Chaiyi AVA 2 (once more) and 2 Yaopus. Also, it seems like WBA will got some interesting wildcard options to lever Zhanshis; which requires you to think about saving your daily line infantry to make it fully functional.
For what it's worth, YJ doesn't exactly have the best track record for players who get excited about things... On the subject of the Zhanshi restriction, sure, it strikes me as silly from a thematic point of view. But practically speaking, I really can't be bothered to care. Zhanshi are among the worst of the baseline infantry, and I always avoid taking any more of them than I ever have to. I fully expect to see a bunch of arbitrary fireteam restrictions imposed on White Banner that no other faction has to deal with, but the Zhanshi are not the trooper where I'm going to start worrying.
Except we already more than likely will get QIang Gao and Lei Gong as wildcards to fill in there. And then we have the Jujak, Tian Gou, Jing Qo, and Adil that have special fireteam options that could also belong in there too.
Zhanshi are soldiers of the banner, they just didnt specify which banner. Probably the orange banner.
