I played White Banner and I liked it

For the people coming into this thread wondering if I hit my head recently:

At 400 points

Purely to humour a local player's request our local group agreed to play a 400 point game at one weekly meeting (keeping the 15 slot limit). To my surprise, I actually liked the 400 point format alot and as it turned out so did everyone else. That was well over a month ago and my local group hasn't switched back to 300 points since upping the points limit. At this point everyone prefers the new format and it's highly unlikely we ever switch back.

I intend to make a general post about it at a later date but I felt like making a thread specific to the discussion of White Banner and its standing with the other options in faction.

Don't get me wrong the format isn't a silver bullet. It doesn't fix garbage profiles like the Tian Gou and Qing Gao. However that aside one of the big issues I've had with buildings lists in N4, and this isn't just for White Banner, is that there are a far greater amount of gear checks you need to hit. The lists have often felt extremely cookie cutter because almost the entire list is busy meeting various gear checks before I can really add any flavour to it. Jumping to 400 points offers enough breathing room in SWC and cost to actually leverage the increased AVA options available to the sectorial.

For White Banner the extra 2 SWC is huge, at 6 SWC it struggles hard to differentiate itself from Vanilla because the sectorial is super fucking SWC hungry. The star players of White Banner the camo team of Long Ya, Hundun, Guilang, and Daofei are particularly guilty of this. 8 SWC gives you enough room to get a healthy amount of these units and also get a good value Fireteam Core or Haris. At 300 points you can't really get the fireteam in as well, which means why the fuck would you play White Banner over Vanilla who can also leverage NCO and better LT options and a wider roster of camo units.

That bit of extra room though? Really make the sectorial feel like it goes from grinding like clunky jank to spinning smoothly with a purpose.

 

No joke I think Infinity on the whole operates better at 400 points even if there are a few sectorials that are still ass (such as ISS and USARF), but I'll save that for another thread.

 

My finding has actually been the opposite, line troops are still showing up and the SWC troops are also actually seeing play again. With 100 extra points and 2 SWC it's easier to find your list with no room left for more bodies, yet still a few points and SWC left over. At this point upgrading a basic trooper to a random grenade launcher, HMG, or MSR into a line infantry team is a viable option instead of just having another combi Zhanshi following Shang Ji around.

This is less so for White Banner, who are super SWC hungry, but has been common for my IA lists at 400 points. However the Zhanshi are still turning up in White Banner because having a basic hacker in a tinbot link from the Shang Ji plus a fuckload of Guilang Minelayers projecting a repeater net and mines is actually really solid. I played into Shas tonight and between the Guilangs and Long Ya I had five minelayers and my opponent's Caliban were super sad about the amount of crap they were looking at wading through the board to actually get at anything.

You can definitely play the Shang Ji core you've listed, but I find there's way more list variance at 400 points. Zhanshi core plus wildcards is still totally a top end option for both IA and WB.

 

Heh, well as it turns out the trick for our group was the person in question convinced the guy running the tournaments to get on board and try it out.


Anyway this is the list I was running this week.

Looting and Sabotaging
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GROUP 1 10 1
DÀOFĚI (Lieutenant) Spitfire, D-Charges / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 55)
DÀOFĚI (Hacker, Hacking Device) MULTI Rifle, D-Charges ( ) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0.5 | 56)
YĚ MĀO (Engineer, Deactivator) MULTI Rifle, Chain-colt, Panzerfaust, D-Charges ( | GizmoKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 31)
YĚ MĀO (Hacker, Hacking Device) MULTI Rifle, Chain-colt ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 31)
SHÀNG JÍ (Tactical Awareness) AP Heavy Machine Gun, Chain-colt ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 49)
GŬILÁNG (Minelayer) Boarding Shotgun, Shock Mines ( | Deployable Repeater) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 27)
GŬILÁNG (Minelayer) Boarding Shotgun, Shock Mines ( | Deployable Repeater) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 27)
GŬILÁNG (Minelayer) Boarding Shotgun, Shock Mines ( | Deployable Repeater) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 27)
CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7)
WÈIBĪNG Yaókòng Combi Rifle, Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 15)

GROUP 2 3 2 2
LÓNG YÁ (Minelayer) Panzerfaust(+1B), Flammenspeer(+1B), Submachine Gun, AP Mines / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0.5 | 17)
LÓNG YÁ (Minelayer) Panzerfaust(+1B), Flammenspeer(+1B), Submachine Gun, AP Mines / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0.5 | 17)
HÙNDÙN (X Visor) Heavy Rocket Launcher ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 27)
SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 6)
SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, DA CC Weapon. (0 | 6)

8 SWC | 398 Points

Open in Infinity Army


This is a modified version of a 300 point list I tried to work out a long time ago but could never get it functional to the point where I liked it.

The original was never made specifically for Looting and Sabotaging, so don't factor that in too much I just happened to realise I could adapt it to work well. The original idea was to project a strong minefield as a defensive tool that could also threaten to deploy a hacking network defensively as well.


Original
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GROUP 1 10 1
ZHANSHI (Paramedic) Combi Rifle ( | MediKit) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 13)
ZHANSHI Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11)
ZHANSHI (Lieutenant) Combi Rifle / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 11)
SHÀNG JÍ (Hacker, Hacking Device) MULTI Rifle, Chain-colt ( ) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0.5 | 41)
SHÀNG JÍ (Tactical Awareness) AP Heavy Machine Gun, Chain-colt ( | TinBot: Firewall [-6]) / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (1.5 | 49)
GŬILÁNG (Minelayer) Boarding Shotgun, Shock Mines ( | Deployable Repeater) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 27)
GŬILÁNG (Minelayer) Boarding Shotgun, Shock Mines ( | Deployable Repeater) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 27)
GŬILÁNG (Minelayer) Boarding Shotgun, Shock Mines ( | Deployable Repeater) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0.5 | 27)
CHAĪYÌ Yaókòng Flash Pulse / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0 | 7)
MECH-ENGINEER Combi Rifle, D-Charges / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15)

GROUP 2 3 2 2
LÓNG YÁ (Minelayer) Panzerfaust(+1B), Flammenspeer(+1B), Submachine Gun, AP Mines / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0.5 | 17)
LÓNG YÁ (Minelayer) Panzerfaust(+1B), Flammenspeer(+1B), Submachine Gun, AP Mines / PARA CC Weapon(-3). (0.5 | 17)
HÙNDÙN (X Visor) Heavy Rocket Launcher ( ) / Pistol, CC Weapon. (1.5 | 27)
SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 5)
SHAOLIN Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, Shock CC Weapon. (0 | 5)

6 SWC | 299 Points

Open in Infinity Army

So the issue I ran into workshopping this list is it's fantastic during deployment but becomes very very clunky after that. Deployment is awesome, you get your mine/deprep camo spam network down and it looks fantastic. The main issue that drags everything down is the fireteam, specifically the hyper vulnerable Zhanshi LT in that link is a massive anchor hanging around its neck.

The Guilangs are great openers and fantastic skirmishers but they don't hit quite hard enough to crack well defended targets like an entrenched enemy link. They need someone to either come in as a second wave or to brute force ahead of them. It's really hard to make this happen with the Zhanshi link containing the LT, and even if you're successful you're opening yourself to your opponent counter attacking you into LoL the following turn.

The list is also contains a fairly exploitable linchpin with the Shang Ji HMG. An impersonator managing to suicide trade for it or your opponent managing to brick it then deleting the Engineer with a missile can put the list so far on the back foot it struggles to get back into the game. Again, Guilang are fantastic but they're not well rounded enough to carry the game on their own.

Expanding to 400 points solved these issues for me and more. Whacking a pair of Daofei into the list made the LT far more durable, freed the Shang Ji's link up to attack aggressively, doubled the hackers up to improve the value of a defensive hacking network. Additionally it vastly improved insulation against the list getting alpha struck with two Daofei able to back up the Guilang in the event of the Shang Ji's link getting crippled by my opponent's opening turn.

In general 400 points generally improves firepower redundancy and makes it more difficult for overbearing alpha strikes to entirely deciding games on turn one. I think this is a healthy thing for the game in general.