Yes, the thread title is a pun. Let’s chat about the state of Yu Jing and its sectorials in ITS 12. I’d really like to hear everyone’s thoughts about which sectorials, units, or strategies are likely to be most suited to the different missions. Something that stuck out to me is that order efficiency may end up being a really big deal, especially now that it’s confirmed that objectives will still require WIP rolls as they did in prior seasons; this has always been the case, but the 15 model limit and the appearance of so many potentially order-intensive missions (cough Rescue cough) puts IA on somewhat better footing than expected, and I’m anticipating some tac awareness cheese. It also looks like we’ll be able to ding even a Limited Insertion list at the start of the game to dock 2 orders, and lots of TA might be considered a form of soft counterintelligence against that. White Banner is also looking really solid for missions that feature zero-g zones. It’s got a bunch of Terrain (Total) units and they’re legitimately good for the most part. The Blue Wolf is one of the small number of TAGs in the game with a pertinent Terrain skill—the others being the Gecko, Marut, and Sphinx. Corregidor is the only other sectorial in the game that combines good coverage of Terrain-effective linkable troops with a Terrain-effective TAG option. Unfortunately, ISS is going to have it a little rougher in terms of navigating those zero-g zones, but a couple of key force-projecting models and good low-burst fire into/through saturation sones from the DZ might work in their favor with the right list builds. Positioning the saturation/zero-g zones to keep Kamau-style linked snipers from getting their full ARO burst down firelanes ought to help with getting out of the DZ, and Lunah is looking good as a potential sniper to operate in or shoot through those zones in a pinch. I suspect I’ll have to suck it up and spend some command tokens to coordinate troop movements in vanilla lists more than I’m used to; the extra order efficiency is going to matter when you can’t spam order generators, and vanilla has some tempting options for handling those terrain zones, but loss of links could hurt. So...looking at the ITS 12 mission lineup, which sectorial (or vanilla!) would you be most inclined to take for a given mission and why?
I don't think you'll find the Zero G terrain zones used that much as movement blockers. I think you'll find they're used to fuck with people's firelanes more often. It's a bigger deal for a Vanilla player to able to deploy them in locations they really don't want a Kamau, or Atlanta locking it down by making it easier to deal with them by cutting their burst down in half. The Blue Wolf is interested in this mostly because it, along with the Yan Huo and core linked HMGs is the least affected by a saturation zone.
I’m also interested in giving troopers with Terrain (Total) a +1” movement bonus, which is why I brought up linkable troopers. Shang Ji and Daofei are MOV 7-2 in those zones, and the Blue Wolf is 7-4. Lists intended to rush the midfield get a nice little boost from that in addition to a buffer against sniper AROs. Guilangs lurking in there get MOV 5-4, as would a Tiger. This is all situational and table-dependent, obvs; it just happens to be stuff that jumped out at me when trying to think through the strengths and weaknesses of different armies to handle the quirks of ITS 12 missions, and the addition of those zones is going to be interesting.
Something to remember is D-Charges against scenery are just 1 order now, no need to roll with the CC stat. 1 Order to place the charge, and it auto explodes during the resolution step of the order. With that in mind Daofei, Zencha, and the Liu Xing are all pretty decent options at busting objectives in Mindwipe. Also this is delving into jank territory, but would placing a Rem Racer with [+1 Damage] which also gives +1 WIP on an EVO hacker boost its Eraser damage against the objective in that mission? My gut feeling is that the Ye Mao Haris is also one of the better options for White Banner in Mindwipe. The KHD Ye Mao actually has a significant purpose in that mission, and when combined with a Shang Ji Tinbot and BTS6 it's a mission critical piece that's hard to remove. Trinity's purpose is simply to defend the Ye Mao itself from hacking attacks which makes killing less important and just deflecting attacks with F2F rolls more important, giving it value over the HD profile. Along with being cheaper and no SWC tax. Additionally he links with an Engineer which further insulates him against hacking attacks, and moving up the table also brings the Engineer who packs D-Charges closer to the objective as a backup option in case the hacker goes down. EDIT: Except I'm fuckin retarded and forgot the KHD profile can't carry the eraser program. HD Ye Mao it is or the Shang Ji HD if you wanna go the full hog
The Hsien HMG loves Saturation Zones when playing against Sectorials. Another thing to remember is that there's no restriction on blocking terrain/objectives with the Decompression Zones, so you can force an attacker to stop dead at the edge if they don't have the right Skill- which can give you an extra Order to Discover or shoot something.
Localized Decompression looks really fun and interesting. In my opinion, It will make games less snowbally (which is usually very common in Infinity) by slowing certain Rambo pieces from Alpha striking effectively, and putting some restrictive reactive pieces in check. It also emphasizes the importance of Hacking in this edition, since Saturation only affects BS Attacks and the Difficult Terrain can keep units inside Hacking Areas for longer. The fact both players can deploy them and the one who kept Deployment has to do it first makes it interactive, and that's awesome! In general, units with Terrain (Total) and (Zero-G); and strong active turn pieces with high Burst weapons will be better in missions with Localized Decompression. Some I can think of right now are: Spoiler: ISS Su Jian, Ninja and Kanren have Terrain (Total) Hsien, Wu Ming and Dakini have HMGs and can be linked, Cranes are Wildcards and sport a Visor X Spitfire as well Spoiler: IA Shang Ji, Haidao, Zhencha and Mowang all have Terrain (Total), which is awesome for this We have several HMGs here, but the one that shines brighter is the AP HMG in the Shang Ji. This means they can both shoot and move better through the zones (plus AP ammo). Mowang has Spitfire and Red Fury options Spoiler: WB Ok, now we are talking: Tiger, Guilang, Daofei, Shang Ji, Ye Mao, Blue Wolf and Tian Gou have either Terrain (Total) or (Zero-G) Tiger has Spitfire, Daofei as well. Shang Ji has that linked AP HMG, Ye Mao has a linked AP Spitfire, Blue Wolf brings an AP Spitfire with +1B and even Tiang Gou can use a Red Fury (even though you probably want to link them and give them a Jammer). Having said that, It seems clear to me that White Banner is above the rest at managing Localized Decompression.
I'm going to be trying out Mindwipe tonight with White Banner. It this mission kinda sucks for them. I'm taking a Daofei HD because he also comes with D-Charges for destroying the servers. But he's the only forward deployable guy that has anything that can destroy them. All other anti-materiel weapons are back in deployment. There's a special hacking program a hacker can have but he can't be a marker state. Meanwhile, i'm going up agasint either Haqq of some flavor or Bakunin. Both of them have good hackers and cheaper infiltrators with D-Charges.
I did the new Mindwipe tonight with White Banner. I only did WB because I told myself that I would play with the same sectoral 5 times before going to something different. It was against QK. I think I made a mistake of picking deployment because letting him go first with pitchers and a bunch of hackers is never good. He had a Druze core with a KHD and HD with pitchers, at least two hawwa hackers (they come with D-Charges BTW). So anyway, like the last game I played, a lot of my forces was targeted and destroyed by the missile bot (all of my Shaolin, TG jammer, Guilang). The the Druze KHD killed my Zhanshi hacker, Tian Gou KHD. But somehow I managed to pull off tie. with a few orders in my second turn my Daofei managed to hack a console and luckily it rolled the server closest to the Blue Wolf. But the Daofei got isolated and immobilized while doing it. in my last turn i had only 2 reg orders and the BW tac aware order. He used and order to get on contact and the last two orders he managed to destroy it in CC. Like I said before, WB only has one guy with Anti-Material weapon that is infiltrating. And that guy is expensive and hackable. The rest of my CC Anti-material need to walk through a repeater net and get targed the whole time. If you do a rest you are slowing yourself down as well. This guided missile thing is getting stupid. Question: can a camo guy that becomes targeted, go back into camo?
There is nothing preventing it, though it is unclear whether Targeted State gives your opponent a bonus to Discover rolls.
In the Spanish ITS 12 it says "the hacker has to be always on the table as a model OR a marker". So we might need clarification on that one @HellLois :)
Wow I just took a look at ISS and they have it even worse with Mindwipe!! The only troops with Anti-Material weapons are: Ninja AVA1, Sophotech AVA1, Crane Agent, Zhanying Hacker. This mission really sucks for them. Using the Uber hacker is also not great but maybe more possible. I'd probably make the Crane the Uberhacker. You'd think Ariadna would have it worse with no hacking but no. They have a ton of guys with D-Charges and some of them infiltrators.
I think ISS is not that terrible for mindwipe. Mindwipe asks the player to do exactly what ISS asks you to do, it just asks you to do it with a regular Crane rather than with Adil.
I think they're going to have issues with sporting enough redundancy in attack vectors. A strong hacking opponent will render it difficult for the Crane or Zhanying to attack a target, which leaves a singular Ninja as the Sophotect is unlikely to have the grunt to do the job. Vanilla and WB have a bigger range of backup options (6pt DA CCW Monks are solid) in case of difficulties approaching or casualties suffered.
Just be prepared to go through a repeater network to do it! I'd suggest a EVO for that. The Crane is the best hacker ISS has too, so a tinbot would be good too. Unfortunately after taking a Crane and anyone else to help him, you don't have much in the way of defenders. ────────────────────────────────────────────────── GROUP 1 9 CRANE AGENT (Hacker, Hacking Device, Hacking Device) MULTI Rifle, Nanopulser(+1B) ( ) / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0.5 | 46) WÚ MÍNG Boarding Shotgun ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 31) WÚ MÍNG Heavy Machine Gun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 37) XI ZHUANG Combi Rifle, Light Flamethrower(+1B), Flash Pulse, Madtraps / Pistol, CC Weapon, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0 | 21) ZHÀNYING (Hacker, Hacking Device) Breaker Combi Rifle, Chain-colt, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (0.5 | 25) NINJA (Hacker, Killer Hacking Device) Tactical Bow ( ) / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 29) GARUDA Tacbot Boarding Shotgun / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 19) SOPHOTECT Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 31) ZHÀNYING (Lieutenant) Heavy Machine Gun, Chain-colt / Pistol, PARA CC Weapon(-6). (1 | 26) GROUP 2 3 PANGGULING (Hacker, EVO Hacking Device) ( ) / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0.5 | 15) CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7) DAKINI Tacbot Combi Rifle / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 13) 4 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army
You are not wrong, so let me rephrase my assessment a bit; I don't think Mindwipe, specifically, causes any problems for ISS that they don't already have in other missions. You can't design your list much better for Mindwipe than you typically already do, and you won't be altering your plan to any significant degree than you already planned for a less demanding mission like Annihilation. The units that aren't allowed to get killed when playing Mindwipe are the same that your game plan hinges on during other missions. The problem with playing ISS when playing Mindwipe is that you're playing ISS, not that you're playing Mindwipe.
I don't think that's strictly true I mean look at the list in the post above yours, even though I think it's got some weird ass choices in there like the solo Zhanying HMG and random Dakini, in another non smash the objective mission there's at least 2 Wu Ming, a Garuda, and Xi who are all capable of either just killing shit/contesting from scoring zones or pressing buttons to do objectives whereas in Mindwipe they're incapable of completing the main objective and you're very much all in on the Crane, Ninja, Zhanying, and Sophotect. Mindwipe has a very very narrow scope for ISS.
Still have to remember that you'll still have to both get your dudes to the mission and prevent your opponent from getting there. You can't focus absolutely everything on destroying the mission objectives or you'll end up losing to the opponent simply punching through you. The solo Zhanying and the random Dakini are both quite decent at controlling the home zone (and the Zhanying also offers a Core refill) while the Garuda is capable of acting as a cheerleader-sweeper and the two Wu Ming both provide bodies and protection from point defence so that your DA weapons can get forward more intact. That's all contributing to the mission and you're gonna need those kinds of units regardless what sectorial you play. Sure, it's not all magically falling into place like some list where accidentally every single profile of your main fireteam has a D-charge Just Because or where the entire point of your sectorial is carrying around explosive melee weapons to stab people in the eye with. However, unlike White Banner, you don't need to consciously go out of your way to get the units necessary to get anti-materiel CC options in ISS; chances are you'll already be using a Zhanying Hacker or that altering from a MadTrapper to a Hacker isn't a big deal and having a Crane is essentially the point of the sectorial. It is still a bad sectorial for this mission, but it's not worse off compared to many other sectorials because of the mission. Most sectorials are challenged by Mindwipe more than what extra challenges ISS have to put up with due to the mission.
That's true, but it's still not the same. Mindwipe (or Looting and Sabotaging) if you have specific units sniped or suicide piece traded for you can't win anymore. You're hard locked into drawing or losing pretty much. Other missions you can still score with with plan B or C units. You don't have the luxury of really having a decent backup plan in this particular mission which kind of sucks in Infinity. In my game I was well ahead of my opponent, wiped his core link out in one turn and gutted his order pool. Still lost because a fucking TR bot of all things decided to go HAM in the final turn, killed my Ninja rolling on 5s to hit vs 14s, then took out my Daofei in one order rolling 4 hits including 2 crits. 6 Armour saves later Daofei was a smear on the ground. I hadn't moved the Monks up far enough to finish the job with the remaining orders and that was the end of the game. Mindwipe is far far harder to ensure list redundancy compared to other missions for ISS was the point Space Ranger was making and I think he's correct in that assessment.
Okay, fair enough, but what sectorials don't have a hard time with this mission. (It's actually so damned funny how well suited for this mission IA is compared to the other two with the only thing stopping them being a repeater wall near all servers.)
Any Nomad sectorial, ASS, Bahram, Starmada, any Knight linking sectorials, off the top of my head. IA can also probably do this mission fine so long as they can ensure they don't get shut out by enemy hackers. I think White Banner is probably also decentish. They can stack multiple options including a half decent hacking set up + d charges into a link and roll with it and Monks are Monks, and they get Daofei. I haven't tested it but it was pointed out to me the Blue Wolf is possibly a potential order efficient candidate at handling the objective too with Berserk and linkable tinbots to protect it on the hacking front but I still think it's potentially sketchy based on levels of hacking in the meta.
