I'm really struggling to come up with any strategies for IA to weather going second, especially in ITS games where you don't get to see the table or know your opponent's faction until after your list is made. This is an area that doesn't feel much different from N3 for me, and I hope I'm just not clever enough to spot new strategies. The active turn seems to be a bit more lethal and a bit less friendly to AROs in N4 than in N3, at least so far, and pie slicing makes any attempt to set up cooperative or overlapping AROs seem like a bit of a waste of effort unless you've gotten lucky with the table. There are some strong ARO pieces in IA, but they're sort of spendy. I'm not that keen on sinking the points into a heavy ARO presence that is rapidly dismantled during the first turn. The standby Haidao MSR + Zhanshi fireteam isn't really what I want to use my points, slots, and Core link on, most of the time anyway, and a smart opponent may well bring something to deal with an MSV sniper. Daoying are actually AVA 3, so you could potentially include two Daoying snipers alongside a LT, but that's a lot of points and SWC for 2-3 BS 12 camo snipers that don't really bring any other tools besides minelayer. We don't have much in terms of ablative troops, and losing multiple orders per troop due to the preponderance of TacAware hurts. Plus our midfield game is limited and expensive, with minimal access to minelayer troopers, and the ones we have are neither linkable nor cheap. Starting a Hulang FD SMG in suppressive isn't bad, but he's 42 points, and dedicating almost a sixth of the list to a speed bump—even a tough speed bump with a Crazykoala nearby—is rough. Likewise, Zhencha are good, but just one is only going to accomplish so much. We can hide points off-board with a Hac Tao and Liu Xing, and under camo with Zhencha and Daoying, but that means no TacAware, no link bonuses, and starting a player turn short four regular orders if the Liu Xing are maxed out. A blank courtesy list in IA that maxes AVA of those units will cost you around 400 points and any hope of link bonuses or a well-rounded toolkit, and is still just 12 models. A single Hac Tao is effectively a pocket Cutter and hides a primary attack piece off-board, but he's so expensive that I feel weird not building the list around using that gimmick somehow. Plus a strong alpha could leave him starved for orders when he finally does make an appearance. #feelsbadman Null deployment seems chancy; I've tried it a couple of times recently, and all it did was give my opponent free rein over most of the table and, in one case, the reserve model was a Squalo that got to spend the first player turn lobbing spec fire without any restrictions to speak of. Right now, the best things I can think of involve strategic repeater coverage and hackers to Spotlight the hell out of anything coming close, and/or just putting heavy armor troops in cover and hoping to tank lots of whatever happens during the other player's first turn. Which is sort of a better prospect because of the crit change from N3, but still. How do you like to handle going second with IA? How does that consideration affect your list building, if at all?
Been wondering that myself. In N3 I mostly got really lucky with the Haidao sniper. I also ran a list that layered the Hac Tao ML with a prominently placed Haidao and that worked well, but the rest of the list had to lean really heavily on the Rui Shi and independent operators like the Zhencha and Liu Xing. In N4 I'm thinking max Chaiyi, a warcor and a Husong or 2. I think that's the best we can do regarding ablative defensive troops. Otherwise I feel like mostly-null deployment is our best bet. Maybe leave a few pieces covering the midfield, but we're not really going to be able to hem someone into their deployment zone. Could try Krit FD and a Hulang along with either a linked Haidao, or a Husong or two supporting them. Once the price drop came around I also considered the possibility of 2x Haidao snipers in the core, but I haven't been able to play a game with that yet. Edit: Maybe the Zuyong ML/Shang Ji HRL aren't totally unreasonable? Using the N3 dice calc a Zuyong ML only has a 20% chance to go down in one order from an opposing linked BS13 HMG, and you can get it back up fairly easily if you've got a linked paramedic nearby. And the odds have probably gotten slightly better in N4 due to the crit changes.
I agree completely with your assessment of hard aros in N4. Stronger gunfighters absolutely benefits the active player. A fireteam I really like in theory is: Shang Ji AP HMG Haidao Sniper Haidao KHD Zhanshi Hacker Zhanshi Hacker gMwPaW52aW5jaWJsZS1hcm15AIEsAQEFAYCWAQsAAoTeAQUAA4TeAQMABHwBBgAFfAEGAA== If you pair that team with a few remotes, maybe a Lu Dua, or possibly Krit Kokram, you’ll have a solid repeater network with brutal hacking coverage. Wip 13 with sixth sense and a -6 to incoming hackers means that even killer hackers will have a hard time with your Zhanshis, much less your Haidao. Your Zhanshis will be able to spotlight any non hackable targets and oblivion or carbonate anything hackable. The one problem is that if a khd gets into your repeater network, you’ll have to drop the khd out of your team if you want all three hackers to react. Make sure that you include a couple of templates (I think the FTO baggage bot is a solid candidate) and you should be able to hide your army a little and still make your opponent spend extra orders resetting, using pitchers without having to sacrifice your heart hitters.
I like the Yan Huo ML with Neurocinetics. Despite how much I’ve bashed the Yan Huo, I simply can’t bring myself to hate that one specific profile. I know it’s often a coin toss and he never really wins that many FTF rolls but my experience with him, is that he rarely ever dies and if he does, he swallows tons of orders from the opponent. Bio immunity have made him much more durable against certain ammo-types as well. My only real issue with him is that rather than dying, he’s prone to failing Guts Roll, which wouldn’t be a big issue for me if I was able to spend a Command Token on passing my Guts Roll in ARO
My preference in IA has been: - The haido msv2 in full core. I will accept that he dies in my oponents active turn. But hopefully he sucks out some orders. I will usually try to place him so the enemy will have to use some orders to get into shot-range. I have a paremedic close by in case im lucky and get him to go prone alive. If he dies I reform the link with another attack piece. - Hac tao missile launcher - Some hacker presence in middle with zhencha and combined with the missile bot - flash bots and warcor I have to admit that IA is the yu jing army I have had most problems defending with. In N4 i think having some midfield hackers (or repeaters) are a huge bone, and thats why I prefere WB or vanilla (or even white company). Zhencha is better than in N3, but not guilang material.
Some interesting thoughts here. I have played 4 games with IA in N4, 4 of them lost (and in 3 of those I started second, the one I started first at least I lost in the last order and it was a tight match against a great player). In my eyes the single most important addition to midfield defense is Krit FD, which can also switch to offense super easy.
So far my ARO presence for IA has largely been the Haidao MSR, 2 Chaiyi, and a Warcor. Between that and stripping orders it's largely been enough to keep my opponent out of my face on turn one. I've been running some math and the Haidao MSR is also the better active turn piece than Shang Ji-sus against certain opponents. If your meta is Mimetic heavy, or favours Feuerbachs (ORCs, Karhu, Securitate etc) as ARO pieces the Haidao is actually statistically the better option to try bring them down in the active turn provided you can set up a shot over 32". If you see alot of WinterFor odds are the Haidao is actually a primary attack piece for you as it's statistically the best option to bust through most of the SF ODD speedbumps as well as the ORC/Karhu acting as hard ARO link pieces too. The KHD Haidao needs to get the fuck out of that link and join a different one, he fucks everything up for the rest of the hacking team. It's asinine but you still can't mix program AROs in link teams or the minority program user falls out of the link. It's fucking stupid and should've been one of the things that was cleaned up in the N4 hacking changes. The wasting an order to get the Burst 1 retard to stand back up in the following turn, only to potentially eat a shit flash pulse ARO or something and duck again is what really kills me about that profile.
So the ARO workhorse is the Haidao MSR. I got some very good success in N3 with him (one exception was a BS15 Domaru Spitfire, that kills him in one burst and countinued this with Lei ... I rolled three threes ... but on the other hand hold a Hospitaller fireteam a whole turn, ending in NWI). In N4 I had only one game with IA and there he stops an early attack run of a Maghriba. Normaly I try to go down with him in time and heal him out of NWI. My second choice for an Zhanshi-Defense-Link is the Sunbae. Beside of this I don´t put much dedicated ARO stuff. Chaiyi, Warcore if I have some points left. If I want an 2nd turn list, I would propably get the Yan Huo as an ARO that you can´t ignore. I think the Zuyong ML or Shang HRL will fill the same roll in a firteam. For hacking ARO I would try Krit, a deprep could be very annoying behind total cover.
My problems have been so far, Fidays killing my Lt., team leader, or best fig like Shang Ji APHMG. Also, hacking. My opponent pitching repeaters all over the place in their turn. If it's not actually hacking, it's spotlighting. With or without a missile bot. So I'm going to start taking the Hulang FTO in my core and possibly EVO REM. Hopefully he can counter the Fiday. Also the extra protection from Fairy dust might help too.
If I read you correctly you are assuming that getting back up from being healed by a dr/paramedic provokes an ARO. I’m not sure that is correct as the model gets up at the resolution of the order IIRC.
No, we are talking about the fact that the Yan Huo is a very expensive ARO piece that lacks Courage. So despite having a great armour save and packing bioimmunity to try to be tankier (even though in most situations Bioimmunity on a 5/3 unit is actually pretty fucking useless) after getting hit 35% of the time your unit will fail the guts check, shit his power armour, and dive going prone. It may not be dead, but it's no longer doing its job to ARO allowing your opponent to advance as if it were dead. The Neurocinetics has a compounding problem, if it wants to stand up next turn it may have to fight something, like say an opponent's flash pulse bot that was deployed in a mexican stand off watching the same lane of fire. Now you're firing back with a Burst 1 shot, not great. If you lose the F2F roll, congratulations you may have wasted an order to stand the Yan Huo up only to have him immediately shit his power armour again and fail his guts check and go prone.
To be perfectly honest, while that hacking interaction is annoying to deal with, I do think it's overall better for the game balance.
I dunno, basic KHDs are so trash these days it really just further widens the divide on haves and have nots in the hacking sphere which is already stupidly far apart. If CB want more people to invest in hacking they need to up the bottom end of the spectrum a bit so they can actually put models onto the table to clash with the other end of the spectrum. Just for reference I've been playing a fair bit of Invicibles and I've been using the Haidao KHD alot, but not to hack stuff. He's just been used as a cheap specialist link filler who also covers classifieds. Everytime I've come up against a problem that could use the Haidao to possibly solve it, I've looked at the situation and realised it's just better to send Lei Gong or Cheong in to resolve the situation.
IA isn't the bottom end of the spectrum, though. The sectorials at the bottom end are those without minelayer repeaters or pitchers or generally unworkable hackers, while still tending to rely on HI. You know, like ISS or JSA. And just in general, I'd like to not play a game that is even more aboit stacking loads of hackers in a tiny box called "repeater" and yell "surprise, mother f:er" everytime a target forgets it's there. Allowing more mixed hacking reactions do encourage just that and makes solo hackers even worse. Edit: And on that topic, I'm now thinking about how amazing (-ly oppressive) IA would be if the Hulang Combi had Minelayer and Repeater. I think at least one of them would be the first miniature I added to exactly all of my lists...
That's the box we're stuck with though, right now the only realistic way for a shit to average hacking faction to try and stave off some WIP15 BTS6-9 uberhacker with a flexible program loadout on an excellent device is to cram a bunch of hackers into a link and try to fight them off with weight of numbers and a firewall. KHDs are so trash tier that you're better off just stacking regular HDs. Realistically the better option is to just make KHDs not fucking trash like they are now so those solo operator KHDs could actually be a viable threat, but given that they're unwilling as fuck to do that for whatever reason the next best option would be to at least let them link and hang out with the much better HD carriers rather than becoming a literal fucking detriment by being next to them. I think it's telling how fucking terrible basic KHDs are right now at their job of killing stuff when the most frequent use I see for them is to press buttons and give a ghetto marker state to models like the Raptor, Nourkias, or Kanren.
It's a 3-point device. It's amazing for the cost. I'm still not sure whether you've got your head screwed on right when your solution to solo hackers being trash is to implement a change that will make them even more trash. I'd rather see Repeaters (at least the Token variety of Repeaters) have an "exclusive access" rule where the "bandwidth" only allowed for one hacker (per side) at a time. There's further complications with the current hacking system beyond just how they interact with other hackers, and that is how Spotlight interacts with a Guided REM. How to break N4 starter kit ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 KOKRAM (Forward Deployment [+8"], Minelayer) Heavy Shotgun, E/Mitter, E/M Mines ( | Deployable Repeater) / Heavy Pistol(+1B), CC Weapon. (0 | 41) SON-BAE Yaókòng Missile Launcher / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (1.5 | 16) ZHANSHI (Hacker, Hacking Device) Combi Rifle ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 16) ZHANSHI (Hacker, Hacking Device) Combi Rifle ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 16) ZHANSHI (Hacker, Hacking Device) Combi Rifle ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 16) 3 SWC | 105 Points Open in Infinity Army This "starter kit" can be replicated in White Banner, White Company, and vanilla Yu Jing. Probably a few others. It can also be mimicked using non-minelayer deployable repeaters or pitchers in just about all other factions with a few exceptions such as for example any form of Ariadna, JSA, ISS or SWF. The fact that you can just dump Spotlight on an enemy through weight of numbers using repeaters that are nigh-on impossible for the opponent to remove effectively without being specifically prepared for it... And the funny thing is, with 3 fairly crap hackers huddled up behind a Firewall like the above list, it's actually fairly difficult to get at them. Add a maverick KHD out and aboot and you'll be quite safe. Even funnier is how grossly un-safe a HD user that's alone is against a KHD. So yeah. Haidao KHD not working in a Fireteam with regular hackers is not at all an issue, I feel, and allowing them to do so would compound the issue while solving literally nothing.
I find that solo hackers will find life easier if I feel compelled to put a KHD plus a HD in a link, rather than spamming 3-4 Zhanshi HDs in a link. As you note, weight of numbers spammed into a repeater is a problem. Fewer present hackers, easier time for a solo hacker operator (who may be literally be the sole hacker for a faction like JSA) to attack said issue. Right now a faction like JSA that is on the shit end of the hacking spectrum really has to look at the situation and say, "you know what, fuck this killer hacking device I might as well not even bother trying to participate in the hacking game." Personally I would like to do Shang Ji hacker plus Haidao KHD in a link (or Shang Ji+Tian Gou), however I shelve it the instant I remember that they fuck each other over and don't play nice together. As you point out rather than trying to build an encompassing elite team, I'd be better served just spamming 16pt idiot Zhanshi. It's useful for its cost versus the added vulnerability on a very few select profiles and it's being taken for cyber mask and specialist status not for its namesake, you know, the killing thing. Right now it's truly garbage at its job of attacking and removing entrenched/high BTS hackers.
There aren't all that many of those kinds of hackers outside of Nomads and your solution is still to make stacking hacking ARO even easier while doing nothing about the fact that an Interventor is basically impervious to the damage Trinity can do. Not to mention that it allows the opponent with those high BTS units to more easily stack them up in fireteams to make them more difficult to handle through other means such as Stealth or BS Attacks... Giving KHDs the ability to stack AROs through Repeaters isn't going to solve this, because Trinity is crap at attacking Interventors (unless you're Mary Problems in which case it's just bad) and it allows even more stacking of hacking through repeaters to make factions like JSA even worse at hacking.
